A Kind of Grace Read Online Free
Mississippi, and were raised there from birth by Estella's mother, Lena. When Lena moved from Ruleville to East St. Louis, Illinois, she brought my mother and Della with her.
By the time she was a teenager, my mother had blossomed into quite a beauty, standing 5′ 6″ and weighing about 130 pounds. Alfred, my father, was just entering puberty at the time of their marriage. But A.J., as Daddy was known in the neighborhood, looked and acted like a man. He ran track and played football. He was tall and handsome and had an athletic build, reaching 6′ 2߱, 190 pounds before he stopped growing. Wary parents in the neighborhood called him, and boys like him, “mannish.”
After taking their vows, Momma and Daddy went back to their separate homes. Two years later, my mother was pregnant again. When my great-grandmother found out, she hit the roof. And when she discovered that Alfred was also her grandson-in-law, she tried to hit my father. She chased him out of her house and all the way down the street. Then she stormed back into her house and kicked my mother and her baby son out.
Lena considered herself a devout Christian. But I guess she was too mad at my mother to care that she'd be giving birth soon or that she and her baby son had nowhere to go. Fortunately, Daddy's grandmother, Ollie Mae Johnson, took in Momma and my brother, Al. Ollie Mae told her neighbors, “I won't have my great-grandkids raised on the street or in some stranger's house.”
My father's mother, Evelyn, worked and lived in Chicago and visited East St. Louis on holidays and weekends. She was home for the Christmas holidays in January 1962, a few months before the second baby was due. John Kennedy was president at the time, and grandmother Evelyn told my mother, “If it's a girl, name her Jacqueline because she's the first Joyner girl and someday she'll be the first lady of something!”
Three months later, on March 3, 1962, I was born.
My sister Angela was born eleven months after me, in February 1963. Debra arrived the following year in June. While Momma stayed home with the babies, Daddy finished high school and found a job after graduation. They were kids raising kids.
The six of us lived with my great-grandmother Ollie Mae in her small, six-room, wood-frame house. The house wasn't spacious or opulent, but it was home to us. My mother treated our living room furniture like fine antiques. She kept plastic slipcovers on the couch and upholstered armchairs, and wouldn't allow us to sit in the room unless visitors came over. Space was at a premium. The house had one tiny bathroom. I shared the room off the kitchen at the front of the house with Debra, on the other side of the wall from the family room. By day, the family room was the gathering place for meals and TV watching. At night, it was the bedroom for my other sister and great-grandmother, who slept on the fold-out sofa. My parents' bedroom was across the hall from the kitchen. Al took the room at the back of the house.
Except for Al's space and the bathroom, the house didn't have interior doors. We walked right out of one area into the next. As soon as fall began to turn into winter, my father turned on the furnace. As the feeling of warmth circulated through the house, we gathered around the door frames with armfuls of blankets. Daddy stood on a chair with a hammer and a pocketful of nails. Holding the satiny hem of the blankets to the top of the frame, he drove in the nails. The makeshift insulation trapped heat within our bedrooms, and kept Al out in the cold, literally. His room could have doubled as a refrigerator.
All of our efforts to trap the precious warm air came to nothing when the furnace broke, a frequent wintertime occurrence. At those times, the kitchen stove was our heater. My mother kept the oven door open day and night. For most of the winter, the kitchen replaced the den as the family gathering spot.
On the coldest days, I'd walk in after track and basketball
By the time she was a teenager, my mother had blossomed into quite a beauty, standing 5′ 6″ and weighing about 130 pounds. Alfred, my father, was just entering puberty at the time of their marriage. But A.J., as Daddy was known in the neighborhood, looked and acted like a man. He ran track and played football. He was tall and handsome and had an athletic build, reaching 6′ 2߱, 190 pounds before he stopped growing. Wary parents in the neighborhood called him, and boys like him, “mannish.”
After taking their vows, Momma and Daddy went back to their separate homes. Two years later, my mother was pregnant again. When my great-grandmother found out, she hit the roof. And when she discovered that Alfred was also her grandson-in-law, she tried to hit my father. She chased him out of her house and all the way down the street. Then she stormed back into her house and kicked my mother and her baby son out.
Lena considered herself a devout Christian. But I guess she was too mad at my mother to care that she'd be giving birth soon or that she and her baby son had nowhere to go. Fortunately, Daddy's grandmother, Ollie Mae Johnson, took in Momma and my brother, Al. Ollie Mae told her neighbors, “I won't have my great-grandkids raised on the street or in some stranger's house.”
My father's mother, Evelyn, worked and lived in Chicago and visited East St. Louis on holidays and weekends. She was home for the Christmas holidays in January 1962, a few months before the second baby was due. John Kennedy was president at the time, and grandmother Evelyn told my mother, “If it's a girl, name her Jacqueline because she's the first Joyner girl and someday she'll be the first lady of something!”
Three months later, on March 3, 1962, I was born.
My sister Angela was born eleven months after me, in February 1963. Debra arrived the following year in June. While Momma stayed home with the babies, Daddy finished high school and found a job after graduation. They were kids raising kids.
The six of us lived with my great-grandmother Ollie Mae in her small, six-room, wood-frame house. The house wasn't spacious or opulent, but it was home to us. My mother treated our living room furniture like fine antiques. She kept plastic slipcovers on the couch and upholstered armchairs, and wouldn't allow us to sit in the room unless visitors came over. Space was at a premium. The house had one tiny bathroom. I shared the room off the kitchen at the front of the house with Debra, on the other side of the wall from the family room. By day, the family room was the gathering place for meals and TV watching. At night, it was the bedroom for my other sister and great-grandmother, who slept on the fold-out sofa. My parents' bedroom was across the hall from the kitchen. Al took the room at the back of the house.
Except for Al's space and the bathroom, the house didn't have interior doors. We walked right out of one area into the next. As soon as fall began to turn into winter, my father turned on the furnace. As the feeling of warmth circulated through the house, we gathered around the door frames with armfuls of blankets. Daddy stood on a chair with a hammer and a pocketful of nails. Holding the satiny hem of the blankets to the top of the frame, he drove in the nails. The makeshift insulation trapped heat within our bedrooms, and kept Al out in the cold, literally. His room could have doubled as a refrigerator.
All of our efforts to trap the precious warm air came to nothing when the furnace broke, a frequent wintertime occurrence. At those times, the kitchen stove was our heater. My mother kept the oven door open day and night. For most of the winter, the kitchen replaced the den as the family gathering spot.
On the coldest days, I'd walk in after track and basketball
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