MaryDonna Mississippi

J. Kafer David

Description

MaryDonna McCoy never realised that she was poor until her classmates began to tell her. Despite the lack of money in her family, MaryDonna knew that she was loved and cared for by her momma and daddy. And to her, that made up for the lack of funds. Her ability to find adventure was never lacking and she often found herself in compromising situations. Nonetheless, she grabbed her inner tube every chance that she could and went down to the river to float her cares away. MaryDonna's curiosity found her intertwined with the local eccentric woman whose story carried a great deal of gossip and mystery, while her budding relationship with her best friend, Rodney, continued to surprise her. MaryDonna Mississippi is a tale of love and loss, adventure and intrigue. In a world where identity is muddled by poverty, MaryDonna finds a way to rise above the weight of her challenges in order to survive. This is a story about simply persisting to exist.

Sujets

• Adventure (Guyana)
• Adventure

Informations

• Publié par: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Date de parution: 30 novembre 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781528976350
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

MaryDonna Mississippi
David J. Kafer
Austin Macauley Publishers
2020-11-30
MaryDonna Mississippi About the Author Dedication Copyright Information © Dedication Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15
About the Author
David J. Kafer is most notable for being an award-winning hairdresser, as well as an avant-garde painter. He is an imaginative storyteller and writer, and has finally produced his first book. An avid converser, Kafer takes great joy in listening to other people’s stories and bringing their voices to the pages of his book. He is known for his big laugh and his ability to connect with others from all walks of life.
Dedication
This body of work is dedicated to my mother, Janice Lee Kafer, a woman of great imagination and creativity. Thank you for teaching me how to be brave and to love without abandon. Love you!
Copyright Information ©
David J. Kafer (2020)
The right of David J. Kafer to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by the author in accordance with section 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publishers.
Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781528976329 (Paperback)
ISBN 9781528976336 (Hardback)
ISBN 9781528976350 (ePub e-book)
www.austinmacauley.com
First Published (2020)
Austin Macauley Publishers Ltd
25 Canada Square
Canary Wharf
London
E14 5LQ
Acknowledgement
To the love of my life and my greatest fan, Jason Hall. My husband, best friend and my biggest cheerleader. I love you.
Chapter 1
My mama always did tell me that true gifts were from the Lord above and that all the rest was a blessing of kindness. I hated it when she said that because it meant one thing and one thing only, my birthday. You see, my birthday was just one day away on July the fourth and Mama always felt guilty that she couldn’t get me much. So, every time she started talking about the Lord and his wondrous gifts, I agreed in order to make her feel better.
Even though there weren’t a lot of gifts, birthdays were special in my family.
Mama would always give us a choice as to what flavor of frosting we wanted on the cake and we were able to choose our favorite supper. But really though, it was always the same. A chocolate cake with fried chicken, mashed potatoes, coleslaw and Mama’s famous macaroni and cheese. Still, I loved it every time! Mama would usually sew me a skirt and a blouse with some material that she found at Goodwill. It was always pretty, but oh how I dreamt about a dress that came from one of the major department stores in Biloxi. Blue, flowing down past my knees like romantic silk moving in the breeze.
Without my daddy having a job anymore, things were tight around the house. There wasn’t much room for anything extra, even though we always seemed to have an extra setting at the table for one of the neighbor kids. It’s just how it went in my family. Poor as we might have been, we always found extras. My daddy talked about when he was a kid and didn’t have much and how his mama would always find extras. He said that if it meant staying out on the river a little longer in order to catch another fish, he’d do it. Said that it was always better to be prepared for hard times and that having extras was something he took pride in.
My mama worked at St Mary’s Church part-time down on Chelsea Street in Chawncey, where we lived, doing secretarial work for Father Paul. We weren’t Catholic when Mama got the job. She told me that she took the job and then got religion. Told me that it was a requirement in taking the position and that even though she grew up Baptist, she didn’t mind. Said that as long as she got a paycheck, it didn’t matter much what religion she was. She also said that God didn’t come to us through religion, but through stuff like the wind and the trees. Said that nature was the perfect representation of God. And to me, that made sense, being that I loved nature so much. Especially the river.
Our town of Chawncey, Mississippi was small and quaint. Some would probably say it was poor and run down and they would probably be right. But there was a time when Chawncey was a booming town and we were well known for our paper mill. It was simple, I guess. Chawncey Pulp and Paper Mill was a big old factory that used wood to make paper products. Anything from the school paper that I used for my homework, wrapping paper and I guess, stuff like toilet paper. The factory sat on the edge of the river, right as you came into town. You could always count on seeing the billowing smoke coming from the chimneys of the factory. Some said, you could see it for miles and miles. And if you couldn’t see the smoke you sure could smell it! Most talked about the strong sulfur smell, but to me it just smelled like moldy cardboard that had been sitting in the rain for a stretch. When the economy started going under, the paper factory closed.
Guess it couldn’t keep up with some of the bigger factories in the bigger cities. Daddy told me that ever since then, all the businesses in town suffered. Some two thousand jobs were lost, forcing people from Chawncey and surrounding areas to move away. Small businesses closed too, causing even more problems for the town. Lots of people had to leave their properties on the river and give up all they had worked so hard for, in order to make a living elsewhere. Most of the houses were small and crumby looking and if they had any paint on them anymore, they were a tobacco brown color, blending in with the rotting wood. Many of the houses were built on stilts so that they wouldn’t flood when the waters would rise. There were some areas of town where the water had risen so high, that it didn’t ever recede. And so, people had to build docks to their houses, hence gaining our reputation for being the floating town of Chawncey.
Where we lived, we didn’t have as much a problem. We were on higher ground.
That was until the year that I was born. My sister used to tell me about that year and how bad it had flooded. She told me that whole houses collapsed and fell into the river and how Mama was terrified that the same would happen to ours. Told me that Mama would stand on the front porch and sweep away the water, hoping that it wouldn’t come inside. She said that one morning, when the family woke up, everything in the house was floating. Daddy and Mama had had enough. Chawncey was going under with the economy and it was taking our house with it. As much as Daddy tried, he couldn’t save that little old house. They’d set sandbags out around the doors and Mama had just gotten used to sweeping water out of her house when the waters would rise. And so, Daddy went out looking for a new place for our family to live. It didn’t take long before he decided to buy an old caboose from the rail station in the town one over. He had it moved down its original track and when he picked a spot that he liked, he parked it. Right there on the track. Turned out that the old abandoned tracks that had run behind the house for so many years was the perfect spot for the new house. When he realized that one caboose wasn’t enough, he bought two more and connected each of them in a line. Rumor had it that the county was gonna disconnect the track anyways and when the community found out what Daddy was up to, sixteen more families decided to follow suit before the removal of the old tracks. Most of them were small one-car cabooses, but a couple of families had gotten more than one and connected them like Daddy did. In time, we were known as ‘The Cattail Caboose Community’. My Daddy and a couple of his buddies made up the name, seeing that it was cattails all around the properties.
After the rail cars were moved, Daddy got all his buddies together and started hammering and sawing away and not nine months later, they were finished. Daddy had fit it with everything Mama wanted. Three bedrooms, kitchen and living room and even managed to put up a freestanding deck outside the front door. In time, everybody in the community did the same and they all painted their cabooses red so that it looked uniform. Some of my friends at school thought it was weird that we lived in a caboose and it wasn’t uncommon for me to get teased by some. It was what it was. No reason complaining about something that I couldn’t change.
Living in a caboose was the only thing I knew. I never felt it was anything to be ashamed of. Fact is, some said it was a step up from living in an old shack! The cabooses were cheap and most certainly cheaper than a house. And although it swayed at night when the winds were howling, it was home.
When Mama wasn’t working, she took care of my youngest brother and sister. It always amazed me how she could juggle so many things. I could only hope to take on her best traits when I was a woman. Mama was one of the prettiest women I knew. She had the most vibrant red hair and her blue eyes were soulful and kind. She was short like me and lots of times people would say we looked alike, minus my curls that I got from my daddy. My mama was, in many ways, the head of the household, especially since Daddy had lost his job and started drinking more. As much as I knew, s