The Fortunate Child

Maxine Sue Feller

Description

It was a long, sometimes devastating, journey Maxine was forced to undertake through the depths of despair as a preschooler, and then on through a tumultuous adolescence during which she was ignored yet at the same time abused by a un-caring mother who daily left her with a malevolent grandmother who similarly mistreated her.
Instructed by her divorced mother to no longer call her Mama,in an effort to enhance her own marketability as a perspective wife to some unsuspecting man.
Fortunately, Maxine was endowed with the guiles and street smarts that allowed her to survive. The pain of her youth was converted, of necessity, into the toughness and unwillingness to accept what appeared to be inevitable. As the result of her own perseverance and courage she was accepted and graduated from Brooklyn College.
Separating herself from her horrendous past, she resurrected her life by achieving success as a schoolteacher, a wife and, ultimately, a mother and grandmother. Along the way,,she became proficient as a stock trader, thus providing herself and her family the additional financial and emotional security she was deprived of in her early years.
Maxine reflects on her life as an independent success story.

Sujets

• Women
• Maxine
• Biography
• Story
• Success
• Journey
• Independent
• Autobiography
• Maxine Audley

Informations

• Publié par: Xlibris US
• Date de parution: 28 mai 2023
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781669878889
• Langue: English

Extrait

The FORTUNATE CHILD
 
 
 
 
 
 
Maxine Sue Feller
 
Copyright © 2023 by Maxine Sue Feller.
 
ISBN:
Softcover
978-1-6698-7889-6

eBook
978-1-6698-7888-9

 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
 
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
 
 
Rev. date: 05/26/2023
 
 
 
Xlibris
844-714-8691
www.Xlibris.com
853520
CONTENTS
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
CHAPTER 35
CHAPTER 36
CHAPTER 37
CHAPTER 38
CHAPTER 39
CHAPTER 40
CHAPTER 41
CHAPTER 42
CHAPTER 43
CHAPTER 44
CHAPTER 45
CHAPTER 46
CHAPTER 47
CHAPTER 48
CHAPTER 49
CHAPTER 50
CHAPTER 51
CHAPTER 52
CHAPTER 53
CHAPTER 54
CHAPTER 55
CHAPTER 56
CHAPTER 57
CHAPTER 58
CHAPTER 59
CHAPTER 60
CHAPTER 61
CHAPTER 62
CHAPTER 63
CHAPTER 64
CHAPTER 65
CHAPTER 66
CHAPTER 67
CHAPTER 68
CHAPTER 69
CHAPTER 70
CHAPTER 71
CHAPTER 72
CHAPTER 73
CHAPTER 74
CHAPTER 75
CHAPTER 76
CHAPTER 77
CHAPTER 78
CHAPTER 79
CHAPTER 80
CHAPTER 81
CHAPTER 82
EPILOGUE
BACK OF BOOK
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
After an accident, in 2018 it was suggested I write a book about my life to enable me to review it… perhaps understand myself better. “DON’T CALL ME MAMA “was published in Spring of 2021, and the Los Angeles Times reviewed it and said it was a “good summer read”.
Recently, I was sad to read the suicide rate of teens and young adults has risen significantly. Friends suggested that I write a sequel of the story to inspire those who might be thinking it would be better not to continue to live on with the struggle to realize one must overcome difficulties to become a strong adult…Living requires effort. A diamond becomes one because the pressures put upon the rock turns it into a diamond.
Thank you to all the negative and positive people in my life who contributed to my journey to survive. A special thanks to Robbin and Shaiya Schenker whose love and creativity crafted the cover.
 
CHAPTER 1
After I read, “The milestones in the life of a person are birth, school, graduation, work, marriage, divorce, death, or retirement,” in the epilogue of Joseph Campbell’s book, “The Hero With A Thousand Faces,” I was very surprised.
Until that moment I’d thought that the milestones of my life were incidents that caused the more dramatic changes.
The earliest memory I recall began on a June morning in 1936 when I was awakened by Mama’s voice, screaming up the staircase to the second floor bedroom, “Wake up, Max! My brother is here waiting to take you along with him.”
I really liked being with my nine-year old Uncle Larry. It meant having fun. Quickly, I jumped out of bed, washed and pulled on my over-sized sun suit. Then, holding onto the wooden banister, I hurried downstairs and ran through the living room to the kitchen.
Mama handed me a slice of bread and butter, and Uncle Larry hoisted me, his three-year old niece onto his shoulders. Mama opened the door for us. I waived to my “sissy cousin” Melvin who was eating breakfast at the kitchen table with his mother.
Larry always took me, and not him. Larry loves me I thought as we hurried to the street corner where the neighborhood boys were waiting for us. I clung to his neck.
“Here comes Larry,” one of them, the tall brown-shirted Otto said, and passed the brown bag of candy thay he always brought with him to Larry.
“What are we doing for fun today?” Larry asked.
Otto was wearing his usual brown shirt, and stroked his yellow hair. He rubbed his chin and said, “We’re going to throw snowballs.”
I was very surprised to hear him say that. It was a sunny day in June, and there was no snow on the ground.
“Dum ta dum” the boys chanted as they galloped after him on their imaginary horses. Then, Otto stopped in front of a big wooden house. Hydrangea bushes were growing on the lawn next to the house. They covered the bushes with their large white flowers. I was amazed. They really did look like snowballs.
Larry put me down on the lawn. Otto tore off one of the blossoms and said, “Add pebbles to these ‘snowballs,’ and we’ll throw them at the people who pass by.”
I pulled off a flower too, but I didn’t add the pebbles to it. We hurled them at two teenaged girls who were walking by.
“Ouch!” they cried and ran away. Then the boys all laughed at the girls..
Next, I saw a lady holding her child by the hand coming toward us. I didn’t think that the boys would throw anything at her, but I was wrong. They pelted her with “snowballs”.
The brave woman raised her arm and pointed to Otto who was the oldest in the group. She shouted, “You Nazis are a bad influence on these children!”
Otto pulled off another snowball and was lacing it with pebbles to throw at her. Suddenly, the front door opened and a burly man dressed in an undershirt and pants came outside. Otto screamed, “Yipes!” He dropped his snowball and ran. All the boys ran after him, and I did too.
The owner of the house bounded down his front steps and chased after us. The man caught me by my sun suit’s straps, and spun me around. I saw him raise his hairy arm to hit me, and scrunched my eyes shut in anticipation of what was to come.
When no blow landed on me, I peeked and saw he had lowered his arm. He shook his head and said, “I no hit babies” and walked back into his house.
Feeling insulted at being called a baby I stamped my foot on the sidewalk and shouted, “I’m no baby! I know where I live” and then I walked home.
***
I waited in the house a long time for Larry to return. I wanted him to read to me in the front room. I was passing the time looking at the pictures in the Grimm’s “Fairy Tales” book. Larry had read these stories to me many times. I knew them by heart, but I enjoyed sitting close beside him.
Larry arrived and asked, “Are you okay, Max?”
Seated on the couch I nodded my head.
He said,“We were worried about leaving you. Come outside and show the boys that you’re all right.”
As we walked from the living room through the kitchen to the back porch I realized no one had stayed to see what happened to me. When Larry pushed open the door screen we stood in the doorway. and I looked down at the upturned faces.
“Max, what happened?” they asked.
Well, I wasn’t going to tell them the man said I’m a baby, and then let go of me. They might call me baby too… I quickly made up a story. “The man caught me. I raised my fists and shouted, “You let me go, or I’ll hit you!” And the man let me go.”
On hearing my heroic tale the boys murmured in wonder. However, Otto shouted, “Nah! He let her go ‘cause she’s a girl.”
I thought to be called a girl was worse than being called a baby. “I’m no girl!”
Some of the boys snickered. Otto jeered. “Go ask your Mama if you don’t believe me,” he said, and then they all laughed.
Upset, I opened the screen door and ran inside to search for my mother. I found her on her knees scrubbing the bathroom floor tiles with some nasty smelling stuff.
“Am I a girl?”
Surprised by my question she stopped what she was doing, and sat looking up at me. “Of course you’re a girl, Maxine.”
I stamped my foot, “No! I’m not a girl. Uncle Larry takes me to be with the boys.”
“Larry takes care of you while I do the housework, Maxine. Tonight, when I bathe you and Melvin, I’ll show you why you’re not a boy.”
***
That evening Mama placed me in the tub first, and then dangled Melvin’s body in front of my face. I saw he had something between his legs that I didn’t have. Hmm. I don’t have that thing between my legs. Is that what makes him a boy? If it comes off, can I put it o n me?
When Mama left us to get a bath towel. I grabbed his boy thing and tried to yank it loose.
“Ow-w!” he wailed.
It didn’t come off. So, I had to agree that I must be a girl. Hmm. Tomorrow, I’ll stay in the house and see what girls do for fun..
CHAPTER 2
In the morning, I washed, and dressed. From downstairs I overheard Mama, Aunt Jean, and Grandma talking in the kitchen. When I entered the room Mama giggled and pointed at me. “Max thought she was a boy!” Then the women all laughed.
Mama had squealed on me! Furious, I saw red and charged at her. I hit and kicked her with all my might. Everyone stopped laughing. Mama grabbed my arm and held it behind my back th