Wow. Ten days of camping and canoeing with six grands ranging from eleven to 22 will flat wear your ass out. We had days of sunshine and warm weather, ate lots of fresh fish and had a blast. Now that I'm home and rested it's time to post another story. As a young man the following statement was said to me when I thought I had all the answers without all the facts.
"Son, there aint nuthin worse than the things you know that just aint so."
I was smart enough to know what he meant. We all make decisions based on what we think we know, even if what we know isn't true. Much like this story of two people who knew they were meant to be together but held back because of preconceived notions. This is a story about a very successful black lady and a common run of the mill white guy. Nothing more, nothing less. Please read it for what it is, a romance story.
Angie's Preserves part one
Staring out my third story office window I have a view of the small city where I reside. Our city's not huge by any standard, and truth be told, there are but a few buildings in town with a third floor. To my left is the full parking lot for Angie's Preserves employees. A company I have the privilege of saying that I own. Lock, stock and barrel as my mom's late sister Doris would say. Angie isn't my name, far from it, my given name is Skye. Yes, like the blue sky above. I was born with blue eyes, which, from what I've learned is quite rare in dark skinned people. My daddy insisted that I be called sky, so they changed the spelling slightly and here I am.
Angies Preserves is named after the one I referred to as Aunt Angela, the lady who graciously put up with all my shenanigans as she raised me from the age of ten until adulthood. She's not with me anymore, age and sickness stole her from me just over eighteen months ago. At the ripe old age of thirty I found myself all alone in this big wide world. My dad was a black man of French descent, my mom was from Egypt having darker colored skin like my father. As for me? I'm what auntie used to say was a smooth light chocolate, with rare blue eyes and long dark hair.
Following the death of dad's parents my folks immigrated to the states in their early twenties. With inheritance money they bought a small grocery store in an area known as the inner city. It wasn't the safest place to do business, but as I'd heard my father say many times, "Everyone deserves to have decent food at a decent price." Their little store catered to the local neighborhood enjoying loyal customers and a good report within the community. I say community because even though we lived in a large city, neighborhoods tend to develop into their own community of sorts.
There were the Iverson's who still had a functioning bakery, the Weissmans who ran the local butcher shop and Steinson's Hardware. Not a chain hardware store, one of the old ones with bins full of nails, screws, bolts and on and on. There were things hanging on the walls that were as old as the store, things I had no idea what they were supposed to do. The only business owners of the neighboring fifteen or twenty blocks that weren't black were the Weissman's. It was the winter I turned ten that my world changed exponentially.
Considering the fact that we were a family-owned grocery store I was expected to work alongside mom and dad in the evenings if I didn't have homework. Stocking shelves, sweeping floors, helping bag and carry out groceries, simple and yet helpful things. I was helping an older lady I knew only as Granny Iva put bags of groceries in her Red Flyer wagon, (one of the cool ones with the wooden sides). We were outside the front door to the side when my world changed. Three loud noises rang from within the store, Granny Iva grabbed and hid me behind the bushes along the street. I recall clearly how she muttered over and over.
"Lawdy, lawdy, not agin." Then she cried softly saying, "These be good folk."
She kept me there while the thieves and takers of my parents' lives jumped into an old beat-up Chevrolet and sped down the street. Granny Iva's arms were holding across my chest as I stared at the doorway, she wasn't about to let me go inside. When the police arrived mere minutes later I bolted free from her grip and ran inside. Imagine the horror to my innocent eyes as they drank in the lump of deceased flesh that had been my father and a writhing moaning body that was my mothers. Standing in shock I couldn't move, I couldn't speak, in fact, I don't recall crying. That came later when reality hit.
I was literally numb as I stood frozen in time, it was Granny Iva who broke that spell as her arms encircled holding me tight to her bosom attempting to shield my young eyes from the tragedy before me. I remember the authorities moving us outside where they were asking Granny Iva numerous questions. Iva wasn't what one would call schooled, and yet in the haste and turmoil of the moment she had memorized the license plate of the fleeing car.
She also knew who one of the robbers was. They had the culprits in custody within hours. My father was dead, my mother struggling to stay alive and my world turned upside down for a measly $168.47. To keep me out of the system Granny convinced the authorities that she would take me home with her and care for me until my mom's sister arrived from California. She had immigrated a few years before my folks and with her husband owned an olive farm.
My Aunt Martha had been with me for two weeks following my ordeal. She knew she couldn't stay to raise me and I didn't want to go live on a farm thousands of miles away. The lady that lived behind our store had been my sitter since I was born. Aunt Martha, mom's sister, suggested I stay and be raised by her. Having passed all state requirements my former babysitter, Aunt Angela as I called her, was now my legal guardian. My mother survived the shooting but died the day my dad did. Not physically, it took two years for the loss of my father to kill her. The facility where she was cared for was on my way home, I went to see her every day after school and in the summer. She was riddled in pain, both physically and mentally, in the end she simply wasted away and left this earth in her sleep
My folks had life insurance but not much. Fifty thousand on each which became less once all the funeral costs were covered. Angela had a POA to cover anything pertaining to me and before mom died she made Angela POA over everything including her finances. To Aunt Angie's credit she kept meticulous books. Every expenditure, every receipt, anything having to do with me, or mothers finances, was recorded and kept in an old safe so heavy it was on wide steel wheels.
The store had been leased to a young middle eastern couple and doing well. When mom died Angie sold it to them, putting the proceeds into an education fund for me. The public school I went to was basically all black students, there was a smattering of different colored kids, but by and large the populace was dark skinned. Because I have blue eyes the assumption was generally made that somewhere in my families past there had to have been an interracial marriage with a Scandinavian person. Which was complete BS, though it wouldn't have mattered to me.
What the morons didn't know, or care to find out, is that blue eyes in black children, though rare, are not unheard of. I was never one of the popular girls, I was slow developing physically still wearing the equivalent of a training bra when I was sixteen. The running joke was that I was as flat as the blue sky, which was not only an embarrassment, but a cruel play on my name. I had a slender waist, a nicely shaped butt, and firm legs without anything to go with them. Ignoring me was easy. I don't recall having more than a few friends all through my early years.
And don't even ask about a date or being asked to the prom, not gonna happen. With mother gone and no family to keep us in place we moved the summer I turned 18. To a small city of about eight thousand in the heart of farm and produce country. It was a new place where we knew no one and it didn't bother me in the least. I'd been having a period since I was fourteen, but that was the summer I began to develop. By the beginning of my senior year I was wearing an A cup bra thinking I had knockers like Dolly Parton. When you're flat as a board anything seems large.
