Born in the City of Baltimore, Maryland, to a Haitian immigrant father, Leonel Jacques, and a White American mother, Muriel Hawthorne, Helena Jacques was born at a rather turbulent time in the United States of America's history. She learned early in life that being different could indeed make one's life more complicated than it had to be. There was definitely a price to pay for being rather unique in American society at the time.
In mid-1980s Maryland, interracial couples weren't exactly rare, nor were they that common. A Black man and a White woman being happily married and raising a mixed-race daughter in a middle-class neighborhood, definitely earned the Jacques family a few extra glances, but none of that fazed them. The Jacques family had been through many upheavals and emerged stronger as a result.
"You can accomplish anything you want, my dear," Helena's mother Muriel told her, after the young woman wowed everyone by becoming the first non-White valedictorian at Magnus Academy, an elite private school which only accepted the cream of the crop of Maryland society. Eighteen-year-old Helena Jacques looked at her mother and smiled, then gave her a fierce hug. Mother and daughter embraced on Helena's graduation day, while a lily-White crowd of attendees looked on.
"Come on, ladies, save some love for me," said Helena's father Leonel, and the six-foot-tall, burly, broad-shouldered and dark-skinned Haitian-American Corrections Officer smiled at his darling wife and daughter, then pulled both women into a bear hug. The Jacques family made their way to the school's crowded parking lot, then went to dine at Creole House, a neat little Haitian restaurant located a few miles from their house.
"Mom, Dad, I want to study Anthropology at Howard University, I think I can make a difference in that field," Helena told her parents during their celebratory dinner, and the two of them looked at her, clearly surprised. Muriel Hawthorne-Jacques had hoped that her only daughter would go into teaching, and Leonel Jacques thought Helena was going into law enforcement to follow her old man's footsteps. They were both wrong. Nevertheless, the Jacques family informed their daughter that they respected her choices.
Educated at Howard University, where her keen intellect amazed both her instructors and her peers, Helena Jacques was bright, beautiful, and destined for great things. She fulfilled a lifelong dream when she became Professor of Anthropology at her alma mater, at the tender age of thirty two. At a time when a lot of folks her age were still in graduate school or working on their Ph.D. Helena Jacques was teaching at a world-class school.
Becoming a Professor of Anthropology at a fine school like Howard University was but a stepping stone for Helena Jacques. There weren't a lot of women working in the fields of Anthropology and Archeology, and the works of minority women in those fields had gone merely unnoticed, they were practically nonexistent. Dr. Helena Jacques set out to rectify that...
The books, documentaries and exposes done in those fields usually featured the works of middle-aged White men in Khakis, exploring the mysteries of the ancient past in exotic locales. In her first field assignment, Dr. Helena Jacques was trying her damned best to buck that trend. That's what led her to leave the comfort of her classroom at Howard University and come all the way to Sudan, to the cradle of human life, as it were.
"We've found some ancient skeletons that are going to revolutionize how people think of human evolution," Dr. Helena Jefferson said, speaking to the news crew from the Discovery Channel, at the excavation site located near the City of Khartoum, Sudan. The six-foot-tall, curvy, dark-skinned and very voluptuous, Khaki-clad, thirty-something African American Anthropologist wiped her brow with a slender hand, and smiled for the camera.
"Doctor, please, tell us more," replied Hans Drexel, a one-time CNN reporter, now a talking head and frequent contributor for the Discovery Channel. The short, red-haired, plump newsman tried to feign interest in those ancient human bones that Dr. Jacques, Award-winning nonfiction author and Howard University Professor was so damn excited about. Leave it to a geeky Black woman to get worked up about old bones, Hans thought dismissively.
"Last year I was in Botswana, overseeing political elections on behalf of CNN, now I'm in the frigging Sudanese desert, looking at the bones of frigging cavemen," Hans almost blurted out, seriously wishing he were elsewhere. The Anthropological dig site was full of workers, mostly young Sudanese men whom Dr. Helena Jackson probably bribed into working for her by plying them with American dollars. The doctor herself wasn't bad looking, being tall and athletic, but she was also bossy on top of extremely nerdy, which Hans found off-putting.
"Oh, dear, please, come along and see for yourselves," Dr. Jacques said, literally bursting with enthusiasm. The smiling doctor led the newsman and his assistant, a bored-looking young Asian woman named Kelly Ling, deeper into the excavation site, to a large tent under which sat an ordinary wooden table. Atop said table sat a rather large pile of human bones, or at least, that's what they appeared to be at first glance.
When Hans Drexel came closer, he took one look at one of the skulls, and involuntarily flinched. For the skull, while no larger than that of a modern human, was definitely peculiar. There was something definitely off about it. In its maw sat row upon row of distinctly sharp, glistening canines. Hans hefted the skull in his hands, he saw that it was real, and not a plaster duplicate like those he'd seen before. This was oddly discomforting, for some reason...
"Doc, I believe that you've found the ancestors of Count Dracula," Hans Drexel joked, and Dr. Helena Jacques frowned. The newsman put down the skull and held his right hand up, smiling faintly. Shaking her head, Dr. Jacques took the skull from Hans, and the newsman was such a butterfingers that he almost dropped the priceless artifact. Dr. Helena caught it just in time, and winced, for the skull's fangs lightly grazed her fingers.
"Mr. Drexel, I expect more Professionalism on my site," Dr. Helena said, clutching the skull as protectively as a mother holding her young. Hans apologized, but the good doctor ignored him like a waitress ignoring the advances of drunken louts at the local pub. Hans looked at his assistant, and Kelly Ling shrugged emphatically, even though she did not care one way or the other.
