Preparing to leave for Army basic training, Joyce looked at her younger sisters and brother. Sharon was five, Angie was three, and Allen was one. They gathered around Joyce’s suitcases, not quite understanding where JoJo was going as she packed her bags.
“You coming right back, right JoJo?” questioned five-year-old Sharon, brown and gold streaked eyes big in her pig-tailed head.
Joyce looked at her little sister thinking how much she would miss her much-younger siblings. After Jeffrey died, much of her sanity when she wasn’t on the run came from having to take care of little Sharon right after her birth. Even though they had different biological dads, Sharon looked much like Jeffrey and Joyce.
Looking at Angie picking through the things she had just packed and baby Allen crawling around her room, Joyce smiled fondly at “her” babies. These two looked just like Pops. She loved them just as much as she loved the twin with whom she had shared their mother’s womb but was now gone. To where, she didn’t know.
“I’ll be back in a couple of months, Pretty Thang,” Joyce answered. Because Sharon had no real concept of time as yet, Joyce didn’t bother to explain what “a couple of months” meant. “But I’ll call you and write you and let you know where I am,” she assured Sharon and Angie, the only two really paying attention to her. Both little girls nodded their heads in agreement. To what, they knew not. They only knew they would miss their big sister.
Joyce looked forward to going into the Army. Since the recruiters came to her high school for career day, she had planned everything out. She knew her decision would be one she would have to take seriously. But she was prepared to make the decision and many more to follow it.
Even though she loved New York and her family, she was sick of the city and sick of being under her parents’ rule all the time. She was ready for adventure on a grand scale. She knew there was more to life than what she faced each and every day of her life—babysitting, same old friends for years, more school if she decided to go to college, and her parents.
Finally graduated, she wanted something different, something she knew she wouldn’t find in New York. She certainly wasn’t inclined to go to college right now, especially in New York. She wanted to experience freedom she had never had before.
After talking further with Army recruiter Staff Sergeant Sanborn, Joyce discovered she could serve in the Army and get a college education at the same time if she wanted. The Army would pay for it. And the Army would allow her to go to different places, overseas places, she had always wanted to travel to.
While celebrating her eighteenth birthday last week down South with all the grandparents and cousins, Joyce informed her family that she had signed up to serve in the United States Army. Surprised gasps filled the humid country air as her family realized she wasn’t joking. Music and conversation stopped in the field behind her grandparent’s home.
Pulling out the paperwork she had completed at the Army recruiting station prior to coming South for the yearly family reunion, Joyce shared her ASVAB scores and other information showing where she would go for basic training and what job she would pursue as her specialty with her stunned family members. She gave a big slow grin as a feeling of accomplishment settled in her heart. She was going into the Army, her biggest adventure yet.
Samuel, her stepdad, stared at her, tears welling in his eyes. Of all his children, Joyce was the most adventurous. Always willing to go and do what no one else had ever done, Joyce was bold, brash, and beautiful. Samuel was glad God had made her his daughter.
Since Jeffrey’s death five years ago, Joyce had been in sort of a self-destruct mode. Sometimes disappearing for days or weeks at a time, no one ever knew what she was up to. When she finally made an appearance, though, she would nonchalantly come into the house as though she had never left. They knew the girl loved her family, but Marie and Samuel had almost given up hope with her after some of her escapades. Samuel decided the Army just might be the thing Joyce needed to get on the right track with her life. Lord knows she had already searched with no good results.
At fifteen, Joyce came home with her head covered, claiming to have found religion at an Islamic mosque in Queens Village. She called herself “Amira Bahja Mohammed” and would only answer if they referred to her by her new name. She kept that mindset for seven or eight months until she discovered she stood the chance of being one of many wives when she was chosen to be married. That didn’t sit well with her. She quickly renounced the Islamic faith.
At sixteen, she went from Islam to a Pentecostal holiness church and stopped wearing pants or any clothing that were manly in nature. Women were advised not to wear any makeup, perfume, jewelry or anything that drew attention. During this time, she constantly rebuked her mother for wearing slacks and dressing her little sisters in pants, giving them a warped mind. Marie suffered in silence because she wanted her oldest child to find her way even as she had. However, Joyce only continued with that movement long enough to discover that the men were able to dress decently but the women had to appear drab. That was their code of belief.
At seventeen, she disappeared for two months during the summer of 1978 and was found living in a Rainbow Family Commune in upstate New York. She enjoyed the communal living until she discovered the leader of the commune, Father Good, was having illicit relations with everyone under his leadership—men, women, boys, and girls.
From this fiasco, she came home and vowed she would not serve anyone or anything because there was no God. As a matter of fact, she knew there couldn’t be a God. A real God wouldn’t have allowed Jeffrey to be killed like he was.
Joyce remained devastated by the loss of her brother. A part of her was lost forever on that crucial day five years ago. No one seemed to understand the loss she felt in her heart from not having Jeffrey with her any more. Her mom and dad seemed to have moved on. She couldn’t make herself come out of what she had felt since that day.
They never found the person who killed Jeffrey. Soon after his funeral, though, strange envelopes addressed to “The Mother and Sister of Jeffrey Jones” occasionally arrived at their apartment. Enclosed in the envelope inside of a card were wads of cash money. Never a return address, no one ever called to explain where the money came from or what it was for. Samuel and Marie decided it must have come from the killer. They started the Jeffrey Earl Jones Foundation for Youth to help young people in their neighborhood find their path in life.
During Jeffrey’s funeral, many people showed up that Joyce had seen around the neighborhood but didn’t know their names or who they were. One guy in particular who showed up cried almost as hard as the rest of the family. Joyce didn’t know who he was but thought he must have been very close to Jeffrey.
On the occasions when she took her younger sisters to the park, many times, Joyce noticed someone else there who seemed to be watching over them. He was a nice-looking guy who appeared to be in his twenties or so. She thought she recognized him as the guy who cried at the funeral but wasn’t sure. He always sat opposite where she sat waiting on the girls to finish their play. He never came closer to where she was. A few times, she started to approach him. But when she walked toward him, he always got up and left the park.
Joyce felt there was a connection between her brother and the man but never knew what it could be. When she started dating and hanging out with the wrong crowd, she found that guys wouldn’t bother her the way they messed with her friends. She didn’t know whether Jeffrey was protecting her or if someone here on Earth was looking out for her.
Samuel looked at his daughter as she made her announcement. He had long quit referring to Joyce as his stepdaughter. She was his daughter—that was the way he felt about her. He went to her and hugged her, telling her how proud he was.
No, he didn’t want her to go into the military. However, one thing he had found out about his women was this: they were all headstrong and had to learn from their own mistakes.
He stood with her at the reunion and glowed as only a proud father could. Her grandparents and the rest of the family were shocked that Joyce wanted to go into the military. But in a way, they were all thankful. They knew how much trouble she could get into in the city. Everyone hugged her and told her how proud they were.
Homer remembered the day he had met this little one at the Amtrak station in Atlanta. When he had gone there to pick up Ree, he had no idea he would also be picking up his twin grandson and granddaughter at the same time.
As he first laid eyes on them, Joyce was the one kicking and screaming because no one paid her any attention. She let out a bellow to let him know she was somebody and he would do well to pay attention to her.
“Well, baby,” he told her as he hugged her. “With that mouth of your’n, you should be able to make a good soldier in that Army. They’ll be lucky to have you. Good luck, shuge,” he said teasingly, unshed tears glistening in his eyes.
The family laughed at Homer’s joke because they all knew it was true. Joyce had proven over the years to be the most verbal of the family. They all knew this particular quality would serve her well in the Army.
But there was one family member very hesitant in coming forward. Marie hung back, tears gathering in her eyes as she realized the power of what her daughter was doing. She was going into the Army. Her baby was going into the Army. Ree looked at Joyce as all their family members surged forward to hug their soon-to-be soldier.
Joyce, though proudly aware that she had made the right decision, was nonetheless anxious at the new ground she was about to cover. Looking around, she felt someone’s eyes on her. Before she found the face, she knew the eyes were her mother’s.
Joyce and Marie had always been connected in this way. They could be on a crowded New York City street and always search each other out, no matter how many people stood between them. Joyce looked at her mother’s eyes and saw the unshed tears. She knew her mother would never understand why she felt the need to do this. But she also knew her mother would not stand in her way of searching out this path in her life.
She wanted to explain to her mother how she felt—as though something were missing from her life and she had to find it. She still missed Jeffrey.
People had told her after Jeffrey died that it would become easier and she wouldn’t miss him as much. She had found this to be untrue. She missed him now more than ever.
Sometimes she dreamed about him and the things they did when he was alive. Other times, she dreamed about him as though still living and they were the same age. She imagined the shenanigans and the trouble they would get in together. She missed her twin and wished she could see him.
Joyce was thankful they looked so much alike. She could always look in the mirror and see his face, but it wasn’t the same. Joyce knew the Army was something Jeffrey would have wanted to do. She would fulfill the dream for them both.
What she continued to ask herself, though, and what she still searched for the answer to was, Why? Why did Jeffrey have to die?
In the days, weeks, months, and years after his death, the why of his death was still the most prominent question in her mind. She remembered seeing the guy with the knife about to stab her stepfather. Instead, Jeffrey grabbed Samuel, turned him around and took the knife in his own back.
Had he planned their stepfather’s murder that day? Or had it been a case of random violence? None of Jeffrey’s old friends recognized the description of the guy who came out of nowhere to bring about the devastation leading to Jeffrey’s death.
Joyce agonized over the fact that she would never know the answers to any of these questions until she saw Jeffrey again and asked him the questions that had dogged her for five years. She didn’t even know if she would ever see him again. He was lost to her.
Joyce went to her mother as family and friends cleared a path between them. When they finally reached each other, they sobbed because they knew the day Joyce said the oath of enlistment into the Army would be the first day of the rest of her new life. There would be no turning back for either of them.
Joyce and Ree held onto each other as though holding onto a life raft. They both thought that if they weren’t careful, the tears they cried would drown them. They had had many milestones in life. This was a major milestone they would have to face together.
Ree looked at her now eldest child, the twin who survived. Joyce had been a very deep child and was now a very deep young woman. She had been through many things since the death of her twin, her soul mate from birth. Ree had watched and prayed for this daughter who seemed to be running headlong into destruction at a speed she couldn’t understand.
At eighteen, Joyce was a beautiful, petite young woman who had experienced things her southern cousins could only dream about. Now she was going into the military, a career no other woman in their family had chosen—her daughter the pioneer.
“Joyce, I am very proud of you, honey,” Ree wept. She held her closely as only a mother could. “I know you will do wonderful things.”
Now as Ree watched Joyce preparing to leave for the airport to go to South Carolina for basic training, her heart pumped with dread and longing as she prepared her daughter for a voyage she would have no part in except to pray. And pray she would.