Record Paradise

By Joni Jacques

Record Paradise is a funny, poignant and sometimes heartbreaking story about a group of friends growing up from the late 60's to now. Most of all it is a love story that has lasted over fifty four years. Greg and Chris first meeting at eight years old forged a friendship that deepened into a love that couldn't be broken although quite a few obstacles stood in the way. Most brought on by an immature Chris herself! This story is filled with wonderful, unique characters that come to life with each turn of the page.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Mar 19, 2015
• ISBN: 9781499084429

Joni Jacques

Joni Jacques, a proud native of Gary, Indiana is a graduate of Indiana University Northwest where she discovered her love of writing. Record Paradise is her first full length book. She won second place for Best Short Story, "The Border" presented by the Indiana Collegiate Press Association in 2004 while a student at IU. She is a former Teachers Assistant for Special Needs Children and the mother of two sons.

Book preview

1

If you carry yourself like Jackie Kennedy you’ll never have any problems.…Mom

I was born in East Chicago, Indiana, at Saint Catherine Hospital. December twenty-fifth is my birthday, hence the name Christmas. Although a somewhat unusual name, I like it. My friends and family call me Chris. My very close friends sometimes call me Christmas. On the first day of school when roll is called the new students always turn to see who I am, whose name is Christmas Warren. No middle name, thank God. My Grandmother told me my mother wanted my middle name to be Carol. I’m so glad she talked her out of that. My mother is very grandiose in every way. She would have loved to stick me with that. I went home from the hospital on December 28 th to Block Avenue. Not the most prestigious block in East Chicago for sure but from what I’ve heard we had a pretty nice apartment. My Grandfather and Father both worked at Inland Steel. Those jobs made possible for us to move to Gary, Indiana when I was one year old on a street shaded in oak and as emerald as Oz. If there was a Beaver Cleaver neighborhood for Blacks, I lived on it. We had a Block Club, Easter egg hunts, and trips to Riverview on Belmont Avenue in Chicago on chartered buses (Laugh Your Troubles Away!) Our mom’s stayed at home and our dad’s went to work.

The summers were as crisp and fresh as a starched gingham skirt and as sparkling as white linen on a clothesline. What’s prettier than sheets blowing on a line against a sky hand painted by God in white clouds? Those sheets looked like sails on a lake if you ran through them the right way. Pretend you’re on a schooner riding the waves of Lake Michigan, that’s what I did. The smell of those sun kissed sheets on our beds at night was like heaven. There was a farmer’s market downtown that sold peaches so ripe and sweet when you bit into the flesh the juice would run down your arm like the Mississippi. I loved the smell of the market. At night they would throw away all the over ripe and bruised fruit; peaches, pears, apples and concord grapes. The scents would blend and the perfume of it was like home made wine. There was also a red light district in the same area that was called The Border. Some of the most beautiful women I ever saw were on the Border. My mom said they were working girls. I didn’t know what that was but I told her if she ever wanted to work; I was pretty sure she could get a job down there because she was pretty too. She looked like I had slapped her. I asked my grandmother why my mom got mad at me for telling her where she could secure gainful employment! She explained what a working girl was and she and my grandfather had a big laugh about it.

In 1969 downtown Gary had a wealth of stores. Sears and J.C. Penney’s anchored about four blocks of the most remarkable boutique and family owned stores probably anywhere in the state of Indiana and Chicago. We also had wine shops, a Fanny Mae candy shop, jewelry stores, and two theaters. The Palace Theater was the largest and the most impressive. It really did look like a Palace. It stood on the corner of Eighth Avenue; The grand Matriarch of Broadway. My sister had a huge crush on a young man who worked there as an usher. I think one Sunday she bought ten boxes of popcorn just so she could walk past him. She would actually try to eat it before going out to buy another one. I told her just put the boxes under the seat, you’re going to explode. He swears to this day he never noticed her until two years later when he stopped by our house with a mutual friend. When I ran in the bedroom and told her to guess who was on our porch she almost passed out when I told her it was her Prince Charming from the theater. I had to make her walk not run to the door. (Another story almost fairy tale worthy!) The State Theater was on Sixth Avenue, its design was Art Deco. The Palace was my favorite but I loved going in the State Theater (Sonny and Cher actually made an appearance there) because it was owned by a mysterious little white lady who always wore black, head to toe, smoked incessantly and had the most beautiful gold charm bracelet I ever saw. It looked like it weighed a ton. She would walk through the lobby before each movie and then she would disappear into her office like a little ghost. She was fascinating.

I love to shop. I love it because I love pretty clothes. My Grandfather says I got it honest and my mother encouraged it. She was always concerned about the outward appearance of her daughters. (My Grandfather used to say, I don’t care what you got on, nothing is more important than being clothed in your right mind.)

Every new bag, every new shoe, and every new thing that could be bought downtown we had. Every year I won best dressed from the seventh grade to the twelfth. I thought that was a big deal at the time. Not so much now. I would give a lot of that clothing away. It was my pleasure. If someone didn’t have much I could fix that. My grandmother knew I did it and she approved. I couldn’t wear it all and my grandmother couldn’t stop my mom from buying it. Every so often we would take some of it back and my grandmother would put the refund in church under my mom’s name. At the end of the year when my mom got her church statement back she would say, I didn’t realize I had put that much in church. She would be beaming. She would have had a spasm if she knew that money came from a horde of clothes we had returned!

There are three of us. Sunday and Autumn are my younger sisters. Guess why they have those names. Autumn is younger by three years, Sunday by seven. My mother bought us everything she could so we spent a lot of time shopping or at the movies. She loved big screen stars, especially Elizabeth Taylor, Lana Turner, and Jeff Chandler. More than anyone, she loved the Kennedy’s especially Jacqueline. She would always say, If you conduct yourself like Jackie Kennedy you’ll never have any problems. Or she would say as we were walking out of the door, Remember Jackie. She was dead serious. My mother would have loved those little bracelets that had the letters WWJD? We all would have had one to remind us What Would Jackie Do?

This school year while shopping for school clothes at The Mademoiselle Shop French Room in East Chicago, (Only the best for Azalea Warren’s daughters) there was a black and pink velour dress that I just loved and my mother didn’t care for it. She thought it fit too tight. I thought it fit perfect. Turtle neck, long sleeves huge black and pink horizontal stripes, it was smokin’. She stood back and had me turn around in it several times and she analyzed that dress for about five minutes. She then said in all seriousness, Do you actually think Jackie Kennedy would wear that dress? No, I said, almost doubled over with laughter, not at 1600 Pennsylvania!

I mean when she was in the 12th grade! she bellowed. You know what I meant!"

I don’t think she realized that was even funnier. The sales lady excused herself for a minute. I know she went in the back and doubled over too! I got that dress and I got a million compliments on it, even from teachers. After shopping, my other great love was dancing. I took ballet for eight years. When I entered high school I didn’t want to take it anymore. I loved the freedom of dancing to what I wanted and when I wanted. I think I was tired of all of the discipline. I love to eat and I was becoming real shapely, and not like a ballerina! I loved to dance for me, and would do it at every opportunity. Washing dishes, hanging up clothes, or setting the table, everything had a rhythm I could discover and dance to. I secretly wanted to dance on Soul Train with Jeffrey Daniels! I thought he was so cute. Move over Jody and give me a chance!

My sisters and I lived with our grandparents most of our lives. My mom and dad lived down the street, eight houses away, but we loved staying with our grandparents. I always lived with them. My sisters would go from house to house but not me and no one ever asked me too.

I had two best girl friends, Ani and Terri. We have been friends since kindergarten. Terri was tall and lanky; she had a Pam Grier body; skinny and all bust. Terri was striking because she had a secret weapon that people would stare at, and it wasn’t just her chest! I’ll get to that later. Ani was short and round with a pretty face, she had a huge wardrobe too. Her mom was one of the best beauticians in the city and had a large clientele. Terri lived the closest to me on 17th and Arthur Street. Ani was just a block and a half away from Terri on 19th Avenue and Roosevelt. I lived on 17th and Hayes. The streets on the West Side of Broadway were named after Presidents. The East Side was named after states. This was our final year of high school and we spent the summer sitting on each others porch’s watching boys, talking about boys, clothes, and college, not necessarily in that order.

From the previous summer until the very beginning of this school year I dated a young man named Tobin Gregory. He was known only as Greg or Gregory to everyone. After the first couple of days of school even the teachers stopped calling him Tobin and called him Greg. He says I am the only person other than his Mom who every once in a while calls called him Tobin. When I do he knows something is important or it’s an emergency; I need his attention now. He was my first real boyfriend and I was his girl. We had been friends for years.

Greg was considered rebellious in school. Some even said bad. He had been to reform school twice for fighting. I missed him so much when he was away because he was my touchstone; he kept me grounded even at such a young age. I liked to know he slept only five streets over and was a phone call away. The reform school was only about a hundred miles south of home but for me he seemed to be over the moon and miles past the stars. I couldn’t call him and I couldn’t visit him and most of all, I couldn’t hug him. Only his mom could do that. The last time he had to go away he came over right after juvenile court with his mother and he told me he would be gone for almost a month. We were fifteen. I cried and I cried and begged him not to leave me. I held on to his clothes when it was time for him to go and kissed and hugged him until my grandmother and his mom had to pry me off. A month seemed like a year to me. You would think he was going off to war, his mom said. He’s coming back Chris. My grandmother said if she didn’t know I was sincere and that I cared for him that much, I could have received an Oscar for that performance because it rivaled anything she had ever seen Bette Davis do on screen. That day he promised me he would never go away again and he kept his word. While he was gone I would sleep with his sweatshirt stuffed in my pillowcase. He was my best friend regardless of what some people thought, I knew and my grandma understood that he did not have a bad bone in his body.

He still smoked cigarettes though and he continued to skip school on the regular, but came just enough to keep from being suspended. He always found work on the days he didn’t come to school. He wasn’t just lying around being idle. He could ace a test and was smart academically when he was there; He thought it was just as easy to read the book at home as long as you passed all of the quizzes and tests and he had a syllabus to tell him when that would happen. He had a lot of street smarts. Greg always seemed to be ready to get out on his own; he wanted to work full time but he knew he still needed the diploma. I never saw him start a fight, and he tried to avoid them if possible, but if pushed too hard, he would. He could finish a fight real fast. Nobody wanted to tangle with Tobin Gregory once they saw him fight. If you did, you would leave with a well whipped ass. If you took the time to know him he was extraordinarily good hearted, generous. He always stood up for the underdog. If he could stop someone from getting stomped by some bully without raising his fists he did. They didn’t want to take the chance of fighting Greg so that usually ended it. He couldn’t stand to see some boy beating up or pushing around a girl. That, he didn’t walk away from. He would immediately break it up and if the abusive young man wanted to try Greg, he got his ass whipped. He would be equally angry at the small crowd that stood around watching someone abuse a young lady. Once after one of those fights the well whipped fool apologized to Greg. Greg told him to apologize to the girl, not him. I never thought Greg was bad. I knew he wasn’t. He harbored some anger issues and he had reason. To witness Greg really snap was like being in the eye of a storm. I saw a couple of those fights and it was frightening and it took him a while to calm down. Then he became very quiet and didn’t want to be talked to. Once it was about his younger sister. Toni Gregory was hands down the prettiest girl in the school. She had the most beautiful smile and chocolate complexion. She was sweet and quiet. A senior boy from another school saw her at a basketball game and started to harass her for a date even after she told him she was only in the 9th grade. When she finally told Greg the young man would not leave her alone and had started coming up to the school on lunch hour, Greg confronted him and told him his sister was a freshman and she wasn’t interested. Leave her alone. Not only did the idiot call her out of her name but he pushed Greg. It was the wrong thing to do. A ferocious ass kicking ensued and that was the end of that. I was never afraid for Greg because I knew he could handle himself but I couldn’t stand to see him get hit at all. I tried to hold him back once and he told me to never do that, I could have got accidentally hit, just stay out of it. I think because Greg didn’t look like a brawler, he was always being tried. By the first couple of weeks of our senior year, he was pretty much left alone. His rep preceded him.

He was also the ladies man by no choosing of his own. He sometimes could be offensive and aloof. He could be moody. Rude if he was tired. He didn’t laugh and joke around at school. But in private with his friends or with me and my family he laughed all of the time. I guess the girls liked his attitude and could overlook it because of his looks. I loved him though with all the love my adolescent heart could muster and he loved me the same. I understood him and I loved the way he treated me; always like a lady. Some things he kept close but he knew he could come to me and talk. Often he did but most of the time he would come to me in silence and I would just sit with him, lace my fingers through his until he got up. He would hug me and say We’ll talk about it later. and walk away. I never pressured him to talk. When he was ready, he did. His home life had not been like mine, but he dealt with it. He witnessed some domestic violence and had no tolerance for it. Walking down the hall at school, Tobin Gregory was something to look at. He didn’t look like a senior. He looked older, college age. He carried himself well. Never like a kid. He was never in a hurry. He walked slow and he talked low. His voice was deep and I liked to hear him whisper to me. If we were in the moment it could be as deep as a well. Even the female teachers would turn to look at Greg. The rumor was he had been with some of those teachers. If it happened he was discreet. He never told me and I never asked him. He had slightly bow legs, an athletes body and stood over six feet. He was handsome. If you got really close you could see a few fine healed cuts and scratches from fights, some of them happened at home. They gave an edge to that handsomeness. He kept his hair cut low. People who didn’t know him were never quite sure of Greg’s ethnicity; he was almost dusky in color. I always thought walnut! We knew he was Black. His mother was Black. Black and beautiful, and he carried her last name. When asked, if he answered he said Black. He never entertained the question And what else? He didn’t like a lot of talk about his looks. I always believed it was because he probably looked like his father and that’s where some problems slept. We never saw Greg’s dad. He didn’t stay with them when Greg started the fourth grade with us. Greg said he would come by every so often but I never saw him.

The fast girls tried to sleep with Greg, the good girls fantasized about what it would be like. Some of the ladies on my street who were as old as my mom would always find a reason to stop by if Greg and I were sitting on my grandmother’s porch. They would openly flirt and say, You really grew into a fine young man Gregory! He would say, Thanks, and look them in the eyes until they looked away. They would blush and get all flustered like I did when we first started dating but I was sixteen. I knew he could have them if he wanted too. I’m pretty sure he knew it too. When they twitched away I would joke about it and he’d look down and smile. Everyone thought somewhere in Greg’s heritage there were a lot of Chinamen. He had the most beautiful eyes. The girls called them Oriental eyes. They squinted when he laughed. He eventually told me his dad was Puerto Rican. He said the only person he knew on his Dad’s side was his grandmother who would come see him and his sister and brothers twice a week faithfully. He had a younger brother and an older brother. His grandma would read to him in Spanish. He told me loved her and she moved back to Puerto Rico when he was twelve. They wrote letters to each other at least twice a month. No one else on his father’s side ever reached out to him, like he didn’t exist. He also had a great Southern drawl that would creep in sometimes inherited from his grandmother on his Mom’s side that lived with his family also. I am also the only person who knows he can speak fluent Spanish other than his family. Once I asked Greg what was his Dad’s last name. He answered, Rivera. I rolled it around my tongue slowly. Tobin Gregory Rivera.

Tobin Gregory. He said. Son of Amanda Gregory. I could tell by his tone, which was simply matter of fact, he didn’t want to be referred to as Tobin Rivera and I never did it again.

After we started officially dating my best girlfriends still flirted with Greg! I didn’t care. He and I were best friends and I knew he wouldn’t hurt me and they would never actually try to date him because we all loved each other, but boy could they tease me about him. The only difference between my friendship with Greg and our dating is that now we open mouth kiss and make out! If we break up he’s still my Greg and that’s important to me. I really don’t remember him having a real girlfriend after me, just a bunch of girls and women sniffing around him. At least that’s what I want to think!

I was not sexually active. He definitely was and I knew it. I was Greg’s Sunday girlfriend. My grandfather always told us, You want to be the Sunday girlfriend. I knew what that meant. The one your young man cared about, the one he respected. Not the one in the back seat of a car or sneaking around in some boy’s house when his parents were not home. Greg and I went to church every Sunday, dinner at his house or mine and then to the show. Sometimes we ate at Azars Home of the Big Boy, the only sit down restaurant downtown which was directly in front of the Palace Theater. I always had the fish filet sandwich and fries; Greg always ate the biggest sandwich on the menu that Sunday and most of my fries. I’m sure most of the kids and teachers at school would be shocked to know that he went to church every Sunday. I love to look over at Greg during the affirmation of faith. I know he means it as he recites it. I believe in God the Father almighty, the maker of heaven and earth and in Jesus Christ his only son born of the Virgin Mary…

Whatever he did with other girls I didn’t know and he never let me see it as long as we were together. No girl ever approached me or signified she had been with Greg. We talked every night even if only for a minute or two and went out every Sunday. If there was a school activity I wanted to attend, he took me. He always found me at the beginning of the school day for a quick hug or to whisper I love you. If he didn’t I knew he was absent. He took me to every school dance and he was no great dancer, so popular dances I would usually dance with his best friend who could really dance, but Greg and I danced every slow dance. He was an excellent slow dancer. My parents and Grandparents drummed into us to never let a young man under your clothes. "He doesn’t