Henrietha

Ruthie often traveled on the subway with her best friend Jem from the church where they attend often. She told me that the pastor had brainwashed her. When the abused came to light to her pastor, he called her stepfather and setup a counsel session for him but not for Ruthie. Often times, Ruthie traveled on the subway with her friend Jem, and they discussed their abuses as Jem was abused also. They share many interests in life. Ruthie said thoughts of jumping across the train tracks often crossed her mind. Jem talked her down at times. One night, she came home and had me cornered in my bedroom with her eyes blazing with fire as she sat me on the bed and yelled at me, "Why didn't you come over to my house and save me from the abuse? I was waiting for someone to save me. I can still smell the scent of Jason on me. Night after night and Sunday after Sunday, when he came home from church, he had me as his sex slave. Grandma you said you felt in your mind something was not right, so why didn't you come and kick the door down and find out what was going on?" "But, my dear, I did call the Children's Aid. I told them what you said, that you were sleeping in the closet at one time, and they came and visited. They called me and told me all was good in the home. There was nothing else I could have done." She left that night with her friend, and three days later, I heard from her that she is in British Colombia. They took the bus. She said if she hadn't left the province, she would have jumped the subway track. As you know, Joanna, there is a finished rooftop on my building. Many times, whenever Ruthie comes home, she would go to the rooftop even before she goes to bed. She said she finds peace and comfort there. She felt like God was up there waiting to talk and comfort her. Is domestic work really for black women? It seems that way. Whenever some white person or others meet you and talk about work, it seems they are waiting for you to say that this is the job you are doing.

About the Author :
Jamaican native Joyce M. Johnson spent her formative years in the rugged confines of nature with quasi-feral fortitude to aid and abet her survival there. For over forty years now, she has called Canada home, where she has enjoyed such opportunity availed to her for secondary and postsecondary education. Joyce has led a long and checkered career as a main-frame computer operator and programmer beginning at Dover Elevator and growing into professional independence as CEO of Johnson Productions. Owed to her creative writing studies at Seneca College in Toronto and treasure exposure courtesy of CBC, Toronto, the scribal bug had already bitten and seduced her into the world of penmanship where she has fortitude and emergence as a narrator for substance in content and conviction. Canadian living no doubt has had reaching influence on Joyce's sociology as a woman of color, abuse survivor, and God-fearing visionary. Her personal evolution is inspired with evidenced experience. She writes with generous measures of compassion for and commitment to universal humanity. Her pen plots with unique rhythm and richness that has come to define and endear her to an increasing readership with the quickening of enlightenment. Her mind is weighted by unbridled intuiting; these seed thoughts steep in the perceptive fertility of her cradling gray matter, which nourishes these precious germs of mischief. Inflicted by their immediacy and threat in mental filtration and afflicted by a disquiet in their traded trauma of virtual victory, Joyce's captive consumer would've reserved the benefit of a swift recovery . . . or so it is hoped. Without objection, Joyce extends her pen to all who are constituted for the rigor of her now-respected lushness of emotions, unrepentant rawness of her experiential reality, richness in reveries, wealth to call your own, the refreshing of life you may have lived/seen lived and/or to live in the true worth of human messaging toward the expansion of self in the framework of the human family. Her first novel is Henrietha, which has proven to be a strong beginner. Joyce says, "This is an exciting beginning to my writing career because I do feel this is where my calling lies. Henrietha covers two novellas, Henrietha and Waiting for the World to Change. It embodies the indomitability of cosmic spirits that inhabit and influence all." The audio script has been aired in part on CBC radio, and the work is poised to survive time as Joyce's personal treatment of a core of social issues that keep cropping up. Currently, Joyce is composing a sequel to "Henrietha" amongst other literary compositions, which include an anthology of poems.