ISBN: 9781626751446

Chapter One

Gloria Gant was the youngest of five children that moved from Southern Georgia to D’lberville, Mississippi with her entire family. Her mother’s husband Nicholas Gant came into her family and had her and her two elder sister’s last name changed to his. Her two brothers at the time were fifteen and sixteen. Their last names did not get changed, because their mother could continue to receive child support money from their father. The two boys had the same biological father and the three girls another.

The year was 1964, she was five years old then, but could read as well as any of her older brothers and sisters, because not only did they teach her to, but most of her time when she was alone it was spent going through their books and school work . She was very much loved by her adopted father, maybe because she was fair in complexion as he was, and was prettier than the others.

No one thought of her as a Prophetess or Seer. The family moved to Mississippi, because the neighborhood children teased her, calling her devil child. Over a period of a year on a consistent basis she was able to foretell things that happen in the new community a day before the event actually occur, and to recognize illnesses of the people around her. None of her revelations were ever prompted or encouraged, except that she was able to stand in close proximity in front of any person and tell them things about themselves that they may or might not have known. Most of the predictions that she had made were classified as coincidental until one night when her mother tucked her into bed, she said; “Mamma, take your umbrella with you tomorrow so you won’t get wet”.

Her mother Cynthia, a short stocky black woman who worked as a maid with some white folks in the city of Biloxi considered it strange that her daughter told her to take her umbrella with her. There was a drought; it hadn’t rained in more than three months. As a matter of fact, the last time that it was forecasted to rain she had taken her umbrella to work, but it stayed a clear day, so she left it on her job. That night before she went to bed, she watched the late night news, and the weather forecast was for clear skies.

For her to be at work at seven in the morning, she had to leave home at five to catch her first bus and transfer to another, with a one hour wait between buses. Missing one bus meant that she would be late by two hours.

At work that day, most of Cynthia’s chores consisted of ironing clothes. Her employer had her once per week do the ironing for her friends and collected money for it. It was so hot on the screened back porch where she usually does that type of work that she used a long electric extension cord to reach the ironing board under a tree in the backyard where there was a slight breeze. Normally she would leave work at three-thirty in the afternoon, but that day she had to work until five-thirty to make up for the two hours that she was late the day before. She was late two hours because the bus was late two hours, and Gloria had told her the night before that her bus would be late, but she neglected to make any alternate plans to get to work.

At five-fifteen she got permission from her boss to leave so that she could catch the last bus. It was late summer, and daylight hours were long. All around was bright and clear. By the time she got off her second bus about three quarters of a mile from her house, the entire surrounding was as dark as a midnight without the moon. There were no street lights in that part of the neighborhood, and only the flash of lightening and the occasional automobile head lights provided enough light for her and other pedestrians to barely see where to walk.

Suddenly, the down pour of torrential rains came. That was when Cynthia regretted not adhering to her daughter’s advice about the umbrella. It had crossed her mind to take it with her just before she left her job, but she was in such a hurry to catch the last bus, and thought to herself that she would look really stupid travelling with an umbrella in such a dry time.

At five o’clock that evening two of Cynthia’s other children, the twelve year old twins were at the house of an old white lady by the name of Gladys Knowles, a retired school teacher who agreed to tutor them in exchange for them doing house work for her one day per week. When they lived in Georgia, they were both A students in high school, but since they moved to Mississippi the nearest high school was three miles from their new home, and transportation was too expensive.

The two girls, Cleo and Claire waited there as usual for Cynthia to get off her second bus, and for all three to walk half a mile home, but when it was five-thirty and their mother did not show up, Mrs. Knowles saw that it was setting up for rainfall, so she told the girls to run home before it started. They got home and collected their baby sister Gloria from the next door neighbor who took her along with her own daughter to the Elementary school and back each school day. The two eldest children, Harold and Edward were learning to be brick-layers with Mr. William Smith who was also the Elder/ Pastor at the church the family attended. He was also a longtime friend of Nicholas, and he was the one who encourage the family to move to Mississippi to avoid paying high rental in Georgia.

The boys got home at six. They were ravenous, not having anything to eat since they emptied their brown paper sandwich bag at noon that day, and were expecting to smell the sweet seasoned smell of the usual almost ready dinner. Needless to say that they were upset, and raided the bread pan, but it was empty. The girls had beaten them to it.

“Cleo and Claire”, said Gloria. “It would please Mamma’s heart if you two could start making the dinner. And make enough for tomorrow, because Mamma is going to be sick, and I’m not old enough to cook”.

“Why do you say that Mamma is going to be sick”, asked Harold. “She was perfectly healthy when I last saw her this morning. Don’t you be calling sickness on our Mamma. Its’ no wonder that the people in Georgia say that you have a devil. You had told us that their car would catch on fire, and the very next day it did”.

“There is a voice in my head that told me that she is going to be sick for three days”, answered Gloria.

“You better listen to her”, said Edward. “Remember that time when she told you not to ride your bicycle to downtown the next day, and you wouldn’t listen. You rode downtown and some boys beat you up and took your bike, and what about those people in Georgia. She told them that they would get a lot of money, and not long after, they won the China man’s game”.

“Oh yeah”, remarked Harold. “Well that doesn’t make her a Prophet, and why is it that her predictions are mostly bad? Just last Sunday I heard her telling a pregnant woman at church that she was going to have triplets. The woman told her that she already knew. She went on to tell the woman that they would be three boys. The woman said that she already knew, and then she told the woman that one boy would turn out to be a killer, another would turn out to be a beggar, and the third would be a liar. The woman was visibly upset”.

“Well, I guess we’ll have to see what those boys grow up to be”, said Edward.

At seven o’clock Cynthia was standing at the front door. She was dripping wet from head to toe. She stood there shivering and called for a blanket, and then she wrapped herself in it and stripped off her wet clothes right there on the steps. Her lips were trembling as she kissed each of her children on their foreheads and walked slowly to her bed. One of the girls retrieved her wet clothes, and another covered her with a second blanket.