J. California Cooper - The Future Has a Past: Stories

Table of Contents

Dedicated with love to

Joseph C. and Maxine Rosemary Cooper, my parents
Paris A. Williams, my chile
Kiska Ivora Gross, my niece

Other Special People

Ted Lange, Gebby Lange, Juanita Wilson, Hubert Glasgow, William Kunstler, Ron Kuby, Claude O. Allen, attorneys

Irashel Fitzgerald, Bertice Berry, Terri McFaddin, Joyce Carol Thomas, authors

Sharon Elise, poet

Robert Kelly of Los Angeles (& Herman)

Beaver Scott, musician, Oakland

Mary Monroe, author, Oakland

Elizabeth Coleman, author

Other V.T.P. s

All the teachers of the world who love their jobs and children and adults whose minds they are helping to mold. I admire and congratulate and appreciate you so much for what you do with Love. I dont know all your names, but... Septima Clark, Barbara Christian, Erin Gruwell, essayist and poet June Jordan and Louis Braille all extraordinaire. You all deserve more. And more money too!

Acclaim for

J. California Cooper

Her style is deceptively simple and direct and the vale of tears in which her characters reside is never so deep that a rich chuckle at a foolish persons foolishness cannot be heard. Alice Walker

Cooper writes about small-town life with a verve that nearly bursts off the page. Ms.

Gutsy and familiar.... [Coopers] powers come from sticking to her instinct, which is to tell a story, plain and simple. The Washington Post

[Cooper] knows how to talk her stories to us, as though each of them is told by a kindly and concerned friend.... The sound of them is lovely, memorable, haunting. San Francisco Chronicle

Her stories, parables, and monologues take flight with truths about being alive, rhythm of folks at ease by the creek and the pool table, songs of love and remorse, syncopated, galloping, and beguilingly genuine. Ntozake Shange

Ms. Cooper is as down-home as Zora Neale Hurston. Essence

Acknowledgments

I wish to express my deepest gratitude for the assistance in writing this book of the swift intelligence, generosity and patience of Janet Hill and Roberta Spivak, her assistant. I was blessed with their encouragement, knowledge and understanding. I am proud that Janet Hill IS my editor.

I will be forever grateful and beholden to Doubleday Random House and the people who extend themselves there, always to ensure that good things prevail. Steve Rubin, Gerry Howard, Shioban Adcock and many others. Of those no longer there, Sally Leventhal, Peternelle van Ardsdale and Martha Levin stand large in my heart.

I wish to thank Belinda J. Hughes of Tampa, Florida, for her kindnesses that went far beyond friendship.

I would say a special word to Anita Williams of Washington, D.C., for always being there to rescue me when I needed it and always managing to do it in such a delightful way.

A special thanks to Evelyn Coleman who was so magnanimous and kind when I sought her help. I will not forget.

To my agent, Anna Ghosh, a Scovil Chichak Galen in New York. You have no idea how I appreciate you. Stay.

Last, but not least, I am grateful to the readers of my books. Without Alice Walker and you, there is no me between the covers of books. I do not get the opportunity to see all of you, but I think of you and in my prayers I thank God for you. Just imagine: YOU like something that comes out of my mind. Wow!

Authors Note

I have, I think, written about paths and roads that lead to a future. About the light, quick footsteps on that roadand the heavy, burdened footsteps imprinted there also.

Choices. Decisions... Oh, how they form your life. They, finally, make you walk the walk you walk; Run, when you will, and Rest, when you can. I have tried, in a small way, in this book, to remind you... Today is Tomorrow taken from Yesterday. Or today is some of yesterday and a bit of tomorrow, too. All are pieces of you. Your life.

If you are old enough... you can look back and see your footsteps through the years on the roads you have chosen. If you are young enough you can look ahead, prepare, to avoid or take the roads in your future. As you press forward against the winds of time... or are pushed against your will by the winds of consequence. (Which you have possibly set in motion.)

Let us think of the future as a house we are building. A brick or plank a day. Some days we may not have any material, a rainy day even, but we do not disregard the future house. Years pass, and finally, the time is right and the future is built. Our futures we will have to live in during the end of our lives. Will it have bricks or planks missing? Be drafty and cold? Will the foundation be warped and hard to maintain a balance on and will we be able to see the dirt ground beneath us? Will we have windows to see the outside? What will we be seeing; the beauty of the earth or the decaying wall of someone elses future house? Will we be alone? Is there peace in your future? Are there good memories of a good life? Or will we have to take, if possible, a room anywhere we can find it and depend on the kindness of strangers?

As you journey on your chosen roads, think of GOD and pay attention to the movements of GODS garments in the changing winds.

As you move toward your future, look back and you will see your future has a past... because THE FUTURE HAS A PAST.

J. California Cooper

A Shooting Star

Now, you dont know me. And, I know that you know that nobody knows everything. But a person does have to go by whatever they do know and every new thing they can learn, to make any good sense out of life. They say love makes the world go round, and I believe that. But, it seems to me, and I already told you I dont know everything, that nowadays sex is making the world go round.

Theres another sayin, What goes round, comes round. Well, I know that sometime what went around comes back around a whole lot different and bigger and worser than what you sent round in the first place.

You got to watch life, cause its moving all the time, every minute! You have to look all around yourself and see whats happening to you and everybody else. Try to get some understanding of it. But, I notice, some people look at things in their life and never do understand.

I grew up in a fair-size town that had a little of everything in it, I guess. In small communities you just know everybody cause you go to school with em and you usually know their parents cause you know their kids.

You know how growin children talk by the time they get to junior high school; half of the day is spent on gossip, some innocent and some not so innocent. Thats when I started payin attention to Lorene. She was one of our classmates and a main subject to talk about.

Lorenes full name was Heleva Lorene Shaky. Her father named her Heleva (I dont know how he came up with that name) and her mother put in Lorene and thats what everyone called her, til they were mad at her or something; then they would say Heleva! like that, for awhile.

Lorenes mother is a real nice, smiling lady from this town and her father was from somewhere in Washington, D.C. Somehow they met somewhere and he traveled back and forth til they finally got married.

Lorene grew up in a nice house and they seemed to be a regular happy family like most other people round here, but what do I know? Her father, Mr. Shaky, was often gone, on business, back to Washington D.C., and her mother was alone a lot so she attended them teas and church socials and some womens clubs. Nice people.