Broken Roots: Based on a True Story

Copyright © 2021 Darice Brooks.

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ISBN: 978-1-9822-6466-6 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-9822-6467-3 (e)

Balboa Press rev. date: 02/26/2021

This book is dedicated to my Mother, My King/

Husband, My Angels, My Sons and My Grand

Babies. No Matter The Weather We Will Win &

Rise, Crowning… Ancestral Healing, ASE...!!!

Broken Roots is similar to a novel called

The Coldest Winter Ever written by Sister Souljah.

CONTENTS

PART ONE: MEMORIES OF CHILDHOOD

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 5

Broken Roots Part 2

PART TWO: UNCHAINED PASSION

Unchained Passion

Royalty

No Fear

Reflection

Among Wolves

Grateful

Growth

Purity

Angel’s Message

Promise

Truth

Give Back

As I Found It

Care

Designing Me

Priceless

Blunt Words

Lady

Magical

Our Paths Crossed

Heaven-Sent

Soul Surfing

Pastime

Free

Someone’s Watching

Patchwork

Just Do It

Slow Down

Comforter’s Song

Love Won’t Let Me Wait

No Air

Pure Bliss

Part One

MEMORIES

OF CHILDHOOD

CHAPTER 1

My memories of childhood are like a puzzle that I piece together as I write my story. I’m writing my life out on paper with the hope of touching someone else’s world, or maybe just assisting them in getting through their storm. One person’s story can give hope, clarity, and meaning to another person’s existence.

This is my story. I don’t mean to be grim or to shine a bad light on any of my loved ones, because God knows I love my family and love to see nothing but smiles on their faces. But the fact of the matter is, I grew up in a very abusive household—with my biological father, Rodney James Dupree, present as our abuser, and my biological mother, Emerald Ann Jenkins, as the wholesome, loving, nurturing, faithful goddess who gave us amazing comfort during those traumatic times. I’ve always told my friends that when I was growing up, my mother was the angel and my father was the devil.

My parents met at a pool hall in Oakland, California, where they both had jobs. My father and the owner of the pool hall, Manny, were very close friends, so my father was given a job as a manager. But my father also had his own shoeshine business, so he and the owner had a business agreement that allowed my father to run his very lucrative shoeshine business out of the busy establishment. My father was a shoeshine man for the many customers who came to the pool hall and just about everyone else in Oakland, so he knew everybody. His days were filled with long conversations, laughter, business deals, shining shoes, and running a tight ship.

My mother was a beautiful cashier and salesclerk who sold candy, chips, and other junk foods to the customers who came in and out of the pool hall throughout the day. My mother was very shy with the customers but very professional, always getting along with everyone. Everyone loved her. She found herself daydreaming sometimes about her future, how she would someday have this huge, amazing family of her own, a handsome husband, and pretty much what most young ladies fantasized about in their spare time. She was so beautiful.

I know that my father noticed her, and her beauty was probably one of the reasons that he’d hired her. With his aggressive nature, plus being the joker that he tended to be, he put on quite a show trying to get my mother’s attention, joking around constantly. They began a beautiful friendship as coworkers that stayed strictly in the workplace, but after about a year, the pool hall closed down due to the owner’s sudden death from kidney failure, and they went their separate ways. They probably never imagined fate would have its way and they would end up meeting one another again.

Due to my father’s ability to see my mother’s virtue, class, unique personality and soul, I’m certain that he was more than anxious to reconnect with this rare beauty he had found but lost. I’m sure he saw in her what most men looked for in a lifetime partner, a wife. He never forgot her, even after mourning the death of his good friend, relocating his shoeshine business, and redirecting his clientele. He always said jokingly, Elephants never forget, and he had my mother on his radar.

As fate would have it, about a year after Manny’s death, my dad saw my maternal grandmother, Sabrina Jenkins, while on one of his business ventures. My dad had been through some sort of training that day that put him in her area. He remembered her face from the times that my grandmother had picked up my mother from work at the pool hall on the days when it would rain. Rodney was excited to see her, and after greeting her, he immediately asked for my mother’s phone number so he could get back in contact with her.

My grandmother remembered my mother, Emerald, speaking of him a while back as being her manager, and the pleading look on his face convinced her to give him Emerald’s number. My father didn’t waste any time calling my mother when he got home that evening. Emerald was surprised that her mother had given him her information, but she was not complaining and had actually wondered from time to time what had ever happened to him. A date to meet up was set immediately, and they got together again, rekindling a friendship that blossomed into a twenty-year marriage. They fell very much in love and eagerly made plans to start a future together.

My mother already had a child named Venus from a previous marriage, and my father had a son and daughter, Sammy and Tina, who were not in his care or his home at the time. My father truly loved Venus as his own, embracing this new child into his life and giving her everything a father is expected to give. Things set off in a good direction: my