The Feminist's Daughter

(Length: 76,000+)

This fabulous novel contains some very strong erotic content in places:

After being inseparable best friends through high school, Rose and Giovanna decide to leave their suburban New York home to seek adventure in South Florida. Their newfound freedom soon leads them down a dangerously self-destructive path. The uninhibited and excessive lifestyle of drug-infused 80’s South Florida costs them their innocence and their friendship.

Rose abandons her friend to return home and live a ‘normal’ life. She still believes in fairytale endings and only wants to find her ‘prince’ and ‘live happily ever after.’ Having survived these shattered fantasies, her feminist generation mother tries repeatedly to convince Rose to set more realistic goals. She believes that only the ideals of feminism can save her daughter from a life filled with disappointments. Rose’s past eventually catches up with her.

After decades of living separate lives she longs to reconnect with Giovanna before it’s too late . . . 

Giovanna Cafarelli lives in South Florida with her son. She is currently at work on her next novel, a sequel to The Feminist’s Daughter. She says: This book is dedicated to my cousin Lori whose laughter was taken from this world too soon. And to women around the world who struggle on a daily basis to educate themselves and their children; those who know that mothers are the first teachers. We begin to teach our children about love from the moment of conception, and we continue to teach them for all the days of their lives. It is dedicated to all of the children whose parents have been taken from them by the scourge of AIDS and to the scientific community who continue to work to find a cure.

Chapter One

The Light

January 2001

The light of day shone brightly on the South Florida landscape. Four young men exited the giant pink building that was Royal Palm Beach High School. They said their good-byes.

“Elijah, ya sure you don’t want to come with us? We’re goin’ down the beach to see if anyone is hangin’ out.”

“No, I got somethin’ I gotta do,” Elijah replied.

Sunlight reflected on his golden eyes and his ash-blonde hair, which was closely cropped on the sides with small, tight curls on top. His ears sprouted out slightly from his head. The tone of his skin was a perfect suntan. He smiled, showing straight white teeth, surrounded by soft, full lips. He stood six feet tall. His body was muscular, and he appeared more mature than his age. He had high cheekbones, a strong chin, and his nose was rounded and wide. His face was still smooth; only a hint of coarse facial hair was apparent. He strode with confidence toward his red Camaro. As he jumped in, he turned on the radio. He headed east on Okeechobee Boulevard, the music playing at a volume no parent would approve of, changing stations from rock to hip-hop to R&B, as his mood shifted. He quickly reached his destination, a large brick building with a sign out front that read “Shady Palms Nursing Care Center.” He parked and entered the building as if he had been there a thousand times before. As he passed the nurse’s station, he paused for a moment to say hello. He flashed a big toothy grin and gave a wave to all the staff.

“Your grandmother was here this morning,” a nurse informed him. “Yeah, I know. It’s one of her days,” he answered.

He strode down the hall and entered a private room; a pink glow from the afternoon sun poured in the windows. His mother was sleeping in the bed, covered by a rose-patterned comforter. The wallpaper had a matching rose pattern, and a fresh bouquet of white roses stood on the maple dresser. A bulletin board hung on the far wall. It was covered with cards from wellwishers. There was also a chest of drawers with a large mirror. On it was a small basket of toiletries, some fragrant candles, and potpourri. The closet door was a full-length mirror. He pulled up a chair next to her. She lay on her side, her long, wavy, golden-brown hair surrounding her pale, oval face. She slept lightly. As he settled into the chair, her eyes opened and her hand reached out.

“Hello, my baby. How was your day?” she whispered.

“It was a good day, Mom. I played some b-ball with my friends after school. I got an acceptance letter from FSU,” he told her, reaching for her outstretched hand.

“I knew you would, my angel, I knew you would.” “So how was your visit with Grandma?”

“Fine, you know it’s hard for her to come, but she does and brings me my roses.”

It seemed she had been at Shady Palms for a long time. On the wall, nearer to the bed, were her family photos. The photos of Elijah were neatly arranged on the wall, showing him when he was a baby, a toddler, on the basketball court, on the beach with his mother in her bikini, hugging him and looking so petite beside him. Both the photographs and memories were fading with age as her life’s energy was dwindling. Only the bond of mother and child could rouse her glow now.

“Last night the light was calling me. The light calls me now almost every night, but I’m not ready to go.”

“What do you mean ‘the light?’?”

“You know, honey, the light,” she said in a soft, halting tone. “The light that calls to people when they are going to die; we’ve talked about it before.”

“I know, Mom, but it never called to you.”

“No, honey, but I know the time will come. I’m waiting. I’m waiting as long as I can; you know I don’t want to leave you. That’s what has kept me here. I don’t want to leave you, but I will have to soon.” She closed her eyes and held back a tear.

“I know, Ma. I know you’re going to have to go. I wish it wasn’t like this,” he said, squeezing her hand tightly, his volume decreasing with each word.

“Don’t be sad, baby. Sometimes things just happen, and you know I’ve been sick for a long time. I told you from the time you were little that people die. Everyone has to die. Even children die sometimes. At least I’m not a child. I may not be old, but I’m not a child, and I did some good things with my life. Now my time is drawing near, but I’m still here, and the staff here is taking good care of me. I’ll wait as long as I can and stay here for you. Now, I don’t want you to stay too long, I know you have things to do. You should be with your friends, you should be out playing. Next year the party will be over; you’ll be in college and you will have to work much, much harder. I know you are a star student now, but next year is going to be more difficult. Have you decided yet what you are going to major in?”

“Oh, Ma, I can’t decide. I don’t know. It’s such a big decision for me to make at this age.”

“I know, honey, but even if you don’t decide until your second year in college, it’s okay. Look at me. I never could decide what I wanted to be when I grew up. I never did decide, but at least I had you and I did well with that. At least I was a good mother.” She spoke softly, her golden eyes opened wide again.

“Ya did other things beside that! You did a lot of good things. The people from the center called the house, ya know. They told me you won’t take their calls anymore.”

“I know, baby, I can’t. I don’t have much energy. I just want to be able to talk to you when you come and talk to your grandmother when she comes. You know she was here this morning.”

“Yeah I know, Ma.” He answered, realizing she was becoming forgetful.

“I almost feel like she believes it’s her fault I’m dying. Like if she had done something differently, told me something else, taught me something else, maybe it wouldn’t have happened like this. I keep telling her it’s not her fault, but I can see it in her eyes that she thinks it is. A mother is supposed to protect her babies. I think she feels like she didn’t protect me enough. But no one can protect you once you are grown. You start to make your own choices, and no one can keep you from making your own mistakes. I made mine, and you’ll make yours. But you’ll be careful. Some mistakes you learn from and some mistakes . . . I don’t know . . . they just stay with you.” She spoke in a somber tone. Changing the subject, she asked, “So, how’s your father, honey?”

“Ah, he’s fine, Ma. You know him, he just works. The business is doing well, he says. Ma . . . you didn’t open your mail yet. Let’s open the mail.”

“Alright, open it,” she said with a sigh. “I’ll read it to you,” Elijah said.

“If I’m not reading to you, you’re reading to me. Read, go ahead,” she instructed.

He opened the cards and read them one after another. All of them said basically the same thing: “Dear Rose, thank you for your help, thank you for your kindness, and get well soon.” She listened, her mind wandering, tears streaming down her face.

“Don’t cry, Ma, the cards are supposed to cheer you up, not make you cry.”

She nodded, glancing up at him, her sad, golden eyes wide. As he looked at her, he remembered her when she was younger and more beautiful. She always wore lipstick. She was rarely without the shimmering gloss on her lips. He smiled at the thought. Sometimes she would say, “Make sure they put lipstick on me the last day.” He laughed, but really that would be Grandma’s task.

Her mother would know what to do when her day came. Grandma would take care of the lipstick; only a mother could take care of something like that. A mother or a daughter, but she had no daughter, only a son. She glowed with pride as he sat there reading to her. Her love and admiration radiated like the beams of morning sunlight through the window, warm and welcoming.

She thought back over all the years, about all the teachers who told her what a good job she was doing. “You must be doing something right,” they said. “He’s so bright; he’s so wonderful; he’s so sweet. Well you’re doing a good job,” they’d say. “Whatever it is you’re doing, keep doing it.” She would laugh because all good mothers question themselves. Every step of the way, all good mothers doubt themselves, and all good mothers feel guilty when they think they’ve made a mistake, when they think they’ve done something so horrible that it could irreparably, deeply damage their child. These are the good mothers because they do question themselves constantly and wonder if they are doing the right thing.

There were times when he was younger that she felt so inadequate. She thought she wasn’t giving him enough. She felt at times, no matter what she did, it was the wrong thing. But now, here he stood beside her: a young man, strong, tall, intelligent, and kind. He was on his way to college, to life. As he continued to read, she thought of how he’d marry a beautiful girl someday and her grandchildren would be born. Tears welled up in her eyes again as she thought of never seeing them, but she knew they would be okay. She knew he would be a good father, and he would choose a good mother for her grandchildren.

“That’s it, Ma. That was the last one.” “Oh, okay, honey.”

“You weren’t even listening, were you?” he asked, glaring at her.

“Oh . . . I was listening, honey. I was listening. I was listening. Stop giving me that look.” She grew more insistent as she spoke.

“No, you weren’t. What were you thinking about?”

“Do I have to tell you everything I think about?” she asked sweetly. “I told you, get outta here. Go. Go be with your friends, you should be with your friends. I don’t want you spending too much time here with me. It’s depressing. I don’t want you to be sad.”

“Mom, I’m not sad when I come to see you,” he assured her. “I want to see you as much as I can before you’re gone, ‘cause once you’re gone, I won’t be able to see you, ya know?”

“Oh don’t be so smart,” she admonished. “You always thought you were smarter than your mother.”

“Well, maybe I am,” he told her in a slick sarcastic tone.

They both laughed, her knowing since he was a small child that he was smarter than her, and Elijah thinking there was no way he was smarter than his mom. They hugged and kissed as they laughed together. He lifted her up from out of the bed. She was light now, probably not much more than one hundred pounds. Elijah, with his big muscular arms, every bit of 200 pounds, picked her up effortlessly.

“Go. Go. Go be with your friends!”

“Alright, alright, Mom, I’m going.” As he left, he looked back at her several times. Heading down the hall, he stopped at the nurse’s station.

“Hi, Louise,” he said.

“Hello, Elijah, how are you today?” she asked with sincere concern. “I’m fine. I just want you to know my mother says the light is calling her.”

“I know, Elijah. She tells me, too.”

“Alright, I’ll be back tomorrow after school.” “We know, Elijah.”

“Well, I still feel like I gotta tell ya.”

“She told you to get outta here and be with your friends?” the nurse asked.

“Yes, she did,” he mumbled. “I’m going.”

He flashed his big grin again, turned, and strode down the hall and out into the bright sunlight. He drove back west on Okeechobee, toward Royal Palm Beach, changing the radio station furiously before finally settling on a CD. When he arrived home, he parked the car in the garage. It was a small yellow house with a two-car garage and a low white picket fence in the front. He walked into the spacious living room, toward the open kitchen, and as all teenagers do, headed straight for the refrigerator. He proceeded to make a sandwich, accompanied by a two-liter bottle of Sprite.

A long-haired cat meowed at his feet. There was a large fish tank in the living room, along with an impressive Bose stereo system and Sony big screen TV. The house was cozy and decorated pleasantly. It almost seemed to have a woman’s touch, but not quite. After he devoured his four sandwiches, he clicked on the stereo and went to his room to change into his swimsuit. He lounged out back by the in-ground pool and studied, then finally dove in and swam laps for about an hour.

“Eli, I’m home,” his father shouted as he came in.

“Hey, Dad, what’s up?” he shouted back, emerging from the water and wiping the chlorine from his eyes.

Quickly, he hoisted himself out of the pool and toweled dry. He and his father sat by the pool and began to discuss their day. Michael really wasn’t a small man, but next to his son he appeared small. A light-skinned black man, he was approximately 5’9” with his head shaved clean. He wore a goatee, mostly gray. He was beginning to show his age. He had full lips, a straight and narrow nose, and perfectly straight teeth like his son. Dark eyes, a strong chin, long dark eyelashes, and nicely arched eyebrows. He was muscular and nicely built. He wore black and white checkered pants and a white chef ’s jacket, which he was unbuttoning as he began to speak. “My son, my son, I thought you’d stop by the store on your way home.”

“I spent extra time with Mom; she’s not feelin’ so great, and of course, I had to shoot some hoops with the guys. I just wanted to come home to, ya know, cool out. How was your day, Dad?”

“Ah, it was alright, the usual, ya know, teachin’, cookin’, sellin’, same old, same old. How’s your mom?”

“Well, I just told ya, she’s not feelin’ so good these days. She’s sayin’ she’s not gonna be around much longer. It’s different this time I think maybe she’s right . . .”

“Well, son, when it’s your time to go, it’s your time to go. When God calls, you know?” He spoke slowly.

“Yeah, I know, Dad. She asked about you. She asked how you were.” “Does she wanna see me?” his father asked with a hint of hope in his voice.

“No, she didn’t say she wanted to see ya, she just asked how ya were.” His dad let out a low sort of moan, contemplating his son’s reply.

“How does she seem, Eli? Does she seem to be peaceful or upset?” “Well, I dunno, I guess more peaceful than upset. I dunno. She’s getting ready. She seems more worried about you, me, and everybody else, not herself.”

“Well, that’s your Mom. That’s the way she has always been, always worrying about everyone else, always worrying about . . . everyone . . . else . . .” Michael trailed off, shrugging his shoulders. “Well, let’s get some dinner going. Why don’t you light up the grill, son? We’ll throw something on.”

“I’ll get right on it. I want to swim a few more laps, too.”

“Maybe I’ll get in the pool, too. You know, your mother always told me I swam like a rock and drove like a blind man. I dunno, sometimes her sense of humor left a little to be desired, but that was her: heavy sarcasm, getting a laugh when she could, even if it was at my expense.”

Elijah lit the grill, then leaped back into the pool and began to swim. His father went to the kitchen and began to prepare their dinner, a salad of mixed greens, corn-on-the-cob, and salmon fillets brushed lightly with olive oil and Mrs. Dash seasoning. He diced some potatoes and a small onion and placed them in foil with some rosemary, salt, and pepper. He brought it all out to the grill, the vegetables wrapped in tin foil, the salmon directly on. As he cooked, Elijah continued to swim.

“C’mon, let’s eat.” The boy quickly sprang from the pool, and they sat down to dinner together outside. The cat made a figure-eight around each of their feet, meowing for a tidbit. Father and son tried to shoo her away before finally giving her some food from their plates. They ate in silence as the sun faded.

“Go shower, I’ll clean up. Don’t worry about it,” Michael told Elijah.

“That’s just what I wanted to hear, Dad.” Elijah grinned and left to shower.

As Michael cleaned the kitchen, he thought of the woman he had once loved so deeply, loved enough to marry, loved enough to have a child with. Once again, as he had so many times over the years, he wondered what had gone wrong, what he could have done to stop it, and why he didn’t. He thought about how beautiful she was, her golden eyes, her soft long hair. When he met her, he remembered the men on the job telling him that she was “different.” They didn’t explain, just said she was different. No one else had dared approach her, and when he asked the other men, they just said, “I dunno, she’s just different.” He too, thought she was different, but something about her intrigued him. Something attracted him. She was friendly but he could never quite tell if she was being flirtatious. Her voluptuous body almost looked dowdy in the uniform they wore, but that wasn’t really what he was after. He was looking for that one special woman to be in his life at that point, and she was looking for that one special man. They had reached out to each other, and for a time it had been so good and so perfect. They had been everything to each other.

When she was pregnant, he thought he would be able to be a father. He thought things would be okay, and he tried. He tried. Somehow the marriage didn’t work out. This would be his regret, perhaps for all of his days that he could not hold onto that happiness. He could not hold onto his woman, and now she would be gone from his life, and gone from this world. He knew the world would miss her because she could touch someone’s soul in an instant. She could see all the good in every person she met and he knew she could bring it out in them, as she had in him. This was her gift and her flaw, because in trying to bring out the good in some people, she also touched the bad. That was her downfall, she could only see the good, she could always shoo away doubt and give hope to anyone.

Unfortunately some people can’t be repaired, no matter how much you love them. They are already too far gone or too damaged.

He shook his head; a lone tear fell quietly to the kitchen floor. It had been too long. He had cried too many times. Now when he would think about it, only one or two tears would escape. He shook it off as his son entered the kitchen.

“You’re still cleanin’ up?” Elijah asked.

“No. No. I’m done. I’m done. What time is it anyway?” “It’s about 8:30.”

“Alright, did you finish all your school work?” Michael inquired. “Yeah, Dad, I just have to study for a test. I’m alright, I’m set,” Elijah answered.

“Okay, now let me get my ass in the shower. You gonna watch a little TV?”

“Yeah, I’ll see what’s on,” Elijah replied. “Alright, boy, let me hit the showers.”

Michael’s room was a nice bedroom, with somewhat ornate, contemporary furnishings. He had a large chest of drawers adorned with pictures. Of course, there were pictures of Elijah when he was a child, as he grew, and the two together, father and son over the years. On the right-hand corner of the dresser was a picture of the family: Rose, Michael, and Elijah when he was only a baby, not even two. They were all smiling. The background was like a halo surrounding them. Mother and father beside each other, their beautiful son between them, Michael’s hand draped across Rose’s shoulder, his wedding band barely visible through the locks of her hair. They looked so young and happy. It was the beginning of life then, their beginning. She had given him the photo long after their divorce. On the back, she’d inscribed, “One moment in time, of happiness.”

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