A Sparkle in Darkness

Sparkle is a young woman with two children. Thirsty, for not only a drink of alcohol, but thirsty for a better life. Impoverished from birth and no father in her life to sway her self destructive behavior. She spends her days in the rough crime infested streets of Buffalo, NY, with its humid and hot summers, to its almost arctic, snowy winters. Sparkle has an attitude stemming from her abuse as a child, at the hands of her estranged sister Angel, and that attitude is the one that causes her world to collapse around her.

Sparkle finds sisterly companionship in the least likely person. A girl named Tracy, who she was supposed to hurt. She could not understand how her Sister Angel had felt so negative about this girl Tracy, who she called friend, and sister. Angel had always been slick, cunning, and hateful. Sparkle is a African American woman on the verge of changing.

Sparkle's story is one of love. She has had a soul burning crush on one of the regular thugs that hung out in front of her apartment. Juice is a light skinned handsome, lean, muscular young man, who blended in well with his background. He did what most young men did, hit it and quit it. At least until he engages in a lust filled alcohol enticed relationship with Miss Sparkle Jones. He finds himself cheating on his baby's mother, whom he had an ongoing relationship with since high school.

He was compelled by her will and her free spiritedness, as well as her beauty. She was just like one of the guys to him, that is, until he finds himself in bed with her. If that relationship was ever going to end, it would be by her hand, not his. Sparkle had her own baby daddy issues to deal with. Her two children both had the same father, whom she despised. He had cheated on her more times than she'd care to remember. She needed him for money, and being a drug dealer he had plenty of it. What he gave to support his children was not very much at all, and welfare was her prime source of income.

Her Uncle Woody was her foundation, an uncle from her father's side. He would be her transportation and Counsel at times. He called and visited her often, and made sure she had beer and cigarettes, yet he tried to put it in her heart to try god, by going to church. Instead, Sparkle chose drug dealing as a way out of her poverty. Night living, clubs, and drinking excessively became her new way, it became her only way. Sparkle had dumped her thug boyfriend and pawned her kids off entirely on her childhood friend Chris, who no longer lives in the hood. Uncle Woody eventually too, became nothing more than an aging old fool to Sparkle. However, Tracy, the friend and sister she'd longed for Angel to be, stayed solid and true.

Tracy brings a wisdom to Sparkle that only a sister can. When she brought remembrance of the beginning of their friendship back to Sparkle's confused and intoxicated mind, the tears flow, the emotions thunder, and a piercing pain of reality is forced to be reckoned with. Sparkle now embarks on the journey of putting right all the things she had done wrong. This would take a little time she knew, but with the return of Juice to her life, brings more than hope. The confusion she had in her mind had vanished! That is, until Tragedy strikes one last time, and fate rears its ugly head once more. Had all the struggles Sparkle gone through in vain? Were they for her to survive, only to endure this most heinous of punishments by god.