Preface
A Cry No One Heard Preface
One nonchalant, unexpecting call day, while lounging in my recording studio, I received a call from a familiar, raspy voice saying, “Hey, girl, it’s Bonnie.”
Now, as I think back, the universe must have sensed that I was telepathically searching for her, and behold, the phone rang.
Bonnie and I have always had a twin-flame connection, a sort of kindred spirit. I’ve been fortunate in my life to have had a few wonderful home-girl relationships with amazing women, but Bonnie was the first. After her, the rest of my life has been spent searching for a friendship like ours. She has always been my rock, and we rolled together. She was like the older gangster sister I never had.
We hadn’t spoken for decades, but of course, we connected as if time had never passed. I was taken aback by Bonnie’s change in voice; the tone was different but memorable. Sensing ill health, I asked, “Bonnie, how has life been treating you?”
Well, that question led to us chattering on the phone for at least four hours. The story of Bonnie’s life after our time together began to unfold, with my mouth agape during the entire conversation. Quietly, I would repeatedly mouth, “Oh my God.”
Bonnie has always been a loving and caring person who would give you her last dime. I was a few years younger than her, but we had lots in common, including soul music, laughter, and the love of animals. During my early years, I envisioned forming an all-girl band, and Bonnie was my support system.
I found my calling early as a child, and I was passionately addicted to music. When my mother expressed issues about me pursuing music, I flew the coop. Not even scrutiny by the Queen of England could change my passion. Bonnie invited me to live with her, along with her two small children. She unconditionally supported me spiritually, musically, and financially. Above all, Bonnie encouraged my dream, which became hers. She is an intricate part of my success and the forming of the all-girl band KLYMAXX.
I know Bonnie well. She is not a fabricator for the sake of bad theater, so when she began to tell me her life’s adventures, doubt never entered my mind. However, I could not fathom what I heard this 1970s Hollywood model saying.
I listened intensely to the possible baby daddy drama with one of the Jackson Five. I’d already known about that because I was her chauffeur who waited in the car during a few of their rendezvous. Then again, I had to stop and ask Bonnie to repeat the part about her jumping out of a high-speed vehicle on the highway to get away from a John who premeditated killing her (yeah, a John as in prostitution). She escaped by jumping out of the speeding vehicle, but the consequences were brutal, as most of her skin was stripped off of her body. One entire side of her face was raw, with bones exposed because of the continuous rolling onto the highway pavement. I listened in horror.
In a separate scene, two hours into our conversation, she admitted to committing murder after an abusive relationship with a shell-shocked Vietnam vet.
She continued and elaborated on her cocaine, heroin, and crack addiction and her connection to the serial killer Kenneth McDuff. And this was only banter from the first three hours.
The last sixty minutes were spent on the unthinkable portrayal of her enjoyment as a Hollywood pass-around fetish, the premeditated sex games, and the various elaborate schemes, cons, and strong-armed robberies that she boldly committed all in the name of a crack pipe.
Lastly, my friend, who was a graduate of higher learning, described her adventures of being an inmate at the Women’s Texas Penitentiary. Shackled and in prison garb, being put on the Texas chain gang led her to violently hack a female prisoner to keep from marching in the brutal heat.
Bonnie, once a pre-law student, was the first multiracial woman in Waco, Texas, to win a lawsuit against the United States government without an attorney; she represented herself. Also, she was the first African American host, who happened to be a woman, in Wichita Falls, Texas’ cable history. However, she was a country girl to the bone with a thick, southern accent, bowlegs, and champagne taste. Although quite the brainiac, she often, subconsciously, masked it with naiveté, as in “blond wig,” a mix between Lucille Ball meets Mae West, but the girl was quick-witted; what made her a double threat was what one would call street smarts. She just had a second sense!
In my opinion, Bonnie was, is the real definition of a female gangster. One of those girls who tell it like it is with a slight edge of danger. If a guy wanted to date her, she had no problem saying to him up front that support (as in rent, bills) was necessary. If he agreed to these terms, only then could he date her—and he better be on time with the rent. This conversation usually took place within the first ten minutes of their meeting as I stood on the sideline, watching and listening in disbelief.
Bonnie never had a problem achieving this because she was every man’s fantasy. However, all of Bonnie’s tragedy came into play because she desperately desired to be loved. She had to have a man in her life, or she did not feel complete.
Bonnie had expressed to me that she had written her life story with events and dates scrambled and scribbled down on hundreds of loose-leaf papers. She wanted no one but me to read and write it. Her faith and belief in me remained after years went by.
So… I received her memoirs, the notebook of her journey. I assembled all the pages on my kitchen floor and put her life in chronological order. I read every chicken scratch, making sense of the rapture and the pain, and then I channeled her and began writing.
This novel’s journey breaks ground in the nineteen-twenties before the Great Depression and the rise of Hitler, when many colored people migrated North to escape racial discrimination that they faced in the South from the Jim Crow segregation laws. We then cruise into the seventies, the era of Black independence, and, eventually, into the eighties, arriving at the adventures and the chapter called ‘Bonnie and Bernadette ‘Clyde,’ Their shenanigans as sister-friends are what friendship is made of.
The drama that continues throughout the twenty-first century does not disappoint. As you traverse the book, page by page, you will mind-bogglingly observe Bonnie’s years of exploitation and the trauma she endured, which lay the foundation and ignite the fire of her desire to be a star.
I enlisted the expertise of Raina Shaw, a former model who is also a historian of times, periods, and music, to help me capture the true essence, tranquility, and excitement of each era. Also, to assist me with the transition of each generation, beginning and ending.
If you follow the slow, winding introduction of the early family years, the unbelievable adaptation of Bonnie’s life will commence unfolding and shall keep you captivated. Bonnie’s childhood abuse and the torture that shaped her life are harrowing yet riveting.
Although evident that life has a beginning and an end, this story is the quintessence of change. It displays that no matter what adversity you have endured in your life, you have the power to overcome and amend the ending of your story. My friend Bonnie was living proof of all the above.
A Cry No One Heard is a loving, albeit heartbreaking story of friendship, women empowerment, and the determination and grit of one woman, Bonnie Thompson, the beauty contest winner, who always wanted her marquee to read Small Town, Local Girl Bonnie Thompson Makes It Big in Hollywood. It was her dream by any means necessary.
Bonnie, this is a labor of love. Rest in power, my friend.
Bernadette Cooper