People often ask Josephine Howell how she can be so happy.
Because when Josie-as she is known-smiles, you see that glorious gap between her front teeth. It's as if joy streams out of that tiny space and flows directly into your heart.
But she wasn't always so joyful. At 43, her life's journey has been challenged by doubt, drugs and despair.
At 8 years old, she was molested by a family member. Then in grammar school she started smoking marijuana. In high school, she got hooked on Sherm. At 15 she got pregnant, and again at age 16. At 17 she was a single mother with two children, living on assistance. Then she tried cocaine--and she liked it. And with only two credits to go, she dropped out of high school.
Two suicide attempts, six children and countless drug and alcohol-clouded years later, she found her way back into the light. But her downward spiral would last until May 21, 1999.
Howell sat down to share her story between rehearsals of "Black Nativity," Langston Hughes' gospel song play in which she has performed for the last seven years. Relaxed, warm and open, Howell didn't spare the details-or herself. As we talked, she laughed, she sang and sometimes she cried.
Originally from Chicago's South Side, when she speaks about it, her husky melodic voice fills with warmth. "Just picture this: All different kinds of smells and food. People outside always. Music on the street corner. Kids playing in the street--football, jump rope. Forever alive. I love Chicago. It's home," she recalled.
Inside off the streets, music was second nature. "We didn't have a piano in our house," Howell said, "but my grandfather had one in his. My Uncle David Lee used to play the piano, and he taught us to sing the blues."
Howell loved to sing, but she didn't know she had a special talent. It was just something families did. "My first solo was "I Made a Vow to the Lord." I was maybe 6 or 7, singing in the youth choir at the True Right Missionary Baptist Church."
She was growing up to be a happy little girl, but at 8 years old, Howell's world began to fall apart. "I was molested by a family member. I honestly can't tell you how long it went on. I can remember the first time vividly. The rest, I've blocked out."
Howell told her sisters, but never her mother. "I was afraid she would kill him. After that I hated being a girl. Because cute little girls get molested. So I tried to be a boy. I hung out with boys. I tried to walk like boys."
Despite that personal tragedy, her singing talent shone through. At 16 she was cast in a production called "Chicago, My Chicago," and people from the Broadway show "Dreamgirls" came to see it. Howell was singing, "And I am Telling You," the song that propelled Jennifer Hudson to her Oscar. The "Dreamgirls" folks wanted her to try out in New York. But her mother wouldn't sign the papers. She said, "She's not ready."
"When my mom said that, all I heard was that she didn't believe in me."
Howell had first experimented with drugs when she was in grammar school-mostly marijuana. But in high school, she started smoking what they call "sherm." You roll marijuana up, dip it into embalming fluid, let it dry out and then you smoke it. She compared the experience to being high on LSD and methamphetamine at the same time.
She got pregnant by her best friend, and again a year later. "But I had no concept of what it was to have a relationship. I was insecure. I was scared. I even stopped going to church."
Things kept getting worse. At 17, she was alone with two children and continued to use drugs and withdrew from everything she had known. Then one night she freebased cocaine.
"First time I smoked it, I got hooked. There was a room full of people, and they said try it. My whole heart and everything in me was saying, "Don't do it." And I did it anyway--and instantly got high. I was shaking so badly I couldn't even hold the flame to the pipe.
"I couldn't afford the habit. So anytime I'd come around, [dealers would] give it to me. They'd give it to you before they give you food. Then my two oldest children were taken away from me by their dad-the one I broke up with," she said. "Not because of the drugs, but because I was with someone else. That was my world crumbling."
Over the next few years, Howell continued down her destructive path. In 1993, she moved to Seattle with her husband, also an addict. She had since married and had four more children. "It was so bad. We were living in a lady's van with our kids. And we stayed homeless for about five-and-half years."
But still, there was a tiny musical glimmer left in her. Wherever she happened to be living at the time, she would sing. "I had lost my song, but not my voice."
After her marriage broke up, Howell gave her life over to drugs. "I would sell myself in a heartbeat for a hit--or be with somebody that disgusted me. I would tell my kids to open up the food. Because if they left anything in the freezer, I would sell it for drugs, as sure as my name was Josie. They would get toys, and I'd sell those, too."
One day, out of the blue, Josie received a letter from her mother. "She had never written to me before. In her letter, mama shared that she was severely depressed when she was pregnant with me, but I was the reason she kept on living. Mama said whenever she sang, I would move and jump. And she thought, 'Oh, my God, can this baby inside my womb hear me? And then Mama wrote, 'If you're looking for your purpose, Josie, you were born to help others live.'"
She didn't realize it at the time, but that letter was Howell's first step on a bumpy path to recovery. A few months later, she tried to commit suicide for the second time.
"I put so much cocaine onto a pipe, I just wanted to take the biggest hit and die," she said. "My kids were in the house, but I had the door closed. They kept banging on it, and they started praying. And I yelled, `Could you just not do this?' I was mad at them for praying, which was so out of character for me. I was thinking, 'Stop doing that while I'm doing this. You're disturbing my high.'"
Her children did not relent. They continued to pray on the other side of that door. So Howell told God, 'If you're going to deliver me, you're going to have to do it right here and now. 'Cause I ain't going nowhere.'" Later, Howell gathered her four children around her and said, "It's going to be all right." A promise they had heard far too many times.
But she kept her word. On that same day, May 21 of 1999, she officially stopped drugs and alcohol--cold turkey. And she's been clean ever since. She's now back in God's fold and in her 10th year of sobriety.
A "Black Nativity" regular, Howell's signature number is "Alabaster Box," CeCe Winan's touching song about Mary Magdalene, a scorned sinner who bathes Christ's feet with her tears, dries them with her hair, and then anoints them with oil from her alabaster box. Just talking about it brings Howell to tears. The song is a testimony to her own life.
If you ask her if she's forgiven herself, she's quick to answer. "Almost." More important to her is God's forgiveness. "He has given me back my song, and I have been redeemed. I'm no longer who I used to be.
"My eyes and my teeth are no longer the biggest things on my body. My skin doesn't reek of alcohol, and I don't sleep in a car any more. If God brought me through all that, he can surely bring me through anything else."
"Black Nativity" runs Tuesday to Sunday through Dec. 27 at Intiman Theatre, tickets $15-$45, 206-269-1900.
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