Jennifer and Joy

09/20/2025

By Joy Lynn Clark

I was struggling as a single parent when I moved back home with my parents.  It was a humbling experience.  At first I worked as a weekend hostess on the breakfast shift at the local diner where I saw all of my former classmates.  I held my head up and showed every last one of them to their tables.  I also attended bartending  school where I earned my certificate.  I still had my hopes for radio and television so I kept sending my resume around. 

I said goodbye to all of my friends on the breakfast shift and started tending bar just 10 minutes from my parents house.  The boss turned out to be so cheap that he didn’t want to give me my shift pay and I quit. 

Pros ended up being featured on the CW’s Bar Rescue with Gordon Ramsey and had a really unauthentic re-enactment with mostly white people.  I never saw a white person a day in my life when I worked there,  smh (Pros/Raw Bar).  Everybody thought that I was from Jersey but that was just the second half of the show. 

Back at home, my father and stepmother were driving me nuts. In addition, lots of universities were sending me recruitment letters.  I decided to go back to school after I was awarded a scholarship.  I was so optimistic about school that I started applying to private schools in the city for my child.  I didn’t have any money so I ended up settling for a magnet school. 

Once I moved back to Chicago I decided to apply for another position.  This time, at my Dad’s network job.  Dad was very close to retirement and I figured that I can apply there now.  The position looked perfect, “Web producer with writing experience”.  I called Dad and told him of my plans. 

At the same time, my stepbrother Gus Conda had just gotten married and my halfsister Jennifer was in the planning stages of her nuptials. 

“Joy, you will get this job for sure, what can go wrong?”  I think to myself.   I also was poaching some of my dad’s contacts from Facebook.  After I configured my own site’s e-commerce, I decided to do some promotional  posting on FB.  My family and friends are downloading the latest music and they are saying so. 

One morning I wake up to, “Jennifer!!!”.  I laugh when I realize that I had left on the television and Jennifer Hudson is being featured on GMA.  Next, a commercial with Jennifer Garner and then a movie with Jennifer Lawrence.  The movie was titled, “Joy” and I immediately call my stepmother and insist that she and I cancel our QVC cards. 

Next, my mom calls me to get my email address so that she can send me a link to my sister’s profile on a wedding site.  “Joy, you have to order your bridesmaid dress through this site and I will pay for it”,  my mom insists. 

I sign up for the wedding site and immediately start having regrets as I consider my own site’s traffic.  I search the site, no delete profile buttons or links.  Eventually, I emailed the site’s admins to remove my account. 

The next week my mother calls me with a solemn tone, ”Joy, I have cancer and I need you to keep me in your prayers because I can’t afford my treatment”, she admits.  “You can’t afford treatment?  Call off the wedding or at least dial it back.  Are you footing the bill for all of this by yourself?”  I seriously question my mother since Jennifer is my half-sister and her dad passed when I was just seven years old.  I wondered if my mom was seriously overextended as she has already retired. “Of course” she adds.  “Well I can’t be in the wedding because I am too broke and you can’t afford your treatment.”  I yelled at my mother.

In addition, my sister had to convert to Catholicism because her husband is a Roman-Catholic (from Ohio).  She has been taking classes and strangely I’ve been helping with the scriptures a little.  She was learning about the different Catholic Sects and I really only had a sense for Protestant Denominations.  I even had to recall the Eucharist. 

In the meantime, I held out for the, “good job”.  My mom was so happy about the wedding and I thought that she was crazy as hell since she had no way to pay for her medical bills.  “You are going to die throwing all of your money at this” I spitefully sniped.  Also, Grandfather Clark  passes away and my cousin Robert calls to tell me that his dad died. I gave Robert my condolences for Robert Sr. and pointed out that I am in mourning myself.

I inherited grandpa’s car with all of his stickers and decals.  Well, at least I can get some good parking sometimes, or so I thought. I cried every time that I put the key in the ignition and had to just sit there until I could regain my composure.

It is the winter and I am impatient because I am sick of networks keeping my resume in the cue forever.  They should have accepted or rejected me by now, I can’t keep living like this.  I started thinking about all of my complaints about communications media and the application process. Next, the phone rings and I know that number anywhere- Dad’s job.  I am so giddy right now and I answer, “hello”.   This is so-and-so assistant at a network and  . . . “ I am distracted by the sound of, “ Jennifer!!!”  and I get a power surge bad enough to fry my phone and my laptop.

My mother was hospitalized because of her cancer.  My father was diagnosed with leukemia and I missed the call about my mom because I had not yet replaced my phone.  I eventually got a HSN card so that I could make payments on a new laptop.  I did eventually attend my sister’s wedding even though I was not in the wedding party.  My Aunt Grace offered to let me tag along with her family at their expense.  I really did not have a dime to my name.

I eventually got rid of all of those contacts that I had poached off of my dad and  I finally got that rejection letter from the station where everybody knows me signed,  “Yours Truly, Jennifer”.

Both of my parents’ cancer is in remission. Cousin Robert decides to fundraise for the American Cancer Society.