“Be good for the nice lady, baby. Mama will come backreal soon.”
I have said those words in my head so many times theydon’t sound like words anymore. They sound like adoor closing. Which is what they were.
My name is Jolene. I’m thirty-five. I live in Decatur,Georgia, with my husband Curtis and a rescue dognamed Biscuit who is afraid of thunderstorms andceiling fans. I am telling you this because somebodyneeds to hear it and I have been quiet about it for thirtyyears and I cannot be quiet anymore.
I was five years old. It was July. I remember becausethe pavement was hot enough that I could feel itthrough my sandals. My mother put a grocery bag inmy hands, the brown paper kind, and told me we weregoing on a trip. I was excited. I had never been on atrip before.
There was a green Buick in the driveway. I didn’trecognize it. There was a woman in the driver’s seat Ihad never seen before. She was maybe forty at thetime, thin, with short brown hair and a cigarettebetween two fingers. She didn’t smile at me. Shedidn’t say hello.
My mother walked me to the car. She opened the backdoor and put me in. She buckled my seatbelt. Iremember her fingers on the buckle. Her nails werepainted pink. I remember that because it was the lasttime I saw her hands.
She leaned in and kissed my forehead. She said, “Begood for the nice lady, baby. Mama will come back realsoon.”
Then she closed the door.
The car backed out of the driveway. I turned around inmy seat and watched my mother standing on theporch. She was waving. She was smiling. I waved backuntil we turned the corner and I couldn’t see heranymore.
She did not come back real soon. She did not comeback at all.
The woman’s name was Darlene. She lived in a double-wide outside Macon with a chain-link fence and a yardfull of dirt and a dog that barked at everythingincluding me.
Darlene was not kind. I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. Shewas cruel in the specific, daily, grinding way thatdoesn’t leave marks that teachers notice but leavesmarks everywhere else.
She hit me with a wooden spoon. Not once, not when Idid something wrong. Regularly. The way you’d swat ata fly. Casual. Like it cost her nothing. The handle ofthat spoon cracked eventually and she replaced it witha new one from the Dollar General. I rememberstanding in the aisle while she picked it out.
She made me sleep on a mattress on the floor in aback room with no door, just a curtain. She told meevery single day, sometimes multiple times, that mymother had sold me because I was bad.
“Your mama didn’t want you, Jolene. You were rotten.She got eight hundred dollars for you and she spent itbefore the week was out.”
$800. I was five years old and my mother sold me for$800. That is less than what Curtis paid for our couch.
I believed Darlene. I believed I was rotten. I believedmy mother looked at me and saw something wrongand decided $800 was a fair trade.
I lived with Darlene until I was eleven. That’s when aneighbor finally called somebody. I don’t know whattriggered it. I don’t know if they heard something orsaw something or just finally decided they’d lookedaway long enough.
CPS came. Darlene was arrested. I went into fostercare.
I’m not gonna walk you through every foster home.There were four. Some were okay. None of them feltlike mine. I aged out at eighteen with a garbage bag ofclothes and a GED and the bone-deep belief that I wasfundamentally unlovable because my own mother hadsold me for grocery money.
I ruined two relationships before I was twenty-five. Noton purpose. I just couldn’t let anyone get close. Everytime someone said “I love you,” my brain said “Yourmama didn’t want you.” Every time someone left thehouse I was sure they weren’t coming back.
I had two miscarriages. I was married for fourteenmonths the first time. He wasn’t bad. I just couldn’tstop testing him. Picking fights to see if he’d leave. Hedid. I don’t blame him.
Then I met Curtis. Curtis is the kind of man whodoesn’t flinch. I tested him for two solid years and hejust kept showing up. He’d say, “You done?” and thenhe’d make dinner. He married me anyway. I still don’tunderstand why.
Last Tuesday. April. I was sitting at the kitchen table inour apartment in Decatur. Curtis was making coffee.Biscuit was under the table chewing on a sock.
The mail came through the slot the way it always does.Bills, a coupon packet from Kroger, a flyer for a pestcontrol company. And a letter. Plain white envelope. Noreturn address. My name and address handwritten inblue ink. Handwriting I didn’t recognize.
I opened it.
“My dear Jolene. I know you probably hate me. I haveno right to write to you. I was forced to give you up. Ihad no choice. Your father owed money to dangerouspeople and they told me if I didn’t give you to Darlenethey would hurt you. I chose to let you go so theywouldn’t hurt you. I have thought about you everysingle day for thirty years. I want to see you. I am inMacon. Please.”
There was an address at the bottom. And a name.Lorraine.
My mother’s name is Lorraine.
I read the letter three times. My hands were shaking sobad the paper was rattling against the table. Curtisheard it and came over. He put his hand on myshoulder. I couldn’t feel it. I was somewhere else. I wasfive years old standing on a hot driveway watching agreen Buick pull away.
“Jo. Talk to me.”
“My mother wrote me a letter.”
Curtis sat down. He didn’t say anything for a long time.Then he said, “What do you want to do?”
I said, “I want to go to Macon.”
I drove alone. Curtis offered to come. I said no. Thiswas mine.
The address was a small house on a dead-end street.Overgrown hedges. A mailbox with the flag up. A porchwith a plastic chair and a coffee can full of cigarettebutts.
I sat in my car for eleven minutes. I counted.
Then I walked up and knocked.
She opened the door. Fifty-seven years old. Shorterthan I remembered, but I was five when I last saw herso everything was bigger then. Gray roots growingthrough faded brown hair. Housecoat. No makeup.Lines around her mouth from decades of smoking.
She looked at me. Her eyes went wide and then herwhole face crumpled. Her chin started trembling. Shereached both arms toward me.
“Jolene. Oh my God, Jolene. My baby.”
I stood there. I didn’t move. I didn’t reach back. I justlooked at her.
“You said you’d come back real soon.”
She started crying. Full body crying, the kind whereyour shoulders shake and no sound comes out for thefirst few seconds.
“I know. I know. Baby, I was forced. Your daddy, heowed, the people he owed, they said they’d hurt you ifI didn’t, I had to, I had no choice.”
“You had a choice. You could have called the police.You could have run. You could have done anythingexcept hand your five-year-old daughter to a strangerfor $800.”
“It wasn’t like that.”
“It was exactly like that. Darlene told me every day thatI was rotten. That you sold me because I was bad. Ibelieved her, Mama. I believed her for thirty years.”
She was sobbing now. Reaching for me. I steppedback.
“I can’t do this,” I said. “I thought I could, but I can’t.”
I walked back to my car. I sat in the driver’s seat. Iclosed the door. I looked at the house. She was stillstanding in the doorway, crying.
I drove home.
Curtis was on the porch when I got back. Biscuit wasnext to him. He didn’t ask what happened. He justhanded me a glass of sweet tea and sat down.
We sat there for a long time. The sky went from blue toorange to dark.
Eventually I said, “She cried.”
“Yeah.”
“She said she had no choice.”
“What do you think?”
“I think she had a choice. I think she made it. And Ithink she’s been telling herself a different version forthirty years because the real version is too ugly to livewith.”
Curtis didn’t say anything. He just put his hand onmine.
I still have the letter. It’s in the nightstand drawer. Ihaven’t thrown it away. I haven’t read it again. It justsits there. Every night before I turn off the lamp I seethe corner of it sticking out.
Some mornings I wake up and I’m five years old again.Yellow sundress. Grocery bag. Hot pavement. Mymother waving from the porch.
She was smiling.
I don’t know if I’ll ever call her. I don’t know if I’ll evergo back. I know I’m not rotten. It took me thirty yearsto learn that, but I know it now.
And I know that $800 was not enough. Not for a child.Not for thirty years. Not for anything.
The coffee’s done. Curtis is in the kitchen. Biscuit isunder the table. It’s Tuesday again.
