“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.
