I was born in my mama’s bed. Curtains drawn, radio blaring, and daddy trailing scuffs on the living room carpet from pacing too much. See, for as long as I had known him, my daddy wanted to have a son, so he paced doughnuts into the carpet and drowned out the sounds of my mama’s screams by humming Take Me Out to the Ballgame. That song marks the first time I disappointed him. I think he knew in his gut that something was wrong when the doctor came out to invite my daddy in.
“Her name is going to be Darla,” mama told him, holding a lanky baby girl against her chest, “Just like my sister.”
“I’ll be damned if you name our daughter after that ugly witch. Do you want our baby to be ugly, Maggie?” daddy said, and they fought about it for weeks. I was known simply as “the baby” to everyone who cared enough to call me out, and I didn’t get the name Jolene until Aunt Darla came to visit me and named me herself.
“Don’t worry about what you’re nasty father says, Jolene. You’re gonna be a beautiful girl,” she used to say to me, and sure enough, she was right. I grew up looking quite alright. I was tall too, so when I say my hair used to reach the back of my knees, everyone knows that’s a lot.
Mama says the boys who were mean to me actually had a crush on me and that meant that they wanted to see what I had under my skirt, but daddy wouldn’t have any of it. The only boy he’d ever let me study with was Marcus Timoteus Grenville because he had tiny arms and big glasses and he was real afraid of daddy. Also because he was daddy’s boss’s youngest son and he was in high school.
Marcus would always tense up, straighten his back, and make sure never to look down my shirt when daddy got home from work. Sometimes he’d even stand to greet him with a welcome home handshake. But when daddy wasn’t home, Marcus Timoteus Grenville would kiss my lips. I didn’t like him all that much, but I let him kiss me because he told me that he loved me. Daddy used to tell mama that all the time, and she let him kiss her.
“Shouldn’t we be studying?” I’d ask him, but he always said we were. Studying for real life, he called it and then he’d kiss me again. He wasn’t very good at it. He’d bite me, I’d cry, and he’d apologize, telling me he was trying to make it more fun for me. I never did find the fun in biting people or being bit. He did that seven times
One day, he brought me a pink ribbon for my hair and asked me if I loved him. I didn’t answer. He gave the ribbon to my mama so that she could put it on me and told me to meet him that night by the big apple tree in my backyard. What he was doing by my apple tree at dinnertime, I’ll never understand.
Only because he asked so nicely, I went out after dinner to see him, thinking he’d just want to study life some more. I told him I thought kissing was a bad idea because I had just eaten dinner and my breath tasted like mama’s broccoli, but he didn’t listen to me. He just kissed me even harder than usual. When mama called me home, he told me to make sure I never told anybody where I was and to come back to the same spot the very next day. “It’s our little secret,” he told me, so I did what he told me to do and came back the very next day.
I think he knew I wasn’t liking that game anymore, so he made a new one where I’d stand up real tall and let him put his hands on my skin. I didn’t like that one so much. I didn’t want to go back the next day, but Marcus Timoteus Grenville told my mama that she had seen me with boy from Riverview that afternoon. I told her it wasn’t true but she didn’t believe me and daddy gave me spanking and took away my dessert. I went to the apple tree after dinner.
Every day, after dinner, Marcus Timoteus Grenville would want to play the game where he could put his hands on my skin but every time it was a little bit different. Sometimes I’d have to take off my sweater or my shoes. In 6th grade I started wearing bras, he made me take that off too. When winter came around and it got too cold, he’d let me wear his leather jacket that his daddy bought him. The rule was I could wear the jacket if he could see what I had under my skirt. I guess mama was right.

I should have known he was a sinner. We heard about it in Sunday Chapel every week. “Jesus doesn’t love fornicators,” they would say, but I didn’t know what that I meant. I thought fornicators were people who stole, and I had never stolen a single thing. Marcus Timoteus Grenville knew though. I know he knew because he sat three rows over from mama, daddy, and me and when the pastor talked about it, he would look at me from his seat. He’d just stare at me for much too long.

On the first day of February, Marcus Timoteus Grenville met me by the Apple tree and told me I was beautiful. He gave me his leather jacket and put his hands under my skirt. On the first day of February, he made me bleed and cried.

“Don’t you love me?” he asked, and I told him no, so he hit me on my face and went home. I cried by the apple tree until it got too cold to be outside. He had taken his jacket you see and left me all alone in the cold. When I got home that night, I threw away my panties and went to bed. I think I cried all night.
For the next two days, I met him by the apple tree and we didn’t play any games or nothing. We’d just sit across each other and he’d look at me and I’d cry. I thought it was nice that he didn’t ask me to do nothing, but it didn’t last. They very next week, he was back to putting his hands under my skirt and I would bleed every time.
“What’s wrong with you?” he’d ask every time I’d cry. “I know you love me,” He’d say, and I’d go home and throw away my panties and come back the very next day. Mama used to get mad at me because she had to keep buying me new panties all the time.
“What do you do with them?” she’d yell, and I’d cry. I did a lot of crying back then. I would cry every time I went to the bathroom because my insides hurt. Once, I asked Marcus Timoteus Grenville if we could play another game and he said yes. I was so happy, I didn’t even notice when he unzipped his pants until he pushed me against the apple tree and pulled down my new white panties. I cried the hardest that day.
Thankfully, Marcus Timoteus Grenville went to university the very next week. He couldn’t come see my at the apple tree because he was too far away, but every weekend, he’d come and pick me up from school on Friday and take me home. He’d always stop on the way home to spend time with me in the car. When he dropped me off, mama would invite him in for lemonade and ask him about his studies. I’d run off to my room and she’d scold me for being “so damn rude.”
In 10th grade, there was a new girl in my school and she was my neighbor too. She had come from Alabama, where everyone was real Christian, real creepy too I guess, because she was real creepy. She used to spend a lot of time alone. Me too, but she was worse because she’d just sit and read the Bible for fun. Sometimes she’d walk home on Friday afternoons and I’d pass her by in his car.
“Do you have a boyfriend?” she asked me one day during recess.
“No,” I whispered and told her to go away.
“Then why does that boy touch you, Jolene? You know Jesus doesn’t like that, right? That’s fornication,” she said and I hit her. She never talked to me again, but that very night I went home and told my daddy that Marcus Timoteus Grenville was making me fornicate. He hit me. He hit me 13 times with his belt until I couldn’t feel it no more.
“Whore,” he’d call me and he’d lock me in my room. Daddy never looked at me the same. He used to hit me for everything and if mama would cry and he’d hit her too. The only good thing was that he never let me see Marcus Timoteus Grenville again. A couple months later, I had a big belly and mama said I was pregnant with a Grenville baby and that I would have to marry that boy. Daddy hit me until the baby died so I didn’t have to marry him.
“Babies having babies,” people would say. Everyone was real mean about the way they looked at me, especially the people at Sunday chapel. But at least I used to have life in me.
Used to.


I never let another boy touch me.
Some people say I like girls because Marcus Timoteus Grenville did me wrong. I think I like girls because on one very lucky day, I met Abigail Georgia Graham. She didn’t like that name though, so she made me call her Abby, and two weeks later she kissed my lips and put her hands on my skin and it was ok, because I loved her.