Jolene

Jolene

On my first day of work at the cafeteria in the student union, I am assigned to Jolene to learn the ropes. Or rather, she is assigned to me, someone who has barely ever even held a spatula, to teach me how to scramble 400 eggs at once on the grill.

“College girl,” she says, letting me know that: 1) she is not a college girl, and 2) she doesn’t think much of them. Us. I try to be very friendly and pay close attention because she scares me and this whole scenario is more challenging than my counterpoint class. We talk a little, I am riveted when she explains the salad bar protocol, and I’m determined to be good at something else besides music. Even if it’s this.

“Music? That’s a thing you can major in?” She tosses her long-handled spoon into the sink, puts her hands on her hips and gives me an astonished look. I am equally astonished that she doesn’t know this, considering that we’re on the very campus of Indiana University, home of the biggest and best university music school in the country. I’m thinking I’m going to have to explain to her what an oboe is, but then a rush of people come in. We man our stations. I’m dishing out vegetables, Jolene is on salad. Pansy, our supervisor, is on meat loaf. “M’elp you?” Pansy says to a professor-looking type with oversize aviator glasses and a pocket protector full of red pens.

Jolene is singing to herself while I restock the pans of entrees and veggies. She sounds like Patsy Cline. Walkin’ After Midnight. She has a pure, unrefined, killer dark voice. I’m stunned. “You’re really good,” I say to her, meaning it. “You can really sing.”

“Shut up! Just shut the hell up!” She turns and heads into the walk-in fridge. What did I do? She never again sings within my hearing range. All semester long, I want to hear her voice again but I’m too afraid to say anything. It took me a week to understand that I embarrassed her, another week to fully get it that we could never be friends. Besides being four years older than me, she’s a townie, from an entirely different universe. And that she must see me as some privileged, entitled college girl. That’s what she meant by “shut up.” Shut the hell up.

I wondered why she chose to work on campus instead of being a student. So naïve of me. It didn’t immediately occur to me that she might not have wanted to go to college. Or more likely, that she couldn’t afford it. Then one day a Harley dude type guy came in carrying a wad of blankets and waited around for her to finish the lunch shift. Only it wasn’t a wad of blankets, there was a baby in there. The tiniest little pink face peeked out and when Jolene saw the baby, she got the happiest look on her face and she grabbed the blankets and started singing All the Pretty Little Horses, really quiet, but I heard it again, her gorgeous voice. I was plastered up against the walk-in, trying to be invisible, willing her to never stop singing. Here is this person who is sort of my peer but not really, she is a mother and a cafeteria worker and the baby daddy is a biker dude. She has a voice that could possibly make her famous but no one is ever going to hear it ever and should I be sad or amazed? I was both. That voice lives here in this world and maybe no one is going to know about it and that’s just sad. Or is it? In the days before American Idol and The Voice and all those other competitions that she would win hands down, here is Jolene who will never go anywhere except southern Indiana. She might have more kids. She might sing at Nick’s downtown sometime. She will probably keep her voice to herself forever and I don’t want her to. But I don’t have any place in her life.

Now she’s sitting at a table in the corner with Harley Dude and the baby is smooshed up against her chest. She is singing Crazy to the little pink baby and oh my God, she could BE Patsy Cline reincarnated. I can’t help it, I slink closer so I can hear better. She lets her voice belt around the cafeteria line and the empty tables in the room. The clanging of pots and pans stops and everyone stops working to listen. She turns her head and throws a look at me, a total fuck-you look, still singing, and the three of them head out the door.

Jolene never came back to work. I got a few double shifts in her absence but it wasn’t the same without her around. I missed her, but knew that I was not someone who had an ounce of meaning in the entire scheme of her life. She taught me instantaneously that music is not just for the chosen few of us who spend our time in rarefied conservatories. People make beautiful music anywhere, everywhere, even cafeterias. I can still hear her voice in my head, one of the most beautiful, haunting sounds I have ever heard. I’ve looked for her everywhere, watched the charts, waited for her to drop something on iTunes, thinking that maybe she went for it, maybe she broke out and hit it big and I’d collect all her albums. Her little pink baby would probably be a parent by now, making Jolene a grandmother. Maybe she’d had other kids, maybe she has a dozen grandkids, maybe she’s had a fulfilled and happy life. I will never know.

There are so many others like her, people who just toss music out of themselves and it is the most beautiful thing you have ever heard. Over the years, my envy of people who just do that has turned into awe. They so easily make music like it’s breathing or walking and it’s so heartfelt and so lovely. Some of us need pages of notes to catalyze our musicality. The ones like Jolene launch it from a place deep inside and let it fly.

Crazy