When Terrie fled the mountains of Wyoming, she was forced to grow up far before her time on an open stretch of highway after highway. Jess told me that for a brief moment, Terrie joined a young man, older than her, she had met on those vacant roads, heading east toward the gorgeous Nebraskan horizons in the quite hope that relocating on unfamiliar soil might offer them air to breathe.
She believed that joining his band might carve out a better future for herself. But shortly after they crossed the Colorado-Nebraska border, having just turned seventeen, an unexplainable pain flared deep inside her. It intensified so rapidly, so violently, that it quickly became unbearable.
I knew this story well; Jess spoke of her sister constantly throughout our lives, explaining the severe trauma Terrie endured. She suffered through several agonizing nights until her body physically couldn’t go any longer. When she finally reached the hospital, the staff working the Emergency Room department discovered an ovarian mass that had grown so immense it had twisted in on itself until it ruptured. It was a severe abdominal emergency, and in order to save the terrified seventeen year old, surgeons were forced to remove all of her reproductive organs leaving Terrie faced with the crushing reality that she would never bear children of her own. I sensed there was more to the story, though, it wouldn’t be until years later that the complete truth would be seen.
Drawing from the ancestral strength bound within our blood, Terrie pushed forward and finished out the tour. Convinced that marriage might anchor their chaotic lives, Terrie and David wed soon after, but the union dissolved within months amidst constant, bitter fighting inside the four narrow white walls they called home. Defeated, penniless, and exhausted to their cores, Terrie finally reached back out to her mother, desperately hoping for a turn of events.
Back on the crumbling compound in Oklahoma, Terrie discovered that Kenny—Bandi’s father–had stayed long enough for young Jess to form lasting memories of him as a father-figure. Even after Jess uncovered her true paternal origins years later, those early memories of Kenny remained etched in her soul until her final breath. But Kenny, too, was eventually worn down by the volatile foundation surrounding them. The relentless, explosive arguments between Winnia and himself took a heavy toll. Following one final, devastating confrontation, he packed his belongings in a frenzy and fled the oppressive compound without looking back, leaving two sweet little girls bewildered as to why another father figure had vanished.
I truly believe Winnia viewed his departure as yet another clean slate. Though now she left at least three failed marriages in her wake—effectively abandoning three young daughters, even if Terrie was no longer under her roof—Winnia had still not captured a shred of true peace. Jess and Bandi packed their bags once more, leaving Grammy Max behind in the Oklahoma red dust. Guided by Winnia, they drove north toward the golden fields Terrie had stumbled upon years prior. Reunited at last, Jess collapsed into Terrie’s arms, overwhelmed by a bittersweet relief. Yet leaving Grammy Max behind marked the fourth-hardest goodbye of Jess’s young life thus far.
Upon reaching the Nebraskan border, they settled into a modest mobile home in a run-down trailer park on the outskirts of “big” small-town Nebraska, where the air was bone-dry and a relentless breeze swept across the open plains. The girls didn’t remain long before shifting into a single-family house in an adjacent rural community. It was between these two prairie towns that Jess entered her middle school years.
I recognized the deep isolation my mother felt during that era. Her life was slowly started deteriorating, crumbling just like the structures around her. Her grades slipped continuously until she stopped attending school all together during her eighth-grade year, at just fourteen years old, following an explosive argument with her own mother, Winnia. Jess spent several freezing nights sleeping outdoors beneath the low branches of a park tree, and on cold, unforgiving benches, entirely unsure of how to mend her life. Terrie did live with her younger sisters and their mother for a short while, but eventually, Terrie relocated thirty miles South, scattering the family once more. Jess drifted from one friend’s couch to another, constantly on the move, trapped in survival mode until she met her first serious boyfriend.
He was a friend of her old classmates—a classic “pretty boy” with bright blonde hair, baby-blue eyes, and a charismatic smile that felt too good to be true. The initial romance was brief, though. Jess watched as he grew increasingly possessive and controlling. His spiraling drug use eventually drug a lost Jess down alongside him. They spent most of their days sneaking down to the local sand pits, chasing a reckless form of escape.
Then came a life-altering night for Jess. As they lay sprawled across the sandy embankment, another vehicle pulled in, its high beams cascading through the thick row of cottonwoods trees and down the gritty hills of sand, leaving them both blind sighted. The driver’s side window rolled down just enough for a voice to cut through the stiff air. As their teenage hearts hammered against the cold earth, Jess instantly recognized the voice: it was her mother.
Without uttering any words, Winnia stared at the two of them entangled on the sandy beach, sharply turned her head away, threw her beaten up car in reverse, and backed out down the gravel road. As Winnia pulled off, Jess noticed the silhouette of a tall man sitting in Winnia’s passenger side. A sickening realization hit her with such force: she was traveling the same dark path as her mother.
Her boyfriend tried to brush the unexplainable interruption off, but the magic of the night had completely extinguished. When he reached out to touch her, Jess shoved him away, shouting into the dark as she scrambled to her feet and gathered her things. Completely overwhelmed by the suffocating weight of the night, she was filled with an uncontrollable rage all the way back to his truck, her voice raw against the rustling trees. She couldn’t fully understand what she was feeling in that moment, but she knew with absolute certainty she needed to disappear.
Surrounded by gravel, cottonwoods, and the steady chorus of crickets, he offered a cold, final dismissal, climbed into his pickup, and peeled off, spitting loose sandy gravel in every direction. He left her standing stranded and alone beside the blackened ripples from the pit’s water.
Jess collapsed onto the sand and wept, wondering how her young life had spiraled to this moment. After what felt like hours, she stood up, brushed the gravel and dry prairie grass from her jeans, and marched toward the entrance where the gravel road met the invisible highway—beginning her twenty-mile trek back to town.
About fifteen minutes into her treacherous walk, Jess saw headlights topping the hills ahead, coming from the north. Assuming her now-ex-boyfriend had returned, her entire body went into fight-or-flight mode. She could hear the engine attached to those pillars of light, thundering down the unusually quiet highway. As the vehicle drew near, the driver thought he recognized the girl walking the shoulder at such an impossibly late hour. He slammed on his brakes, whipped his old Chevy across the median, and pulled directly onto the shoulder in front of her. His headlights glared straight ahead, blinding her completely; Jess couldn’t see a thing, but she knew whoever sat behind the wheel could see every inch of her within the glow.
Startled, Jess scrambled into the cover of the roadside ditch, scraping her knees through her jeans as she ducked as low as she could. A young man stepped out from the dimly lit cab, walked to the edge of the embankment, and called out into the dark: “Hello? Is anyone down there? I thought I saw someone needing assistance and I figured I’d stop.” His voice sounded remarkably caring, kind, and gentle—a voice that made her feel, for a delicate moment, that she could actually trust someone. When no answer came, he turned back toward his truck while the sound of crickets filled the heavy silence around them.
In a split-second decision, Jess stumbled out from the shadows, revealing herself within the glow of the pickup. With a trembling voice, fighting back tears, she tried her best to announce herself. At only fifteen years old, she was trying desperately to appear stronger than she truly was, but it didn’t take long for him to see right through it. Nor did it take long for him to realize he recognized this petite girl because they attended the same school, though they had never socialized. That night, he played hero by swooping her up and taking her home; he never did ask for anything in return, including answers as to why she had even been out there in the first place.
I never did learn the exact order of their relationships, but I do know Jess learned his name was James and that he had an older brother named Jeff. The dynamics of everyone’s relationships never stayed the same from what I could piece together. Before Jess quit school, she had actually dated Jeff first. I knew him as a gentle giant—he towered over most, but his soul was pure. I had learned that Jess and Jeff hadn’t been an item for long before both brothers found their true paths. When my mother had fallen for my father, they experienced a freeing feeling while getting high together. Jess hadn’t experienced this form of happiness before, and it wasn’t long until she became addicted to this lifestyle, too.
In the beginning, James’s parents disapproved of their whole situation. But his mother, Jan, could feel the genuine concern in her son’s voice and see it trapped within his brown murky eyes for this guarded girl, so she took Jess under her protective wing. Jeff, however, moved on fairly easily with James’s ex-girlfriend, Chris. Jeff and Chrissy would go on to have three beautiful children—starting and ending with beautiful daughters, and filling the heart of their family with their only-born son.
My parents had been infatuated with each other from the git—so much so that they referred to themselves as “Jessie-James.” But what Jess hadn’t yet realized was that beneath his charming exterior, alongside his escalating drug use, James had developed a severe compulsion for stealing and lying. It had become second nature to him.
Over the years, I learned he had an undeniable problem with stealing cars and he had such an ease with his kleptomania. On what should’ve been his final stunt ultimately would be just the beginning. James had broken into Winnia’s house while my mother was out and her mother was at work, stealing their living room television, which happened to be their only television. Jess had told me he did it so he could sell it for whatever kind of drugs he could get his hands on. When Winnia returned home, her arms were loaded with grocery bags; she was trying not to struggle or lose one piece of food on her own, but she felt immediately that something was wrong as she approached her door from the evening shadows. She fumbled her keys, but when she finally turned the lock, she gently pushed her front door wide open. She looked around her living room, carefully inspecting every detail, and it hadn’t taken long for her to notice the empty entertainment center that once held her television as she could see a TV-shaped ring of dust that had been left behind. She knew instantly who was responsible and confronted him. James flatly told her he had nothing to do with it, gracefully shifting the blame away from himself and onto everyone around him.
Winnia knew his words carried little value, so she vowed never to speak to him again, demanding he never lay eyes on her daughter. She wanted him out of their lives for good clearly seeing the dark shadows beneath the surface. James’s mother, however, defended her son to the very bitter end, believing his every word.
The relationship between the two families fractured completely when blue and red flashing lights arrived a few hours later at James’s parents’ house with his arrest warrant for theft and destruction. Winnia had officially reported the theft, and James had already experienced prior offenses for stealing vehicles, and taking items that hadn’t belonged to him, with little to no remorse.
There were definite warning signs; one of my father’s favorite stories to tell was from his senior year of high school—senior prank day. You see, he was a very calculated mechanic and numbers came to him in almost an unnatural way. He had told me for his prank day he had taken apart his high school’s principal’s car. Hidden within shadows and silence in the dead of night he managed to dismantle it and reassemble it completely back to how it was, right in the middle of the gymnasium walls of his high school. I can only imagine the crowd that had grown and the chatter that followed. I do believe he had been suspended, but this had all happened within his kleptomania spree.
She loved beauty even if she couldn’t see the beauty she possessed herself. She model for a bit before she turned nineteen. She lit up every time she’d tell her children about the time she experienced wearing the highest of heels just to joust the other delicate models. It was her favorite, her smile always gave that away. She enjoyed putting on make-up and styling hair, she wanted to become a hair stylist one day. She even had her hair kit, from her schooling in the cosmetic world, in the bathroom cupboards and I remember her using it on my own long hair during Halloweens and dances. I wanted her to do the “waterfall” style on one of the pages in her flip book terribly bad. My hair hadn’t been long enough for it and by the time it would be—we’d be hours apart and her hands hadn’t worked for a few years.
My mother didn’t talk much about the time she had met my father or the events that followed, but I knew it always ended in chaos filled with deep emotional pain. All she had been searching for was her respectful place in this universe. When I was searching for answers to all of the unknowns left in my own world, my aunt Terrie had told me that yes, my father had been arrested for theft and destruction, but while he was sitting for his crimes, Jess packed her things along with a mutual school friend. They loaded her friends car as full as it could be and hit the road, heading northwest toward Montana where Jess’s sister, Terrie, had moved. Upon arriving, they found Terrie had immediately rented a small two-bedroom apartment giving herself a new fresh start.
A few months passed before James was released from custody—only to find an empty house and “his” Jessie gone. Using his local connections and his mother’s standing within their small community and the communities around them, he tracked down her path. After several devastating days, traveling in the comfort of his truck surrounded by pure isolation on the open road, he finally found their run-down apartment building in the middle of nowhere, Montana by spotting Terrie’s car parked outside. James marched straight into the main floor office, claiming to be Terrie’s visiting brother-in-law. One way or another, he managed to trick the staff into giving him her unit number. He quickly went up the stairs and knocked obnoxiously on Terrie’s apartment door.
“Knock, knock,” he said with a smirk. “I know you’re in there, Terrie!”
Terrie said she gathered enough courage to finally open the door to confront the angry man on the other side. As soon as she cracked the door, James shoved his way past her, frantically scouting the small rooms.
“Jessie! Where are you?!” That was his biggest concern.
Finding the apartment empty, he turned his rage directly on Terrie, demanding to know where Jess had gone to, completely unaware that another man had come with her. When Terrie told me she had reacted as calmly as she could toward James, informing him that Jess wasn’t there as she had left about an hour or so ago, James’s eyes ignited with such an intense fury. If you had seen the anger his eyes held, you would know exactly why we all kept silent in his presence.
He slammed his shoulder ruthlessly into Terrie as he passed her on the way out, sending her crashing against the wall, and began violently headbutting her walls—leaving deep holes through the drywall. Neighbors above and below reported the violent outburst, prompting the building management to investigate immediately. In the end, the landlord of the building cited Terrie for a breach of contract due to the severe property damage, giving her just one week to pack up and leave.
Meanwhile, James left in a rage of fury. He had tracked Jess all the way to a local house party where dozens of teenagers were drinking and listening to music. Finding Jess standing with their male friend, James let his anger ignite instantly again with another volatile explosion. He lunged straight for Jess and grabbed her by her wrist tightly. When her friend had tried to step in by grabbing James’s shoulder to pull him off of Jess, James spun around and shoved their friend, knocking him to the ground. As party goers pulled their friend up from the alcohol-soaked floorboards, James stormed off in a fit of fury to his pickup, bringing his rage with him. He scrambled into the cab of his truck and tore off back east toward Nebraska and his mother.
Having just endured the loss of another father figure, her home, and now the destruction left behind in Montana, Jess walked away from the wreckage of that night without ever looking back toward the Montana skylines. In the end, Jess headed to Nebraska with James, the friend followed pursuit and Terrie drifted back toward their Oklahoman compound, as if nothing had ever happened.
Shortly after returning to the cornfields, Jess and James married, moving into one of the spare bedrooms of Terrie’s three-bedroom house right off Main Street in their small Nebraskan town. Surrounded by rage, their eldest daughter was welcomed into the chaos of their lives, a sliver of hope tying Jessie and James together as they began building a life as one. Before their daughter had come into this world, all of her ultrasounds showed a perfectly healthy little boy; Justin Lee Layton was his name, but when the time came and their baby was here, they realized they were in for a surprise. In the blink of an eye, their son Justin Lee Layton had turned into a healthy baby girl named Justina Joan Layton! Her name would be the one I would grow accustomed to over the course of my whole life, understanding how deeply my name truly mattered.