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Repentance

They kept me pretty busy with regiment and duty. I had a lot to learn and had to learn quickly, because if you made a mistake, it meant a whipping. Poppa used a twenty two inch board with holes in it to whip us with, at least for the first few months that I was there. After that, he had a two inch wide piece of leather, which was saddle sewn down the sides and it had a piece of metal in the middle of it. I kid you not. The reason for the change was that the board kept breaking.

If you did something really bad, you went immediately to the office, to have a private
board meeting with poppa. If you just got points against you, then you went to
a public board meeting.  Points were given for anything you did wrong, you would get one point for leaving hair in the garbage can, or you would get two points for getting a c as a grade in school. If your bed didn’t pass inspection you got three points and so on. Room
inspections were done at least once a day, usually while we were at school. But
many times we would all be sitting at bible study or something and watch Granny
and Elaine doing surprise inspections, so there were all kinds of ways to get
points. But if you got caught trying to run, or talking bad about the home, or
anything in it, or they found something hidden in your room, or you tried to
sneak a letter out, you got immediate retribution from poppa.

There were two board meetings a week, on Saturday night and on Tuesday night. If you got five points from one board meeting to another, then you got a whipping. All of us
would go out into the church area; usually Granny was the one to read the list.
They would call your name. If it was called, then you got in line and Granny,
Poppa and Elaine would take turns whipping us. You had to bend over the alter,
and then you had to lift up your dress, in front of everyone that was there, Including Granny and Poppas 14 year old son.
He and their daughter who was in the “Honeybee quartet” lived there with them. They all had a big apartment up at the front of the building. And man would they whip us, they were serious about this “whipping stuff.” They would hit us so hard that they would wear
themselves out and have to take turns. As I said, I have seen many boards
broken on the behind’s of many young girls. If you showed any emotion then
you would get it harder, like if you yelled or tried to pull away. It was worse
to be called towards the end of the list, because you had to anticipate longer.

The board meetings were more embarrassing than an office visit, but much less painful. Believe me; you never wanted to get called to the office, for any reason.

I remember one night, right after I had gotten there, a new girl named Paula Lyons got caught “over the intercom” planning to run. Paula was a tough girl, she was half
white and half black and in 1970, that was already a hard thing to deal with,
but she had so many more problems than just that. I believe that she had always
been in some kind of trouble. She had dyed red hair that was short and wiry. It
gave her a wild and somewhat scary appearance. She was a big girl and she was
also pregnant, but not very far along. She was actually just a very sad and lonely
person but if she liked you she could be very kind once you got to know her.

My room was up at the front of the building, by the dinning area and the office. After
lights out this one night, we awoke to someone screaming. I got out of bed and lay
on the floor trying to see under it, to see what was happing. It was coming
from the office. They had Paula in there and they were beating her. It lasted
at least fifteen or twenty minutes, after it was over I watched “from under the
door” Poppa, Granny, and Elaine carry her to her room. I know I wasn’t the only
person that heard and watched under the door and saw what happened to her, or
the only one that will never forget that place.

When I got to the home, there were 28 girls, plus the pregnant girls, and we got at least one new girl every few days. I didn’t know it then, but I was at the beginning of
what would become a very large operation. The “HOME” as we were told to refer
to it, was huge. I don’t know how many acres “Brother Rolloff” (as we were told
to refer to him) actually owned, but it had to be thousands. And what he didn’t
own, wasn’t worth owning, there was nothing on it anyway. There was nothing for
miles in either direction.  Except for the “Home” and it was an incredible, huge, working farm.

There were a few girls there that probably needed to be somewhere, but most of them were
pretty much like me, just from an unstable home life and they had really done
nothing wrong. There were no girls there over eighteen and the youngest was
twelve.

A couple of them had had a hell of a life already, there was this one girl there, that had
been forced by her father, to go into the garage, along with her brother and
sisters, and watch as their father tied their mother to a chair, poured
gasoline on her and sat her on fire. He forced them to watch her burn to death.

Another girl there had stabbed her father to death with a knife, in a corn field, for
raping her repeatedly. She was only twelve and she was very sweet.

The rules I had to learn were endless. In fact it would be easier and less time consuming
to tell you what we “were” allowed to do, instead of what was taboo.

All of the girls had to wear dresses to the middle of the knee, no longer and definitely
no shorter. No shorts, pants, or any “Male attire” of any kind. We had to wear
matching dresses at church or any other time that the public was there. It was
easier to keep track of us that way. We were each issued three uniforms. One
was blue, one was Yellow, and one was pink, they were made of polyester. They
would tell us prior to the event, which color to wear. We were kept in uniform
because difference was “Worldly” and being different was not tolerated. If you
were different, then you were worldly and that was a word I heard a lot
there.

We were allowed no Pork, no fried foods, no carbonated beverages, nothing with refined
sugar in it “like candy, or cake” amd we were allowed no information like Radio,
Television, newspapers, books or magazines. All of our mail was censored “in
and out.” If they caught you saying ANYTHING like “get me out of here, or
please bring me home you would get a beating. Especially if you said anything
bad about the home, or if you got caught trying to tell anyone what they were
doing there you would get a beating. Half the time you would get a letter that
was all blacked out except for a couple of words and then you would get a
beating, just for what someone else wrote to you.