All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [104]
Tenth grade was a long, lonely, dangerous year for me. I was more alone than I had ever been (which was saying something) because now my sister was gone, too. I mean, she had run away before, but now she was seriously gone. I’d been indoctrinated to believe that I was self-sufficient and it was normal to be alone, but at times I naturally was making some perilous choices. Sick of never having a ride, I began to drive without a license. Sister had been a great one for having fun parties in previous years, when Mom was out chasing Larry around and we were left alone, and the tradition continued, sometimes even when I didn’t want it to. Kids just knew my home was often an empty one, and sometimes they would show up with a case of beer and I couldn’t seem to make them leave. One such night, a boy I had asked to the Sadie Hawkins dance called and asked, “You there alone?” Not knowing any better, I told the truth. He said, “We’re on our way!” and hung up before I could protest. It was a school night, for crying out loud! He brought a friend, and they hung around drinking beer. I had some. Mamaw happened to call while we were drinking. I was mortified, feeling so much shame, as if my precious grandmother could tell through the phone line that I was alone drinking with boys. When Mom came home during one of her rare visits to Del Rio Pike, they were still there. She chased them around the house with a long kitchen knife. Believe it or not, we’re able to look back and laugh about that one.
I was grounded—which was nothing new. I was grounded for breathing, it seemed. Although sometimes I deserved it. When I was only fourteen, I was goofing off in the yard alone one Saturday afternoon when some of Sister’s friends stopped by to see her. She wasn’t home, but Sister’s pal Lance was very friendly and asked me if I wanted to go to Nashville with them to take in the scene while Vanderbilt played a home football game. Mom was on her usual three p.m. to eleven p.m. shift, so I thought, Sure. Why not? But by the time we arrived in Nashville I was already frightened, in over my head, with older, strange high school boys. Plus, I didn’t have any money and couldn’t buy anything to eat. Their plans kept escalating, and I was absorbed into the whirlwind. They party hopped around campus and the stadium, and soon everyone was very drunk, dragging me with them. I was panicked, nagging them to take me home, but no one was in any mood to make a forty-five-minute run each way to the country for some fourteen-year-old. The party landed at the house of one of Lance’s friends. I was stashed in the bedroom of his little sister, who was away at boarding school. I lay down on this strange girl’s bed, sensing I was in great peril, frozen, unable to figure any way out of this awful pickle. I didn’t even know where I was. I knew my poor mother, at work at St. Thomas Hospital in Nashville, would be out of her mind when she arrived home to an empty house. I had no idea how to call her at the hospital, and I was far too scared of her to pick up the phone and call home after midnight.
I somehow made it home the next day, and I was grounded forever. My mother even made my sister put all my cheerleader uniforms in a garbage bag and return them to the school principal, saying I was in big trouble at home.
My friend Lisa Cicatelli, on whom I often relied, admitted my mother had asked her parents if I could live with them full-time when I was in tenth grade. They had said no. Realizing there was really no plan in place for me, I decided that, just like when I was seven years old, and I had hung on the back of Dad’s borrowed motorcycle