All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [107]
After many of these nights in a row, for some reason I received a phone call from Ken Stilts, Mom and Sister’s manager. It is possible I called him; I don’t recall. He could hear in my voice that something was wrong. I broke down, and a staccato description of how I had been living poured out.
My mother, sister, and Nana happened to be together that day in Washington, D.C. Ken told them what I’d shared, and within minutes it was decided that I should go live with Nana. She had gotten remarried to a man named Wib Rideout, and she and my mom had finally repaired their relationship. Nana would be happy to take me. But of all my grandparents, I had spent the least amount of time with her over the years. It had simply never occurred to me that she would want or accept me.
I leaped out of bed, packed up the Honda Accord that by that time my sister had given me for my sixteenth birthday (which arrived too late to be of much help during the actual school year), and drove back and forth to eastern Kentucky twice, moving myself to my ancestral and spiritual home. Avalon, at last!
Dad, to say the least, did not take it well. When I told him over the phone, he started screaming at me for being ungrateful, for leaving him after all he had done for me. He tracked me down at Nana’s and flew into another rage. I don’t remember the details of what happened next, but this is what Dad tells me transpired: It was about ten o’clock at night when I met him in front of the hotel where he was staying on Winchester Avenue, right down the street from Papaw Judd’s filling station. He demanded to know why “I was doing this” to him.
“I did the best I could for you,” he bellowed. “But if it’s not enough, if you don’t accept it, fuck you! I’m out of here.”
I don’t remember if I said anything back to him, if I ran away or stood there and took it. I was obviously not going back with him. He had, to use his own words, publicly “divorced” me. He was saying he was out of my life for good.
Finally moving in with Nana was my redemption. She proceeded to give me what I had had for only brief stints in my entire life: three hot meals a day cooked by a grown-up rather than by me; someone to wash my gym clothes on Fridays; a safe, consistent, and abuse-free home. She listened to me. She supported me. She bought me pearls when I made straight A’s. When I asked her why, shocked at the gift, she said she felt that others did not give me the recognition I deserved. I didn’t really know what she meant.
In addition to having Nana, my beloved Mamaw and Papaw were of course nearby, prior to and after they came home from their usual winter in Florida. I could go there for breakfast. I could stop by every day after school. This, for me, was nothing short of heaven. It was what I had been trying to organize, manipulate, connive, and make happen my entire life; I had begged, in many ways, many times, to be allowed to live in eastern Kentucky. I finally was, and I know beyond a shadow of a doubt that it saved my life.
I had one year of being a normal teenager. I confess that I had a Miami Vice poster taped to my bedroom wall. I fell in love with the movie Out of Africa, listened to Billie Holiday records and U2’s first album, and dated a smart, kind, delightful boy. And once again I loved going to class. I went from nearly failing geometry at Sayre to finishing eighth in my class at Paul G. Blazer High School—the same school my mother had attended twenty-two years ago.
I had known I wanted a higher education since I first learned to spell the word “college.” But when the time had come to apply to schools