All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [11]
I don’t remember much about those early years in Sylmar, in the San Fernando Valley, when Dad was busy building his career in the aerospace industry. Mom says she longed to get out of the boring valley, and my first memories are of the two-story house they rented in 1970 in West Hollywood on Larrabee Street, just off Sunset Strip and around the corner from the Whisky a Go Go. It was a marginal neighborhood, and my parents’ lifestyle was typical for the “anything goes” era. Mom and Dad had started experimenting with pot while we lived in Sylmar, and by now Mom smoked regularly to escape her suburban blues. The habit stuck with her after we moved to Larrabee Street. I remember there was always marijuana inside the house, and I heard about the smack dealers out on Sunset Strip, where Christina walked by the bars on her way to elementary school. Dad was prone to taking hallucinogenics with friends on Saturday nights
Dad lived with us there for a year, but the marriage had begun to deteriorate. Mom was working part-time as a model and a secretary in a production company, with hopes of breaking into show business somehow. She also started running around with a would-be actor who lived in the neighborhood, and Dad knew about it. I have a vague but aching memory from that time, when I was about three years old: I was alone in the backyard, sitting in the swing—probably because my parents were fighting inside the house—when Dad came out and knelt in front of me. He was moving out, and he’d come to say goodbye. I don’t remember the words, just the feeling of a silent hole opening in my young life.
Dad moved in with a buddy from work who had a place in Manhattan Beach. I used to stay with him once in a while. I remember sleeping there on strange, dark sheets and sucking the life out of my thumb.
The would-be actor Mom had been dating moved in with us after Dad left. He made our lunches and babysat for Chris and me while Mom worked as a receptionist in a Century City law office. I was too young to know what “normal” was supposed to be, but I felt very uneasy around this man. He gave Gabrielle, my friend who lived across the street, and me the creeps. Another character peopling my young world was Joanna Cole, who rented space in our basement. I used to love escaping down into her “lair.” I would screw up my courage to pick my way down the dark, narrow stairs, from where I could see her twin bed pushed in the corner of the basement. She always welcomed me warmly and began reading to me, especially The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, which initiated my intense wonder with stories. In 1972, Mom’s younger sister, Margaret, moved in with us, too. As Mom put it, she had eloped as a young teen with the wrong man back in Kentucky to escape their parents’ worsening marriage and just as quickly divorced the boy. She had a sweet baby daughter, Erin, who was four years younger and like a sister to me.
Aunt Margaret didn’t like Mom’s live-in boyfriend one bit, and she was adamant that she would not tolerate being around physical abuse, which was happening in the house. She told Mom she had to choose between her or the boyfriend, and Mom, for a period of time, chose the man. After Aunt Margaret left, things went downhill fast. According to Mom, he turned out to be a full-blown heroin addict with a criminal record (although others maintain he just dealt pot for which he did time). I have only hazy memories of it, but I do recall that he used to knock us girls around. I remember in particular the time he threw my sister up the stairs, seeing her crumple as she hit the landing. After Mom finally tossed him out, he broke into the house and assaulted her badly enough that she grabbed us and moved to a motel for the night. When a police officer friend of Mom’s showed up at the house to pick him up for