All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [15]
“Try reading to yourself, Ashley,” said the teacher.
“But I don’t know how,” I said.
“Sure you do.”
So I looked down at the page … and it happened. The words became a voice in my head, and something shifted forever. I was an explorer making landfall in a vibrant new world.
Now that I was in first grade, I had already outgrown the remedial books, like the Dick and Jane series. I thought they were pointless. They were so stark, and the supersaturated primary colors bored me, as did the simplistic world they painted. I already knew life was more nuanced than that. I didn’t relate. And I didn’t like how Jane always seemed to be trailing behind Dick and the dog. I preferred something with guts, intrigue, and magic. I was soon devouring the Little House on the Prairie series and especially fairy tales with moral complexities. Someone gave me a child’s version of Genesis that fascinated me. I literally wore the pages out with my thumb. And on my own I learned the order of the books of the Bible.
There was a cinder-block Holy Roller church just down the road from us along the river, and one week while they were having a revival, I got saved. As with so many of my childhood memories, I don’t have any idea how I arrived there, why I had gone to the meeting with one of my little friends from up the river, where the grown-ups were, what the evangelist said, or what it was that compelled me up the aisle for a full immersion baptism. My memory resumes when I am sitting at the foot of my bed, still damp, crying softly, frightened I was going to be in big trouble for having done something momentous in secret. First my mother entered the room and knelt in front of me, looking concerned, and then my father came in. I wondered if they thought I’d fallen in the river or some such.
“I got saved,” I whimpered.
They weren’t mad at all. In fact, they both hugged me, were happy and supportive, which really surprised me. It was one of the few times that I can remember them agreeing on anything and the last cooperative effort they made on my behalf for many, many years.
Mostly, they fought. Dad wanted to spend more time with us, and Mom did her best to drive him away from Camp Wig, back to his room behind the leather shop in Lexington. When Mom and I passed him in town once, I was transfixed by the sight of him, but she ignored him. Eventually he decided that as long as he was paying the rent, he was going to move back to Camp Wig full-time. At that point Mom moved out, telling us she couldn’t stand him anymore. She rented a converted garage apartment out in the country near Berea, an idyllic and creative college town about forty minutes across the river from Camp Wig. Sister and I finished the school year living alone with Dad. Mom would occasionally come to pick us up for weekends. During one of those visits, on the most beautiful spring day I still have ever seen, we floated over the swollen Kentucky River on a rickety ferry and drove through lush, rolling land to visit her apartment. I recall looking out the window at redbud, dogwood, daffodils, irises, and pom-pom bushes, knowing exactly what heaven must look like: a spring day in Kentucky.
At the end of that next summer, during which Sister and I had continued our routine of living with our grandparents, Mom came by and swooped us up without warning and took us to a new home. She had befriended a kindly music professor from Berea College, who for a small rent let us live in a beautiful house on her rural estate in the hamlet of Morrill. The house was so lovely that it had its own name: Chanticleer. It was filled with Appalachian crafts such as hand-hooked rugs and Early American antiques and was surrounded by lawns and woods. I was enchanted by the new place and didn’t even mind starting second grade in a new school. I suppose I was mystified that Dad had suddenly disappeared without any explanation from Mom. I don’t remember the precise