All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [38]
“Excruciating pain gripped my heart like a vise during those long hours, days, weeks, and months prior to his death,” she told one interviewer. “Looking at his deteriorating condition, tears would just flow from my eyes and it is then that he would say, ‘Mummy, why are you crying? I will be okay.’ His innocent face and words have always remained with me and filled many of my waking hours. His determination to get better always returns to haunt me, for I knew even then that without proper medication that he needed, Chris was fighting a losing battle.”
I listened keenly every time Agnes told her story. It was impossible to witness her grace and see her resilience and remain apathetic. Audience members would come up to us later and tell us that it was Agnes who made the crisis seem real, not like something happening to strangers in an alien world. Meeting this one woman made me realize how little I truly knew about the challenges of life in the global South.
When we reached Wheaton College, a private Christian school outside of Chicago, Jamie was nominated to implore me not to talk about condoms. They were afraid of offending the students. Naturally, I wasn’t having any of it.
“These are my people, Jamie,” I said. “I am comfortable with evangelicals. I grew up part Pentecostal.” So I took the stage and shouted, “They don’t want me to talk about correct and consistent condom use! They don’t trust Christians to get it!” The kids were cheering. It was great. They let everyone know they could be devout Christians at a sectarian college and still accept the A, the B, and the C of HIV prevention: abstinence; being faithful and delaying onset of sexuality; and correct and consistent condom use with every sexual act. (Eventually, I would add my own D: delay of sexual debut, especially important for girls, who are so often preyed upon by older men.)
Kate Roberts joined us in Chicago, as planned. I liked her immediately. She was an elegant Englishwoman in her mid-thirties, with chestnut hair cut in a chic bob and a graceful carriage that radiated energy and purpose. In fact, I liked her so much that I didn’t mind that the first thing she said to me in our get-to-know-you moment was, “I have to tell you, I loved you in Pearl Harbor.” Then, after I pointed out that I was not in that movie, she continued to insist that I was. I thought: Wow, I think I’ve met my match in this woman! It’s another thing we still laugh about.
I didn’t realize that Kate had actually come to audition me for the job of global ambassador. Just as I had tried to perform due diligence by researching PSI and YouthAIDS, she in turn wanted to observe me in public and see how I handled the material. Kate accompanied me to the next event, which was a meeting in a South Side Apostolic Faith Church where each member of our group was going to talk to the congregation about HIV. After listening from the sidelines to Agnes’s story, I confessed to Kate how inadequate I felt. I had so much feeling and intensity, but I felt like a bit of a fraud and was scared I’d do something unhelpful. “I don’t have any experience in the field.”
“Then let me tell you a story,” said Kate. She described Mary, a prostituted woman who made her living in a squalid Kenyan brothel. Mary had been hired by PSI/YouthAIDS to be a peer educator for other exploited women, teaching them how to protect themselves and their clients from the spread of HIV. Kate told me that PSI/YouthAIDS tries to change risky behavior and empower people to use condoms—female condoms for exploited prostitutes and male condoms for their clients. But Mary gave Kate an example of the violence that goes on in the highly dangerous world of forced paid sex and how treacherous it can be to try to be safe. One night Mary was trying to persuade a client to use a condom, but instead he pulled a wrapped