All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [47]
After asking permission to hug them—a custom in Cambodia—I cradled them, held their hands, smoothed their hair, and made them giggle. We basically just loved on one another. I spoke in English, trusting that tone and melody would be intuitively understood and felt, giving them my encouragement, prayers, and affirmations. It was difficult to leave, and I struggled to stay on the schedule that had been created.
My next destination was at the end of the dirt road in a peri-urban slum. It was yet another collection of one-room houses on stilts, with ravines ribbing their way underneath. As we got out to walk, an ebullient little girl with long black hair and a short-sleeved blouse with a Peter Pan collar burst out of the crowd. Before any grown-ups could explain, she leaped onto me, wrapping her legs around my waist and flinging her arms around my neck. Introductions were no longer necessary; she was my next appointment. Ouk Srey Leak was an eleven-year-old AIDS orphan who was being cared for with the help of Khemara. Although her delicate face was sad and serious, she greeted me with unusually intense and spontaneous physical warmth.
She jumped down, took my hand, and began to pull me toward her home. I asked if, on the way, she would give me a tour of her neighborhood. An important feature we passed was the well that provided her community’s drinking water. It immediately brought to mind the wells on family farms in eastern Kentucky that fascinated me as a child and the deep satisfaction of drinking delicious cold water. Srey Leak’s well looked functional, but of course microbes and parasites are not visible to the naked eye; there was no way to ascertain the quality of this drinking water upon which thousands relied. Diarrheal disease is a massive global public health crisis, the second leading killer of children under the age of five worldwide. PSI addresses unsafe drinking water by socially marketing point-of-use water purification solution, which costs pennies to provide safe water for a family of five for a month. We also socially market and give away oral re-hydration salts, essential for recuperating from otherwise deadly episodes of diarrhea. Srey Leak was very patient with my keen interest in her well, and I was so glad it was nearby. Girls in Southeast Asia can spend up to six hours a day doing chores, much of that time involved in searching for and carrying water.
Her small hut was where she had lived with her parents until they died of complications of AIDS. She was able to stay here alone with the help of an aunt who lived in the neighborhood and a health care program run by Khemara. I stepped inside her spare, neat wooden hut and felt a shiver of recognition. With a translator seated nearby, I sat on the floor and Srey Leak, whose name means “Perfect Girl,” curled into my lap. I was cross-legged, and we fit together perfectly, as if we belonged just this way. As she nestled up against me, my arms completed the circle of holding, fully enveloping her, and I began to rock her. She relaxed against me as she told me how her parents had died one after the other and how much she wanted a mother. If the rocking slowed, she would press into me, wordlessly letting me know she wanted more. She showed me a small photo album with pictures of her beautiful family—mother, father, and grandparents—enshrined in plastic. It was all she had left of them.
I told her about my grandparents and softly shared some of the ways I am able to keep my relationship with them dynamic and alive, even though they had passed on from the physical world. Last night, in fact, I had very auspiciously had one of my deep, beautiful, heart-piercing dreams about Mamaw, the kind that happens on occasion and nearly breaks me in half with its bittersweetness. She had come to me just as she had been in life, appearing so naturally and fully that I could see every eyelash, the exact color and flecks of her irises. She had whispered guidance, direction, and care to me, soaking me in the unconditional love she gave me in such abundance in