All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [77]
However, I also felt serene, having created a protected, peaceful space in the room, with an altar on which I put my incense for both harmony and love, powerful spiritual iconography such as a cross, some special stones, Nelson Mandela’s autobiography, and other resonating items. Moyra, Kate, and I blessed the space (and ourselves) with a deep yoga practice, concluding with a long prayer, which I dedicated to our teachers: the easy stuff, the hard stuff, the eternal stuff. But it was possible I was confusing serenity and low-grade depression.
Later that week, Sahouly invited me to her home. I was having a “bad” day, crying uncontrollably during our short lunch break back at the hotel. I had gone full fetal thinking about baby Patrick’s likely life, and it was only the sweetness of Sahouly’s offer that motivated me to peel myself by the ponytail off the mattress. I tried to dress, hardly able to see myself in the mirror for the tears, and played the outfit game, trying to choose something I thought she’d like. But the bow on my shirt hadn’t been ironed right and looked like a shoelace instead of a lovely ribbon, so I finally just put on Mamaw’s pearls. They’re the equivalent of my heavy artillery, and I bring them out when I am at my lowest and need her strength and guidance the most. It’s never failed.
Sahouly and her family lived in two very small rooms, dirty through no fault of her own, as the courtyard she shared with forty others was unpaved red, raw dirt that tracked unrelentingly. Her water source was a spigot not too far away, and she used our Sur’Eau water purification solution, to prevent diarrheal disease in her family. She had a suite of wooden furniture with no cushions and we sat directly on the slats, all except Dr. Rene, who rightly assumed the rickety pieces would not hold his weight. Her two girls sang a few songs for us, and we chatted about this and that. They both loved school, particularly math and science. They had no idea what their mother did to provide for them.
Sahouly had told us she’d turned to prostitution ten years ago to pay for the medical bills after one of the girls was gravely ill. Although her husband knew she turned tricks, her children thought she was just a counselor for PSI. After the visit, she took us into her crowded neighborhood to show us the stop where she caught the bus to the red-light district every night. Sometimes she met her quota of seven clients in time to catch the nine p.m. bus home, but more often she was stranded in town until service resumed at four a.m. Once home, she slept for a few hours, then did her day job: mother of three, wife of eighteen years.
Moyra and I had an extraordinary opportunity with Sahouly, and we seized it. We rode the bus with her to work, and I chuckled when she pointed out her in-laws’ shack, and we had a conversation so typical as to be ubiquitous: How do you get along with your mother-in-law? In town, she showed us her corner and walked us through what her night would be like, but as it was still daylight, after she traced for us what her typical nights were like, we found ourselves idle. Men would not be trolling for sex until after dark, and that was when Moyra and I hatched a plan. We invited Sahouly to our hotel room, where we could offer her a hot meal and a bath.
She’d never taken a bath before, and as we ran the water for her, we explained the concept, feeling so pleased when she stepped into the water, only to be surprised when she popped back out into the living room. We clearly hadn’t explained well enough. Relax, we said. Submerge your head underwater and let it all go. Fall asleep if you like. We ran the bath again after I cleaned the tub (her first dip, however brief, testified to her lack of running water