All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [95]
But at least he was there. He sat on the edge of my bed when my first little boyfriend broke up with me, saying, “Poor baby, poor baby.” (Of course, I recognize now that the level of grief I experienced had little to do with the boy and everything to do with retriggering major feelings of abandonment.) Dad was also great with me when I returned the five-dollar bill I had pinched from his wallet. He recognized the risk I had taken by being honest with him and rewarded me with his joy, kneeling in front of me and even crying a bit over my truthfulness, which was a revelation. With Mom, the punishment rarely fit the crime, and even telling the truth earned a spanking, additional grounding, or worse, the dreaded “silent violence” of more neglect.
We had some good times living like river rats along the Kentucky that fall. Dad had made a lot of improvements to Camp Wig. He was growing weary of eating peanut butter and living the life of a starving artist, so he cut his hair and started selling advertising for Blood Horse magazine in Lexington, which bills itself “the Horse Capital of the World.” I enjoyed our drives to and from Lexington, now in a proper car, Mamaw and Papaw’s salmon pink Imperial, loaned to us while they wintered in Florida. I played with the myriad fancy buttons just as I did on the long road trip vacations on which they took me every summer. Dad and I listened to National Public Radio, and there was a sense of routine, even though the loneliness never left me. I didn’t reconnect with the little girls I had known on the river back in first grade, and the kids at the private school I now attended were culturally and physically far removed from Camp Wig. I never had a friend over, or stayed with one, for that matter. So once school let out every afternoon, it was just Dad and me. Sometimes he couldn’t pick me up on time, and he arranged with the school for me to hang out in a classroom until he could fetch me. There was one other boy, a bit older, who was in the same predicament, but we never spoke to each other. I just remember his preppy shoes and figured he was “better” than I.
I was also uncomfortable with Dad’s occasional girlfriends, who sometimes came to the river and spent the night. Once, when he had a date to spend the night with a girlfriend in Lexington, he took me along. I recall feeling insanely weird sleeping in the strange home, knowing we were there so my dad could be romantic and sexual with his date. When I thought it was about time to wake up for school, I went looking for my dad and walked in on them having sex. On the way to school, Dad said, “Well, now you know why we spent the night in town.” The “ick” factor for me was stratospheric in this department, as it would be for most fifth-grade girls. Dad says he was motivated to be honest and open about the human body and sexuality because he had zero sex education as a child. But, as with many of my parents’ choices, he realizes now his open attitude about nudity and sexual information was an overcorrection. While he absolutely meant well, it did not have the desired effect; it repelled me.
Eventually, strip coal mining up in the hills caused so much erosion and flash flooding that the camp flooded for good. With the river rising in our house, we had to escape in the middle of the night to a Red Cross shelter. Camp Wig was a total loss, so we moved in with one of my friends from my school, Fielding, and her mother, Willie. Fielding and I shared a room as if we were sisters and slept in matching twin beds, which I thought were grand. I helped her little brother Austin pick out his Garanimals in the morning, and I felt responsible and needed. The house was a beautiful old Victorian, with gorgeous porches and fish scale tiles in deep colors. To me it felt almost like being a family, something “normal,” which I craved: a mother figure, a dad, and some kids who could play and hang out together. Fielding