All That Is Bitter and Sweet_ A Memoir - Ashley Judd [97]
I entered the sixth grade at Grassland Elementary School, while Wynonna, after her hiatus, was finally starting high school at Franklin High. Early on, we used to do the laundry together at a laundromat I still pass often, and once when Sister and I were folding towels, she cracked, “If you are going to live with us, you have to fold the towels our way.” I guess I had picked up a different technique over the years, spending time in so many different households. How did Mamaw fold? Nana? Cynthia? Dad? Willie Wood? So hypervigilant and unsure of where I belonged, I took my sister’s remark very seriously, believing that one wrongly folded towel and I’d be turned out to live somewhere else.
I continued to fantasize about moving to Ashland to live with my grandparents, but neither of my parents would abide the idea. Over the years, both sets of grandparents had been concerned enough about my living arrangements, yet they never managed to form a full alliance to actually rescue me from my chaotic, nomadic life. Once, even my aunt Margaret hired a lawyer to discuss the possibility of obtaining custody of me, which he explained a judge would never grant. Both my parents were living, and he said she wouldn’t stand a chance. She still looks at me with soft regret, offering her apologies that she couldn’t help when I needed it, and only when I was in good recovery did I stop wondering about how different—how much better—my life could have been if my grandparents had succeeded in adopting me.
Cynthia and Papaw Judd started talking about adopting me as soon as they learned Mom wanted me back again. I would have loved nothing better. They lived right down the street from a school, and I used to walk to it after dark, and in the very picture of a forlorn lost child, wrap my slim fingers in the fence, staring longingly at the playground and buildings, imagining that it was my school, that I had just walked there from my home with my grandparents, after a hot breakfast they had cooked for me (Papaw Judd made a mean country breakfast), and sat at the kitchen table eating with me while we talked about my upcoming day. Cynthia knew Mom needed money and told Papaw Judd the way to make this happen was to pay Mom $10,000 for me. Before they could make arrangements, Papaw’s kidneys failed, related to his alcoholism, and he had a transplant. The medical process was not near what it is now, and he was a sick man off and on for his remaining years, making incessant trips to Lexington for his complex care. He admitted to Cynthia that he was too sick to keep me. I am still so grateful to Cynthia for how very well she took care of my grandfather. She was a faithful caregiver until he died, and it does help knowing they had wanted me.
My feelings about where I actually belonged in the world fluctuated even within my peer group. I had friends from a grade above me, and in my frantic attempt to be accepted, I tried to gain their approval by “acting big” and carrying on the way they did, which at times included smoking cigarettes and behaving like a cool teenager. I was devastated when friends my own age rejected me as being “too fast.” But by now I had no idea what it meant to be “normal.”
Mom took nursing jobs to pay the rent, eventually settling into a three p.m. to eleven p.m. shift at Williamson County Hospital. I nagged her to switch to the seven a.m. to three p.m. shift so