All That Is Bitter and Sweet (34 page)

Mamaw told me she and Papaw wanted to keep me there and wondered how I would feel about that. I was surprised they wanted me—that anyone wanted me—and I naturally loved the idea. I had often fantasized about it. They really wanted to keep me, and it was the first of several conversations we would have about me living there with them. But Dad wanted me, too. He and Mom had been having a drag-out fight in court, where she was suing him for back child support. He told me that although he keenly wanted both of us girls to come live with him, Mom was wholly uncooperative. Sensing a possible compromise, he offered to make her a deal: “I’ll give you $2,000 if you give me Ashley.” Mom took the money.

I had deeply ambivalent feelings about being with Dad again. He was still living the bachelor-hippie leather worker life at Camp Wig. It was clear Mamaw and Papaw did not fully approve of his choices, and I was very aware of their unspoken attitude and concern. They were classic American dreamers, having arrived in the upper middle class through hard work, self-employment, and flawless respectability. Dad was a creative free spirit, and his way of life seemed a bit scandalous to them.

The morning I was leaving Morningside Drive, I stuffed as much of Mamaw’s costume jewelry as I could into the many pockets of my blue jeans—I have no idea why, except that perhaps I wanted to take a piece of her with me or to control something, anything, pushing back against my obvious powerlessness in the family. Or maybe I wanted to squirrel something away that I could look forward to later, anticipating I would be lonely, imagining bringing each item out, one by one, remembering the fun times I’d had with Mamaw. Our two-hour ride was quiet, each mile deepening the silence as we drew closer to parting. Papaw was so mad about leaving me in a situation he feared was not appropriate for me, about not getting to keep me I recall he wouldn’t pull the car into the long driveway or set foot in the yard at Camp Wig. Mamaw walked me to the house, and when it was time to say goodbye, she turned to me and searched my face, giving me a chance to come clean. Eventually she said, “Ashley, I would give you anything I have. You don’t have to take it from me.” I reached into my pockets and handed my grandmother her things. I was devastated that I had hurt and betrayed her and was very ashamed of myself. I have always thought the way she handled this moment exemplified her dignity and grace.

My first months back at Camp Wig were indeed very lonely. I remember playing alone every day after school, sitting in my austere room, trying to pretend it was comfortable, that I liked it and that it was my “own.” I had a stiff plastic horse that I played with on the windowsill, and I tried futilely for a short while to read music out of a collection of Peter, Paul and Mary songs. At the same time, Dad treated me well and was committed to parenting me as best he knew how. For a while, I had a father again. He fed me hearty bowls of oatmeal with raisins and honey in beautiful hand-thrown pottery every morning. It was delicious, but I had a hard time telling him that the breakfast didn’t stick to my bones long enough and that I needed him to pack me a lunch and a snack because I became hungry again every day well before lunch, which made me struggle in school.

Whenever I went into of my “spells” of depression, the ones I’d been having since I was eight, I would become mute, limp, and lethargic. I would be frozen in some intractable silence that I could not break out of. Dad would ask me what was on my mind, trying to draw me out to find out what was wrong. He would attempt to reason things out with me, to encourage me to speak, to describe my feelings. This line of questioning was so perlexing to me, so foreign, I would stall and often went to one default word: “Mom.” I also could not understand how he, a grown-up who should have known how things worked, could possibly have expected me to be verbal in that condition. Didn’t he know I was down a deep, dark well, where no talking could take place? Also, he tells me that sometimes I was so angry, I would just stand there in front of him and shake or bite my arm—my sister has told me this, too—and I could never articulate what I was angry about. (Dad and I now both know that depression is anger turned in upon oneself, but at the time, neither of us had a clue what was going on.)

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 and I sat in a living room nook playing backgammon. I did not understand the nature of my dad’s relationship with Willie, which had initially been romantic and then was not. He confided in me that he wearied of her leaning on him, but I didn’t really care and didn’t want more insider scoop on the adult dramas. He picked me up from school on Wednesdays and took me to the ice-cream parlor near Rupp Arena and let me eat a hot-fudge sundae while I told him about my day. Those were the sorts of things that mattered to me.

Meanwhile, Mom and Sister were busy hanging out with the musicians they met as they rambled around the country, practicing their singing, trying to find their entry and niche in show business. Soon, I received a letter from my mother in which she told me that she and Sister had changed their names. Mom picked “Naomi,” a name she admired from the Bible. In court, she had retaken Judd as her last name. Furthermore, Christina Claire Ciminella was no longer; her new name was Wynonna Judd. I lay on the floor practicing how to spell it and say it. Why. No. Nah. Now that they were the Judds, things were changing with them, and it seemed I no longer had a place in their world—or any other world, for that matter. I had just turned eleven.

n 1979, when I was finishing fifth grade, Mom decided to stop wandering around the country with Sister and settle in Nashville, Tennessee, where most of the country music labels were based. After four months in motels and house-sitting for friends, she rented a small, hundred-year-old farmhouse on Del Rio Pike in the town of Franklin, a forty-five-minute drive south of Nashville, and arranged with Dad to take me back. He was becoming more involved in the world of thoroughbred racing and would soon be moving to Florida to work for a promotion. They had apparently agreed to share custody again, letting each other take me during alternate years. I had no knowledge of their conversations or their plans for me.