River of Time by Naomi Judd
Chapter 1
Shhh…Don’t Tell a Soul
It’s not a bad dream or even a horror movie nightmare, though it has become the most harrowing aspect of what is now my constant personal torment.
It’s three in the morning and I go from a deep sleep to standing bolt upright on my bed, the covers draped around my feet like the Statue of Liberty, but I am not free. I am imprisoned in my body; my mind has taken me hostage in ways that are unbelievably terrifying. I reach up to my throat, expecting to find a pair of hands belonging to an intruder who is out to kill me with a grip that is slowly closing down on my windpipe. I am hyperventilating. My heart is beating so rapidly that my eardrums are throbbing. I am in danger, but I don’t know the reason why. My vision blurs. The room spins. My face, neck, chest, and palms are covered with sweat.
My terror, which seems to send lightning bolts of energy through our perfectly quiet bedroom, awakens my husband abruptly. My dog Bijou, who has been snuggled next to me, jumps from the bed yelping wildly, which brings the other two dogs, Maudie and Lulu, racing into the room. All three dogs are in protective mode, looking for a dangerous intruder. They sniff at the doors and scamper down the hallways, fur on their backs raised, ready to attack.
The intruder is here in the panic, which is rising up with a vicious force inside me, breaking through six decades of suppression. The intruder has had enough of living in a stifled memory far below my optimistic consciousness and is here to follow through with what he started. He’s here for the lonely toddler who never trusted that she could tell anyone her truth, not even her mother. He has come for Naomi Ellen Judd, the sweet Appalachian child, and he’s not going away this time, no matter how hard I’ve tried to forget about what happened long before my first day of kindergarten.
I am no longer Naomi Judd, the mother of two daughters, the mom half of the Judds, the most documented act and successful singing duo in the history of country music. I haven’t yet won a Grammy or Country Music Association award or had platinum albums and number one singles. I haven’t had sold out concerts at the London Palladium, Madison Square Garden, or the Houston Astrodome. I’m no longer married to my life partner and true love of thirty-seven years, gospel singer and former backup singer for Elvis Presley, Larry Strickland. I’m not in the warm, comfortable bed we share in our beautiful home in the lush countryside of Franklin, Tennessee.
No, I have been emotionally transported back, to my very first memory, as a toddler, in my dreary, gray, and somber hometown of Ashland, Kentucky.
The eruptive memory of this unwelcome life-altering experience has overtaken my mind, in the much the same way the Ohio River can rise and overflow into Ashland with muddy swirling water whenever there is a significant storm. Positioned on the border of West Virginia and Ohio, Ashland often suffers severe weather that lingers, brought to a standstill between the Appalachian Mountains. During my childhood, the sun also had to compete with the layer of fine black particles that always settled to the ground after hanging in the damp air.
Three major industrial plants based their production in Ashland, taking advantage of the fierce Ohio River. Ashland men worked at one of these plants, many spending their workdays filling large ovens with tons of coal, baking it into the fuel called coke. As a result, the community had to live with heavy pollutants and a constant noxious odor. A layer of black soot, which coated our windowsills and most likely our lungs, was ever-present. Even sitting on a park bench was out of the question, unless you took the time to wipe off the grime.
In the 1950s, doctors were still unaware of the causes of lung cancer and other diseases toxins create in the body. Living with this pollution was just the way things were. For me, my hometown was not only a place of darkened skies and a stagnant stench; it was also a sealed vault of fetid family secrets.
On this winter night in Franklin, Tennessee, decades after I left Ashland, my subconscious has figured out the combination to unlock the vault and drag the heavy door open. The secrets have escaped to destroy my sleep. They play across my mind’s eye like a virtual reality video game. It feels so real that I could reach out and touch it. My mind had been proficient at keeping the shameful secrets suppressed, so why are they emerging now as a nocturnal panic attack, surfacing from my slumbering subconscious as if past events were happening in my own bedroom? I can hear the whisper, “Shhh…don’t tell a soul.”
I am three and a half years old and running a high fever. My small toddler body is aflame with fire-red chicken pox. My pregnant mother has deposited me with her Judd in-laws to prevent me from infecting my two-year-old brother, Brian, at home. She can’t stand her in-laws or anyone on Daddy’s side of the family, something I am well aware of. However, they live only two blocks away and are the only nearby solution to her problem, me. I have been sent to stay with Grandmommy Judd in my flannel nightgown, which is torture against my feverish, itchy skin. Grandmommy sternly warns me to not scratch as she points the way to the tall feather bed in the small attic room at the end of squeaky, wood-planked hallway, and instructs me to stay in it. I have to figure out a way to climb in, by myself, though the mattress top is at my eye level.
I grab the iron bedpost and dig my toes into the edge of the frame until I boost myself high enough to get my knees on top of the mattress. I crawl to the center and under the covers. I rest my head on a fat feather pillow and listen to the domestic sounds coming from the house. I can tell that my four eccentric adult aunts, all of whom still live with Grandmommy and Granddaddy, are bustling about doing their chores. I feel like my face is burning, yet I’m shivering at the same time. I’m tempted to scratch the red bumps that have banished me to my grandmother’s bed, alone and sick, but I won’t. I’m already an exceptionally well-behaved child, doing whatever she’s told, searching for a sign of approval.
While everyone is wrapped up in housework, I am feeling abandoned and restless with fever. Then, I hear the squeak of the floorboards in the hallway. I have a trace of hope that it’s Mother, coming back to get me. I want her to comfort me, to lift me up in her arms, and take me home. But I know that is highly unlikely. She hasn’t held me on her lap since the day I learned to walk. She never reads me bedtime stories or tucks me in. Everything my mother does for me is done with practicality. The only time she touches me is to run a brush through my wavy hair in the morning, tugging at the tangles, or to yank up the zipper of my jacket before she shoos me outside.
I know it’s not Mother coming to see me. Instead, I start to imagine that the person coming down the hallway will be Daddy. He’s heard that I’m sick and has come to take me home. I want the footsteps to be Daddy’s work boots. I always felt my Daddy loved me. But I know he is working at his small gas station and it would be too much for him to close his business, our livelihood, to look in on a lonely, sick little girl.
The door slowly creaks open. It’s a male figure looming in the hallway. I know instantly that it’s not Daddy. I turn over on my side, as close to the wall as possible, and scrunch my knees up toward my chest. I am hoping this old man who is peering in at me will go away. I dread the sound of the door being closed, because I know the man is now inside the room. I’m a captive. I squeeze my eyes shut, praying that if I pretend to be asleep, he will leave. I can hear the sound of a belt buckle coming loose, then a zipper. His stale breath comes out in short, noisy puffs. I have no reference point for what is about to happen to me, but my infantile innate senses tell me that the survival of my soul is at stake.
I pull the sheets up around my neck and press my tiny body as close to the wall as possible. I sense that the other side of the sheets and blanket are being lifted. The mattress sinks down and the bedsprings make an off-key sound like an out-of-tune Autoharp as the intruder climbs into bed beside me. I can smell hair tonic, cigarettes, and musty body odor. I turn to see that it’s Uncle Charlie, my Grandma Judd’s brother. He places his finger to his mouth and says, “Shhh.”
He reaches under the sheet and grabs the calf of my leg and drags me across the mattress toward his body. I can feel the chicken pox on my back rupturing open from being yanked across the stiff cotton sheets. As I am pulled closer I can see that his pants are undone and his privates are exposed. Of course, I’ve never seen adult male genitals before. His breathing is even heavier, which scares me so much I hold my own breath. He has an odd and creepy grin in the face of my terror. He uses his dirty rough hands to push my nightgown up to my underarms and then grabs at my waist to pull me toward him. In that very moment, at age three and a half, I understand that no one is going to save me from Uncle Charlie. I have to save myself.
I jerk my arms out from under the sheet and grab the flesh of his face in my hands. I dig my fingernails into the soft baggy skin under his eyes. Then I manage to bring a foot up and jab it into his throat, right at his Adam’s apple. Uncle Charlie coughs in surprise and lets go of me. I scramble to sit up on the bed and then scoot back away from him until I awkwardly tumble off the end of the mattress and drop with a loud thump to the floor.
I’m scared witless that Uncle Charlie will catch up to me at the door, but he doesn’t. He is probably equally afraid that someone has heard the thump of my fall and will open the door to find him exposed. His face is now red-streaked from my scratch marks. I yank at the doorknob that I can barely turn, open it, and run along the hallway and down the stairs to the back porch and then out into the cool dusk. Two of my aunts, Evelyn and Ramona, are there shaking out rugs against the back fence. They don’t see the look of pure fear on my face. It seems that doing mundane chores is far more important than a terror-stricken little girl.
Uncle Charlie isn’t looking for me anymore. He has his floppy hat that he always wears pulled low over his face and he waves goodbye to my aunts from the sidewalk and leaves quickly.
I go back inside and peer up at the wrinkled and tired face of my Grandmommy Judd, who is standing at the kitchen sink. She has a bandana tied around her forehead, the sign that she’s suffering another migraine headache. The steam is rising from the hot water in the dishpan and streaming down the window over the sink like long tears on a sad face. What will happen if I tell her? I don’t know what words to use. I have no way to comprehend what Uncle Charlie was trying to do to me. I only knew it was wrong.
Grandmommy Judd looks down at me after I tug on the hem of her dress gently. I search her face, longing for her to see my terror and make me feel safe somehow. I hope she will ask me, “What’s wrong, sweetheart?” when she sees how frightened I am. I don’t find comfort in her eyes, only frustration with being bothered. Grandmommy Judd frowns, raises her eyebrows in a disapproving way, wipes her hands on her apron, and points me back upstairs. I can’t go in that room, again. I stand against the refrigerator, frozen in fear.
Should I run the two blocks barefoot to our home, crossing a busy street by myself, and tell Mother? I already know that her reaction will be one of anger. She never wants to have to interact with the Judds about any issue.
Anytime I expressed emotions, whether they were joyful, fearful, or full of hope, Mother would become annoyed. I knew she would be mad at me for causing trouble. Even at age three and a half, I understood that my mother didn’t seem interested in whatever happened to me. The one person on earth who was supposed to love and watch out for me didn’t. My hope of being protected was crushed. Tiny Naomi Ellen Judd had no one to tell. No one cared. I fully realized that I was on my own. Live or die, make or break, it all rested on my will. I wasn’t going to die or break. Somehow, I would live. At this early age I possessed the character trait of persistence: There would be nothing I wouldn’t try to live down, rise above, or overcome. For my very young self, it meant that the experience of being sexually assaulted couldn’t be allowed to stick in my memory if I were to survive intact.
I submerged this crushing secret to the very bottom of my subconscious. How many more Uncle Charlies might be lurking out there? I would come to find out there were more, one even worse.
Yet, here I was, six decades later, at a time in my life when I should be enjoying the bounty of my successes and my unimaginably exciting career, panicked, in the middle of the night. Living a past trauma as if it all were happening again.
Larry pulls at my hand to sit down on the edge of the bed so he can rub my back, but I can’t stay still. If I do I’m certain my heart will overload. I can’t breathe well enough to tell him that I am coming apart. Am I losing my mind? The dogs whine and sniff at my feet as I walk to the bedroom door. I can barely feel my limbs, but I move into the hallway. I walk from room to room, never stopping. The dogs follow me, until they realize that I’m not going to settle down. They give up on me an hour later and jump back up on the bed with Larry for the rest of the night. I am too afraid to go to sleep. I don’t want to find myself back in the memory of that feather bed. I keep moving.
When the morning light starts coming through the windows, I am exhausted. I finally sit at the kitchen table as Larry comes down the stairs. I can tell he is extremely worried, but he tries his best to make it seem like any other normal day. He puts on a pot of coffee and then whistles to the dogs to go out. Larry takes out his Bible to read a chapter or two in the same way he does every single morning. It fortifies him. He asks me if I’d like to pray about whatever kept me up the whole night before. I can’t answer him. My mind feels too messed up to plug into anything about God, but I don’t know how to admit that to a man whose faith has never wavered. I manage to mumble, “Later.” Larry pulls on his jacket to go out to the barn to feed the cats and horses. As soon as he opens the back door, frigid, damp air rushes in. It’s another gray and dreary day; one seems to follow another. I drag myself over to the couch near our big kitchen table and collapse under a throw blanket, pulling it up to my chin. I wonder what all of this stress is doing to my health.
While recovering from hepatitis C fifteen years ago, I learned that unbridled stress can wreak havoc on every system of your body, including the immune system, and precipitate many types of illnesses. According to facts quoted by Dr. Andrew Weil, physician and bestselling author, 90 percent of all visits to primary care physicians are due to stress-related illness. Andy is responsible for sterling research on mind-body-spirit medicine and has personally taught me so much. I had become quite expert at controlling what my mind would say to my body. I had to. The doctors had told me I would die in three years from hepatitis C. I rejected that message and my liver responded in a positive way. But this time there was no doctor giving me bad news.
My panic attacks are a manifestation of a past crisis hidden in my subconscious. The current message arising from my sleep-starved mind is, “It’s hopelessly over for you, Naomi Ellen Judd. Underneath your upbeat public personality is a ravaged and fragmented young girl whom you’ve spent decades trying to forget.”
There is someone I wish I could call, someone with whom I once shared everything, who has been with me through most of my trials and all of my successes. She has witnessed me overcoming many challenges in the past. I want this person to come over and just be with me today. I’m in such emotional danger I would love for her to comfort me and encourage me to believe that I will be fine no matter what. I know better. My wishes are as futile as those of the three-year-old Naomi Ellen Judd, hoping Mother would come to comfort her and rescue her from being molested and tell her she can beat hep C. It’s not going to happen now because it has never happened in the past. I know she won’t be calling me. We have barely spoken to each other in almost two years.
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