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. The majority of 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.