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to end when I was still very young, and I never knew what to expect next, whether I’d be tucked in by her, left alone to do the task myself, or left with a complete stranger. I often felt like an outsider observing my mom’s life as she followed her own dreams. Sometimes I was allowed momentarily into her inner sanctum—the bedroom while she studied or where I was occasionally permitted to sit beside her as she applied her makeup. I spent a lot of time waiting and watching, hoping for my turn with her. It rarely came.

Chapter 2

    THE SAFEST PLACE IN THE WORLD

    At my beloved great-aunt Pauline’s farm on Little Cat Creek in Lawrence County, Kentucky.

    You can judge the moral stature of a nation by the way it treats its animals.
    — MAHATMA GANDHI

fter Dad found out that Mom was moving us back to Kentucky, he offered to put us all up at Camp Wig while she studied for her degree. Mom decided to declare a temporary truce in her war against Dad in order to score a place for us to live, and Dad put aside his simmering resentments to have us girls back in his life. So for several tense months in 1974 and 1975, we were more or less living together again as a family.
    Camp Wig could be amazing for exploring, being half-naked and wild, kept company by tomcats and playing in the fecund river mud, but it was not practical. It was buggy and hot in the summer and freezing cold in the winter. We did have indoor plumbing, which some of our neighbors did not: a toilet and a small, funky shower. (When a neighbor friend of Sister’s was over playing with us, she wanted to try taking a shower. It was her first, and she was so scared, we crowded in there with her.) I had the pervading sense that we were living without direction or structure, although I was unable to articulate the chronic, low-grade feeling of something being not quite right. There was a classic seventies hippie vibe at the camp: the Stones and Joni Mitchell playing on the stereo, grown-ups smoking pot. Although today I know they thought they were simply trying to correct the taboo around bodies and sexuality that had warped their parents’ generation’s attitudes, I was exposed to adult nudity (skinny-dipping in the river, grown-ups coming in and out of the bathroom naked), and it felt icky. Dad kept a copy of The Joy of Sex in plain view. (Well, plain view when Sister retrieved it from his bedside and showed it to me!)
    Sister and I were quite feral, and in good weather it could be fun, even the time she pushed the lawn mower over a nest of yellow jackets. We made the best of it, sitting on the screened-in back porch eating graham crackers and drinking milk, with me commiserating while I carefully observed the backs of her knees swell up. But mowing was a rarity at Camp Wig, which at times bore a strong resemblance to an abandoned property—at least, compared with our grandparents’ homes and what I thought was normal and safe. Thick vines hung from trees in the undulating front yard, and I remember wandering around in grass taller than my head, eating blackberries off the bushes, chasing fireflies, swimming across the wide, powerful river, bravely climbing fences from which to leap onto any bareback horse I came across, gripping a section of mane, and squeezing my tiny legs till I fell off and got the wind knocked out of me again.
    We were always well clothed thanks to our grandparents, and there was enough to eat. I have the most special memories of Mamaw and Papaw taking us to the shops in Ashland or fancy department stores in Lexington like Shillito’s for our back-to-school gear. They were so careful picking out and buying each item, making sure it was quality made, would last, and that we had “room to grow.” I also know they put cash in my parents’ hands. To supplement our meals, Dad would hunt rabbits and catch catfish for dinner, and I flinched in bed in the early morning at the sound of his hammer coming down on their heads after he’d picked the