NO MATTER WHERE WE MOVED, NANA AND PAPAW’S HOUSE IN MCGREGOR was home base. The five of us cousins—the children of the Drew girls, my mom and her two older sisters—would play outside from the second my parents pulled into the driveway. The oldest were Debbie’s kids—Zeb and his younger sister Sarah; then Connie’s son Drew; then me and Ashlee bringing up the rear. At six years old, I was exactly two years and three days younger than Sarah, who I idolized as more of big sister and best friend than a cousin. Sarah was already so effortlessly cool that I loved anything she loved. She liked pigs, so I liked pigs. When her family visited us in Colorado, we made snow pigs instead of snow angels. She went horseback riding, and, well, I tried.
Now that we were back in Texas, we made the hour-and-a-half drive down to McGregor all the time. McGregor is a small town next to Waco, the buckle of the Bible Belt. My grandparents lived on Leafy Hollow, named for all the tall skinny trees that reached so high to the sky. The trees created clouds of white flowers in the spring and a canopy of green throughout the summer. There were at least a dozen in the front yard alone.
We cousins played in the creek behind their house, and all of us wore our McGregor Bulldogs T-shirts. Even Ashlee, about to turn two, danced around in her size small T-shirt, swirling in it like a princess dress. This was in tribute to Papaw, who was the beloved line and strength coach at McGregor High. Acy Drew was Ace to everyone when he made First Team All-State as a quarterback in high school, then played football for Baylor. But by the time I came along, everyone in town called him “Coach,” stepped aside for him when he passed and never once thought about cussing in his presence for fear of what he would do. Believe everything you’ve heard about the reverence for football in Texas. In the name of the Father, the Son and the Hail Mary pass . . .
He’d been a tough man, but he’d softened with age. Men don’t normally change, I know, but they can. I like it when they do. The only thing he loved more than his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ was us kids, and he would casually patrol the creek while we were out there, keeping watch for snakes. If he spotted one, he’d pick it up and squeeze its neck, even the rattlesnakes.
My Nana, Dorothy Jane, was my prayer warrior. She held firm to her Christian faith and did all things through He who strengthened her. Her steadfastness was almost a response to her mother. Bertha Dee died a couple weeks after I was born, but she was a legend to me. “She was full-blooded Indian,” I grew up hearing in whispers from cousins and my mother. My great-grandmother read people’s fortunes and aligned her gardens with the stars. This was always said before a long, dramatic pause. Nana never wanted to talk about her. If I said anything about astrology or being a Cancer, my grandmother would go move quick to hush me.
I heard different stories about my great-grandmother, cautionary tales about what could happen if you leaned in hard on that intuition. I don’t know the full story, but I also know that she was a card reader in Waco, Texas, at a time when that was not done. She was considered crazy by a lot of people in town. That buckle on the Bible Belt can come down hard and leave a mark.
But I’d stare in the mirror at my brown eyes and high cheekbones, convinced I was Native American. More than that, we Simpson girls, my mother included, all seemed a little witchy. A nicer word would be intuitive. We had a good sense of people from the get-go and we often knew what was going to happen before it happened. Sometimes we chalked it up to our faith that God would provide, sometimes to just paying attention. But often it felt like we knew what was destined to be. Everything that happened in my life just felt preordained. Still does.
If we weren’t at Nana and Papaw’s, the family usually met up at my cousin Sarah’s house. Her dad, Uncle Boyd, put up a tire swing while I was in Colorado, and when I got back it was all me and Sarah wanted to do. Sarah loved the swing, and, like I said—I loved anything she loved.
Aunt Debbie, Sarah’s mom, was even more of a devout Christian than my parents, and while Sarah and I ran outside, she would listen to one of her evangelist tapes. Sermons all the time, loud so everybody could hear. You’d dip in and out of a deep, solemn voice rolling across the yard as we played. “Now, I want you to turn with me to 2 Chronicles, the 33rd chaptah . . .”
It was spring, and I sat on the grass as Sarah swung in the twilight air. I watched the long curls of her brown hair trail behind her like a comet. It was just us, and I wanted to tell her something, because I could always talk to her about anything. But this time, I stayed quiet. Something had happened, twice now, and I was supposed to keep it secret.
The daughter of a family friend was abusing me when my parents brought us for overnight stays. It started the winter I was six, when I shared a bed with the girl. She was a year older than me. After lights out, I would feel her hands on me. It would start with tickling my back and then going into things that were extremely uncomfortable. Freezing became my defense mechanism, and to this day, when I panic, I freeze. We had an earthquake recently here in L.A., and instead of running for cover, I grabbed a bag of Cheetos and just stood there eating them.
The second time she abused me, it was during a spring visit, and Ashlee also shared the bed. I lay between them, fiercely protecting my sister from this monster. I didn’t want her to feel as disgusting as I felt.
For six years, I was abused by this girl during our family’s visits, which happened three times a year. Eventually it wasn’t just nighttime. She would get me to go into a closet with her, or just find a way to linger until we were alone. It got to the point that she would sneak into the bathroom to watch me shower. I did not know how to get away from her.
She continued to try to sleep next to my little sister, and I would just scooch Ashlee over and get between them whenever she did. I never let her near Ashlee, but I also never screamed or told her to stop. I was confused, wondering if it was something that I wanted to keep going. Why am I not telling anybody? I would ask myself. Is it because it feels good? The irony is that I was protecting my abuser. I thought that if I named what she was doing, she would feel the shame I felt. And I wouldn’t have wished that on anybody.
I never slept well again. Well, I could sleep, but it took forever to get there. Even at home in my own bed, there was a feeling that I had to stay up to keep watch. I stopped waiting for Ashlee to come to my room and started sleeping in her bed. I remember the humiliation of saying to my baby sister, four years younger than me, “Ashlee, can I share your room?” Even then, I would lie awake waiting for my brain to shut off. I wanted to keep us both safe, but I also wanted her protection, too. Ashlee was already becoming her own person. She always took good care of looking after herself, and I was terrified someone could take that courage from her.
Over the years of this family friend abusing me, I learned that she was being molested by an older boy. I can’t play armchair psychiatrist and guess what her motives were for abusing me, but I can feel her pain and mine at the same time. She would describe her experiences in detail, and it was all so crazy because I was so young that I didn’t know anything about sex or about my private parts. My parents never talked to me about this. I mean, they taught me my body was a temple of God, but that was in reference to some imaginary guy in the future. It was never about someone who’s supposed to be a friend making you do things you don’t want to. So, I came to understand sex and my body solely in terms of power, or in this case, lack of power. I was just gonna let her do whatever it was she wanted to do because I didn’t want to hurt her feelings.
That’s kind of how I was in many of my adult relationships, too. At first, I held myself back, refusing to have sex until I was married. I was afraid sex, and the need I had to give pleasure no matter what, would destroy me as I let men walk all over me.
I was right. But I am getting ahead of myself.
I only found the strength to tell my parents what was happening because I made a deal with God. I was twelve, and my family was in the car on the way out of the town where the girl lived. It was a four-hour ride, and my
father would always stop at the gas station to fill up the car and buy two scratch-off lottery tickets, one for me and Ashlee. I won so often that it was like a family joke—“the wealthy one” at it again—and I always thought it was God looking out for me.
My dad handed us each a ticket and a quarter when he got back in the car. Usually, I scratched the ticket right away, but this time I stalled. First, I wanted to tell my parents what was happening to me. What had just happened again the night before. For me, this would be a confession, because I felt like I might be sinning by allowing her to continue to do these things to me. I was the victim, but somehow, I felt in the wrong.
I waited until we were on the road, when Ashlee would put her headphones on. She was eight, and I wanted to protect her from hearing what I had to say. But when she did put them on, I lost my nerve, and decided not to say anything. I rested my head against the window to feel the rhythm of the Texas road. Occasionally, I lifted my head, ready to speak. And then I didn’t. It was like back when I stuttered. The words just wouldn’t come.
I rubbed the quarter between my thumb and pointer finger. “In God we trust,” it read. God and I were always in conversation. No matter what I did in life, He was there. If I do this, my reward will be in this ticket, I thought. He’ll give me a prize for being honest.
I started with a quiet singsong of “Ummm, guys.” Like I was tuning an instrument. My parents didn’t hear me. I cleared my throat, and the worlds spilled out in a quiet rush.
“I feel like you guys might know that this has been going on,” I said, “but if you don’t know what’s been going on, she’s been touching me for years and it makes me really uncomfortable and I don’t ever want to go back there.”
I couldn’t undo it. It was done.
My mother slapped my father’s arm with the back of her hand. “I told you something was happening,” she yelled at him. Neither turned to look at me. Dad kept his eye on the road and said nothing, his shoulders sunken. It didn’t surprise me that my mother knew. I already understood denial and how much it fueled the actions of families, especially Southern families. People want to paint the picture pretty, especially a minister’s family. They were probably also shocked. These good people who did everything to help others hadn’t been able to help their own daughter.
“Hello?” I said. I expected them to say something to me. I wasn’t angry, I was just confused. I wouldn’t be angry about their silence until much later.
I scratched off the ticket, knowing that I would win something. It was fifteen hundred dollars. I looked up to God. Then I brushed the ticket against my mother’s shoulder, forcing her to look back at me. She took the ticket and screamed to my father.
“One thousand five hundred dollars,” she said, drawing out the words. Dad pulled over, and Ashlee pulled off her headphones in confusion. They told her, so excited, and she looked at me with her eyes wide. She gave me a huge smile, and I took it so I could manage to give it back to her.
Dad did a U-turn to take us back to the gas station so we could collect our winnings. My parents clung to the happiness of that ticket, thrilled to be rescued with a change in subject. We never stayed at my parents’ friends’ house again, but we also didn’t talk about what I had said.
Instead, we just went back to start. As if what I said happened to me happened to some other girl, in some other car, in some other life.
3
Saved by Failure
Spring 1993
“I once was lost, but now am found,” we all sang in unison. “Was blind but now I see.”
There were seven hundred kids that last day of church camp, all from different schools in Texas. I was a seventh grader, twelve, and I had tagged along to so many church camps and vacation bible schools as a preacher’s daughter that I was excited to be with kids and believers my own age. One of the best parts of every church camp stay was when we sang together. People who were once strangers sang hymns that felt they like were written for just that shared moment.
We were in a huge church, and as we paused between the choruses of “Amazing Grace,” the pastor spoke on the mic. “There’s somebody here that’s going to use their voice to change the world,” he said. “They will use their voice to minister to others.”
We continued, and then I heard it: My own voice. “How precious did that grace appear,” I sang. “The hour I first believed!” I have spent years trying to describe the feeling, and I still have trouble. I felt a light upon me, and then the certainty of a calling. It’s my voice, I thought. And because I was twelve, I added, “He is totally talking about me.”
I realized I was walking forward down the aisle, the only person doing so. I felt wrapped in purpose. You have to understand how rare it was to just have one believer swept up at camp. Sometimes, peer pressure or a need for attention can make the front of the room a popular space. I reached the pastor just as we finished the song with, “And grace will lead us home.”
He invited everyone to do silent prayer and looked at me. “I just heard myself sing,” I whispered, “and I think that’s the voice that God wants me to use.”
“Well, let’s pray,” he said.
I felt like God had delivered me to myself, and I decided right there to give myself over to the ministry. I walked back, right past my friends, and went straight to the pay phone to call my dad at church. By then, Dad had been the youth minister for two years at the Heights Baptist Church in Richardson, a suburb of Dallas. We’d left Burleson after I finished third grade, then did a year at a church in Duncanville, which brought us closer to Dallas. But now my father had his dream job. It was a megachurch, so his salary doubled to $60,000, and being a pastor there was like being a rock star. Mom still taught aerobics and did as much work as my dad with all kinds of charity outreach.
I dialed Dad at work and the church secretary answered.
“Hi, it’s Jessica,” I blurted out. “Can I talk to my dad? It’s really important.”
“Hold on, Jess,” she said.
I looked back at all the kids. A girl came up, waiting for the phone. I could tell she was shy and being with someone who was timid always made me less so. At lunch, I had started sitting with kids at school who sat alone. It wasn’t that I felt sorry for them. I was grateful for the company. It’s like when you’re in line for a roller coaster and you find out your friend is even more scared than you—and you both feel stronger by joining hands. “I like your sneakers,” I told her.
“Thanks,” she said, smiling. She looked down at them as my dad came to the phone.
“Jessica?” he said. “What’s wrong?” I held a finger to her to say, “hold on.”
“God called me into the ministry, Dad.”
“Nooooooo,” he said. “No, no, no.”
He said it so loud the girl heard him through the phone. Her eyes widened.
“I know,” I said. I had grown up hearing about the politics of churches. In Richardson, we’d built up the youth group, but we did it by hosting dances and having cool events like lock-in sleepovers. Dad had studied to be an adolescent therapist, and his practice at the church didn’t treat kids like sinners. He encouraged self-care and communication with parents, which had proven effective. But some of the church elders still preferred the brimstone. He fought the battles so the kids didn’t have to, I guess, and he wanted something different for me.
“Jessica, you should think about this,” he said. “There are ways to be of service without—”
I turned toward the pay phone for privacy. “Well, I don’t think I’m gonna be a music minister or anything,” I said. “But I know now I’m supposed to use my voice to change the world.”
“We’ll talk about it when you get home,” he said. “But I’m really proud of—”
“I gotta go, someone’s waiting,” I said. I smiled at the girl and hung up. “I was called,” I told her as I walked away. “I mean, I made the call just now. To my dad. But I was called.” She laughed, so I laughed, and it felt goo
d.
God was going to use my voice. It was weird, because I never really knew that I had a good singing voice. I just liked to sing. I’d sung solos in church since I was younger, and the one I remember loving most was “His Eye Is on the Sparrow.” My mom had started to enter me into vocal competitions the year before. But I thought that was just because Beth Pliler, who ran the dance studio where Ashlee and I took lessons, could tell I was miserable dancing. I would go to competitions in a whole new outfit and come in seventh and it just didn’t seem worth it. Beth was probably tired of trying to hide me in the corps when I wanted to stand out. One day I had been crying trying to get on point and Beth turned to my mother.
“Tina, they have all these vocal competitions when we do the dance competitions,” she said loud so I could hear. “Maybe she could do both.” I fell to the ground and gripped my poor toes. “Or, just,” she added, “uh, sing?”
I looked at my mom and nodded, wiping away a tear. “That’s a great idea.”
“She could really shine,” my mom said. So, the summer going into sixth grade, I did my first vocal competition, going to San Marcos, Texas, to sing “The Rose” in a big purple dress with giant sleeves. I won, and we kept on entering around the region, and I kept winning. Mom and I would go thrift shopping for stage outfits. Then, she started buying clothes at Dillard’s and leaving the tags in so we could return them. I know how that sounds, but she was trying to make me happy and we couldn’t really afford all those outfits. I’ve met my share of stage moms in my career, and she was not one of them. She pushed me to be excellent at whatever I chose to do, but she didn’t tell me what to do.
Two weeks after my “Amazing Grace” moment at camp, my mom was at church when one of her girlfriends, Cindy Caves, came up to her with a cutout from the Dallas Morning News.
“Jessica’s really talented and you should take her to this,” she said.
The producers of the The All-New Mickey Mouse Club had placed ads around the country looking for new talent for its third season. There would be an open-call audition at the Dallas Hyatt the following week. Mom knew Ashlee and I watched it all the time, singing and dancing along with Keri Russell and JC Chasez onscreen as Mouseketeers. The show was a weekly afterschool Disney Channel variety show with comedy skits and kid-friendly versions of popular songs. The producers specialized in finding talented kids who were also relatable, which was why they held open-call auditions for 50,000 kids around the country instead of just in Los Angeles, where kids got agents in kindergarten.
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