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Child
of the 70’s & 80’s
I was born in a time when child abuse was
regarded as good parenting. When the
mere thought of talking back to your parents was met with a resounding slap
across your face at anytime or anyplace and it didn’t matter who was around.
Other parents seeing you were getting slapped down wanted in on the action
because obviously you were deserving of it. Why else would your mother embarrass
you in public like that? If you
dared cry out in pain another quick Muhammad Ali like slap would stun your ass
into submission. Your tears would forget to cry, and your mouth would be agape
but no sound would come out of it. You
knew what the rules were and to break them would be met with immediate and
severe repercussions which could have your ass walking funny for a week looking
like someone analized you. In those days no one thought about sexual abuse. So
they all knew was that you got a beat down from your momma last night. You
always knew your momma loved you because after the beating of your life she
would feed you fried chicken and Kool-Aid as some sort of an olive branch of an
apology, and all would be well until the next ass kicking. Those
were the days when you could fuck up your kids, and they knew they got their ass
kicked because they deserved it. Who were you going to call to complain? 911?
Bureau of Child Welfare? The thought
of calling BCW on my single parent St. Lucian island mother (dad died when I was
nine) or calling the police brings tears of laughter to my eyes as I write this.
“Go ahead call the police,” she would say in her thick island accent.
Belt in one hand and using the other to hand me the phone to call the cops on
her. The menace in her voice would
send chills down my back, and I could feel the sweat trickling down my butt
cheeks and nestling in a pool of fear in my underwear.
She reminded me of Clint Eastwood when he tells the black crook, “Go
ahead make my day,” and you know Clint wants him to try something so he can
fuck him up. Sometimes I think that my mom got off on those ass kickings she
delivered with precision. She was like a finely tuned athlete wielding her
weapon of choice, The Belt. Saying
all that I believe that a healthy fear of your parents is a good thing. I’ve
come to realize this as I attempt to show my son the right way to do things, and
not his way which is always seemingly the wrong way.
But as a child when that belt would pierce my delicate skin I would
instantly hit the high notes like Michael Jackson. My beatings were infrequent
because I was quite devious and methodical in my quest to outsmart my mother.
All kids think they’re smarter than their parents, but I sincerely believed
that I was truly smarter than her so that would spur me on to do things that
would never think I would do. I
would plan in advance and sometimes do a trial run to work out the bugs and
kinks and wait until Mother was pre-occupied with my brother, Denny.
If there was anything I could count as a child was that every week like
clockwork Denny would be in trouble and a good beating was sure to follow. He
seemingly never got tired of getting them and Mama never got tired of giving
them. I would watch in amusement as this epic battle would unfold every week
like a heart stopping episode of my favorite show, 24 there were always twists
and turns and you couldn’t wait for the next episode. In the midst of a
beating he would conjure up shit and try to lie his way out of a beating my
mother had been preparing all day to give to him. The lies would come so fast
and furious it was like having a ringside seat to the early life of a sociopath
mind. It was quite the spectacle to watch them tango together, but you knew in
the end that Mama would win out because she had The Belt.
You would think that at some point as he laid in the dark in the bed
across from me whimpering like a puppy dog that common sense would speak to him
and say, “Heh fucker haven’t you had enough as yet?” He would always
scream bloody murder always promised to be better, but as the older brother by
15 months I knew that next week I would be watching another episode of The Denny
Beatings. To his credit he would
wake up the next morning and I don’t know if the beatings gave him amnesia,
but it would be like it never happened. He would be back to his jovial self with
Mama in the morning as she made us Cream of Wheat and between spoonfuls he was
already planning the day’s activities.
After school during those days we would
go to Aunty Talin because Mama was at work, and normally didn’t get home until
early evening. So Aunty did a lot of the motherly things for us. She is my
uncle’s wife but her influence on us went way beyond those boundaries of not
being a blood relative. She waited on us like we were Kings; lunch was always
ready, our clothes washed and ironed and she would always give us whatever
change she could to put in our pockets. We
were the children she never had and all the love she would have given those kids
were bestowed upon my brother and I. She
was the first woman to show me genuine affection always hugging and kissing me
and never forgetting to tell me she loved me. Her faith in me never wavered that
I was a good person, and she would always try to save us from Mama Saline’s
beatings. She would beg for our sorry lives and for her I always wanted to be
better because her belief in me was unwavering.
As I got older she still saw me as the little boy she helped raised and I
hope that she has taken pride in the fact that she’s had a hand in the person
I am today.
The best days as a youngster growing in
Around this time a man was introduced in
our lives by mother, and it didn’t bother me one way or the other. Everyone
called him Apache and he basically left me alone and didn’t really try to be a
Daddy figure and I appreciated that. Maybe he should’ve but I can see why he
didn’t try. I was a pretty sullen kid and lived inside my mind and books most
times. I’m sure mother was just as perplexed by me and never quite knew what
to make of me so she also left me alone. Conversation
wasn’t a big part of our communication and only the mandatory things were
said: how was school, did you eat dinner, go take a shower or where is Denny?
That’s not to say she was fault I kept her at a distance never allowing
her anywhere near me. Even in her
stoicism, mother was funny. Sometimes when you wake up in the morning and your
brain isn’t quite yet operational you might have a tendency to mumble. Mother
saw this as a sign of disrespect. Did I sleep with you last night was what she
would always say when your half-hearted good morning got caught in your throat.
Yes you did sleep with me last night I felt like saying, but knowing that if I
said that not even God could save me from the hell she would unleash on me. So I
would clear my throat and like a good boy say a proper good morning. These
are just some of the memories I remember as a child, but the one memory I
don’t have and I’ve searched my mind to find it is a memory of my father and
I doing something fun. He was always away working off island and that’s where
he died. The only two memories I have of him is when he kicked his brother’s
ass for beating on Aunty Talin and when we were late to pick my mom up from work
one day. We were on the highway in his orange Nova and were driving at 100mph.
At five years old that was quite a rush to be driving so fast and not knowing
the dangers of such reckless driving. That’s
all I remember of my father. Then
one day we got the phone call that he had died and the chance for memories had
forever been lost. Sometimes you only get one chance to have those memories and
then you spend the rest of your life trying to make up for them in your mind.
Fantasy can only go so far to take the place of real emotional connections that
you will never have the chance to live.
Dean Jean-Pierre