He was never very happy with his lot. His own brothers considered him an outcast and preferred not to associate with him, lest their favorable position with their peers be undermined. He learned to be content, living in his bedroom, or on the maid's stairs coming up from the kitchen, where the aromas of food he would never enjoy would be allowed to permeate every pore in his body. The staircase became his friend. He was truly a product of his environment, however absurd.
He had suffered many beatings with whatever was handy, a coat hanger, a hairbrush, a vacuum pipe, but there was a favorite his mother liked, a "jam spoon". He came to hate the jam spoon. He was responsible for causing them to break, thereby guaranteeing him another beating. His knuckles would bruise and sometimes bleed from these episodes. His secret pleasure was in breaking a brand new spoon. There was one episode too many. She reached across the table to serve another mighty blow, missed, and broke her arm on the unrelenting table. It was all he could do to keep from breaking out in laughter. She sent him to his room, where he jumped on the bed and buried his face in a pillow, screaming with pleasure. He later was ashamed of himself for his glee at another's misfortune.
The tools of his beatings changed. His father had cut a broom handle off to about 2 feet. He sent him to his room to get three of his oldest belts. His father always needed a sharp knife for work. Taking his knife to the belts, off came the buckles, then the belts were divided along their lengths into three pieces, as he was made to watch the process. The nine lengths were then taped to the pole, each length having a small knot tied to the end of it. His father asked, "Do you know what this is?", "It's a cat-o-nine tails, go to the basement!" There, his father put a clean handkerchief in his mouth and told him to bite.
One of his younger brothers, his roommate, his nemesis, his antagonist, constantly caused him beatings. The brother would lie like a rug, bald-facedly, to agitate him, irritate him and finally cause enough trouble, to assure him another beating. He cried often, after all he was only eleven years old and the beatings would never end, beatings in school, beatings at home.
Then one day, his final reckoning came. The boys were seated on the bench in the kitchen, like birds in the nest, waiting to be fed. His mother was upstairs. His brother, the antagonist, walked across the kitchen and lit a match. Being the oldest of the group, he grabbed the matches from his younger brother and put them back on the shelf. It was only seconds before his mother called out, "What's burning down there?", "You'd better answer me before I come down there!" Dead silence. He started to do a steady decline as his mother entered the kitchen. "I'll ask you each again…". All the boys, in turn, answered "No", except him, to whom asking a question was not necessary, 'process of elimination'. It was obvious to all what was next. It was a Saturday and his mother gave his brothers money for the movies. He was told to go get the 'whip'. Kneeling down over the bed she began to whip him. At his young age he had developed a high tolerance for pain. She would ask if he lit the match, and he would answer, "No", whereupon she would continue the beating because he had lied. She would ask again, if he had lit the match, and he would answer, "Yes" whereupon she would continue the beating for his 'guilt'. He amused himself by alternating his responses. This continued for over four hours.
This was the final day of any kind of physical abuse. It was an answered prayer. It was as if someone had flipped a switch.
That day, he knew he had done right. He held no grudge.
No comments:
Post a Comment