Whipped and Beaten

06 Friday Jul 2012

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Hebrew-Israelite, Mount Vernon New York, Movies, race, Religion, Youth

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616, 616 East Lincoln Avenue, Child Abuse, Childhood, Judah ben Israel, Maurice Eugene Washington, Maurice Washington, Pookie

Whipped and beaten buttercream, October 10, 2010. (http://farm5.static.flickr.com/). In public domain.

Another day, another “thirty years ago on this date” post. But this one was my full confirmation that my childhood was over, that humans — especially Blacks males — couldn’t be trusted, and that I had a long way to go to make my life worth living (see my post “Another Day of Days” from July ’07 for more). It took years for me to undo the conclusions I drew from what occurred on this date.

My stepfather cut my Pookie hunt three days short on the sixth of July (see my “Lightning On A Cloudless Day” from last week) of ’82. Because I wasn’t man enough to actually find and confront Pookie to get the money back, it was now time for my whuppin’.

Whap! Whap! Whap!

“Are you gonna do what I say nigga!,” Maurice kept saying as he kept whipping me with his belt.

Kunta Kinte being whipped, Roots (1977) screenshot, July 6, 2012. (http://irvine.wikis.gdc.georgetown.edu). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws because of low resolution.

I stood there with my arms and legs stretched out — and with my pants and underwear pulled down to my ankles — in front of a grimy white wall in my room being whipped by him with his leather belt. I could hear the belt cut through the air before it landed on my nearly naked body. I assumed that he pulled this straight from the ABC miniseries Roots.

Whap! Whap! Whap!

“I’m yo’ father and yo’ gonna listen to me!” he barked.

As the inquisition continued, my room started to spin in my head, and the white walls turned yellow and red.

Whap! Whap! Whap!

“Are you gonna listen to me? Are you gonna listen to me?” he kept saying as each hit became harder and harder on my back, butt, and legs. I started seeing pools of blood forming on the ceiling and nothing but hatred was forming in my mind.

Whap! Whap! Whap!

“Are you gonna listen to me?,” he screamed.

“I hate you! I hate you! You’re not my father, you’re just a bully!” I yelled.

My stepfather then paused from whipping me. Punches and kicks followed about a second later. First came three punches to my head and jaw, after he spun me around from the wall.

“You hate me, huh nigga?!?”

Then he kicked me in the stomach and the mouth as I lay on the floor, at least until I started to spit blood. After I threatened to go to the police, Maurice picked me up and threw me by my arms four feet into a corner wall, almost knocking me unconscious.

“Go to the police, muthafucka! I dare you! If you talk to the police, I’ll kill you!,” he said.

When I came out of my daze, my stepfather told me to move out and go live with Jimme. He told me, “This is MY house. If you hate me get out!” A suitcase then greeted my head as my stepfather said, “Start packin’!”

Mom arrived from a long day at work, around 3:15 pm, as Mount Vernon Hospital was about to go on strike, and she wasn’t a part of the union. “My poor mom,” I thought. When she came into my room, she immediately became angry. “What happened?,” she asked. I told her the story, and she told me to unpack.

After five minutes of quiet, I heard her arguing with Maurice in the living room.

“He’s a defiant child. We have to get rid of IT!,” he said.

“Who pays the bills? Who feeds your fat black ass? If this child of mine leaves, we’re gonna turn this mutha out, and you’re gonna be the one goin’ to hell!,” Mom said in response. I guess she really didn’t remember what happened to her on Memorial Day.

My stepfather then walked into my room to say “Unpack, nigga.” I finished unpacking, and then I sat in my walk-in closet and began to cry. I hadn’t cried in the closet since the day I finished third grade, because Mrs. Shannon was no longer my teacher. I had a crush on her all through that year. Now I closed the closet door, wanting no light to shine on me.

I felt trapped, with no place to escape from the wrath of my stepfather. I thought about poisoning his food, the fat slob. Or slitting his throat when he was asleep, because he could sleep through a thermonuclear detonation. Then I thought about killing myself again. I could jump out of the window in the living room and land flat on the blue-gray slate walkway between 616’s front door and the five stairs leading to the sidewalk and street. I thought that one of us would have to die to end this senseless ordeal.

Muhammad Ali at end of last fight, SI cover, October 13, 1980. (http://www.crowntiques.com). Qualifies as fair use under US Copyright laws because of low resolution.

I discovered that my waking nightmare had just begun. It turned out that my ribs and stomach were bruised, I had another knot on my forehead, my lower lip was busted, and my butt and right leg had bloody scars on them as a result of the belt. And I knew, all too well now, that there was more to come.

If there’s anything to learn from my experience, it’s to not wait for a teacher to notice — in my case, the late Harold Meltzer — or twenty years to feel comfortable enough to talk about your child abuse without being embarrassed.

Before The Fall

28 Monday May 2012

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Hebrew-Israelite, Marriage, Mount Vernon New York, Movies, music, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

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"Stuck In A Moment", 616, 616 East Lincoln Avenue, Angel Eyes (2001), Battlestar Galactica, Captain Zimbabwe, Childhood, Cowardice, Crush #1, Cylon Attack, Domestic Violence, Fear, Maurice Eugene Washington, Maurice Washington, Memorial Day, My Mother, Nuclear Blast, Seventh Grade, Shock, Solar Flare

Cylon Raiders, Battlestar Galactica miniseries (2003), May 28, 2012. (http://tombsofkobol.com). BSG Theme Music (2003) [UK Version]

It’s Memorial Day ’12. It’s been thirty years since that fateful Memorial Day ’82. A part of me, the child that I was, still remains in that day, in the weeks and months before that day.

Little in my life in the previous three years bore a real resemblance to a carefree childhood. But I somehow managed to pretend my way through the three-year-period that included the birth of my younger brothers Maurice and Yiscoc, my idiot stepfather walking out with our food in October ’80, and the first year of the Hebrew-Israelite experiment (see my “Peanuts Land” post from last month).

The speed-of-light shockwave that was my love for Crush #1, and the interrelated turnaround of my grades

Solar flare, aka Coronal Mass Ejection, c. 2010, May 28, 2012. (NASA/GSFC/Solar Dynamics Observatory’s AIA Instrument). In public domain.

in the previous three months gave me a tenuous lifeline to what remained of my childhood self. Making it rain A’s in March, April and May that year reaffirmed the person I thought I was in sixth grade, despite the “Captain Zimbabwe” taunts that began from A and the Italian Club as we approached Memorial Day Weekend (see my post “The Legend of ‘Captain Zimbabwe’” from May ’09).

But the teetering and temporary bliss of grades and the crush on Crush #1 could only distract. They couldn’t delay, even as much as they helped me deny. They could in no way prepare me for the blinding light, the initial shockwave and heat, the full blast effect of what was coming.

It was 5 pm that Memorial Day Monday when it began.

“I’m sick and tired of you treating me this way. I’m sick of you not lovin’ me!,” my stepfather yelled.

“What do you mean ‘love you’?,” Mom said. “Most women wouldn’t even put up with your stinkin’ ass. And now you want more money for a business that I’m not even a part of? You must be kiddin’!”

Mom was on the phone in the master bedroom, while my stepfather yelled into the phone in the kitchen, back in the days when land-lines ruled the world. She picked up the bedroom phone because my stepfather had made a long-distance call to his wayward mother in California, at a time when we were seriously behind on paying the bill. I didn’t understand why he’d want to continue to talk to a woman who abandoned him as a baby to his relatives in Richmond, Virginia and Trenton, New Jersey in ’50. It seemed to me that Maurice was wasting time and money on a woman who cared for him as little as he cared for us.

I was lying down on my bed across the hall from the master bedroom, trying my hardest not to pay any attention to the unfolding drama. With both of them yelling over the phone, though, I couldn’t block their argument out any longer. So I sat up in my bed — giving me a view from our room across the hall into Mom’s bedroom — and continued to listen.

This was one of many arguments over bills and my stepfather’s wack attempts to start a telecommunications business. He had used $2,500 of Mom’s precious money to get a New York State business license for “Sun-Lion Communications” (see my post “Dumb Ass Communications, Inc.” from March ’11 for more). Somehow, Mom’s $15,000-a-year income was supposed to be enough to feed six people and get a business off the ground floor? “Their arguments are insane,” I thought.

I usually could tune them out. But not this time, and not anytime since.

“Who you talkin’ to, bitch!,” Maurice yelped as he punched Mom in the jaw. He followed up with a kick to her stomach and a forearm that knocked her into the queen-sized bed. With each hit he shouted “Are you gonna gimme some respect, bitch!” A moment later, Maurice poured an industrial-sized bucket of water on Mom to wake her up, but that didn’t completely work.

Parisians in shock, tears as German soldiers march into Paris, June 14, 1940. (National Archives). In public domain.

For a full two-minutes, I just stood there. I was in shock, scared for Mom, scared for all of us. Somewhere in that time, my stupid stepfather had escaped the apartment, not to come back for two days, while my mother lay there, nearly lifeless.

I snapped out of it, determined to wake my Mom up. She was groggy, concussed from the battering she took. I sat her up, talked to her, and eventually helped her out of her waterlogged bed down the hallway to the living room, where she lay on the couch for the next day or so.

I should’ve called the cops. As much as I’d been taught not to trust them, I just should’ve dialed 911 and done the deed. What a coward I was! I should’ve done what Jennifer Lopez’s character did in Angel Eyes (2001). It certainly would’ve been easier. In that one decision, I could’ve reported Maurice’s heinous crime, gotten him arrested and jailed, and ended this sham of a marriage and family. Assuming, of course, that my Mom would’ve pressed charges.

Instead, I settled for a psychological and literal guerilla war which left me battered myself by summer’s end and willing to commit suicide within nineteen months. Most of all, I was stuck in that moment (Stuck In A Moment You Can’t Get Out Of), in the weeks and months before that moment, for nearly seven years.