Fighting and Arguing My Parents Finally Separated

¶ … fighting and arguing my parents finally separated when I was thirteen. The final break-up was one thing, but all the events that preceded were as difficult to cope with. When I look back at the events through my childhood lens I can remember some things very vividly and some things are a blur. Growing into adulthood and trying to have a relationship of my own must have been affected by the incidents that occurred in the home during my early childhood years.

I was the fifth of my parents' six children and it is only as I became an adult and began to understand things that I realised what a burden it was on my parents, financially, emotionally and otherwise, to raise six children. So that by the time I came along they were already so stressed out. It must be therefore that from the time I was born there was tension and quarrelling in the house almost constantly. What was the most difficult to deal with was the violence.

I am not sure when the physical violence started, maybe it was before I was born, but I only remember it from when I was about eight. There were several instances since that and I can distinctly remember to this day how scared I used to be.

Though I can't tell exactly what I was scared about- that my mother would be so badly beaten that she might die? That my father would turn his anger on one of us? That we were so little and helpless? The one particular incident that I remember most occurred very late one night. The children were all asleep and I can only guess at what preceded the incident, but the memory started with my mother running from the marital bedroom through our room in the middle of the night.

She was closely followed by my father with a strap beating her as he would one of us children. It was astounding to me that an adult would beat another adult in such a manner. Fear gripped me. All the siblings woke up and for a few short moments we all stood there paralysed by fear. Not one of us dared to stop him. However, I suppose I could not take any more of it.

My first thought was why neither of my elder brothers was doing anything to stop it. Surely this was the male's job. But they were only eleven and thirteen at the time. I am not sure what came over me but I made a snap decision to do something. I figured if I screamed then at least a neighbor would hear and do something. So that is what I did; screamed at the top of my lungs. Never before and probably never after have I screamed like that.

I didn't even stop to think of any other consequences. All I wanted was for the hitting to stop. It worked. I think my father was shocked out of his wits, because he immediately stopped. There was a slight look of defeat in his eyes. Perhaps it was the first time that anyone that objected to his behavior and expressed that objection so vociferously. And a child at that! There was temporary relief for me as we all quietly crept back into our beds.

I was still fearful because I knew that my father would not be defeated so easily and would have to have his revenge on me. I lay there waiting for something more.