Continued, my story the way I never told it before, part 1:

I was born into (at the time) an underdeveloped country, an area occupied by new, unsettled, and uneducated immigrants. The general attitude and understanding was that a child’s mental constitution was determined at birth, and/ or was a matter of the child’s independent choices, that is, choices independent of how the child was treated.

How parents treated their children was considered a matter of no relevance to the child’s mental-emotional health. If a child was mentally unhealthy then it meant (according to this attitude) that the child was born that way. If the child (at any age) acted in generally dis-approvable ways, it meant that the child was bad (not sick), and needed to be punished (not helped).

The dominant attitude was that a child was his/ her parents’ property to do with as they pleased- as long as bones weren’t broken and blood was not shed. People who witness any lesser forms of child abuse (forms that do not include visible, severe physical injury or death) did not interfere. Those who cared did not interfere because they didn’t want to get hurt in the crossfire;  be attacked by the angry parent. The mentality was that it is a parent’s Right to do with their child as they pleased, that it was no one’s business how they treated their child, as in saying: my child is for me to do with as I please; your child is for you to do with as you please!

I have this particular memory that left a big impression on me: I was maybe a preteen, maybe a teenager, visiting a neighbors’ house, also visited by the neighbors’ relatives from the U.S. The American relative, a mother, felt the need to .. discipline her son. She did it inside the house while her sister and others (including me) sat or stood close to the door outside the house. What followed were blood churning screams of her preteen son. All you could hear were his screams and the sound of whatever it was that she used to hit him with, and that went on for a long time. At the end of it, the mother was done with the deed, everyone was quiet and no mention of it ever followed.

Here is another scene: I was an older teenager (high school) and failed to be at home in the afternoon for the meal my mother prepared for me. Angry, she walked the 5-10 minutes to where I was, and walked me back home while calling me names, hitting, kicking and shoving me with her arms and legs. It was done on then street in broad daylight with people watching. No one interfered.

I remember being inside the apartment where we lived, after dark, a thin wall shared with the next door neighbors, she was screaming and yelling at me (and hitting my face with her open hand, right to left, left to right), and I remember wondering: can’t the neighbors hear this?.. They heard and were silent, never a mention of it.

But my mother went beyond what other adults in the neighborhood did: I remember the day she got angry with a music teacher in the primary school I attended (not following something that happened between her and the teacher, but following what someone said the teacher said). She walked up to the school- while it was in session- finding the correct classroom, and standing outside of it, she demanded that the teacher steps outside. She proceeded, for a long time, to scream and yell at the teacher, calling her names, threatening to beat her up (maybe she did, I don’t remember). All of the pupils including me (I was mortified), and school personnel stood there watching. No police was called. (I have no memory of there being a police force where I lived). When my mother was done, she walked back home.. and of all the children, I got to go home with… the crazy woman.

Following the above, nothing happened. There was no follow up: no psychological counseling offered for me, or for my mother, or for anyone present in school that day. There was no mention of it, that I know of.

Part 2 of my story will be next.

anita