My brother’s beating
I was never able to prove it, but I suspect that my brother’s lifelong brain issues (epilepsy, diabetes insipidus as well as paranoid schizophrenia) were caused by a beating I witnessed at the age of five.
I know that I could not have been more than five because my brother, three years younger, was in diapers and the only word he knew how to speak was “Daddy” at the time.
I stood on the hard tiled floor beside my mother as she washed up dishes, when my father entered the house through the back kitchen door. He stood in the doorway, distraught over something as usual. She was scolding and they were going back and forth, neither were happy.
My little brother came running into the kitchen and up to my father, arms stretched upwards, crying, “Daddy, Daddy!” and wanting to be picked up.
It was making it difficult for Dad to speak and Mom was scolding him when suddenly, my father scooped my baby brother up in a rage and twirled him around, turning him upside down and right side up again, in a violent motion, as Johnny shrieked in terror. Then he held him upright and gave him a good shake, then slammed him against the wall and walked away, scowling in disgust, as my brother slumped to the floor. All the while I looked to my mother to stop this wild beast that had just entered our home and was hurting my baby brother.
But she only looked at my father and snickered at him, as if she’d won some kind of victory. He had just proven that he was the bad guy and she was not. They walked away bickering and left my baby brother, a crying heap on the floor.
I never told my parents, or my brother, that I witnessed what I witnessed. I was that afraid of my parents and I was afraid it would cause harm to my brother, he was already suffering from paranoia. I was also a coward and didn’t want to make waves. I did, however, tell one of my sisters over an over again, decade after decade, but I was never sure that she really believed me or understood the severity. I suppose she didn’t want to believe it.
I almost told my brother once … a day that turned out to be a very fateful day … the wind was blowing the curtains and it felt like a great healing was about to occur … there are many times throughout life when the injured are touched by grace … it’s good to recognize it when you can.
I almost told my mother once, what I saw, and what I never forgot … it was met with immediate resistance.
My father, many times, apologized for being a raging lunatic. I was able to forgive him. My mother … it took a few years.
On top of this great misfortune, my brother spent the rest of his school years in special ed, being teased by an entire student body in an upper middle class all white school.
After that he spent two decades in a halfway house, unemployable, abandoned and forgotten for most of those years. I was a paycheck to paycheck single mom living a state away, but was able to spend a few precious months with him before his diagnosis, and few summer visits until he succumbed. This is where I believe that grace comes into our lives …. but grace does not come, sometimes at least, until the ground has been worked with great despair and grief. I don’t like it that way. It just seems to be that way.
Oikos 