If I knew then what I know now.

when i was in college, i was a boarder at the large home of a good family in the “big city“. i will call the parents of this family aunti babs and uncle oda. well the dirty little secret of this “good familY’ was that the husband was very possessive and insecure and he beat his wife when she went “missing.” like if she was late coming home from church. for months i lived there and no beatings took place. one of the older boarders said that he never beat her when their highschool and college aged sons were around. the sons had grown up with that and when they were older, they would physically get in the way and stop the dad from beating her.

one day, auntie babs was 3 hours late coming home from church. the church she went to was near a market. she must‘’ve got got caught up in window shopping at the market that she had forgot to come home on time. when she came home, both her sons were not yet home from school. for about two hours before she came home uncle oda had been screaming at the maids, “where is she?” over and over again. everyone, including me, were shaking. i was up in my room hiding trying to do my homework.

auntie babs got home by bus... uncle oda confronted her and she ran from room to room trying to get away from him. she tried to hide behind the maids. they stood there shivering in fear from that man, but at the same time wanted to protect her. of course they couldn’t, so she even ran to my room. i was the only boarder at home at the time. we locked the door but he was banging like crazy to get in threatening that he would break the door down. i guess she felt bad for me being part of this so she ran to the next room and locked the door and he screamed and screamed for her to open the door. well after a few awful minutes she opened it. from my room I could hear him slapping her around.  

this was my first time ever to see any man treat any woman like this. i had grown up in a family where if anyone did beat their wives, they at least did it in secret. that, or my uncles and grandpa and granduncles really were very decent husbands and never beat their wives. i just didn’t see it. also, i was raised a good catholic school girl, such a goody two shoes. I never questioned authority. we were all raised to never question the parents, the elders, especially the father-folk. people were so good and nice in my family, i just never saw folk being terrible to each other like this.

well—-that incident shook my world... i would never not stop questioning authority and men again. i would never think that they always knew right.  

if i knew then what i know now, i would have defended her. i would have gotten between uncle oda and auntie babs and told him to stop. I would have said that love is more important than fear. and that uncle oda must confront his fear of not knowing where auntie babs is at times, confront the cause of his insecurities that she might be having an affair... confront his fear that because he was an awful husband he was afraid that she would leave him.

i came away from that time very ashamed that I never helped auntie babs get away from his physical blows... or from that man. I felt so helpless. it still brings tears to my eyes thinking about that time.

now I live in another country far away from them. i can only pray that all is well with them and that their sons did not continue on with that “family tradition” of wife beating.

if i knew then what i knew now, i would have helped that beloved woman. I wouldn’t have been scared of that man, i would have pitied him.