 illustration by A.J. Garces |
a couple of teen summers I worked at Galveston’s Nautilus Motel on 25th and Seawall Boulevard, in the snack bar/gift
shop next to the pool. I made fountain drinks and grilled cheese sandwiches for
the tourists, and free cheeseburgers for the surfers, if they were cute and
funny. I served burned toast to Mr. Lassiter, a permanent resident of the motel
who stumbled in bleary-eyed every morning asking for just that, and cherry
cokes to the very tan lifeguard who showed me how to operate the pay phone with
a flattened straw. When my friend Juliet was working there, too, we could take
turns dashing across the Boulevard to check out the surf, or whatever; and when
we weren’t working, we could hang out at the counter and sip malts.
Across the room from our station was another counter, specifically for the
gift shop section, and usually manned by a bleached blonde who we called Mrs.
Dugan. She was nice, but often weepy. Many times she would come in with bruises
and black eyes; once she even had a broken arm. “I’m so clumsy,” she would tell
us, which I was willing to believe, but Juliet, who had an older sister and was
a little more savvy, thought she had a drinking problem which caused her to
fall down steps and run into walls. It never occurred to either one of us that
Mr. Dugan might be hitting her. We had met him and he seemed real nice.
Juliet and I both came from large families headed by diligent parents whose
child-rearing philosophy included certain corporal punishment techniques used
to drive home points about safety or ethics or acceptable behavior. One could
be spanked for foolish flirtations with danger or for lying or for extreme
recalcitrance in spite of repeated warnings. Serious parents felt that a
well-deserved spanking was their duty, and had read so in books by respected
authorities.
We were never beat to bleeding or broken bones, and we did not live in fear of
being hit. My father, an easygoing man, never came home drunk, never abused my
mother, and in fact, never hit a single one of us even one time. My mother got
to be the heavy who designed the rules and administered the discipline. Her
rules were many, but they were fair, and as far as abuse goes, we suffered far
more torture at the hands of each other than we ever did at any of our elders.
The 10 of us fought constantly, teasing and yelling, goading and tricking each
other, hitting and calling names. My mother screamed incessantly at us. “Stop
that goddamned fighting” and “Quit teasing him” and “If you hit her one more
time, I’m going to whip you.” This latter threat we found incongruous, and only
briefly effective in curbing the insatiable childish urge to get a rise out of
a sibling with a poke or a slap. These behaviors were never exhibited in
public, nor directed at any other playmates, and would dissipate with maturity.
We all did eventually stop the bickering, and my mother was able to give up
spanking people. All that was left after that was the arm squeeze, that firm
grasp of the upper arm usually administered in public and meaning:
Straighten up. You are treading on thin ice.
If we knew any battered children, we didn’t know it; and even though we heard
the grown-ups talk over coffee about this friend or that, we didn’t get it. I
always thought the story about “Margo” was funny. One night she’s finally had
enough, and she pins her dead-drunk and perennially mean husband in a bed sheet
and beats him senseless with a cast-iron skillet. At the end of the story when
Margo walks away, I felt the pleasure of her triumphant revenge without
understanding the years of torment that had brought her to commit such a
desperate act. Later I would wonder why didn’t she just leave him long before
it came to that; why Mrs. D. stuck around for another black eye; how women
could love hateful men, and even sacrifice their children to them. Maybe Margo
had been taught to nurture and forgive, to blame herself, and to believe her
partner when he kept promising to change. Maybe Margo and her husband had seen
their fathers hit their mothers, and grew up believing that society accepted it
as normal.
We went to Catholic school where we were busy with bingo and bazaars and school programs and Mass. We had
a lot of responsibility both at home and at school, and we felt part of the
process. My mother was loud and generous, my father hard-headed and friendly.
Their lives were about making it from day to day, about working hard and
helping others. My mother said that all people were good, even if a few of them
had a hard time showing it, and I believed what she said. I believed what I
saw. I accepted the mayhem of our packed household and nonstop lives as normal.
When I left my mother’s house, I knew how to be loud and generous, hard-headed
and friendly. I certainly knew how to get along with people without hitting
them. My mother’s rules had molded me into the good person that she had
promised all people were, and I na�vely expected the real world to work
like one big happy family.
When I met Paul, I did not understand the signs. His mother, a broken,
beat-down woman with a timid voice and skittish manner, was a big one. She
seemed afraid of everything, especially Paul, who bullied and bossed her about.
His father, I gathered, was a drunken asshole who had finally abandoned them
all, though not before he had done enough damage to last a lifetime. Paul
himself was a nice guy, until he got drunk, and then he was a maniac.
It took me a few months to ferret all this out, and I was able to break it off
before he actually ever hit me. Had I been tied down with his children, or
dependent upon him financially, it might not have been so easy. As it was, I
paid a terrible price, for his exit gesture was one of extreme violence. In a
rage, he upturned every bit of furniture and broke every ounce of glass in my
home. Mirrors lay in shards on top of books and clothes and dishes and
foodstuffs. He wrote insults on the walls with lipstick. He took a metal post
and battered the cupboards and doors. There was not one single thing that he
did not hurt in some way, and he left his own blood everywhere, a victim
himself of falling objects and shattered glass. Afterwards he drove himself to
the state hospital, and checked
in. There he was safe from any
repercussions. At the police station I learned that he had a prison record, and
a history of violence against his ex-wife. When she tried to leave, she landed
in a hospital for several weeks.
It took months and many friends to clean up the mess. A year later, I was
still stepping on bits of glass. Years later, I have still not recovered from
the embarrassment of my own stupid na�vete. But I did live to tell it. It
could have too easily gone another way. I could be Margo or Mrs. Dugan, or
dead, had life been presented to me differently.
My mother made it look so easy, raising children. You just whip out the tough
love and they turn out to be, like we did, like so many of my spanked
generation did, responsible and giving adults. But it’s just too easy to cross
the line of tough love into a loveless tough, and conventional wisdom no longer
supports the hitting of children.
My friends want theirs to “use their words” and not their fists to express
themselves, their feelings, frustrations and needs. The irony is that upstairs,
in their rooms, my friends’ children are hitting and teasing each other, just
like we used to do, and for no good reason, except that there is apparently
something violent in the human being, something that must be checked and
channeled, because it can’t be changed. “If you don’t quit hitting her, I’m
going to whip you.”
My mother threatened violence to curb violence. My father never hit me. My
brother did, and I just hit him back.
Freelance writer and Gulf Coast native Jerri Kunz is best known for her
quirky hat and clothing designs.
This article appears in March 14 • 1997 and March 14 • 1997 (Cover).