The following is based on an account of nine-year old Kristen.
Kristen and her younger brother Gerald were huddled on the floor beside the couch. Kristen was hugging her little brother. Gerald was shaking. Kristen could hear her brother's teeth clenching. Gerald was terrified. Kristen was, too. But she was the older one. She had to protect her little brother.
They could both hear their parents in the other room. They were fighting. "Daddy is drunk again. I wonder how much he had to drink today. It must be a lot!" thought Kristen. She could tell that her daddy was hurting her mommy. Her mommy was crying and telling him to stop. "He just hit her with something really hard, I can't tell. But it must have really hurt. I can tell from her moaning," Kristen thought.
Just a couple of weeks ago, he hit her mommy with a baton. (Kristen had joined the town band and was training to be a majorette that summer.) Her parents had a huge fight that night. The baton must have been the first thing that he spotted when he had the urge to hit her. After that fight, her mommy asked Kristen to come with her to the doctor's clinic. It was just a couple of blocks away from their place. Her mommy had a huge bruise on her forehead where she was hit. Kristen was so frightened but she wanted to be there for her mommy. It was already late at night.
There weren't too many people in the streets. Good thing, Kristen thought. They didn't have to explain what happened to her mommy. When the doctor asked what happened, her mommy told the doctor that she accidentally hit a pole really hard and got badly bruised. Kristen felt that it was her fault that her mommy got hit by the baton. She thought that if she had not joined the band, if she had not wanted to be a majorette, her mommy would not have gotten hurt that night. Kristen never held that baton after that night. The following summer, she did not join the band.
"Why did Daddy have to hurt Mommy so bad when he's drunk?" wondered Kristen. "He's not like that when he's sober. I like him when he's not drunk. He makes jokes. He makes us laugh. We go on outings with other families. We are a happy family. The other night, he helped me with my art project, which I didn't finish at school. He stayed up late with me until it was all done. He helps me with my Math homework. He makes them easy for me to understand. Last summer, he went with me to his hometown when Mommy and Gerald couldn't go. We had a good time with our vacation there. I love Daddy so much, but why does he turn into a monster whenever he had too much to drink?"
"Gerald always gets so frightened. Sometimes I think that he gets angry. He clenches his teeth whenever we're huddled here on the floor listening to the beating. Sometimes I hear him at night grinding his teeth in his sleep. He's probably having dreams about their fight. Poor little Gerald. He's only five years old. I wonder if he really understands any of this. I hope that he doesn't grow up to hate Daddy because he's really a good man when he's not under the influence of alcohol."
The fighting and the beating had stopped. Her daddy had gone to the bedroom. He must have been sleeping now. Kristen could still hear her mommy sobbing. She looked over at Gerald. He had fallen asleep. Kristen could hear her daddy snoring in the bedroom. The coast was clear. She came up to her mommy and hugged her. Her mommy's right eye was swollen and was black and blue. Her mommy carried Gerald to his bed. She then tucked Kristen to bed. Kristen gave her mommy a big hug and whispered, "I'm sorry, Mommy." Her mommy said, "It's not your fault, Kristen. Good night."
The preceding account happened at a time and place where there were no AA(Alcoholics Anonymous) or any other organizations that help alcoholics and battered women. We do have those nowadays. If you or someone you know is in an abusive relationship, or is an alcoholic who wants to change his/her ways, please seek help. As you can see from the above account, not only do the alcoholic and the abused/battered woman need help, the children are traumatically affected in this kind of environment, and need help, too.
