Obedience!

A Poem by angelina neves

http://www.writerscafe.org/contests/6562/ - challenge: Write anything at all having to do with your childhood.

During my childhood, most of the time, I was a pacific child. I was very patient with others children and special with the adults strange ways. But I was called “pacific resistance” because, although I never said “no”, or scream and fight, I would say: “ok! I will see!” and then just didn’t do it or if I had to do what I was told I would do it was in may way!

Since I remember I hated that some one “ordered” me around! If it was in an “order” form most probably I wouldn’t do it, even if I would to be punished in some way or another! But when anyone would ask me for a favor, I would do anything with pleasure.

I don’t really know what come from what: if my mother taught me to say “please” and she said it too and it become something that should be done this way and I didn’t accept any other way; or if it was just the way I was and people had to “adapt” to it, and knowing how I worked decided to ask me to do something instead of ordering it to me.

Because of my ways, when I was around 13 years old, I had one of the big marks of my life.

My grandmother, with whom we lived, thought that girls should know how to sew and during the school holidays we should do a tablecloth or something like that, to add to our “trousseau”. I loved to do any hand work and enjoy the afternoons joining with my sisters and my grandmother sewing and the talking about little things of life and telling stories.

But, more then anything else, I adore reading! I would dive into a book and live all the adventures and laugh and cry with the personages of the story I was reading. I could spend most of my holidays reading one book after the other in my grandfather’s office.

One day, as I was reading a very interesting romance, my grandmother passed by and told me: - it is time for us to go and sew! – I answer her that I would go in a moment as I was nearly finishing a very interesting chapter.

She went and I finished the chapter but I couldn’t resist starting the next one, and then I couldn’t stop, because each time was more grasping! My grandmother called me again and again and I would answer: “I’m going! Just a moment”…

Until she got very angry and come to where I was, toke the book away from my hands, and said she wouldn’t give the book back to me before I finished sewing all the tablecloth… that would take me nearly the all holidays as the tablecloth was big and needed much work.

I got furious and as I couldn’t read my book, I wouldn’t also sew the tablecloth and to make very clear, I pick up the cloth and a scissor and cut it into little pieces and when to give it to my grandmother, telling her: If I can’t read, I will never sew again!

It was the time of my grandmother get really furious and she went to my father complaining about what I did, and that she didn’t know what to do with me.

At that time my father was already very ill and lying in bed. He had no strength, just some in his arms. So he called me and he told me to lie on his legs with my back up. Then he said that we didn’t have a thing of our own, he couldn’t help anymore and we couldn’t just throw away what ever was given to us. So he was going to beat me. He asked for a belt, that I suppose my grandmother gave to him, and he started to strike in my back.

I knew that he was just waiting for my to say a little “ai” so he could stop. But I didn’t make a sound. I just lied there silence. And it wasn’t really hurting me.

My father got carried away and he was not only striking me but beating in all the life’s misery, in his incapability of taking care of us, in all the sadness in his heart and his fears. I don’t know how but I knew this, and I thought it would be good for him to do it.

After some time I heard my grandmother screaming at me to please get up and go away, and trying to push me from there. But, calmly and secure I told her to let go of me and let my father do it as he felt like.

At this time my father realized what he was doing and he stops. I got up and went. My back was all marked with red stripes with blood. So I went to fetch a dress I had that didn’t have cloth at the back and put it.

When my grandmother saw it, asked me if I wasn’t ashamed to show others that I had been beaten. And with pride I told her:

- I’m not the one that should be ashamed! This will show others how I’m treated at this house and you are the one that will be ashamed!

She told me that it wasn’t her that had beat on me. But I told her that it was her fault, as my father was very ill, and if someone would ask me who did it I would say it was her!

Well, that dress disappears after I took it out at night and I never saw it again! But I was never asked again to go and sew and, even though I miss it some times, I didn’t go back on what I decided and never again pick up a sewing needle!

May be that is why I could never understand the so called “domestic violence”! I was only 13 and I knew that the shame was not on me and I refuse to hide it from anyone!

- How can “grown up” people accept it?

So, even today, with 57 years old, I think: The so called “Grown up” are such strange beings!