The Barbados Girls
Author’s note: The following piece is a commentary on domestic violence and the benefits of mindfulness in schools. It contains language that some may find offensive.
On a balmy night in August 2013, my gentle island sleep was shattered by a horrific anger.
“YOU FUCKING CUNT!!!” a male voice screamed violently. A door outside my Hilton hotel room aggressively slammed shut.
“Come on girls! We’re GOING!” a women’s voice answered tartly. From what I could tell, two little girls followed her into the hallway, their small voices crying out with fear.
As if on alert for crisis, I quickly scrambled in the dark for my glasses, found the phone and dialed the front desk.
“We have an incident on the 2nd floor. Send someone up right away.” It was about 2:30 am.
The woman and her two children must have found their way back into the hotel room. The man was ferociously beating on the door.
“OPEN THE FUCKING DOOR!” he demanded.
Although I could only hear, and not see the frenzy, it gave me the mental picture of psychopathic Jack Nicholson in the Shining.
Frozen, terrified, I scrounged around for my phone and texted my best friend in Australia.
“Are you there??” In fact, she was and I recounted the details with my nervous fingers.
As the banging and yelling continued, at some point I called the front desk again and told them they needed to send the police. By that time, they said, other guests had been calling too.
As I texted my friend for comfort and distraction, the domestic violence dispute, seemingly fueled by alcohol, dragged on for hours. Over the duration, it mutated from terrifying rage to pathetic despair. With police eventually on the scene, the drunken aggressor was in tears, moaning to them about how the girls’ mother was just using him for his money.
“She treats me like an animal,” he wailed loudly.
Earlier that day, I had seen them, all four of them. They were staying in the room across from mine on a picturesque beach in Barbados. As we passed in the hallway, the two girls said “hello” to me. They were shy, tentative, but polite. As I reflected in retrospect, it felt like they showed me the kind of smile you give when you’re trying to pretend everything is all right. The man accompanying them also offered a friendly “hello.” Although this article is in no way a commentary on race, I surmised that they were from separate families; the girls and their mother were black and the man who was with them was white.*
Sometime after the fracas quieted down, around 4am, I heard what I believe was one of the young girls, knocking on the hotel room across from me, “Ali… Ali…?” it sounded like she said. It seemed like she knocked for another hour, but no one ever answered.
Were the girls separated? Would that have made sense?
The morning after, I went down to the front desk and inquired about what had happened. The man and woman had been put in different rooms and left for Canada on separate flights. They never told me which room the girls slept in. Somewhat to my surprise, the hotel manager apologized profusely for disturbing my sleep, as I was there for a work conference.
“We told them they should apologize to every one of you. They disturbed many guests,” he told me.
“I’m not worried about my sleep,” I answered. “Those girls are in danger.”
He looked at me questioningly and said something about how the woman told him she was afraid.
At breakfast, I was despondent. Two other colleagues also heard what had happened, and one of them opened her door and saw a glass thrown down the hallway and shatter. They were disturbed, but not to the same extent.
Barely able to focus on work, I managed to hold myself together until I got back to my apartment in Manhattan. But the moment my partner answered the door, my sobs broke free. I cried all afternoon: for those girls I would never see again; those girls destined to grow up with crippling trauma; those girls with their uncertain smiles.
What would become of them? Why hadn’t I gone out there? Why was I so scared behind a closed door when they, so small, live this nightmare?
I knew why. I was afraid he was going to kill someone. And if he had a gun, he may have.
At the time, the Oscar Pistorius shooting story was all over the news. I did and do not have any idea if he is guilty of intentionally killing his former girlfriend, but after Barbados, my perception shifted. Murderous rage in the middle of the night exists and it destroys.
I convinced my partner to call the Hilton and see if we could get any more information, but the effort was to no avail. In the following weeks, I tried to call embassies and contact locals. Was there anything I could do? I had let them slip through my fingers.
Three years removed, it still haunts me. The faces of those two innocent girls pass through my mind all the time. They are with me now; they are part of me. As if to make up for letting them go, I often jump into tense situations between parents and children. I try to intervene with a small joke or distraction or anything to diffuse the strain of what may be a very normal and copacetic situation. Now a mother with my own children, every story of abuse, every distressed child’s cry, every thought of a neglected baby unsettles me, sometimes for days.
I think of the Barbados girls: their faces, their fear. I wonder where they are.
As a longtime practitioner of meditation, my recourse is to enter into the silence of my own heart. While it doesn’t eliminate struggle, it has brought me the same benefits that studies have now proven: reduced stress, greater self-understanding, more compassion and self-forgiveness.
Recently, I contacted an organization that offers mindfulness trainings in schools and offered my services. While only one approach, it has shown effectiveness in improving children’s emotional regulation, compassion and focus. In addition to benefiting those coping with severe trauma, it provides relief from everyday stressors.
Mindfulness benefits both the aggressors and the aggrieved. And for some children, school is the only safe place they have.
The Dalai Lama has said that, “If every 8 year old in the world is taught meditation, we will eliminate violence from the world within one generation.” I’m willing to take the risk that he’s right. If each act of violence wounds our planet’s soul, cultivating love and compassion is the way of healing.
When I sit down in silence, I often bring to mind the girls from Barbados. Across the distance of miles, across the distance between memory and reality, their sweet faces enter into my mind, and I send them love. Then because compassion doesn’t judge, I bring to mind their mother and the man who was with them and I send them love. I imagine them all happy, safe and peaceful, and I only hope they can feel it.
(*I have been asked to explain why this is relevant: the reason is that a child in the care of man who is not the biological father is more likely to be the victim of abuse, both physical and sexual.)
