This Is How We Do It
International Women’s Day
This little memoir is to celebrate the International Women’s Day, to celebrate my daughter (11 years old at that time) who’s growing up, too quickly though, to become a wonderful woman.
I’m coming back from a school meeting with my daughter’s tutor and feel my head would explode in a second. A large part of the time the tutor devoted to discussing a curious case of a classmate who beats up everybody around him, no matter if it’s a boy or a girl. I think to myself, “Jeeeeeez! It’s highly likely my baby-girl is a victim of violence at school and I haven’t the slightest idea! I know her so well, she’s such a tough and secretive child! What kind of mother am I? I haven’t noticed anything and my child might be suffering in silence, all alone!”
Soon I recall when I once peeped through a window and saw my kid hiding in the corner of the room in the kindergarten with tears falling down her cheeks and children running wildly around. Nobody saw her crying, neither the caregivers nor the peers. My daughter was a newcomer, had no friends at that time and was in a terrible pain, yet didn’t complain at all. She hid away from us parents the tortures she was going through during this difficult adjustment period at a new place. That’s the way our child is. Even when something bad happens, she just clenches her fists and teeth and never sheds a tear in front of anybody else but herself.
I enter the house, Carol’s sitting on the couch with a cell in her hand and I, as if nothing happened at all, start to clean it all up in the kitchen. After some time, while wiping the counter and the kitchen table, I mention the name of Mark randomly, how ill-tempered he can sometimes become. Carol does admit that indeed the moron adores smashing whatever or whoever close at hand. In my head I rant, “Great! The tip of the ice-berg! Here it comes — the remaining part of it!”
So I ask her, “Has he ever hit YOU?”
Carol frowns in an attempt to collect her thoughts, “Actually, yes, he has, once.”
Fantastic! Standing ovation for me — the best mother of all time! My baby’s bullied and I’m DEAF and BLIND! I’ve failed to notice these small suspicious deviations in her behavior and voice!
In other words, I get into a mad panic so I cry to her,
“And what? What happened? Tell me please! Please tell me!”
Carol, surprised a bit by my enthusiasm, gives a very long yawn and replies lazily,
“Nothing fascinating happened really, mum. I simply gave him a strong push, quickly knocked him down to the ground, then kicked him hard several times in the ass and …ran off. Since then he’s never bothered me again.”
©2020 Marta Mozolewska. All rights reserved.
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