by Beth Harden
“I agree, man. I friend of mine was brought up all Christiany and shit. His Pops was a pastor. None of those kids were allowed to do nuthin’. It was like, Get up, we got to go to church. They had no choice. They’d probably be running after money and cars and girls like men do. And check this out. One of 'em doin’ base now and two are incarcerated. I mean, what the fuck? Maybe their Pop was a hot-ass when he was younger. He gotta be cuz he had two kids outside his own family. He sure ain’t perfect,” Ortega says.
“Don’t drag religion into this. The church wasn’t at fault. It was the sins of the father,” Rev states coldly.
“Lissen, he’s keeping it real. Even religious people have fucked-up kids,” says Euclid. The men from the islands, the Dominicans and Puerto Ricans who have never heard of Hillary Clinton already understand it takes more than a village to raise a child. It takes a barrio full.
“If I got in trouble at school, the principal would whoop me and send me home,” Euclid said. He tells the class how in San Juan, discipline was everyone’s business. As he walked home in shame after being suspended, the aunt got the first whack in and then her neighbor, followed by an unemployed uncle or two. The fiercest barrage was dealt by the dominant grandmother who whipped him with a ficus switch until her fatty underarms were sore and then made him kneel on beds of rice with buckets of water suspended in his hands. And finally, when Moms arrived home from market, she dealt the final blows. The women were the ones that wielded the stick. But for all that corporal suffering, once the lamps were wicked out and the door to his bedroom locked, young Ortega was out the window and into the streets again.
“Did you come away from that experience feeling that it was discipline to help shape you or did it feel like abuse? Let me clarify, I’m not bashing anyone’s parents here. No judgment, but I’m curious to know how you feel about it now you’re looking back.”
“Sure it was abusive, but our moms did it out of love. That’s all they knew.” I can visualize these stocky women in black scarves wading through a herd of milking goats to get at the little scoundrel. My heart breaks for the little boys who thought the welts from flailing extension cords were the norm, along with the beatings for truancy that followed a week long absence from school while they were kept out waiting for their bruises to simmer down.
“Miss, you come from an abusive home?” Ortega asks. As a rule, I never reveal anything about my personal life. The true answer to his question is so out of context, it would be ridiculous to even suggest that non-communication and a flick on the bare thigh with a plastic flyswatter could fall in the same category. I smile and shake my head. As hard it is, we keep going, wading deeper into the murky world where violence evolves like a tadpole out of mud, sprouting limbs and becoming an angry man. It is a process prompted by genes and chromosomes and spurred to completion by a defective environment. If that half-formed creature had sucked up out of the rocky ground in Gust Harbor, Maine rather than a ratty quarter-acre of dusty sand worn down by pit bulls on chains, the worst he might have endured was the loss of a couple dollars allowance.
Tommy has had his hand raised for the past five minutes. My guess is that Tommy never progressed much farther than grammar school, but at least he had come away with one of its basic principles. He is the only one in the group who has grasped hold of this elementary courtesy; that is at least until someone pushes his trigger and that hand drops like a boom on their skulls. He doesn’t show up to class every session and he doesn’t always stay the full ninety minutes. It’s an impressive fact that Mr. Pisano has the desire to come at all without any mandate to do so and given his heightened levels of anxiety and agitation.
“Yes, please. Go ahead,” I say, acknowledging his adherence to etiquette.
“If you axe me, the first thing a baby gets is a heapin’ whack on the ass and it starts hollerin’ back. The doctor’s the first person made him mad. And then baby goes on home and he don’t get what he needs, he’s pissed as hell and figgers out that pipin’ up loud gets people to pay him notice.”
The conversation that ropes around the room is priceless. Here are grown men, many of whom have fathered batches of kids with who-knows-who, trying to describe the miracle of parenthood from their far-removed perspective. For many, it boils down to two roles in this fathering act. The first as the initial fertilizer spreader that often requires a paternity stamp of approval since there is more than reasonable doubt on the source of the seed. And in the second act, he becomes the collections-dodger when the child support enforcement paperwork starts streaming in. Yet deep in their hearts they mean well. It’s not all bullshit and bluffing. There often is genuine attachment to the idea of being the father they have never been or had. It is a badge of manhood to produce as many children as possible regardless of relationship status. Part of their purpose is to impregnate women who welcome another swollen uterus and crying mouth to feed. It ties them together as “family.” She now has the right to demand that he come to her bed periodically and bring money for the kids, and he has created a network of stopovers where he can escape nagging bitches or the police. It is an extended web of loosely-affiliated parents legitimized not by town hall or a Justice of the Peace, but by the church of conjugal union.
“Me and my baby mama make sure the kids is sleeping in the other room when we fight. That way, they don’t hear nuthin’,” Dent pipes up. He is visibly proud of the good psychology he is practicing on his offspring. Ten kids in a kitty-littered, TV-besieged three-decker apartment all crammed into the back bedroom when he starts throwing the Rent-A-Center dining set against the sheetrock walls.
“Don’t be so sure about that,” I reply. “Do you really think kids sleep through all that yelling and chaos? They probably have their ears to the wall, don’t you think?” Dent reconsiders his statement.
“When we watched a horror flick, we used to make Serge Junior sit behind the couch and cover his eyes so he didn’t watch shit he shouldn’t see,” says Serge Senior. A noble move he believes until I draw the pyramid diagram on the chalkboard and divide it up into thirds in order to illustrate how children absorb data. The tip-top sliver, the smallest portion represents what children see; the medium–sized segment in the middle is the amount that they hear and the remaining base of the figure, the majority of space, indicates what kids sense by awareness. This graphic always seems to work. It hadn’t occurred to them that what is out of sight is not necessarily out of mind.
“Listen, your kid behind the couch is hearing horrible shrieking and monstrous noises. He can’t see what’s going on so his brain imagines it. And what his brain is picturing may be far more disturbing than what’s actually happening. Kids are very tuned in to their environment. They are aware of a lot. Don’t underestimate them,” I urge.
For a brief moment, Serge analyzes his parental techniques based on this new knowledge; but then recalls his son is now twenty-seven years old and whatever he eavesdropped on from behind that mangy couch, be it chainsaw massacres, bloody shoot-outs or perhaps even bump-and-grind sex; well, it is too late. He can’t know for sure, since his son doesn’t speak to him anymore but he’d have to remember to make an extra confession for that now. The room is heavy with serious thought. Not even Zimmer dares to break the mood with his dry comedy. Finally, Serge raises a hand. I give him a nod. Our indelible talking stick has long been missing, lost to thieves or looted by stingy teachers.
“I just want to say, I’m not going to blame my parents anymore. They did what they thought was right. I’m the piece of shit. I physically put my hands on my girl. I was the one that let my anger sink in. I chose to hurt her.”
“I respect your honesty, Serge. Thank you for sharing.”
It’s like giving one child a Tootsie-Pop in front of all the others who then instantly reach with hands out. They want what he got and will scramble harder and faster next time to get it. Whether the motive is the reward of respect or a better report card, the result is the same.
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/> “There ain't any good women left in the world. They’re all crazy bitches. Excuse my language, Miss A,” says Dent. He should know. He’s been embroiled in four marriages already.
“That’s why the only bitch in my life is my pup, Cricket,” laughs Zimmer. This part of the curriculum is usually where the pot gets stirred and emotions heat up. These embattled souls launch a weak defense of their gender as we begin to dabble in the area of healthy relationships. According to their claims, every female in greater Boston is bi-polar, which if validated by a clinical study, is information that should be passed on to the makers of Lithium and Lamictal. Cries of foul play go up on every front.
“Yeah, she called the cops and had my car towed.” Willis insists.
“She threw all my shit out the window into the snow and made me go pick it up,” Zimmer whines.
“She wigged out and slashed my tires,” Euclid reports.
“She bugged and stole my crack,” Noble hisses. One would think these she-devils possess supernatural power that can be beamed across miles and through concrete walls to make tough men with spines of steel do things they never would have if she hadn’t made them; including going back to her over and over despite the torment. Of course, the offenders see no harm in the fact that they were sleeping with their sisters-in-law and wife’s best friend or lounging on their other baby mama’s couch. Cheating is what men do when pushed by bad women. Samsung and Apple must be delighted with all the relationship dysfunction out there. One wrong text message or nude selfie and suddenly, the mobile devices are skidding across highways, getting stomped, flushed, and flung. Followed by an order for a new phone. Conflict resolution is without question the most sorely lacking skill in this socio-economic group.
“So, I don’t get it. Why are you with this woman if she is so bad to you?”
“I got with her cuz she like to eat and I figured she was a good cook and all, and I’d come home off the streets hungry as hell expecting a meal on the table and she’d have ordered up Burger King and shit. Dumb broad! I told her, it’s your fault. You didn’t go to the gym and now you’re all fat,” Tommy shouts.
“Okay, tell me if I’m wrong,” I say. “You come home from working real hard all shift and your girl is sitting there waiting. You ask that harmless question: How are you? And off she goes about her bad day. Talk, talk, talk. After awhile, it’s not even about the original issue. Now she’s blabbering about her family, her girlfriends, her bad hair and chipped nail polish and on and on and on. Am I right?” Heads are bobbing in universal agreement.
“And you’re sitting there thinking, I don’t care about all these details. Just cut to the chase and give me the bottom line,” I continue.
“Yes, true story. All’s we want is for her to hurry up and tell us what’s broken so we can figure how to fix the fucking problem and get back to our game of cards,” Dent states.
“Okay, have any of you ever heard of the book Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus? It’s an old-school self help book from the 90’s but some of the truths in there are really good. It’s about how men and women each look at the world and approach their problems from different angles. Neither one is right or wrong; it’s just different perspectives. Let me give you an example. The husband comes home and asks his wife what’s wrong. And she says she had a shitty day. She then proceeds to list all the things that irritated her over the past eight hours. Her spouse is thinking, How can I fix that and possibly make her happier? He needs to go think this over so he heads into that mental man-cave to sort things out. The wife thinks all he wants to do is get away from me. He’s not talking so he’s not listening and doesn’t care. She follows on his heels, nipping and nagging and saying, We need to talk about this. Sound familiar to any of you?”
“Right on the money. That’s my life exactly. She just won’t drop it. After awhile, I block it out and all I hear is blasé, blasé, blah,” Willis says.
“So, here’s my point. Men need to realize that talking is a woman’s therapy. She needs to vent her anxieties and frustrations with him, with her mother, with her sister and anyone else within earshot. This is how she makes herself feel better. On the other hand, a woman needs to recognize that her man is generally much more black and white. Tell me what’s broken and I’ll fix it. He needs to go off and ponder his options in the privacy of his own mind. This is not him rejecting her or keeping her at arm’s length. It is just his natural way of tackling problems.”
“That’s so true. But I can’t figger these broads out for nuthin.’ Seems we always end up in each other’s faces yellin’ and shit,’” says Ortega.
“So let’s move on to arguments. Are they part of every relationship? Should they be? Is it good for a couple to have fights, do you think?”
“Well, we men think from the hip down, ya feel me? Them arguments be good for some great make-up sex,” says Noble. I pretend I didn’t hear that comment and keep pressing onward.
“So what’s the difference between a discussion, a debate, an argument or a fight? How would you define these terms? Or are they same?” This interactive dialogue lights up their interest. The men begin to debate over the definition and their voices elevate up a notch.
“A debate is an argument. Like what lawyers or politicians do,” says Bowman.
“Nah, it’s the same thing,” insists Dent.
“No, man. They be different. An argument is like a fight,” yells Serge. And pretty soon they are arguing over what a fight is. They catch me smiling and realize they’ve fallen into the trap. They are role players in a human drama.
“Okay, since we can’t agree, give me some rules for a fair fight,” I say. “Just call some out if you can think of any.”
“Don’t interrupt,” Rev says, the king of intruding into other people’s conversations.
“Don’t talk over the other person,” Bowman says. Willis and Serge are busy in a conversation of their own in the corner.
“Guys, hold up a minute. Give some respect here,” I demand. The two men swing back around to full attention.
“Sorry, Mizz Abrams,” they say in unison, as if their apology was choreographed in case they got caught.
“Don’t call each other names?” Serge guesses. I nod in approval. Dent lets out a prolonged and deliberate belch before the older man has finished his sentence. “Say excuse me, you ass clown!” says Serge. Dent smirks and says nothing. He’s obviously well pleased with getting the attention his poor manners aroused.
“Yes, what else?” I ask, trying to steer the two back to the topic.
“Take a time out,” Zimmer suggests.
“Use ‘I’ statements,” says Gemini.
“Agree to disagree.” They know this stuff already.
“I try to walk away but she won’t let me,” says Dent. “She stands in front of the door and throws shit at me.”
“Then who’s the real pussy?” mumbles Noble, hoping to keep his comment out of range from the teacher’s ears. I choose to ignore it. Pick your battles is another item on the list yet to be mentioned. It just isn’t worth tangling over this one little remark.
“Okay, so then what? How did you handle that interference?” I ask Mr. Dent.
“I push her out of the way. It’s her fault if any shit goes down after that.”
I’ve got them roiling around like carp in shallow water, all flipping and folding over each other in a slippery struggle to feed on the morsels of bread, the manna I’m about to drop. Time to yank up the net.
“Has it ever occurred to you that maybe you’re with the wrong person? That your relationship is totally toxic? Some things are just not worth fixing. You guys deserve to be treated better and so does your intimate partner. I’m talking to you all now. We only have this side of the story and that’s the only one I want to focus on from this moment forwards. Time to man up now. You were men when you did your crimes; no crying like little girls now. I don’t care if she pushed your buttons to the point of sheer madness, you have contr
ol over what you do. I want you to go back to your cells and write about your part in the violence and the abuse and what you could have done differently. And what you will do differently when you go back out. I don’t care if it takes five hundred words or five sentences. I want you to put your heart into this.”
The men sit quietly for a moment. I’ve caught them off-guard. They realize now that they took the bait without thinking and ran with it. And I popped the reel open and let them go just far enough until they were snagged on their own fibs. Too puny still, I drop them back into the undercurrent of blame to see who will sink and who will flutter momentarily and then set about swimming upright again.
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Brennerman falls into step a few paces behind me after I pass by the supply closet where he lingers and then pulls up gradually alongside with his monologue well underway. One might mistake him for a stalker or a former creeper if they had never taken the time to stop and listen to the fine thoughts inside this nebbish little man’s brain.
“Hey, Doctor,” I say cordially once his battered loafers come into view on my right.
“Greetings, Counselor Abrams. Have you heard the update?” he asks.
“No! Any good news?” I ask.
“Two weeks after our initial conversation, Mr. Willis was seen by the Chief Psychiatrist and then his case was passed on to the Special Assessment Review Board. Their recommendation corroborated our belief that nine-year old Terran was unfairly processed and pressured by police. Nowhere on record was there any solid evidence of a sexual crime. So they concluded that it was both illogical and illegal to arrest a man for failure to register as a sex offender when he clearly wasn’t one. While his controlling offense stands and there is no intent to erase any of his past charges, the Hearing Review Board removed the onus of this particularly heinous label and lowered his Sex Treatment score from a 3 to a 1. In all my thirty-five years of practice here within the DOC, I have never seen this kind of retraction. This is a testament to Mr. Willis’s character and composure, and his patient pursuit to right a grievous wrong. I commend him for the excellence with which he handled himself,” he gushes.
