1717 Domestic

Thursday, March 6, 2008

Earlier this evening while wandering around YouTube looking for Tracy Chapman songs, I found this one, "Behind the Wall". It's on my album, but I almost always skip it because it bothers me.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2g2M2RvCwfc&NR=1]

I grew up listening to screams behind the wall, and often hearing my own as if they came from far away.

Later, when I was 20 and first living on my own, and thought I was finally away from it, there was a single woman in her late thirties living upstairs over my apartment. I guess she had a boyfriend who visited, I never actually saw him, but somebody beat the crap out of her once or twice a week. I'd hear him shouting, and her screaming and crying and begging, and things crashing.

I would huddle with my cat, curled in a tight ball, shaking. I wouldn't sleep that night. I knew from personal experience that calling the police would do no good. That was 1965-66, when men had a virtual right to beat women they "owned".

I never met her. I passed her in the hall only a few times. She was covered with bruises in a variety of colors, and she would never meet my eyes. I lived there only eighteen months, but I still wonder what eventually happened to her.
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