Abuse By Any Other Name

"Shut up before I bust you in the mouth!" she yelled.  The words cut through my early morning coma like a butcher's knife slicing through butter.  The language was sharp and strong, but it got the message across. 

I stood at the sliding glass doors, like hundreds of other Staten Island commuters, and waited for the doors to open.  We would scurry onto the ferry like sheep, pushing and shoving our way on in our quest for our favorite seat.  The morning ritual was abruptly halted by the threatening words that came from a few feet away from me.

Curiousity got the best of me and I couldn't help but turn to see who was speaking and to whom.  To my utter disgust, but not to my surprise, it was a woman in her mid-twenties speaking to her child.  She appeared to be an angry young woman, perhaps bogged down with the difficulties  and stressfullness of being a parent.  Her son appeared to be under two years of age.  He sat in his stroller, clearly unhappy with life and cried.

I decided to sit as far away from them as I could when I got on the ferry.  Few things disturbed me more than to listen to a parent threaten their child with physical violence.  After all, this mother did not warn of a simple spanking.  She threatened to "bust" him in the mouth.    Unfortunately, my seat on the ferry was still in eyeshot of the family. 

I saw the boy walk to the side of the ferry, grinning michievously as little boys do.  He had keys in his hands.  He attempted to put the keys inside of the electrical socket .  It didn't work, but judging from his giggles, it was great fun just to try get the keys to fit.  He laughed wildly and walked on bowed legs back to his mother who was looking in the opposite direction.  He attempted the feat again but this time, his mother saw him.  She stood up, walked to him, turned him around and slapped him with a full hand on the face.  I jumped out of the shocking brutality of the act.  I saw the look of disgust on a few other passengers face as well. 

Who could help but feel anything but pity for a small child who would be reared by a woman who seemed to loathe her own child?  She threatened to bust him up and then made good on the promise.  She was the one person who should have been entrusted to protect him from such acts of violence.

A week later I rushed through the Bowling Green station to catch my train to Grand Central Terminal.  I saw the woman again, standing on the side of the wall, patiently watching a police officer inspect her photo identification.  In all honesty, it wasn't her that I recognized, it was the child who stood near his mothers leg.

I quickly moved on and stood on the platform.  I allowed my mind to drift ahead to the day that was ahead of me when I heard her voice again.  She stood behind me, on her cellphone, ranting about the temerity of the police officer to interfere with her and her child.  She spewed expletives and racial epithets as she expressed her anger at the officer for minding her business. After a few minutes, she hung up the phone but kept yelling to all within earshot.  "This is my child," she yelled, "and I can do whatever the fuck I want with my child!" 

I can only imagine that the officer witnessed how she treated her child and did all that he could to intervene.  But could more have been done?  Was the onus on the citizens on the ferry or in the subway station or on the streets of New York to have intervened in someway?  Was I partly responsible for the adult that that child is going to grow up to be, in part because of  the violent and hateful home environment in which he is being raised? Will he make it to adulthood?

There is an old adage that parents oftentimes jokingly say to their children, "I brought you in this world and I will take you out."

How sad when those words turn out to be true.