Abuse. A Young Witness.

There I was, lying in bed. I suddenly opened my eyes and started searching the room. Oh God, not in the bedroom. Where should I go next? In the living room? Not there either. The kitchen, then? My heart started racing, imagining the worst, but then I heard something. It was coming from the bathroom, and I heard the toilet flush. I ran towards the toilet, and finally, I saw my mom exiting the bathroom. Safe and sound, and alive.

It was just the three of us, my mom, my father, and I. I loved both of my parents, but I had a better (emotional) relationship with my mom. My parents loved to cook, had green fingers, loved Indian movies, and they had the same love for music. I remember we had this impressive collection of vinyl records, and we used to play all of them on our record player. Not to mention all the cassettes we had. My parents used to make mixtapes, and we watched a lot of movies together on videotapes. I know for a fact that my love for food, music, movies, and dancing is because of them. If you look at it this way, we could have been the “perfect” little family. We had a simple life together, and probably to the outside world, we were an average happy family.

Many men in Surinamese culture love a drink or two, and I guess it somehow showcases strength or being macho? The more you drink, the manlier and tougher you are. I have never seen it that way, but many people thought like that, and some still do. Anyway, my father was a drinker. He was a raging alcoholic. Only my mother and I saw that side of him because he was known for being a funny person who loved kids, which he absolutely was, but only when he was sober. However, when he started drinking in the evenings, he turned into a vicious and jealous person. He abused my mom by calling her names, accusing her of infidelity, and beat her.

But what do I mean by abuse? Any form of abuse, be it mentally or physically, is obnoxious and unacceptable. Domestic violence happens more often than you think because perpetrators can hide that side of themselves quite well. And victims can be good at denying it. They mostly feel that they have no choice because they fear for their lives or of others.

My father hit my mother, broke her jaw, gave her bruises, and once, she got a concussion so bad that she had to stay at the hospital for one night. Above all this, my father tried to end my mother's life several times by strangling her or running behind her with a giant meat cleaver (butcher’s knife). My mom had never told me this. She didn’t have to because I was there the whole time and witnessed it with my own eyes.

I was only three years old when I called the police. My mom had taught me our name, our address, and the emergency number. I can’t imagine what a mother must feel when she has to teach her child these things for circumstances like ours. From a very young age, I don’t remember it any other way; I slept with my parents in their bed. Whenever I woke up, be it in the middle of the night or the morning, I always checked whether my mom was next to me, and if she was, I checked whether she was still breathing or not. If she wasn’t next to me, I looked around the house until I found her. It was only then that I could go back to sleep or start my day.

Unfortunately, there were also many days when she wasn’t in bed, and I went looking for her.

There I was, lying in bed. I suddenly opened my eyes and started searching the room. Oh God, she’s not in the bedroom. Where should I go next? In the living room, she wasn’t there either. The bathroom, then? My heartbeat started racing, imagining the worst, and then I heard something coming from the kitchen. I ran as quickly as I could, only for the horror to become a reality. There she was, lying on our big freezer with my father on top of her, strangling her. My mom was trying to remove his hands from her neck, but she couldn’t. She also tried kicking him, but she couldn’t. My father kept strangling her, totally focussed, and enjoying how she slowly started fading away. That’s when I ran and started scratching my father’s legs, kicking and biting him, but to no avail. I started screaming and begging him to let go of my mom, telling him that she is dying and that I can’t live without her. He didn’t react, and so I ran towards our phone and called the police. At first, the police didn’t believe me, but when I told them that my mom had taught me to call, they did believe me. I ran back to the kitchen and screamed to my father that I had called the police and that they were coming to get him. He stopped soon after. I only remember him stumbling upon something and leaving the kitchen. My mom was coughing and gasping for air. I saw what my father did to her neck. She looked almost pale. She sat down on a chair in the kitchen with her eyes closed, and she got startled when I touched her neck. She started crying when she realized what I was doing. I was sitting on her lap while putting on balm on the bruises on her neck.

Seeing my father strangle my mother was one of the many incidents when I saw what my father did to my mother. Or many incidents where I had to clean up my mother's blood or throw away broken pieces of glass or plates. The bond between my mother and I became much stronger and intense because of all these horrible events. We were almost inseparable. It was an unhealthy relationship sometimes, but there was an unhealthy reason causing this, and I don't blame my mom for any of it.

I was a witness—a young witness of abuse. My father is the one who brought this trauma upon us, and after that, I never trusted anyone easily.