It was the first time I had heard someone call out to their mother while in genuine distress.
It hurt hearing his cries,
“mama”
he would softly wail in Mandarin,
for it was his mother who was beating him.
I could not see either of them,
I could only hear his cries,
and her forceful yelps as she swung down on her son,
as I sat on my bike in their front yard on that warm October evening.
To that day,
I thought that the bruises on his neck,
back and ribs were caused by his father.
My eight-year-old brain could not fathom such violence from a mother.
Ryan,
was a disappointment.
Intellectually slow,
overweight and athletically ungifted,
he only laughed at the simplest of things.
His mother could not put up with such a child.
Her only child.
Even the teachers at our school were disgusted with him.
Giving him passing grades just so he would be someone else’s problem.
Ryan,
was not my only friend,
but I was his.
As the teachers and the principal ignored my reports of his bruises,
I remained his friend until his family moved away.
As the years went on,
and I would come to hear dozens more cry out for their mothers,
I still hear Ryan cry out,
“mama”
with whimpers filled with disbelief.
Every impact from the unseen object,
at the time,
I best hazarded a guess of a slipper,
every new dense ‘slap’ would be met with a renewed whimper of disbelief and a plea for her to stop,
“mama.”
I now know that these pleas from the plain mind,
and pure heart,
were what enraged Ryan’s mother.
His desperate cries for safety from the very source of danger were proof of her failing as a mother.
They were proof of her failings in raising a proper child.
I occasionally would see her tend to her tiny lifeless yard after that day,
and she never met my gaze,
or that of anyone else’s.
Forever slumped over a task,
the darkness that she carried with her fixed eyes still sends shivers down my back.
With an adult’s eyes,
I can see now that suicide was never an option for her.
Beating her son habitually was the next best thing.