No Excuse for Pain: A Snapshot in Time
A bill. That’s all it took to ignite hellfire. The kind that bruises more than flesh, that swells an eye shut and shatters the fragile trust a child clings to. A phone bill over $300. A mistake that would become a beating—a fist of punishment for a crime of curiosity, of wanting connection. His anger wasn’t measured; it came like a freight train, crashing into a 13-year-old body that had no place to hide. He called it discipline. But discipline doesn’t leave you swollen, broken, shamed into silence.
He stood above with fists raised like thunderclouds, raining down fury until fear soaked every corner of the house. When he roared, “You better go to school,” as if the world wouldn’t see the damage etched into bone and skin, I knew. No matter what he said, no matter what he demanded, school was not an option. Walking into that building looking like a warzone—like a child beaten for the crime of existing—wasn’t survival. It was surrender.
I wish I had gone. I wish I had walked through those doors, shame swallowed whole, and let the truth of his violence stand trial under the unforgiving light of day. Maybe then his name would have been carved into a cell door instead of into the chapters of my childhood. Maybe someone—anyone—would have saved me.
But nobody did.
My mother took me to her best friend’s house so I could heal out of sight. A swollen eye, a battered spirit, tucked away from curious eyes. She knew the punishment was too severe—anyone would have known—but the silence stayed. In the Black community, there are whispers that boys need their “ass beat” to become men. Discipline is confused with domination, love warped into something violent. It’s the kind of belief that echoes from the fields of slavery, where lashes taught obedience, and pain was currency for respect. Generations carried it forward, passing it off as wisdom. But that was not wisdom. That was trauma. That was a lie.
Fear lived in that house with me. It sat in the corners where shadows grew long and hope stayed small. It wasn’t just the fists; it was the constant threat of them. The smell of beer. The volume of the music. The way safety always felt like a distant dream. Every weekend, I schemed ways to escape. I called my aunt. My grandparents. Anyone who would take me, if only for a few hours. Because freedom wasn’t found at home.
It wasn’t just the beatings that hurt. It was the betrayal. My father, the man who should have been protector, became a tyrant. And my mother, the woman told by her own mother to be my best friend, became his accomplice through inaction. No protection. No sanctuary. Only a life lived on edge, always waiting for the next eruption.
There’s a face I see sometimes in the mirror that isn’t entirely my own. It carries his shadows—his eyes, his lines, his anger simmering just beneath the surface. And that’s where the war lives. Not with fists, but with choice. The choice not to become him. The choice to build a life where love does not strike and respect is not taken by force.
There was a day, much later, when charges could have been pressed. When justice could have come, however small and fleeting. And again, there was her voice. “He’s your father.” As if biology could erase brutality. As if love was owed for the mere act of existence.
Forgiveness wasn’t what she asked for. She asked for complicity. For silence. And I gave it, not because I wanted to, but because I had been trained to obey. Trained to survive. But survival is not living, and silence is not healing.
This story is not all of it. It is a shard of glass from a broken window, a single reflection of a house built on violence and fear. The rest lives in memories too sharp to touch yet too heavy to set down. This is just the beginning.
The child who hid behind bruises—
He is telling it now.
English