Violence, The 'Private' Life of Patriarchy

the elevator doors opened and a woman and her little girl (probably 5-6 years old) walked into the hotel lobby. the little girl smiled at me and i waved in a big exaggerated way and put on a goofy grin. she giggled and waved back. her mother stood by the windows, presumably waiting for someone. eventually a young man with dreadlocks came into the hotel and together they walked back to the elevator and up to their room. trailing behind was the little girl who stared at me until i said goodnite. she returned the phrase and skipped into the elevator.

flash forward. someone calls the front desk from the first floor complaining that upstairs there has been a constant banging and arguing. as i prepare to go upstairs and check on the problem the young man from earlier enters the hotel and tells me that he lost his key (to rm 227) and needs another copy. something in me is suspicious but i don't know what it is. i ask if the room is in his name. it's not. he says it's in his "baby mama's" name. i say i need to call first and he says that no one is in the room at the moment. another alarm goes off but i ignore it since i don't know quite what it's about. against what i should have done, i make him a key.

i head upstairs to check on the noise that the other guest had told me about. i take the stairs and as i come out of the stair well i see a trail of condoms (still in the wrappers) leading to rm 227. it's only then that i realize that the "disturbance" was between the young man who i had just given the key and the woman who had rented the room. the young man got off the elevator and tried to open the door, but the chain lock was engaged. for the next minute he argued with her to let him in and i stood there like an idiot not knowing what to do. she eventually let him in.

i headed back down to the front desk in confusion. what to do? then i get a call from rm 227. the caller hangs up when i answer. frightened i call back. he answers the phone and i ask who had called. he puts the woman on the phone but she is crying so hard she can't speak and eventually the phone hangs up. i run upstairs immediately.

"you beat my ass, you deserve to get beat" says a woman's voice wracked with emotion. i knock on the door.

"who is it?" he asks.

"front desk" i say. she whimpers and he tells her to shush. the door opens.

"what?"

"i got a complaint about the noise and i need to check if everything is ok." i step into the room. it's trashed. items strewn about, the chair laying in the floor with the bed sheets. the woman is sitting on the bed with her daughter trying not to cry. i ask if she is alright.

"yes, thank you" she says and i know it's not true but don't know what to do. i feel that i need her permission to put him out or call the police. i don't know how to act without her direction. but obviously something is very wrong. should i stay out of it? intervene? i need direction but don't know where to look for it. i leave and the door closes behind me.

the arguing begins again.

"you see, you're gonna get me locked up" he yells.

"stop touching me" she pleads. "please stop touching me. you don't know how hard you were hitting me. please, just get out of my life. you can stay the night but please stay away from me. stop kissing me, it's over." my heart breaks. what can i do?

for the rest of the night i try to check in. once i even knock citing a fictitious call from another guest. but this time she seems more adament that nothing is wrong. have i made things worse? i remember hearing that people often make things worse for the victims because the abusers get angry at being exposed or having their private power challenged and they take it out on the abused when no one is around. maybe i'm making it worse.

maybe it's wrong to think of her as a victim. she knows what she's doing, i think to myself, much better than i do. i should follow her lead and stop fumbling around without a real plan of how to make things better. clearly i'm not being helpful. but how does one act in this situation?

this isn't a sporadic issue. this is the third time in 7 months at this hotel that i've had to make decisions about how to deal with abusive men (the others were a boy-"friend" and a pimp). each time i felt totally unprepared and knew i hadn't handled it right.

there's this whole "private" world in which violence and abuse and neglect goes on and the strategies of intervention aren't simple. perhaps it's true that the only real way to intervene is to powerfully support the women in our lives so that if they are in a similar situation they can reach out to us. and i think it also means making a choice to be a part of the lives of working-class and poor women and women of color and living in a way that opens spaces (physical, emotional, intellectual) that puts issues of healing and empowerment front and center while being critical of patriarchy.

of course, what does that commitment mean on a night like this? i wish i knew...i think of my friend Calvin who, as a child, saw his father tie his mother to a chair and beat her. who last i heard was locked up for threatening his own girlfriend with a gun in front of his son. i think of how bravely that little girl smiled. and i commit myself to making the world better.