Brandon Stanton's Blog, page 209

(4/6) “One day the counselor at my daughter’s elementary school...

(4/6) “One day the counselor at my daughter’s elementary school called me. She said that my daughter had spoken up in class about the abuse. She asked me to come in for a meeting. I downplayed it because I was scared. I told her: ‘Thanks for your concern. But it was nothing, really. And it’s already stopped.’ The counselor gave me a pamphlet for a place called HeartShare. HeartShare was just two blocks from my house, so I stopped in one day. I told the counselor what was happening. She discussed the option of domestic violence shelters. But I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t want to break up my family. Then one day he beat me so badly in the stairwell. He punched me so hard that he got blood on my children. I told the counselor what happened and she said to gather all my papers. She told me she’d be in a black car on the corner. I told my husband I was going to the grocery store. I was so nervous because he timed me every time I left the house. I still had to pick up the kids from school. And if I was gone for more than a few minutes, he’d come looking for me.”

(3/6) “I started to become afraid of him. But I never argued...

(3/6) “I started to become afraid of him. But I never argued back because I thought it would make him even more angry. He started to pick on me. He’d criticize how I dressed. And how I wore my hair. I remember it used to bother him that I used the word ‘love’ so much. I was an optimistic girl, so I was always talking about how I ‘loved’ things. ‘Stop saying that word,’ he’d say. ‘Why do you love everything? That’s so stupid.’ I remember one night he hit me because I mixed his vegetables with his rice. I became very still and quiet around him. Just like I’d been with my mother. Remember—this was all I’d ever known. ‘It’s normal,’ I told myself, ‘Everyone gets a beating sometimes.’ We had five children together. It’s hard to explain why I stayed. He began beating blood out of me. But then he’d hug me and tell me he was sorry. He’d tell me that he needed me. He told me about his childhood. He told me that his father beat him every day. He told me that he had no mother. He used to say: ‘I see you as my mother.’ And that made me feel good. ‘I need you,’ he’d say. And that feeling of being needed is what kept me in that house. He was the father of my children, after all. I told myself he’d been traumatized. And it wasn’t his fault. But here’s the thing– I’d been traumatized too. And I didn’t hurt anyone.”

(2/6) “Looking back, I don’t know if it was love or lust. I...

(2/6) “Looking back, I don’t know if it was love or lust. I didn’t have anything to compare it to at the time. He started driving me home from work. Then we started going on little dates. Soon we were spending all our time together. I moved out of the group home and began living with him. I cooked for him, and did his laundry, and ironed his clothes. It was natural for me. I’d done all of this for my siblings because our mother would leave us for months at a time. I’d always told myself that I was never going to be like my mother. I was going to be a perfect mom. And a perfect wife. And now that I had the man of my dreams, I’d do anything he asked. The first time he hit me was when I was seven months pregnant with our first child. I woke up to him screaming at me: ‘You see I’m awake, now get up and help me!’ I need help with my insulin!’ I tried to help him with his insulin but I didn’t do it right. So he pushed me on the floor.”

(1/6) “I grew up in a household where you were beaten for...

(1/6) “I grew up in a household where you were beaten for small things. Like breaking a dish. Or asking for food. My mom was very religious, so she’d take us to church and we’d listen to the pastor talk about love. Then she’d still take us to the back room and beat us. I ran away when I was thirteen. I lived in group homes and foster homes in every borough. When I met him, I was working at the supermarket. I was sixteen. He was sixteen years older than me. He had a car. He was handsome. He’d do little things to make me laugh. He’d wait in a long line just to buy a stick of gum from my register. He gave me compliments. I’d never been complimented in my entire life. He called me smart. And pretty. And nice. He brought me flowers. I’d never experienced anything like that before. I felt so alone at the time. I was living at the group home. I didn’t have anyone to teach me about life. I wanted a family. I wanted a protector.”

“I’m a high school guidance counselor. I’m actually writing...

“I’m a high school guidance counselor. I’m actually writing letters of recommendation right now. It’s tough to be a teenager. You want to be independent while still having to rely on everyone around you. As adults, we’ve been through it all, and we know what’s coming, and we want to protect them. But they don’t want to be protected. I just hope that every student at my school can find one or two adults that they relate to. And that’s going to be a different teacher for every student. But we’re getting older too, so it can be harder and harder to be relatable. I have to really work to keep up with the technology and terminology. I had to text my stepdaughter recently to find out what ‘bae’ means.”

“I went to pick up my daughter and my baby’s mother wouldn’t let...

“I went to pick up my daughter and my baby’s mother wouldn’t let me in the house because her new boyfriend was over. I’m trying to get in the door, she’s trying to keep me out, and she ends up on the ground. The police came and got me the next day. They had a picture of my baby’s mother with a single cut on her forehead. My heart sank. My public defender was very nice. She said she believed me. Every time she interrogated my baby’s mother, the story kept changing. First it was I pushed her. Then it changed to I threw her into the wall. Then it changed to I punched her in the face. But my lawyer said it was dangerous to go to trial. She said without a witness, the woman is going to have the advantage. She said if I lose at trial, I could go to jail for seven years. I couldn’t risk that, so I pleaded guilty in exchange for three months. I told the judge: ‘I didn’t do it, but I’m pleading guilty.’ The judge said: ‘If you’re pleading guilty, you did it.’ I did the time, and now a few years later, I’m working a full time job, and my baby’s mother is on trial for robbing a store. But it’s not like I can go back in time and wave that in the judge’s face. Every time my daughter comes to visit, she starts crying and begs me not to send her back home. But they tell me because of the domestic violence charge, they’ll put her in the foster system before giving her to me.”

“I was watching the girls’ dance class one night when I noticed...

“I was watching the girls’ dance class one night when I noticed one girl in particular: beautiful, slim, big afro. She didn’t wear much make-up. She was a natural beauty. But when she noticed me looking at her, she did that face thing. She scrunched up her face like ‘don’t be looking at me.’ But that was the one I wanted. Back in the 70’s, if you had good words you could say to a woman– that was known as your ‘rap.’ But I was shy. I had no rap. But I said: ‘Fuck it,’ and I asked to be introduced to her. We dated for six months. I took her to movies and parties, but I never made it official. One day my friend Douglas warned me that she was getting impatient, so I finally asked her to go steady. But she said: ‘Too late. I’m taken.’ She said she was already dating the lead singer of a band. I swear she did it just to get a rise out of me. She had me begging her. I’d drop by her house. I’d get her girlfriends to put in a good word for me. I’d go to all the same parties just to get one slow dance and whisper into her ear. I finally convinced her. Last Thursday was our 39th wedding anniversary.” (4/4)

“The Bernice Johnson Dance Studio made me who I am today. It...

“The Bernice Johnson Dance Studio made me who I am today. It kept me off the streets. I hung around a group of kids who would go steal a car every Friday, but I could never go with them because I was always in the studio. Learning to drum made me feel proud. It made me feel like I was connecting to my culture, and also helping to pass it along. Our teachers took a trip to Africa every year. And they’d come back and talk to us about the latest dances and beats. I learned that so much in Africa revolved around the drum: harvest, marriage, circumcision, everything. I learned that our names were changed when we were brought over during slavery, and so we’re all connected, and you never know who might be your family. Everyone supported each other. Bernice had a rule: ‘If you come from my studio, and you make it to the top, you come back and bring five more with you.’ I’ll bet you there were more Bernice Johnson dancers on Broadway than any other studio.” (¾)

“That night Douglas took me to the Bernice Johnson Dance Studio...

“That night Douglas took me to the Bernice Johnson Dance Studio in Jamaica, Queens. The place was full of black people playing drums and doing African dances. I’d only been in New York for a few years at that point, and I was still experiencing some culture shock. Growing up in Georgia, all I’d ever known was black and white. I’d never really seen Asian people before. I only knew about Jewish and Italian people from the Bible. And when I arrived at that dance studio, I learned that I didn’t know much about African people either. I’d only seen Africans while watching Tarzan on the television. Douglas’s father was the chief drummer at the studio. I’ve got a picture of him right here. He became like a second father to me. He noticed me watching the girls dance, and he said: ‘Quit watching those girls and learn to play the drums. If you learn the drums, the girls will come to you.’” (2/4)

“One day when I was fourteen years old, I was hanging out at the...

“One day when I was fourteen years old, I was hanging out at the swimming pool at Richmond Hill High School, and this kid named Douglas came up to me. I was dating a girl named Carmen at the time, so he said to me: ‘I heard you’re going with Carmen.’ I told him I was. And he said, ‘That’s impossible. Because I’m going with Carmen.’ We went back and forth for awhile, then decided to settle it right then, so we both hopped onto his bike and rode over to Carmen’s house. When Carmen opened the door, and she saw both of us standing there, she was so scared that she didn’t know what to say. Douglas and I became best friends after that. If you saw one of us, you saw both of us.” (¼)