I was nine or ten when the lashings turned end of day ritual. Before each lashing I was to undress from the waist down—pants and panties—and bend over the edge of the bed they shared, my mother and stepfather whom I called Daddy. She was never in the room, my mother, always somewhere else in the house, doing something. I imagine her, now, drinking a cup of coffee or a glass of pinot grigio or folding laundry or cleaning the kitchen because that was what she often did, clean the kitchen. She liked a tidy home and was good at keeping a tidy home. We left our outside shoes at the door.
I could hear the slide of the belt behind me each time as he pulled it from his slacks. I still have one hanging in my closet, a belt, not the slacks. I don’t remember being whipped with that belt, in particular, but it became a talisman of sorts. It had personality, like an aging college hippie in bell bottoms and loose cotton shirt, the belt low on the hip, swaggering, holding it all together. It is brown leather and wide with a big metal buckle. I wore it nearly every day in grad school at Johns Hopkins then American University. I secretly called it Superbelt, my symbol, my token, my power stolen from his waning youth, reappropriated for my cause.
The Ritual
Daddy’s preferred belt was finer, smooth leather, meant for business. It was not luxurious. It was middle class appropriate. Brown or black, usually, whichever belt he’d chosen to hold up his slacks that morning, which is to say that it was always the belt he wore, never a belt from the closet. I sometimes wondered if he chose the belt in the morning with this in mind, feeding the belt through the loops of his slacks, visualizing ripping it out that evening upon returning home, an effective routine after a hard day’s work like a fresh cocktail waiting in my mother’s hand, a kiss on the cheek. I was the kiss. The belt was his unbearable virtue.
“This is the way we were experientially schooled in the art of patriarchy.” — bell hooks
I was to always place my hands palms down on the bed. I was not to cry out. It would be worse if I cried out or tried to cover my buttocks or my lower back with my hands. The cheeks were always the first then the backs of my thighs. Perhaps he had started to tire or simply lost aim in his violence. My vagina, the labia, was the crème de la crème.
The belt left marks, yes, a few times blood. I don’t want you to think that there was always blood. There wasn’t. And I could usually sit afterwards. You get used to such things. A good, warm bath will do wonders.
He was careful not to leave marks where a teacher or extended family might see them. Not that anyone would have noticed. We moved quite a bit. And I was not a popular girl. I was ugly and quiet. I don’t say this to be self-deprecating. It is true. I was too skinny, my hair was too short, my baby teeth were black from medications my mother took during pregnancy to ease the nausea. Even then, I made her sick. But my mother had suffered since she was small. She suffered much more than I or my brother had suffered. I did not want to make her suffering worse by talking about him to anyone outside of us. That’s not right. I didn’t want to make her suffering worse by talking to anyone, outside or in. She could not have the conversation of him. She could not discuss when he dragged her by the hair down the stairs or when he beat her in the back of the conversion van that time on vacation, not so unlike what her father did to her before him. We were both surviving her men, the man she had chosen and the man she had not. We were also surviving the man who left us, fallen from a scaffolding when I was one year old. My father. We were surviving her teenaged widowhood, too. I did not want to make it worse. I did not want to make it worse on any of us. I find it shocking when men question why a woman or a girl do not call 911. A man’s experience with authority is so very different from a woman’s, a girl’s.
the will to change: men, masculinity, and love
bell hooks writes about the “art of patriarchy” in the will to change: men, masculinity, and love. Her brother had brought out his marbles and she wanted to play with them and had the audacity to ignore her father’s insistence that she not do as she wished:
His voice grew louder and louder. Then suddenly he snatched me up, broke a board from our screen door, and began to beat me with it, telling me, “You’re just a little girl. When I tell you to do something, I mean for you to do it.” He beat me and he beat me, wanting me to acknowledge that I understood what I had done. His rage, his violence captured everyone’s attention. Our family sat spellbound, rapt before the pornography of patriarchal violence. After this beating I was banished—forced to stay alone in the dark. Mama came into the bedroom to soothe the pain, telling me in her soft southern voice, “I tried to warn you. You need to accept that you are just a little girl and girls can’t do what boys do.” In service to patriarchy her task was to reinforce that Dad had done the right thing by putting me in my place, by restoring the natural social order….This is the way we were experientially schooled in the art of patriarchy. (20-21)
Like hooks, I also wanted to play with my brother’s marbles, which was not an issue for my stepfather or mother, but my Mammy, my stepfather’s mother, would not allow it and threatened to get the switch after me. She could never catch me so Mammy wasn’t a threat. And I did enjoy learning to sew and crochet, beside her. She allowed fishing because that was Pappy’s realm and she would not sass him about that. The day my mother told Mammy that I was allowed to play with marbles if I wanted to play with marbles, was the day I fell in love with my mother a little bit. And the day that Mammy saw the marks on my backside while I undressed for a bath and she spoke to my mother and the whippings on the edge of the bed with my stepfather’s belt finally stopped, I fell in love with Mammy a little bit. The ironies of childhood are vast.
Girlhoods, Womanhoods & Motherhoods
I think on the ways that our mothers survive their girlhoods and womanhoods and motherhoods and how they make efforts to soothe the pains like hook’s mother did, “I tried to warn you,” and my mother standing at my bedroom door and pleading for me to let her in. I have often wondered if the whippings and warnings were particular to an Appalachian system, the switches and the belts on a girl’s flesh, but I can’t find any definitive evidence. It did feel part of us, though, it felt part of the family and the culture and the space we held in the world.
It is true that the resiliencies of youth can foster resiliencies in womanhood. If I have a bad day, I can say, Well, at least I wasn’t whipped. If Trump or Hegseth start a new war, I can say, I wasn’t dragged down the stairs. Another child goes missing? No bruising, today. A woman arrested for medical care or dies from lack of it? No blood on my back. And isn’t that how we’re conditioned? No blood on my back. I’ve learned my lessons well. Each day a little victory, if only for the absence of a belt on my skin. For a time, I felt decadent in its vacancy, indulgent, my sins unpunished and I sought a man who might structure my conscience. He preferred the paddle to the belt and wielded it deftly. He crafted it from a piece of wood. The man likened himself to a master rigger and used rope he purchased from The Twisted Monk. He hogtied the wrists and the ankles. He dangled me from the ceiling. He called me a cunt and he made me bleed and declared it all part of the experience, a Clark Griswold, Juliette Lewis, frozen eyeballs moment. I’ve always been a fan of Juliette Lewis. But when he mocked Superbelt, it was the thing that broke me. Or it could have been the other thing. When I was finally in the women’s shelter, I thought, At least there is no paddle, today. At least there is no belt. His body is far away from my body, now.
The Act of Wanting
Superbelt hangs in my closet. I have not worn it for years but I often imagine it through the day, hanging from its hook. I have thought of throwing it away, cutting it to pieces, burning it, writing a scathing story on its hide. But I have not been able to bring myself to do any of these things. It seems I haven’t the heart for it. I do fantasize about doing them. And maybe the fantasy is the point. Because to do a thing means it is done. And then what else do you look forward to? And what if I choose the wrong destruction? What if I spend the rest of my life wishing I had destroyed it another way? I could be on my deathbed and regretting the loss of the destruction that would have made my living and my pain more complete. And so the truth that I must tell is this. I have never been good with the finality of things. It is in the act of the wanting that I fully live.
