Content Warning: This post contains descriptions of abuse against women and children
By Amber Butts
There have been many good men in my life.
The last conversation I had about my ex-stepfather was with a friend who felt I should stop being so hard on men. He thought my ex-stepfather deserved the benefit of doubt because he provided for me and was probably stressed about money. His metric for goodness was stepping up and taking care of a child that wasn’t his. But my ex-step father is not a good man.
It took me a long time to accept this. I remember feeling this immense amount of joy and care from my closeness to him, even when he would give me whuppings. I remember feeling loved when my door was taken off its hinges because I believed that I “was sneaky and couldn’t be trusted.†I remember my diaries being opened and read. I remember my ex-stepfather’s smile. Sometimes, I find myself missing sleeping next to him, the way his breath put me to sleep, how his breath smelled in the morning.
When I was sixteen, my ex-stepfather threw a plate towards my pregnant mama in our small house in deep East Oakland. The ceiling was low and if I stood on a chair I could touch it. That was the first thing I thought of when the plate crashed and my mama winced. I don’t remember moving. I remember how his fist crashed into my face afterward, like a storm. I thought it—I—would break. I remember falling and waking up, breathing through sobs, aiming my foot towards his chin and kicking hard. I remember the clash of teeth, the spin and blood, my mama’s screams, him saying, “You want to run up on me like a man so ima treat you like one.â€
I remember missing school because my eye was black and swollen. I remember walking to the store the next day and my neighbor saying, “Damn. You must’ve lost.†I remember the lack of privacy. I remember seething with anger and not knowing what to do. I remember him checking my phone, call log and online browsing history.
Even amidst my advocating for survivors of domestic violence, I hadn’t considered my mama to be one. The emotional (and physical) abuse we experienced at the hands of this man impacted our relationship with each other, but it wasn’t until I saw a post on Facebook where the poster said she knocks on her kids doors before entering their room that I was taken back to the lack of privacy I had as a child. I thought about how refusing children privacy was another one of those misleading metrics for good parenting that so often goes hand in hand with abuse.
My ex-stepfather helped raise me from the ages of 6-16. He’d take things away from me depending on what he thought of my attitude; if I smiled upon receiving them, if my lips were poked out, if I spoke under my breath. He said things to get under my skin, so I learned to curb my reactions. Learned to always be composed and never look shaken. I was reminded that I never deserved privacy. I was penalized whenever I pretended to have it.
Sometimes, he or my mama would say, “This is my house. Until you start paying bills here, you don’t get privacy.†Sometimes, this also came with a reminder that I could leave if I wanted to. But I couldn’t leave. Whenever we’d get into it, I was either told directly that I couldn’t or guilt-tripped into staying. This happened even when my grandma and family members would try to get me out of the house, even when the police were called, even when I didn’t feel safe.
My ex-stepfather locked me in a room after reading that a boy I went to school with missed me. This was the first time this version of it had happened. I was seventeen and it was around this time of year. My aunt tried to get me out of that locked room. She was nineteen. He pulled my hair as we tried to leave and I remember looking out the window and marveling at the way the trees danced. At how unaffected they were by the chaos happening here.
My aunt yelled and I looked down at the floor as 5 of my bloody braids tried to get back to each other. I remember being thrown against the front door I couldn’t get out of.
The new next door neighbors called the police because they heard us screaming and shuffling. My grandma showed up twenty minutes later. Apparently my aunt had told her to come immediately. The two of them were standing at the doorway beckoning me to come, and the police asked if I’d like to go with them. I said yes. They asked who my guardian was since I was a minor and I said my mother. They asked my mama for permission for me to leave the house. She responded, “You need to stay here. It’s the holidays. We need to work this out.” So I stayed.
There are still two spots in my scalp that won’t grow back. One is on the right side of my head, near my temple. The other is in the back at the base of my hairline.
When I was a child, we were told that joining the military as an adult wasn’t an option. My uncle had served two times in the Vietnam War and said it wasn’t our war to fight. No more of our blood would be sacrificed for this white man’s war.
Though we were banned from joining, the structure of our households was militaristic. It was reinforced by punishment, restrictions and confinement. It impacted our sense of safety, privacy and security and directly facilitated domestic violence and child abuse. The love we experienced as children felt conditional.
Before my mama was pregnant with me, my grandmama took her to visit my father in Oakland’s North County jail. It was my father’s second time awaiting sentencing and my mama had never been to a prison before. She was patted down and searched before she was able to proceed into the room. The visitation room was small and the visit lasted fifteen minutes. She wore some blue jeans, a loose sweatshirt and open toe shoes. She didn’t know what to expect and wanted to be covered up, but the prison wanted to see everything.
I was four years old the first time I visited a prison. My father was in Santa Rita and I missed him. His hands were handcuffed when he placed them on the bulletproof glass wall separating us. He smiled, talked to me as if we were eating breakfast and he hadn’t been away for a year. His scalp was peeling and he kept running his hands together, asking me questions about pre-school and how my mama was doing even though she was right next to me.
We deserve houses that aren’t prisons. We don’t deserve prisons at all. The lack of privacy I experienced wasn’t separate from the abuse my ex-stepfather wielded against us, or from the abuse the state wielded against my father. They fueled each other.
My mama loved clean spaces and when we (she, my ex-stepfather and I) got our own apartment, she wanted everything in its rightful place. She’d often come into my room and inspect it. She’d go through my drawers and if an item wasn’t properly folded, she’d pour out all of my clothes and leave them in a pile for me to fold correctly.
I was told I had to earn my privacy, that it was a privilege, especially because most of our family members had grown up sharing rooms and not having a space that was “theirs.†This space was both supposed to be and not be mine. When family came over, they thought I was spoiled because I had so many toys and because my room stayed clean, but I was always susceptible to random room inspections and it never really felt like mine. They didn’t understand that.
After a young man I was dating locked me inside his house and took my car keys, phone and wallet, he asked me to prove my love and commitment to him by walking up from the flatlands back to his house in the Oakland hills. I was angry as hell, but I walked and justified it because I enjoy going on walks. It wasn’t until years later that I recognized those patterns and my responses to them as manipulation, control and early signs of abuse.
Children who are taught that they don’t deserve privacy are in a perpetual cycle of apologizing for receiving it and/or being fearful that it will be rescinded. Children who experience abuse are often penalized when they act as if privacy is their right. They are told that they’ll get privacy when they pay bills and/or own their own homes, but we know that home ownership and being current on bills is rare for Black folk in an anti-Black world. Respecting a child’s privacy teaches them (and us) to respect the privacy of others.
When we try to control and determine the amount of space Black children are allowed to occupy, we reveal our own feelings of unworthiness, jealousy, envy and lack of integrity. We specifically respond to our own experiences of abuse, triggers and control that were exercised on us in moments when we were just trying to be ourselves, explore our bodies and/or get some quiet time with our thoughts.
It’s imperative that Black adults learn to build healthier practices of engaging with children that center their autonomy, happiness, care and consent. Practicing this becomes difficult when operating through layers of classism, respectability politics and anti-Blackness. Building spaces for adults to practice, communicate and engage where they are now and where they would like to be without centering mistakes is necessary. We also have to constantly challenge and divest from the “I brought you into this world, I can take you out” narrative.
Anything that mirrors how the state achieves control must be questioned and obliterated, especially when that influences how we care for our babies. Children deserve privacy in the homes that they are in. Children deserve love beyond conditions. This is a requirement. They should not have to prove this.
Amber Butts is a writer, educator and tenants rights organizer from Oakland, CA. Her work has appeared in Blaqueerflow, KPFA’s Women’s Magazine Radio and 6×8 Press. She is currently at work on an afro-futurist novel focused on themes of intergenerational trauma, imagination, Black survival and environmental racism. Amber’s writing challenges multiple systems of oppression through the use of queer and womanist frameworks. She works to amplify the stories of poor Black folks, with an emphasis on mamas, children and elders. She believes in asking big and small questions that lead to tangible expressions of freedom and liberation.
Amber likes cheese and comic books and sings louder than she needs to.
