JANUARY PROMPT: TRAPPED INSIDE
This Is What Happened in A Doctor’s Waiting Room
And I didn’t know what to do
In April, 1994, I’m in a doctor’s waiting room. I pick up a magazine. Flip through a few pages. Put it back down. Decide to relax and let my mind wander.
Voices break the quiet…
A woman sits several seats from me with three children. Through listening I learn the oldest boy is ten, and not in school because he’s sick. The middle child is a four-year-old boy. The little girl is two.
An elderly man sits to my left, next to a middle-aged woman. A younger woman sits straight across from me reading a magazine.
No one speaks to anyone else. We’re a group of strangers thrown together for a moment in time.
I listen. I watch. I remain silent. Unsure of what to do.
I take a pen and a small notepad from my purse to write down what I’m hearing.
The two boys are arguing. One threatens to hit the other. Their mother says, “You better watch out or I’ll smack you.”
WATCH
WATCH
Watch yourself.
Watch out.
Beware.
Tick Tock
WATCH
The secretary picks up the receiver, pushes buttons on the phone. The mother hisses, “See.” She points. “She’s calling the police on you. You better be good.”
The doctor emerges and calls out a name. The magazine reading woman leaves the room. “There’s the Doctor,” the mother warns. “You better be good.”
No wonder people fear authority figures. How can you turn to the doctor or the police when you grow up learning to fear them?
SLAP SLAP
“Sssh…stop that squealing.”
“That’s enough of that.”
“I don’t care. Both of you stop it.”
“Sssh…..”
SLAP
The mother reaches out and slaps the younger boy. “Put that chair back. Don’t touch that! You want me to put you in the car?” She grabs him and shakes him. “In the trunk?” she asks.
She tells the children what they can’t do. Never what they can do. Mother jumps up and down. A slap here, a slap there. Endless slapping.
I see no hugs. No tenderness. I only see pain and suffering. This is love?
Mother seems so far away. Unfeeling. Doesn’t seem to realize what she’s doing. She acts like she’s under a spell.
The oldest boy plays a game of calling his little sister over to sit on a kid’s chair. When she goes to sit down, he tries pulling the chair out from under her. She is innocence and unaware of any danger. Somehow her bum always wriggles back far enough to find the chair. He tries over and over again to fool her.
We’ve been here for half an hour.
The middle boy tosses his hat around the room. His mother cautions him to be careful. He tosses the hat again, turns and asks his mother, “Where’s my hat?” He walks over and greets her with a slap, the same greeting she meets him with. The mother then hands him the hat, says, “Be nice.”
The kids are constantly picking on each other. Tease. Taunt. They slap and kick each other. Their mother keeps telling them to behave. Keeps telling them how bad they are.
There’s no quiet. The kids are in constant motion. Their mother in constant pursuit. There are brief moments when the kids stop and play. But their mother seems unable to cope with not hitting them.
My throat closes up. My hands shake. I feel on the verge of doing something. But my God, what? This is a family. What right do I have?
I continue to write. Catching their words as they fly.
“Listen Buddy,” the mother asks, “Do you want me to spank your bum? Do you?”
Here I sit, helpless again; like when I was a child. Caught in madness. Not knowing what to do.
“You better watch your tongue,” the mother says. The ten-year-old replies, “I can’t. My mouth’s got no eyes.”
His mother says, “Don’t get smart with me.”
The boy reclines across two chairs. His mother moves away from him. It’s the other boy’s turn. “I don’t want to hear you squealing for no reason. I’m going to tape your mouth shut.”
HIT
SLAP
SLAP
PUNCH
Back to the older boy she says, “You’re ten years old. You stop it!”
I think to myself, my God, how old are you? Why don’t you stop it? Why pass the responsibility along to your child? Why make him feel it’s his fault? Why?
SLAP
Back to the other boy. “I told you about that squealing for nothing. I’ll put you in the car.”
The mother hits the older child. The older child hits the middle child.
On and on it goes, like falling dominoes.
SLAP SLAP
A chain reaction that will continue until someone has the awareness to stop.
Over and over.
Never ending.
SLAP SLAP
watch watch
tick tock
The mother’s pointing finger. Shaming and accusing. Not the maternal image we hold of mother.
The mother calls the middle child bad. The oldest boy tries to comprehend. He mumbles, “I thought I was the bad kid? You always said I was the bad kid. He’s the bad kid now?”
No response from the mother. She seems lost in her own world, buried far from here.
She goes over to the little girl. “See the secretary,” she whispers. “She some upset with you. She needs quiet to work. You be a good little girl, or I’ll smack you with my shoe. You listen. Be good. The secretary’s got a bigger shoe than mommy. She’ll smack you with it.”
Beware
Beware
Back to the oldest child again. “I’m telling you to smarten up or I’ll pound you so hard.”
“Shut up.”
She trying so hard to keep control.
“sssh…..sh….”
The younger kids have discovered a pink plastic tea set. They pour a cup of imaginary tea. Their mother can’t tolerate their play.
“shh…..shh…. Stop that…..”
“Oh, stop it! You’re making too much noise.”
Now back to the oldest. “When you get home, you’re going straight to your bed, straight to your room. Next time you’re sick, I’m going to make you come by yourself.”
Back to the younger kids. “Stop. Stop that screaming for no reason.”
SLAP
“Don’t cry.”
Meanwhile, the older boy speaks, “Someone shoot me. I can’t get any sleep at home. I can’t get any sleep in the doctor’s office. Could I sleep in a library? Sleep on a library table?” Mother offers no response. Can she even hear him speak?
No one seems to notice me either. The one sitting here writing. It’s as if I’m an invisible spectator.
Watching
Watching
Helpless from the sidelines.
Mother is unaware of choices. It’s around and around.
Over and over.
Tick Tock
Their names are called. In they all file. I’m now alone in the waiting room.
They came, they went.
Will I ever see them again? How will this end?
Will they ever break the cycle?
I pray the mother awakens from her trance, or the children survived their childhood and if they survive they are able to break this chain. I pray that they don’t grow up and do the same to their children.
Tick tock
Watch
At the time this happened I was thirty-four years old and in therapy facing the reality of my own childhood abuse and this took me back to what it was like to silently witness the abuse of others as a child. But instead of doing nothing, at least this time I wrote it all down. I stayed present enough to be able to record it.
