1972, Lake Charles, Louisiana

By Marla H. Thurman

Kelly and I were in trouble. We had been sent to bed, and instead of sleeping, we had jumped on our beds and played. We had also been caught.

The punishment was different. Instead of the usual, our mother had decided to “teach us a lesson.”

“You can go to your rooms,” my mother said to us, “And you can stay there. And in the morning, you can stay there. You can stay there all day and not go outside at all.”

Kelly looked stricken.

“In fact,” my mother said, “you can stay in all week. While everybody else is outside playing, you can stay in your room.”

Kelly started to cry.

“Unless….”

“Unless what?” Kelly asked, swallowing the bait I refused to take.

“Unless you would rather just get a spanking.”

This was new. We were spanked often, all the time. They just jerked us up and struck us with whatever was handy – a belt, a hairbrush, an extension cord. Something was wrong.

“But you didn’t give me a spanking,” Kelly said.

“No, I didn’t.”

What is the trap? I was trying desperately to figure out what was happening. My mother was crazy, and we – especially I – feared her. She was usually out to get me. I tried hard to stay out of her way.

“Here’s what’s going to happen,” my mother said. “You are going to get up in the morning, and you will stay in your room until you come and tell me you’re sorry and you’re ready for your spanking.”

She was watching us closely. Looking for what?

“And then,” my mother said, “you will pull down your panties and bend over, and I will spank you. Five with my hand,” she paused. “And five with the belt.”

My mother closed our bedroom door behind her without saying another word.

I needed to vomit. I was panicking, though I couldn’t have said so at the time. And I was angry. I would never surrender to this punishment.

Kelly climbed onto my bed. “What does that mean, Marla? What does she mean?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “We just need to stay inside.”

“But we can’t just stay in all day!”

“I don’t know what to do,” I responded. “Go to bed. We’ll figure it out in the morning.”

I slept little that night. I lay awake and worried. I had feuded with my mother from the day I was born. She was always trying to break me. I was always refusing to be broken. I wasn’t sure why, but I knew I could never ask my mother to spank me.

The next morning, Kelly said, “Do we get to go outside?”

“I don’t know,” I said grumpily.

Kelly went to the bathroom, and I heard my mother in the hallway, talking to my sister through the bathroom door. “You get right back in your room when you’re done, young lady.”

“I wanna go outside!” Kelly yelled back. The toilet flushed.

“Are you ready to apologize and get your spanking?” my mother asked her.

“No.”

My mother laughed a hateful laugh. “Well, you aren’t going anywhere until you apologize and come get your spanking.”

Don’t do it! I was screaming to Kelly in my head. Don’t go! Whatever you do, don’t go with her!

“I’m sorry,” I heard Kelly say. “I can get my spanking now.”

Something inside of me died just then. Kelly was leaving me behind, but she was doing something else too. She was giving herself to my mother on purpose! Something was so wrong about that. I was going to be left on my own to fight this battle.

I could no longer hear Kelly or my mother talking, so I went and opened my bedroom door just enough to peek out. I could hear sounds all through the house, but I couldn’t hear what my ears were straining to hear. Where was Kelly?

Just then, I saw my mother walk out of her bedroom carrying a belt. I knew what the belt was for, but still, everything seemed foreign to me. I simply could not comprehend what was about to happen.

Spankings in our house were sudden, violent things that just happened when you accidentally spilled cereal on the floor or when you talked too loudly indoors. Spankings were not planned! And spankings were most assuredly not asked for!

I heard my mother. Her voice sounded far away, and I felt my head begin to buzz with fear. I heard her say to Kelly, “Now, pull down your underwear.”

A pause. Then, “Now, you bend over and hold onto the table,” my mother said. “If you let go, it doesn’t count.”

I couldn’t take it. I closed the door and ran to my bed, covering my ears tightly with my pillow. Still, it was just seconds before I heard Kelly crying loudly.

I don’t know how much time passed, but the next thing I knew, Kelly was coming into the room to get her Baby Tenderlove. Doll in hand, Kelly walked over beside my bed, where I was lying very still with my eyes open.

“Don’t you wanna go outside?” she asked.

She was perfectly fine. For some reason, I hated my sister at that moment.

“No,” I said. And that was all. Kelly took her doll and left the room.

I knew I could never do what Kelly had done. Maybe it was because I was used to my mother trying to break me. Maybe it was because I always felt creepy when my mother looked at my body. Maybe it had everything to do with my friend Billy.

For weeks, I had watched my mother teach our neighbor how to spank her young son. I had walked into my living room numerous times in recent weeks to see Billy’s bare bottom exposed, over my mother’s knee, as the two women, my mother and Billy’s, tormented him by telling him why he was being spanked.

I hated Billy’s mother for watching while my own mother spanked her son’s bare backside. I would never, not in a million years, let her do that to me, as long as I had a choice. I had been given a choice for the first time ever, and my answer was a resounding “NO!”

I could not, would not, give my mother permission to spank me. Not even once. Not even if it meant I had to live in my room for the rest of my life. To give her permission now would be like saying it was OK all those other times. It would be like saying it would be OK whenever she wanted to hit me in the future. And it was not OK.

I stayed in my room for eight days. Daddy, worried about me but weak, begged me numerous times to just go get my spanking. I acted as though I couldn’t hear him. I couldn’t understand why everyone believed it was better to ask for a spanking and all the humiliation that went with it than to just stay in my room and read, even if I did miss my friends.

Not even friends were worth sacrificing myself to my mother. So, except for bath time and meals, I stayed in my room.

It was my grandmother who rescued me.

On the evening of the eighth day, I sat looking out my bedroom window. The summer sun was slowly setting. This was my favorite time to play outside, when the sun was gone but it was still light enough to see outside.

All of my friends would be outside now, with my sister, and they would stay outside even after darkness came. In the humidity of the Louisiana night, they would be sitting around picnic tables out in the courtyard, telling jokes or ghost stories, and begging for five more minutes when their parents finally called them to come in for the night.

“Well, you can’t keep her prisoner,” I heard my Granny yell from somewhere in the house. I didn’t know what had happened, but I was sure it must be bad. My Granny never yelled.

But here she was, in my living room, yelling at my mother.

Then, suddenly, my bedroom door was flung open with a flourish, and there stood my Granny, holding out her hand. “Come on,” she said. “Let’s go for a walk.”

I loved my Granny more in that moment than I ever had before. I grabbed her hand and threw myself into her legs, hugging her hard. We walked around the neighborhood until well past dark. As I waved to my friends, I knew my days of languishing inside were over.

I had won. I couldn’t say exactly what I had won, but I had come out of a dark time victorious.

It was the best walk of my life.

Marla H. Thurman lives in Signal Mountain, Tennessee, her hometown, with her two dogs, Oreo and Sleeper. She has published numerous reflections and articles in Sage of Consciousness magazine, The East Tennessee Catholic, the National Catholic Reporter, InSync Magazine, and more.

Posted by Elizabeth Armstrong Moore on Wednesday, June 27th, 2007 | Email This Post

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