COMING CLEAN
By Dianea Kohl

Today, I was walking in downtown Ithaca, NY, when I saw a light brown
woman "clock" her 3-year-old son's head, and I felt my heart tighten like
a stretched rubber band. Holding sadness and fear. I'd promised myself
this past decade to interrupt abuse of children, despite my fears to do
so.

As I walked up to the crying boy and his young probably late teen
parents, I caressed his afro-curled head with my middle-aged white hand
and said something like, "That hurts doesn't it?" I can't remember what
words I chose next as I looked into his mother's eyes, while two young
black men, one dark, one light, looked at me and after the 2-year-old boy
sibling.

At some point I said to the parents, "Do you like to be hit?" The
dark man said that's what his parents did to teach him respect, which I
followed with, "You mean fear and humiliation? Our generation is learning
a better way." I was relieved and surprised that they continued an
exchange with me and didn't say, "Mind your own business honkie!" like
earlier harsh expletives I'd heard them say.

Before I walked into the doctor's office; I'd said it'd be helpful
to talk to your children like you'd like to be talked to. When I came
back out a few minutes later, the five of them were still standing on the
sidewalk, and the biracial man began a sarcastic jokin' statement about
how he'd treat the kids to get their respect, and without thinkin' I was
conversing with him about how he was raised, one of eight, hit by his
folks - when my ears were hit with, "I'm not a kind man."

A coming clean that had all the filth of violence laid over, "Yes you
are, you were born a beautiful loving baby until that was taken away from
you." (I replied firmly)

Automatically, I reached into the trunk of my Jeep and found a copy
of my children's picture book, Everybody Cries, and gave it to the black
man for his child. The little boy walked down the street, as he turned
the pages. And tears opened my heart once more.