Balmy Street is beautiful to many, but I witnessed my mother get beat on 10 ½ Balmy Street so it’s nowhere beautiful to me. I was a kid until I went through witnessing my mother get beat: that’s when it all changed. Nothing was ever pretty and pink anymore. I became aware and cautious maybe even paranoid at the age of seven.
I sat behind a barred chair and cry, cried because I was afraid. My mother was getting beat but still could yell her heart out telling my brother and me to get out of the room; she didn’t want us to watch. I stayed in place until it was over, simply because I was paralyzed from the waist down. The only functional organ in my body was my heart. My heart is what witnessed the beatings and what felt the pain. It has scarred me and haunted me ever since.
I’m seventeen today and live a good life with my family but ten years ago I was seven and fearing having to face another night witnessing my mother getting beat. I’m still developing life skills and reinforcing skills that life has already granted me as I grew up watching mother’s face get distorted and bruised up. I was forced to be resilient at a young age and continue to do so today. The vile moments experienced on 10 ½ Balmy Street are forever with me. I still walk through the street and begin a journey. In this journey I try to find myself, I think back to ten years ago and yell silently. I weep. I am paralyzed once more because this journey always takes me back to the night where it all changed for me.
I’m almost to the other side of Balmy Street and have a blurred eye sight but clear enough to realize that my heart is behind me. Behind me because it still recalls the beauty of having such a courageous mother. Courageous mother always taking the unnecessary violence upon her body and never thinking for herself but for her kids. My heart only hears the “salgan” of my mother’s cracked voice ten years ago. I meet 25th St. and now and My heart is caught up with the rest of me.