WORD VIEW: And it goes on

By Esther Phillips | Sun, February 12, 2012 - 12:00 AM

I was sitting in a public place in my car the other afternoon, glad that for a change I didn’t have to rush off to pick up my granddaughter.

After a short while I became aware of raised voices.

I looked in the general direction and saw what appeared to be two young women fighting.

As I said, I had nowhere to go, and to be totally honest, I will admit that since I had nothing to write for this column, my instincts prompted me that something might be brewing right here.

It was not two women after all, but a man and a woman. Some differences struck me right away: the man was short and of a small physique; the woman was obviously taller and reasonably well-built. The man was by no means what one would consider attractive; the woman was undeniably so.

The fact is that no matter how gracious one might have tried to be, it was difficult to see what had brought these two together. There could be several answers, but this question is one that occupies the minds of several these days: how on earth and by what means are these young men and women finding each other?

The point is, though, that a fight was on, and a serious one. I was appalled by the violence but found myself, like most other human beings in such circumstances, unable to move away. The young woman did try to return some blows but I was completely baffled by her mostly submissive behaviour.

It was not making sense that this woman could be taking all these blows, given her distinct advantage of height and size. At one point, the young woman’s head was bowed and her arms actually hanging free while the little man pummelled her. What on earth was going on?

In fact, one woman who was standing next to me kept repeating incredulously: “You t’ink I would leh’ a li’l man like he beat me? Dah fight woulda done evuh since!”

Time always seems to go strange in these situations but after what might have been a minute or two, the man tried to leave, with the woman pursuing him.

I implored the woman (admittedly from a safe distance) to leave the man alone; my conscience would not let me leave the scene without having made some attempt, however feeble, to stop this violence that was being inflicted on another woman. The man finally drove away.

For me, however, there remained a huge question.

I felt I had to approach the three adult men – one weighing well over 200 pounds – who had gathered to watch the scene.

“Why didn’t you do anything to stop that man from beating the woman?”

I tried to make sure that my tone was not confrontational, since I did not want to put the men on the defensive but wanted as honest an answer as they could give. I wanted to know, as well, why the female security guards who were on the spot had not intervened.

“Dem is man and woman (in a relationship). We can’t get into that!” The statement was made as though it originated from the fount of purest wisdom.

There were about six individuals in that group and all seemed to be in total agreement, some reinforcing their position with examples of horrors inflicted on people who tried to intervene/interfere in such cases.

One woman then spoke with relish about what she would have done if her hands had been as free as the young woman’s during the fight. A great-aunt had told her how to hold a certain part of the man’s anatomy and apply pressure in a certain kind of way. The man would have been brought to his knees. Another would have kicked him in the choice area with the same result.

The point is, though, that people who could have helped that young woman did not. They just watched her being beaten. What if the man had killed her?

When I left the area, the young woman was sitting holding her child who had witnessed it all.

One of her friends, who had done nothing to help either, had been holding the infant.

What keeps haunting me is the young woman’s attitude of submissiveness to what I suspect is a normal occurrence for her. Was this learnt behaviour? When and where does it end?

What about her little girl . . . ?