"Every time I saw her after that, I would pretend to look down, busy rearranging my books or the buttons on my sweater, guilty that I knew everything about her."
Lena St. Clair carries the weight of her frightened mother and ignorant father, and now, she carries the story of her neighbor whom she hears screaming through her bedroom wall. "Then I heard scraping sounds, slamming, pushing and shouts and then whack! whack! whack! Someone was killing. Someone was being killed." If it truly was someone being killed, the story would be much simpler, but the girl behind the wall could not get that lucky. Lena hears the abuse of the girl behind the wall every night before finally meeting her. And when she does, Lena is shocked at how normal she looks. At the end of the chapter, Lena compares her neighbor's verbal and physical abuse to the silent abuse she suffered in her relationship with her mother. The author presents both girls' abuse in a veiled way but with pathos that provokes both compassion and interest.
Abuse takes on many forms - some easier to recongnize than others. Lena suffered because of her mother's self-centered neglect; and Lena's mother suffered from the abuses of her childhood. It is a never ending cycle. Sometimes, the abused become the abusers; so lost in their own self pity or pent up anger that they don't see themselves becoming the very thing they resent. It is outsider's reaction to the abuse that interrupts the cycle. Lena, struggling with her own abuse, does nothing to help her neighbor, as she describes in the opening quote. In many people's eyes, she took the easy way out - to avert her attention and pretend that she hasn't seen anything. But Lena's admittance to a feeling of guilt reveals what we all truly know: we recognize the hurt in one another and feel a need to fix it, to find justice, but standing up for someone else when we are consumed with our own weaknesses and pain is hard to do. Country singer Martina McBride sings about abuse in her song titled "Concrete Angel." Lines from the lyrics of this song resonate with the situations Lena and her neighbor are experiencing:
"Somebody cries in the middle of the night,
The neighbors hear but they turn out the lights;
A fragile soul caught in the hands of fate,
When morning comes it will be too late."
For me, this song is a call to action. Open your eyes, be sensitive and compassionate - break the cycles.
Le Ly Hayslip also experienced abuse in many different forms in When Heaven and Earth Changed Places. She was abused by her American boyfriend and witnessed the mistreatment of women.
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