My friend is beaten in the room next door

by Carolyn Smart

We were playing in the Rockeries after dark,
Cathy and David and I, we ran around the flower beds and
hid behind the rocks and trees, we ran and ran into the shadowed dark
until the night was fully with us, much too late for play.
Towards home they grew afraid of what would come
from all that running, the laughing and the fun,
and all the shadows grew around their brand new house
as we walked together up the hill towards the door.
Inside, their parents stood together and as one:
go to Cathy’s room and wait, they said to me,
while Cathy and her little brother David cried.
They were small, and so afraid.
I could not sit, I could not play or think,
I heard the father dragging Cathy down the hall,
in terror and in tears, and from the room next door
I listened while her father beat her with his belt,
the hollow thump in tempo with her cries.
I do not forget that sound: the breaking of a girl,
the shaming, the awful supremacy of adulthood,
and I was told to stay exactly where I was.
I did what I was told. But then I told.