She told me that the Thursday previous, she had to go to class so she had dropped The Newbie off at her mother's house. Her mother sometimes babysits when The Newbie's great-grandfather (who usually takes care of The Newbie) can't do it. When she came back to pick up The Newbie, her ears were swollen and bruised. The Newbie's grandmother seemed unconcerned, told my niece that in one instance, The Newbie had climbed into a high sided toy box and while climbing out had caught her foot and fallen into the coffee table causing one bruise.
And the other bruise?
Well, the grandmother claimed she hadn't seen it happen because quote her back was turned while she got a Sprite. But then the grandmother said that she was sure it happened when The Newbie tripped and fell.
These two "accidents," each of which had resulted in a startlingly severe bruise on each ear, had happened on the same day.
My aunt remarked that abusers often target the ear. How she knew that, I don't know.
Turns out she was right. This is a figure (from a paper published by the American Academy of Family Physicians) of a little girl whose ears have been damaged by an abuser:
Bruising of the ear from being "boxed." This type of injury is unlikely to occur through accidental trauma.The bruise on the girl in that photo is much less severe than either of the bruises on The Newbie.
In fact, bruising on the ear is one of the places that is associated with abuse because, let's face it, it's not a common place to get a bruise. When you fall down, you scrape your knee. You bruise your hand trying to catch yourself. You land on your hip and get a bruise there. Or if you fall and hit your head and get a lump and a bruise somewhere on your head. I've never heard or seen someone trip and fall and land so that only an ear--and nothing else--is severely bruised. When a child has a bruise on her ear, someone put it there on purpose.
I asked my niece if she believed that, those stories. She seemed ambivalent. It was her own mother telling her that these were accidents. The Newbie can't talk yet, so she could neither confirm nor deny. My niece had doubts, but she was ultimately non-committal.
I asked my niece if anyone but the grandmother was at the house when The Newbie was there. Only another little kid, the three-year-old godson of the grandmother's husband. Was the husband there? No, he had gone to help the great-grandfather. In fact, my niece had given him a ride after dropping off The Newbie with the grandmother. (Later, my niece changed that story, saying that two of the grandmother's friends had stopped by for lunch, stayed for an hour, then left.)
I asked my niece if she had taken The Newbie to the doctor to have the bruises checked out. No. She had asked her own grandmother (The Newbie's great-grandmother) about it. The great-grandmother is, obviously, the grandmother's mother. The great-grandmother works in a hospital. She told my niece that she would ask a doctor if my niece should bring The Newbie in to see a doctor. When she reported back, it was to say that the doctor had said that there was nothing to worry about as long as The Newbie didn't seem bothered by it. My niece was satisfied with that and wasn't planning on taking The Newbie to see a doctor. I insisted that she take The Newbie to a doctor. She was non-committal.
We had lunch. I took a photo of the baby with my phone and when I tried to take another, the phone crashed, froze up completely, wouldn't turn on, wouldn't turn off. At least I got one photo. In the photo, a shitty cell phone camera photo, you can see the bruise on her left ear. You can see the wariness in The Newbie's eyes. She looks distrustful. Later, she sat on my lap and played, reaching her little hand into my glass to grab ice cubes and stirring the ice water with a straw and a coffee stirrer. I didn't look at her ears.
After lunch, as we walked to the parking lot, I again urged my niece to take The Newbie to a doctor and she again said she might, but I walked away from it feeling awful. That afternoon, I went to the studio. I couldn't focus on my work. I looked up "ear bruising abuse" and confirmed what my aunt knew. Ear bruises are so startlingly uncommon, even in accident-prone children, that they are taken as clear signs of abuse. I called my mother, couldn't keep from crying as I told her about the bruises on The Newbie. I called my aunt after and we talked about the afternoon and about her feelings about the bruises. I called my niece again. We talked for a long time and she grudgingly admitted that The Newbie seemed to get hurt a lot when she was with the grandmother. The grandmother always explained it away by saying that she let The Newbie run around because she wasn't going to coddle her. The grandmother explained the bruises by saying that The Newbie was clumsy and she fell down a lot. A bruise here. A bruise there. No big deal.
I asked my niece if she truly believed that.
She kinda did, but not really. She told me that the grandmother often expressed exasperation at having to babysit for The Newbie and that she had a history of being indifferent to The Newbie, of not visiting or showing interest in her.
The grandmother also has a history of drug abuse, an addiction to prescription pain killers and muscle relaxants that she buys on the street. Now she's on welfare or disability (I don't know which) and she stays home all day and gets high. She claims that she doesn't do it around The Newbie. She dotes on the three-year-old godson of her new husband (they were married about six months ago). The godson is the apple of the husband's eye, a golden child.
My niece and I talked a long time about her mother, The Newbie's grandmother, and she admitted that she had been angry when she confronted her about the bruises. She admitted that the grandmother was unconcerned. I asked how she felt about that. She didn't know how to feel. We hung up and she called back a little later, wanting to talk more about the incident. She seemed on the verge of believing that perhaps, maybe, her mother had done something wrong. Maybe. A little bit. She asked me what I would do if it were my daughter and I told her that I would never let my daughter stay with someone I thought had abused her. Even if there were any question at all, I would remove the person from my daughter's life and never, ever let them have access to her. I told her that I knew she wasn't like that, but that she needed to make sure that no one could hurt her daughter.
The next day I went with her to her class. On the way, we talked more about it. The grandmother had called to request that The Newbie come stay with her. The godson was coming too and they could play together. My niece remarked cynically that maybe she only wanted The Newbie to come over to keep the godson amused and entertained.
After her class we had lunch and talked even more. I told her about my own history of abuse and how I wish someone had spoken up for me. How I still live much of the time in fear, expecting the world to come crashing down the way it did all the time when I was a child. She was sorry for me, of course, but she didn't think the same was happening to her daughter. Maybe her mother was neglectful when she watched The Newbie. Maybe. Perhaps. She said again that The Newbie seems to get hurt a lot when she's over at the grandmother and the explanations for it aren't always satisfactory. She agreed that she wouldn't let The Newbie be with the grandmother unless there was someone else there. That was the most she could think to do. She still wasn't going to take The Newbie to see a doctor.
No comments:
Post a Comment