lise@ttol.co.tt

Love, T&T style

Love might be a many splendoured thing but in this here Trini, in this here time, it could kill you dead like a nit.

Take, for example, that woman from South who now get sentence to hang. She must be did love she husband. She love him to death, as a matter of fact. He self, if you believe what she swear to in court, love she a little bit too much, too. He used to beat she, she say.

And everybody know that if a man don’t beat you, he don’t love you.

That is the kind of stupidness that woman used to swallow like condense milk when is really gall, long time. In my mother day was a normal thing for a woman to get licks from she man every now and then, or at the very least he go bawl she up when she make a mistake.

One of my neighbour say she man used to beat she so bad she lost a child from it. Is only then that she leave him, otherwise she would of stay. Taking licks not so bad when you have the man to hold on to.

Me ent know if is just own-way I own-way, but that kind of philosophy never make no kind of sense to me. To me, you not suppose to suffer for love, and if the man who say he love you beating you, then what kind of love is that?

I feel like people go say this is a wrong-timing column. I mean, is not International Women’s Day or Day Against Violence Against Women or nothing so. Why I writing about licks?

Well, is two things, really. One is the woman from South who going to hang for love, and the next thing is just me thinking about love on the whole.

You know that in T&T, if you’s a woman, you more likely to get kill from your man than from a stranger? Is not the rapist in the dark night we have to worry about so much as the man who take we hand in broad daylight and swear “till death do we part”—and want to hurry up the matter.

But I don’t think most of the men who does beat their women—and it have plenty, even in this time, in this 2006 when we have cable and Internet and thing—does do it for spite. I feel they does really do it for love.

A wrong, bad, out-of-place love, true. And is the same love they feeling that the woman feeling when she taking the licks. She go take she blackeye, buss head, break hand, go by she mother for a week and then come back home, wanting to try again.

Neither one of them does understand that it have something real wrong in the relationship that a week by Mammy ent go fix. Or a good cut-tail, for that matter.

Take the woman from South. Papers say how she say she figure a beating would of straighten she husband out and make him treat she better. She thought the fellas who she hire would of break he hand, for the most.

The papers this week didn’t say what kind of pressure she had was to take when she was in the marriage, whether it was a eye for a eye and he did break she hand first. As everybody know, do so don’t like so.

The papers didn’t say, neither, if they was real lovebirds when they wasn’t fighting like cat and dog. The pictures didn’t show them holding hands and buying ice cream and walking down Harris Promenade on a Sunday evening and going Globe and watch a 8.30 when the children was by she mother for the night.

Because, play you don’t know, is just so man and woman does be. In-between the licks, is the love that does keep you going—and coming back.

Is that love that make she want to teach he how it does feel when somebody push you down on the ground and kick you in your belly with a steel-toes boots. She thought if he did learn that, every day could of be Sunday and every night, a 8.30 by Globe.

Me and my friend, a next woman who single with children, always talking about love and how we want to find a nice fella to settle down with. I does frighten for we, sometimes. Because you know I want my ice cream and theatre show, too. I just can’t handle the steel toes, and no man better not come by me with that or I ent go hire nobody, I go straighten he out for myself.

But, please God, let it never come to that. I wish everybody in this place, including me and my girl E, could have a nice, loving man or woman, who understand that love don’t mean you have to suffer and dead for it.