All Is Grace_ A Ragamuffin Memoir - Brennan Manning [9]
One day we were playing Clock and I was the leader. Earlier that day Rob had been especially mean to me, chasing me around the dining-room table with a butcher knife, pretending to be a villain or something. I knew he only meant to spook me, but he had succeeded a little too well that morning. So I decided to get back at him. My brother may have been tuff, but I could be shrewd.
That particular day we were playing Clock just outside our front door, which was usually locked. However, with a fine scheme in mind, I had left it unlocked. I went down the row of kids asking, “What time is it?” I finally came to Rob. When he gave the wrong answer, I hit him as hard as I could across the face. I immediately turned and bolted through the front door, locking it behind me. He was left banging on the door, screaming, “I’m gonna kill him!” I can only imagine the stunned looks on the other kids’ faces.
Obviously Rob didn’t kill me, and as time eased on the literal clock, so did his anger. But I gained a little status that day in the eyes of our peers. My brother was the toughest kid in the neighborhood and no one had ever dared to hit him. But I did and lived to tell about it. I never asked Rob about it, but I believe he was proud of me that day. That’s what I meant when I said I didn’t know what I would have done if my brother had been left in jail that day. Our brother-to-brother relationship was often antagonistic, but he was still a witness that I had some grit about me. I needed that presence because some days I thought I might disappear.
Notes
1 Louise Glück, “Matins,” The Wild Iris (New York: HarperCollins, 1992), 26.
3
My memories of my father’s father, William Manning, are shy at best. I avoided him as much as I could. He had a work-related injury that prevented him from holding down a regular job. Most of what he held down was alcohol. I have no recollection of him being mean to me, no abuse or anything like that. I was there when he would try to rage at my grandmother or my father, but by that time he was more like a toothless shark. My guess is that was not the case when my father was a boy.
What I did like about my grandfather was that he was married to my grandmother. Anna Manning was a stereotypical Irishwoman minus the temper. I loved her. She was beautiful. She stood maybe five-foot-three, but what she lacked in stature she more than made up for in her kind face crowned with snow white hair. The renowned psychologist Alice Miller introduced the concept of the “enlightened witness”—somebody both able and willing to take a child’s side and protect him or her from any dangers of abuse. My grandmother was my enlightened witness. With her in our house, I felt safe. I felt loved and accepted too, but primarily safe. I do not remember her ever saying an unkind word to or about my mother. She appeared to understand the tenuous state of our household, and she respected its design. However, that did not mean she would stand by silently and watch me be mistreated. She was skilled in the art of disarmament—the craft of using a word or tone to diffuse my mother’s anger. I’ve often thought that she learned that art by living with an alcoholic husband, learning what to say and what not to say, and when to speak and when not to speak. Then again, my grandmother may have come by the gift naturally; perhaps God knew she would need that skill in this life, so He gave it to her in spades. However she came by it, I’m just glad she did.
Of all my books, The Boy Who Cried Abba is one of my personal favorites. It tells the story of Willie Juan, a somewhat autobiographical character. One of the main characters is Willie Juan’s grandmother. Her character had lived a very different life in her youth; she