Tester

Shelter
Sara Yinling
They ask me how I can claim to be an ally of survivors if I have not
known abuse.
We are barricaded in the basement of the youth shelter where I
work,
me, and these two teen clients,
tough kids—street weathered, defiant
and sometimes I am the enemy, and sometimes a tool, and occasionally
a friend.
In the house above us, we hear smashing of dishes
I have not called the cops
They say restraint angers the soul weary of restraint
So instead I have called a relative, an abuser of another form,
“can you pick up your son, please?”
When they ask how I can be an ally of survivors
What I hear is:
Have I nursed bruises from threats followed through? Have I
stood up for myself and been incarcerated because of it, my
body handcuffed and put in a cell, have I kept a vest of ice in
the freezer, have I hid pain for so long that when it bubbles up
it blacks out and rages and sends those trying to help me hiding
into basements, has the state sent me back to my abuser
time and time again saying “it’s not so bad—”
These stories are true. They are not mine and so I am afforded the
opportunity to hold them within my head but they do not belong
to my body.
But I have known fear for my physical being.
And when this raging teen threatened me with teeth, blood,
knives, fists and guns,
the other ones—street weathered, defiant—stood in front of my
body and said,
“I’ve got your back.”
They do not discriminate; a threat is a threat and my fear is so
familiar that in the face of his anger they are either solidarity or
betrayal, there is no middle ground.
And then back to the hierarchy.
He is picked up.
I tell his father, to whom I have already filed numerous counts of
physical abuse,
“your son has an anger issue; it is not your son who is not welcome
here, but his anger.”
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