adams

My father's murder stole my sanity as well as the sanity of my entire family. Our house became a zoo without a keeper. Our mother opened a restaurant and had to work countless hours every week, leaving four children ample time at home to scream and fight in our wild frustration. Toni locked herself in her bedroom for a period of five years and was rarely seen leaving it except to attend Evangelic Baptist Church. I wanted to be more help to my family, but I was too angry, too bitter, and too wild—an animal trapped and gnawing off my own leg to get free from the trap. I couldn't stop feeling my father's eyes upon me. I begged my mother to send me to a military academy for eighth grade; my sould screamed for order. But I was able to find no escape in a uniform; my storm was eternal, and I couldn't run away from myself or my father.

His ghost haunted me in various ways for years: nightmares, fear that kept me sleeping with a gun under my pillow, disapproval I perceived in the eyes of adult men. I would dream of his return, his walking through the door, saying, 'Why haven't you avenged my murder?" it was in the houses of my fellow teenage friends that I was most uncomfortable; I saw my father's disapproval in their fathers' eyes. (17).

Adams, Curtis Dean. "The Relationship." Sticks and Stones and Other Student Essays. 5th ed. Eds. Lawrence Barkley, Rise B. Axelrod, and Charles R. Cooper. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2004. 12-18.