When I was 5 or 6, at my father’s mother’s funeral, my parents asked me to choose who I wanted to live with. My immediate understanding was we are no longer going to live together and I have to tell them both, right now, who I loved the most. Feeling cracked and split. My heartbeat quickened.

This feeling was like the opposite of jumping into a pool. I had been floating along. Even when I was sad or upset I wasn’t living in the real world. In my memories everything seems dreamlike. Fuzzy. But, this is crisp like Autumn wind. This was the real world and I had never seen it before. What was I looking at? It’s like some sort of mean spirited pop quiz. When bad things happened, it always felt all-consuming. Then some deep part of me says, “This is where I am, and I have nowhere else to go. “

My earliest memories of my parents are of them not getting along. But, it was sort of normal; this is life like walking or breathing. There were never violent or huge hits to my psyche. My mother was traveling all the time then. It was me and my dad when she did. She was working on her doctorate and was part of the National Reserve.

Those early times with my dad and I were interesting. There seemed to be an odd separation that I didn’t understand. I remember being home again. I can’t see time. It’s nighttime. Cicadas socialize outside; sounds of the south. I can see a portrait of a clown, with olive skin, half lit by a street light. Smiling at me. I never liked this clown. I turn away from it and concentrate on the cicadas. Something is welling up inside of me. I vomit on my bed, pillow, and myself.

In shame and fear I sit up. I have to tell my dad. I have to be brave. I get up off the bed and avoid the mess, as I step to the door, and open it. Sheepish, I nudge my father, who is in some version of sleep. Angry, he tries to soften his impatience “What is it…?” “I threw up.”

He sits up. I show him my mess. We change the sheets and my clothes. He tucks me in and says use the bathroom next time and to go to sleep. He leaves me with the clown. The vomit came before I could sit up and catch it in my throat. I did it again. I’m a bad boy. What did I do…? I am so bad. I made a mess.

I go to my father. He is father now. Not dad. “I threw up.” He is mad. The changing of the sheets is more aggressive now. He tells me to wait in the living room. I sit in front of his favorite chair.

He comes into the room and sits in his chair. He is holding a belt. He asks me if I am ready for my spanking. ‘What? Why?’ I don’t say. I tell him “No.” I contemplate my first beating ever. I vow to tell him no every time. I will tell him no all night.

I wait him out. Fear has me wide awake. He is slowly nodding. Sleep calls him and he tells me to go to bed. I didn’t vomit again that night. I hold it in. Or did I run to the bathroom? Memory is a patchwork.

The chickenpox was evident all over me the next day. He called my mother who came, with the warmth of spring, into the house, to give me chicken soup, to smile at me, and to rub my head. I still remember the most succulent chicken soup I ever remember having. Memory is food.

I never talked to him about that night, or my ma. I will never forget it. It formed a seed of anger based on my confusion and fear. Was it my fault I couldn’t stop it? Sometimes I wish I had told him I was ready for my spanking. Maybe I would have vomited on him.

Back outside, my now, grandfather’s house, on the sidewalk, I looked back and forth between them, not really wishing, hoping for one or the other to save me; just to be saved, as I pleaded with my eyes to my parents. Was this the first time my heart had beat this fast? I was pleading emotionally that this was not real and at the same time trying to figure out how to tell my dad that it’s my mom I want to live with. Because my choice was immediate and easy. If I really have to choose, it isn’t a choice. It’s a situation I couldn’t bear.

I vaguely remember when we all lived together. I saw my dad more at that time. I have one memory of them shutting themselves in their bedroom and having a fight. I was choosing to pretend not to see. No, thank you. I’ll just stay in this nice place while you two talk without me. This toy is interesting. Not the suddenly cold and quiet house, echoing the cold war of my parents. Angry negotiations I will never be privy to. I wished they would play with me, but only a little.

They both seemed so stoic and uncaring when I looked at them. It felt weird and unfair at the same time. This is a joke. This is not what kids have to do, right? But, neither of them smiled. I looked at my mother and my dad. I looked him in his eyes and told them I wanted to live with my mother. He looked up from me, nodding in understanding. Did I understand?

It wasn’t that I hated him. I wanted to be nurtured.

After that, I remember nothing until I was living with my mother and sister in a house on Hartford Street. I later learned they had stayed together because of me.

Atthat time my memories of him were far apart. I’m not sure when things happened. Disconnected. Snapshots. My father would pick me up and we would do something, maybe go to the park or I would be in his office while he worked. Bored. The last time I remember being with him, before my mother and I left the state, he left me to be babysat, with a family he knew. I didn’t know them.

I played with their boy and some other kids from the neighborhood. All the houses in the complex looked the same. We played into the evening. The boy pointed to the one apartment that was his and said he was going inside. I said okay and kept playing til the street lights came on. The other kids went home and I was alone in the playground.

I swung for a minute. I looked at all the homes and could not remember where the boy lived. It was getting so dark. Fear was creeping up my spine. I picked a door and walked to it. I stood outside for a moment and looked left and right. Should I choose another door?

I knocked.

I waited.

A woman’s voice said ‘Yes?’ I said ‘It’s me, Aeric.’ The door opens and an older white woman opens the door. I told her everything I could remember, including that I did not remember the boy’s name or where they lived.

The lady was nice and patient. She helped me call the police. They came and said they would take me home. At least I could remember my mother’s home address. Well, I knew the street anyway. They found my street on their little computer.

The police got me to Hartford street and we drove slowly down til I could pick out my house in the darkness. “That’s it!” “Are you sure?” ‘I’m sure!” I wasn’t going to be an orphan after all.

When the police knocked on the door with me and my mom opened the door I was as happy as I had ever been — a safe place. I was too happy to care about the shock on my mother’s face. Part of me was relieved that she wasn’t mad at me.

I didn’t see him for a while after that. I wish I knew what the conversation with my parents went like after that. I never knew where my father went. None of us talked about it.

Later, my mother and I moved from North Carolina to Tennessee. My parents would meet half way to transfer me during summers and some weekends. Sometimes all three of us would eat at the Cracker Barrel where they did the hand off. Even then it felt a bit awkward. I smiled through it.

I have pleasant memories of singing with my dad on those car trips to Winston-Salem and back. Singing to oldies, like the Temptations, with my dad was my favorite thing. That and when I would wake up, in my fathers arms, being carried into the house. Or pretending to be asleep so he would carry me into the house. I used to pray he didn’t choose Gospel on those road trips. I didn’t know the songs. I rarely spoke up and told him what I wanted.

I felt like my job was to obey and occupy myself when I was bored, not to talk back. I must avoid my parents’ anger and disappointment. Looking back, I can see if there was tension , it was about the part of their lives they were keeping from me. But, I think I should have been told more about what was going on. I wish I had a better framework for what was going on between them.

I felt like my voice didn’t matter. I think it’s because I thought all kid’s voices didn’t. Maybe that’s why I became a writer, so my words would matter, like they didn’t with the bird incident.

One summer, while staying with my dad, I was biking around the neighborhood, it’s basically a big circle. I went left from the house and up the little hill, past the corner store, around the top of the hill, and I was on my way down the other side when a tiny bird hopped from a neighbor’s yard directly into my path. I hit the break. I swerved and still hit what looked like a lightly feathered baby Robin. It flopped and fluttered.

Discombobulated, I crashed the bike. I may have had a scratch or two. But I only cared about the bird. I rushed over. It was breathing heavily and bleeding a little. I laid it in the grass, hopped on my bike, and high tailed it to my dad’s house. Weird; it’s my dad’s house and not home.

I jumped off the bike, hearing it scrape and scratch in the driveway. I burst into the house, out of breath. My dad was slowly drinking coffee and reading the paper. “Dad, I hit a bird… On my bike… I think it’s hurt! Can we take it to the vet?!” I breathlessly and shamefully exclaimed.

“Yes,” he said. My memory is that he barely looked at me. I stared at him, asking to be helped with all of my silent voice and eyes. I watched him slowly… drinking… coffee and reading his paper, not recognizing the emergency before us. As anger crept in, I remembered the bird and ran out the door, back to the bird.

It was still there. Still, and red and unmoving. No labored breathing. It was gone. I had killed it, and I was helpless to do anything.

I walked back inside and either said it died, or I said nothing. I want to say I told him it died. I want to say that because I want him to feel guilty for it. But, memories are tricky. I am sure we never talked about it again.

My father worked in local politics. When I got accepted to the North Carolina School of the Arts he was proud. It was a school he had helped raise money for. Around this time, he was diagnosed with heart disease.

I would drive him to Wake Forest University, to get treatments and heart related exercise, once a week. We had some good talks then. I told him I heard red wine was good for the heart. He had stopped drinking beer, so I thought it was a good compromise. I found out years later that I was wrong. A humble regret where I tell myself no one is perfect. But, memories are haunting.

In the summer, I was working as an overnight camp counselor in Wilmington, North Carolina. A doctor, in the Intensive Care Unit, called me about the health of my father. I was four hours away. I started making plans to come see him.

Later that night, I was at the beach. The middle schoolers were studying bioluminescence. The ocean’s sound can be so soothing and calm. The sound of kids playing by the ocean. I felt held somehow. A warm summer ocean scented breeze washed over me as I talked with my father on the phone, for the last time. I still feel my own warm, ironic smile. Smiling at my dad through the phone, telling him I loved him, and it was going to be alright. Was it a lie?

Somber. In my memory death felt close, not scary. But, I thought I would see him tomorrow. The doctor called me in the morning, from the I.C.U., and told me he had passed. I absorbed; this is real. Do thoughts move faster or slower? I remember the doctor sounding clinical and stern. Real like death, an air of sympathy… I drove four hours up to Winston-Salem and with the help of family and friends I got his affairs in order.

I cried four times. Once when the doctor told me he was gone, the second time while cleaning out his apartment alone for hours, calling everyone in his address book, and more so when a friend, Sam, close to my fathers age, came to visit me. Sam had been like a father figure to me in some ways. Sam died during Covid.

I cried when I saw him at the wake. I swear I felt his arm on my shoulder. I smiled down on him while I laid my hand on his suited shoulder. Cold. Hard. Lifeless. Still. He isn’t there. He is outside of there. I swear I felt his presence. I did talk to him. I didn’t stay long.

The big Baptist church was filled with people, maybe a few hundred people. Standing room only. I may have met a few of his girlfriends. I had called every number in my father’s contact book, and they called others. He had touched so many lives. Prominent people from the community, politicians, community activists — came to see him and speak on his behalf about how he touched their lives. Politicians, community activists, But, I didn’t cry then.

I didn’t cry when we left the church or on the limo drive over. I didn’t cry as the preacher spoke last rights from the bible. Even as the box was lowered into the ground I didn’t cry.

But, when it was over and we were turning to leave, I couldn’t stop. It was soundless, ceaseless tears. Quite literally like a faucet with no stopping. My eyes were under water, I could not see. I cried so much I could not see. There was nothing to organize. There was nothing to distract me and hold me to calm.

There were friends of the family I was angry with, who had come to the funeral. Friends of my sister had broken her heart because of personal issues. They were there, and I hugged them through blurry eyes and clenched teeth. My anger at them was temporarily nonexistent.

Everything was fast after that. I had a desire to stay with everyone and to be alone. I wanted to be hugged by 100 people and to sit in a dark room. Something was over.

I finished everything I needed to do for him. I filled my car with keepsakes and left the rest with cousins. I asked a friend to hold his bed frame for me. I told him I would come back for it when I could. It took me a year and he told me I couldn’t have it. It had been too long and he made up some lie, saying I told him he could have my father’s last bed. I never talked to that friend again.

Icouldn’t understand my father’s point of view as a child. I didn’t understand his love. With my parents divorce, I have clarity about how they both felt different to me. Different energies.

Somehow, my mother was softer. Only later on would I really discover how strong willed she was. “That’s a hard woman.” My father said this to me once, during one of our few long, if deep, conversations.

When he passed, The Chronicle Newspaper (Article) did a piece on him. Shedrick Adams is my father.

He left a legacy that continues to shine to this day.

Æ