Written by James Harris Jr., MD, FACS

When I dream or have nightmares, I still find myself there. My house was the one about halfway down the street with the big mulberry tree. I am forever trapped within its cracked white walls, which were filled with roach eggs and an underbelly beneath the house crawlspace, which was shared with all the rats.

The berries from outside were tracked in by those who frequented our home, leaving stains in the 70’s shag carpet that, over time, looked like they were part of the pattern. In my room, with my door closed, I was never afraid. I had a nail that was driven halfway through the door frame, which was then bent in the shape of an “L.”

I could twist the nail from side to side as a way of locking it. I thought I was a genius when I came up with that. It kept out the crazy people who frequented and lived in my home. Most of the crazy people were my family. The only one that was sane in my young eyes was Mama.

My room was right next to the bathroom where they would smoke crack. When I was between the ages of seven and thirteen, my father, my uncle, one of my aunts, and multiple “family friends” would use that bathroom as their sanctuary. Crack has a musky, sweet odor, one that could probably be mistaken for incense by the layperson; I was able to identify this smell by the time I was nine.

The back wall of the closet in my room was thin and made up the other side of the bathroom wall. There were once nails that had been hammered through this wall to hold up various pictures over the years. After these pictures came down, along with the nails, the holes remained. From these holes, I was able to watch them.

The glass crack pipe was the popular choice of smoking, but some would fall back on other various contraptions, I assume, because they lost their pipe while on one of their delusional rampages. Considering the depth of their drug-induced insanity at times, the ingenuity always surprised me. It was like watching that old television show MacGyver: an old soda can, a toilet paper roll with some tin foil, you name it, give them the resources, and they would make it into a crack pipe.

Desperation is an understatement when it comes to describing people who are hooked on crack. Some of their makeshift pipes would get so hot that they burned their lips. So strange to watch it happen.

They would react to the pain when the scorching hot pipe touched their lips, but then go straight back to it for another hit. Once they got that rock, it was going to get smoked.

Some acted more strangely than others when they smoked crack. Most could try to act normally as an attempt not to let Mama know what they were doing. Mama and my Aunt Pat were the only ones who didn’t use. My father was by far the worst. At baseline, my father was already paranoid, but when he was using, you knew it.

Over 300 pounds, pacing the floor, drenched in sweat, opening and closing doors, locking and unlocking windows. Even if I was in my room with the door closed, I could tell what was going on by the frantic sounds of his footsteps throughout the house. The weight of each step reverberated through the baseboards enough to wake me from sleep, afraid there was an intruder that had broken in or that we were being raided by the police.

On multiple occasions, I would try to keep him from going outside when he was high. I wanted to protect myself from the embarrassment of the neighborhood kids seeing him in his “cracked out” state. One time, when I was around 9 years old, I thought I could use all my strength to keep that 300+ pound man in the house by force; I obviously was mistaken.

I grabbed his arm by the elbow when he reached for the front door. I was met with a quick glance through eyes that didn’t seem to recognize who I was. It wasn’t my dad, but a monster who somehow stole my voice, like in one of my nightmares where I was unable to scream. My mouth opened, but the sound remained trapped in my lungs, making my chest feel like it was about to explode.

I was thrown on the couch, unable to even exhale. My muscles involuntarily tightened as I curled into a ball, preparing to be hit. My father had never struck me, but everything in the moment seemed as though this man with the empty, unrecognizing eyes was not my father.

The crack was like rabies to his mind. I was facing Stephen King’s Cujo in the form of a man. Instead of feeling the impact of a fist, I felt his hands going down to my waist. He started to burrow his huge hand into my pockets.

His fingers felt like multiple little mice had entered my pocket and were looking for some other way to escape.

I didn’t initially understand what was happening, but my fear immediately transformed into anger, which broke my paralysis. My scream finally escaped as a young boy’s shrill, which could probably not be distinguished from that of a girl. He was not phased by my screams.

He pulled my front pockets inside out. His focus then shifted as his eyes showed a feeling of hope. He picked at a white ball of lint in my pocket and closely inspected it. He held me down with one hand while the other raised the potential crack rock up to the light of the window in his field of view.

As I screamed helplessly on the couch, Mama came from behind him, swinging a frying pan, yelling at him to get out. I think she may have struck him at least one time because he quickly retreated out the front door in the way that an injured bear, shot by a hunter, would scurry off into the woods. A couple of years passed before seeing him again.