Dead Windows: My long journey out of domestic violence

By James Snowden Walker

I didn't want to hear her scream, but I didn't want to put my hands over my ears to block out the screams either. The silence was worse. Much worse. If she screamed, I knew, as bad as it was, she was just being hurt. But there was too much uncertainty in the quiet that followed my father's explosions. These were, for me, terrifying moments, because I didn't know why she had stopped screaming. Had he stopped beating her? Was he doing something so awful she couldn't scream? Or had he hit her so hard she was unconscious, or worse, dead? The anxiety that swelled inside me during these disturbing moments was paralyzing. And it was no different this time. The kitchen had grown depressingly quiet as the four of us sat with our hands clasped in our laps. The hunger that crawled in our bellies moments ago had grown cold, as had the food on the plates in front of us. The cookies our mother baked for dessert were on a serving dish on the cupboard. On the stove, the covered pots and pans still produced an appetizing aroma, while the ladle and serving fork she had used lay on a sauce-soaked napkin in the space beside the burners. These monuments of her existence only seemed to heighten her absence, as did the faint smell of her perfume, which lingered in the air as an alternative to her smile. An inexpressible blackness had descended over the room. Somewhere in the inert vagueness of our surroundings, I could hear the clock on the wall ticking, each second holding me hostage. I stared intently at the space where, from my point of view, my mother was supposed to re-emerge into the room, and I prayed for her to fill that space. The longer the clock ticked, the tenser my body became and the wider my eyes grew in trepidation. Domestic violence and child abuse has devastating consequences on the mental health of Black men, more than is acknowledged. And yet, the voice of how this disease affects Black men has been largely silenced.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: B0BGKMWXBP
• ISBN13: 9798354704644
• Release Date: September 2022
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 305 Pages
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.7" x 6.0"