“Witness”
It’s the word “shooting,” that triggers me. Every time my mother uses it, my system is jolted. My mind prefers to think of it as this amorphous event that I can somehow shape and mold in my brain like play-doe. When my mother uses the word “shooting,” it becomes definitive, monumental, traumatic, and my brain isn’t ready to digest the impact of that reality. Sometimes, I wonder if it ever will but I’m beginning to know that this is okay. I’m beginning to understand that there is no right or wrong way for the brain to digest the incomprehensible. In the end, we all do what we have to in order to survive and maintain a meaningful existence in our own eyes.
The amount of compassion provided by those who know and are not alienated by the intensity of the event amazes me. But this thing…this “shooting” is different than anything I’ve been through. This happened to me and though many around me have been affected, it has changed the whole scope of my existence. And we all know some of the effects are irreparable.
It was one of the first things my mother and I discussed after a couple of weeks of being home.
“I don’t know how this is going to affect me,” I told her, “please understand that I am fully aware my brain has been altered by this experience. There may be things that upset me now that won’t even faze me in a few months and things that may manifest themselves in years to come.”
But, she acted as if she already knew this and seemed relieved that I was cognizant enough to admit it out loud. Asking myself the “who am I now?” question falls well beyond an existential plane, but I find myself asking this question all the time because everything that happened before that moment…before the “shooting” feels like such a blur.
Did I really live in one of the most violent cities in the nation for ten years? Was I truly in charge of coordinating four different programs devoted to violence prevention? Did I really spend a whole decade of my life enduring the sound of gunshots on a weekly basis, domestic violence in my apartment building, needles and crack pipes at the bus stop, helicopters searching for cop killers, the dissonance, indifference, and insensitivity that one must often assume in order to endure these things?
Did I really see up close, a nineteen year old boy get his head blown off?
Okay…let’s stop there; even I know when enough is enough.
And apparently, it was the final straw for my mother too. She has no regrets about ripping me out of that environment, not a single one. And truthfully, even if she had not been told by my dearest friend co-worker to remove me from the area immediately and that the arrangement would have to be permanent, she would still have made the decision to pull me out by any means possible.
It’s at those times when I wonder how it feels to be a parent. I have no children and I am not married. I have no significant partner in my life and it’s likely to be a while before I do. What did it feel like for her to know I had come so close this time, closer than I had ever been, close enough to see with vivid clarity the definitive line between life and death?
She never seems angry or over-burdened that I’m living at home now, just relieved. In fact, it makes me laugh because when I was younger and had a very difficult time leaving the house, she would push me to get out. But she’s careful about that now and so are the neighbors.
Everyone wants to drive me everywhere, but I say, “no, no…you have to let me walk…you have to let me push myself to do this because that’s what I was doing when it happened you see…I was just walking home.”
I’m trying to let my brain re-establish a sense of reasonable safety again. But the truth is every time I walk out that front door; my body is on instant alert. I don’t know how long it will be before that ends or if it ever will for that matter.
What I do know is that it feels as if I have hit a “starting point” of some sort. The whole fabric of my reality shifted on April 10, 2010 around 3:45 p.m. and nothing before looks the same to me.
This is what I told them the night everyone tried to convince me to let my mother come pick me up and take me home immediately. I said, “No! You have to let me be still for just one night, I need to be still with this because I know whatever happens after, my person and my life will never be the same…just give me this night.”
And of course, they did…not that anyone would have pushed me too hard to do anything I didn’t want to. My sanity had been compromised the moment I saw the blood flow out of the top of that boy’s skull and form a pool on the cement beneath him. It was enough for me to make a complete sentence much less formulate a rational thought in my head. If it was stillness I wanted, they would give it to me if only for a night because we all knew afterward, what control I had over the major decisions in my life would be limited in ways I’d never experienced before.
But everything had been building up to that moment hadn’t it? It’s not like I can’t step back and see the grand design. How could I not inevitably witness this horrible thing? Had I not been studying and working in it for almost 10 years? Had I not lived in a city and a profession that would inevitably bring me to understand without uncertainty just how expendable life is when the bullet hits the bone? What else would have finally pushed me to leave?
“Mam,” he shouted at me, “Mam, I mean it…you don’t want anybody to know you saw this!”
The dark man wearing a sleeveless shirt with tattoos running the length of his forearms said this too me twice before I finally looked up at him and all the other neighbors that were now standing witness to the results of what I had just seen take place from start to finish.
“Do you think I should go?” I responded.
“Yes,” he said, “GO NOW!”
And so that’s what I did. The girl, who had been endearingly mocked by her friends for running away from everything that might emotionally suffocate her soul, took her feet and ran for her life because all that was behind her at that moment was death draining out in rivers on to that filthy, gritty, disgusting street pavement. Death was biting at my heels as I grabbed my backpack and forced my shaky legs to run back to my apartment as fast I could. Death was filling up my nostrils as I paced back and forth across my hardwood floor whispering, “No one…no one should know these things…no one should have to see this…this isn’t right…these things shouldn’t happen.”
“No…no…no, I want my life back. I want MY life!”
I suppose one could say two months later, that is what I am trying to salvage out of the pieces of this chaos. But, who am I now? And again, I realize that question requires far more than an existential answer, but it haunts me nonetheless. Do we ever really have an answer to that question?
I am reminded of excerpts of a poem written by one my favorite slam poets, Andrea Gibson entitled, “Water Drips through Stone.”
…her skin held the sun the way lovers hold faith and she
raced every moment towards
moments the way other children ran to their mothers
because
she knew
she knew beauty like the taste of salt on her lips and
she knew the taste of life was this…
for a very long time
the little girl knew but then
she grew…
and she grew ‘til her eyes turned woman turned side to
side and all around her was suffering she couldn’t
ignore
the daily news was a landslide of murders and bombings
and hate and deceit
grief stained the faces of children
the world was a playground for war and the earth that
once held her was plowed to its bones and greed burned
the belly of its core
so for years the woman sunk beneath the weight of it all
years and years she sat hopeless just
barely not breathing
‘til the goddess above saw her weeping below
and she called
down through the trees through the bellow of the
breeze-
get up off your knees woman
water drips through stone…
The damn finally did break for me. It was the night the fireflies returned.
My mother had been away for weeks at a time tending to elder care issue with my grandmother. I’d been drinking a couple of glasses of wine at night to relax, but not too much because when my mother is away, I must wake up early to walk our greyhound, Charlie. But, on this night I had more than two glasses and I allowed myself to slip into that place where the wrenches in the fabric of my reality became fluid and I could allow my five senses to be in the present moment without such intense regard for all the monumental events that have brought me to this place.
I was out on the front porch smoking a cigarette when the first one appeared. It flew right up to my face and glowed luminously in what felt like a long awaited greeting. I thought, “ahhh, here you are again…come to greet me with the bittersweet taste of continuity you know I crave and avoid all at the same time.” And at that moment, I felt that all was not lost. There was something…there was this…and nobody could take it from me anymore than they could have stolen my memory of their sweet glowing bodies the year before.
Oh yes, the damn finally broke.
I hadn’t really been able to cry about it all since I had returned home. I felt emotionally congested when the topic arose. Even now, I might tear up, but my mind tends to keep a steady filter in place and I only allow fragments of that day to penetrate. It’s not that I can’t remember, but frankly, I don’t want too. It’s hard to think about all I lost that day…it’s too much. But when I saw those little bodies glowing in the dark, something in me broke and I confess, I wanted it too. I had been longing to feel some remnant of my own humanity again just as much as I feared the toll it would take. Because this pain, you have to understand, on many levels…is inconsolable.
I went inside, sat on the kitchen floor and sobbed so hard my ribs began to contract in pain.
I remember the dog walked in, probably surprised to see his co-owner sitting on the kitchen floor with her hand on her heart. Poor Charlie, he’s such a sensitive creature; he always seeks to comfort but I couldn’t let him this time. I couldn’t let anything come near me at that moment. I needed to do this alone. I put the palm of my hand out as if to say, “Stop, please don’t come any closer,” and that beautiful tender hearted soul calmly turned around and left me peacefully to grieve. It was a small gesture but I found myself utterly grateful for the respite…for the release.
There was a huge storm that night. It made me smile to entertain the thought that just maybe the lightening bugs had brought some lightening with them. I’m usually a little skittish when it comes to thunderstorms, but for some reason this one didn’t bother me. I’m sure the alcohol helped, but I could feel the sheer vibration of that storm coursing through my bones on that night and it felt good. In fact the louder it became the more my stomach muscles began to relax. I lay calmly in my bed watching the lightening flash through my window and I knew I was as safe and secure wrapped in a gentle cocoon in my mother’s womb.
The rain was torrential and I thought of the very last part of Andrea’s poem:
…so tell me how
why
who
because I don’t know
but just then the goddess cried no…
water drips through stone
now listen close
your heart is that water
your art is that water
you are that water now flow
…and for the first time in years the woman rose
and she rose 'til her hips stretched the skyline
and her lips kissed the stars
and her hands held the sun ‘til it lit
the caverns of her heart
and then she fell
and raindrops poured down upon the earth
she showered the rivers
and the oceans
her breath was the motion of the tide
she purified the soil
she birthed the storm that split the dam
then sprung a dancing spring that drown
the tanks
the machines
everything that didn’t sing
and then she
swallowed up the lies
she vaporized the greed
she was the water that spawned the flowers
that brought the bombs
to their knees
she was the wave
the tsunami
that revived the human heart
she was the part of us
of me
of you
just now
coming true…
Is that what happened the day I ‘witnessed’ a 19 year old boy shot five times not but ten feet from where I was standing? Was I finally coming true to myself?
I don’t really know…maybe I’m just trying to find purpose and meaning in something that will forever remain to some degree, absolutely incomprehensible. But what else can you do? How else does one move forward?
Either way, whether it’s an ending or a beginning, everything from here on out is uncharted territory. There’s no going back…there’s no old life…no fast paced job. There’s just now and whatever tomorrow brings and the knowledge that for better or worse, I’m still here and I’m still alive. And I can still run towards something...a smile, a flower, a little girls laughter…it’s still unfolding…everyday. And more important, it’s what I want.
