by Xenia Ruiz
I turned on the cable news station and before long the screen was filled with images of a SWAT team storming the college with assault rifles, students being carried to ambulances, others crying and holding on to each other. I dropped into the nearest chair, frozen to the TV, unable to move as I heard the reporter’s voice-over: “Another school shooting, this time at a downstate Illinois college campus … There have been eight confirmed dead … At least ten more students have been taken to two area hospitals … The suspect is believed to have taken his own life …”
Like many mothers living in the city, I feared so many things, but it was the senseless violence, the knowledge that any moment your child could be taken from you for no reason, that caused the biggest anxiety. The killing of children while playing in their backyards or sitting in the front window, or walking to the corner store, had become too commonplace. The things I had feared when my boys left for college were what most parents feared: the temptation of drugs and alcohol, the wild parties, the uninhibited, destructive sex. But in addition, I feared the influence of other students who had no moral or spiritual upbringing. More and more, it seemed like there was no escape from the world of terrorism, war and rampant gun violence that seemed to get worse every year. I thought by sending my sons away from Chicago to a small college town, they would be safe. But for a long time, I knew there was no such thing as a safe place anymore.
As I waited for Maya, I reached into the bookcase and pulled out the nearest photo album. I slowly flipped through it, escaping into the happy memories of my boys: what beautiful babies they had been, how happy they looked over the years, how they had tried my patience. I would give anything to deal with breaking up one of their fights, or cutting classes, anything except what was happening. How blessed I had been. In a moment of helplessness, I buried my face in my hands and prayed. Father God, I will never let another man come before You. Just please, let my babies be alright.
During the four-hour drive, made longer and slower by snowdrifts and freezing temperatures, Maya brought me up-to-date on all that I had missed while I was with Adam. When the hospital couldn’t reach Anthony or me, they called her as the third emergency contact. She was able to contact Anthony, who was traveling in New York. He had given permission for the two surgeries Eli required—one for gunshot wounds and the other, a broken leg. Tony had been shot once in the head, but the bullet could not yet be removed. Apparently, Tony had been visiting someone in Eli’s dorm, where the shooting had taken place. Some of the students had been trampled in the stampede that followed the shooting as they ran for their lives. The gravity of the situation was just beginning to sink in. I couldn’t trust myself to speak, so I listened as Simone asked the questions I could not utter.
We listened to the radio in silence as more details became available. A freshman, despondent over his failing grades and a cheating girlfriend, had gone on a shooting rampage in Eli’s dorm, where the girlfriend was attending a party. A couple of students were interviewed, their voices trembling with fear and tears. “This isn’t supposed to happen here,” one student said. It wasn’t supposed to happen anywhere, I thought. It had become an all-too-familiar scene, “a sign of the times,” Pastor Zeke would remark whenever a new shooting tragedy or other catastrophe permeated the news, the consequences of an immoral corrupt society. People in church would declare that we were in “the last days,” that everything that was happening had been predicted long ago.
After a while, the news got repetitious and Maya turned off the radio.
“When you didn’t answer your phones, I knew something had happened,” Maya said quietly, after we digested the additional reports. “I went over to your house last night and you weren’t there. You don’t know how scared I was. Where were you?”
“I spent the night. At Adam’s. I was there when Luciano came over.”
I stared out the passenger window but I could feel their eyes on me. Because I knew them so well, I imagined their faces: shock on Maya’s, surprise on Simone’s.
“That was you?” Maya asked. “When he came back to the car and told me Adam had a woman up there, we got into a big fight, right in the garage. I thought he had some other woman up there. I told him, ‘I can’t believe your partner is seeing someone else while he’s seeing my sister.’ You know what he had the nerve to say? ‘It’s not like they’re married.’ So I said, ‘Hello?! We are!’ That’s when I realized, ‘what am I doing with this man?’”
“So, you didn’t sleep with him?”
“No. I realized being with him was about revenge. It wasn’t love.”
“I’m glad.” At least my prayer for her had been answered.
“That was no one but God, girl. When I got home, Alex had just gotten the call from the state police.”
As we drove in silence, my mind juxtaposed between two different scenes. While I was in Adam’s arms, my children were being shot. While I was in his bed, my children were being carried into ambulances. And while Adam was kissing me good-bye, my children were lying unconscious, fighting for their lives.
“Did you have sex with him?” Simone finally asked, breaking the silence.
I nodded, unable to verbally confess. I massaged my right temple as my head threatened to burst.
“Hey-ey,” Simone said with approval. “It’s about time.”
I knew she was trying to liven up the mood and take my mind off the boys, but her timing was really bad.
Maya sucked her teeth. “Shut up, Simone.”
“She doesn’t need you making her feel worse,” Simone snapped.
“I’m not trying to make her feel worse. But she doesn’t need you congratulating her either.”
“I’m not—”
“Ladies, ladies,” I appealed to them for the sake of my head.
“I knew something was up when I couldn’t reach you. Didn’t we promise to always, always, let each other know where we are, no matter what?” Maya returned to berating me.
“Did you tell me you were going with Luciano?” I knew it wasn’t the time to argue, and instantly regretted it. “I’m sorry. You’re right, I should’ve called you.”
“Don’t ever let it happen again,” she scolded mockingly, trying to cheer me up, but that was impossible.
“Here I am worried about you falling into temptation with Luciano and I’m the one who falls.”
“I’m no better. ‘He who has lusted with his eyes has already sinned in his heart.’”
From the backseat, we heard Simone scoff softly, but she didn’t comment.
“I didn’t spend the night sleeping in his bed,” I said, wanting to clarify my actions, as if it made any difference. “I slept on the sofa, because it was snowing so hard. I realized it was a mistake right away.”
“If it’s meant to be, between you and Adam, it will be,” Maya offered quietly.
“It doesn’t matter, anymore. I told him we should take a break and he basically said it was over. We don’t want the same things, so what’s the point?”
I didn’t want to talk about Adam anymore, but I didn’t want to think about what was waiting for me at the hospital. I didn’t want to think or talk—period. What I wanted was to go back in time or fast-forward to the future, and pretend none of it ever happened. Or just disappear, forever. Adam, for the most part, was history, a part of my past along with everything else that had gone wrong in my life.
“Ms. Clemente, I want to prepare you for what you’re going to see,” the doctor explained. “Your son Elias was shot twice: once in his chest, fortunately on the right side, so there was no heart damage. He was also shot in the abdomen and his spleen was badly damaged, so we removed it. His left leg was broken in two places in the femur during the stampede. We were able to repair the bone with pins and he’s in traction. He was still conscious when they brought him in, but he’s been unconscious since surgery; he is responding to pain stimuli. However, your son Anthony—”
I had been listening without interrupting, looking blank
ly at the doctor’s forehead, but now as she paused, my eyes focused to meet her eyes, wondering why she had stopped.
“Anthony is in critical condition. The bullet is lodged in his brain stem,” she said, pointing to the base of her neck. Impulsively, I flinched. “This part of the brain controls all the essential functions—breathing, talking, everything. His head is quite swollen, so he may look a little frightening when you first see him. A shunt is draining fluid from his head and we’re monitoring him closely with periodic brain scans. There is some activity, but we won’t know the extent of brain damage until he wakes up. Ms. Clemente …”
“Yes?” I answered, my voice far away. The words “critical,” “frightening,” and “brain damage” remained suspended in the air like neon signs.
“He’s in a coma, on a respirator, which means he’s not breathing on his own. We don’t know how long it will be before he comes out of it. In time, we can operate, but now, he’s too weak. All we can do is wait.”
“And pray,” Maya added.
I nodded to indicate I understood, though I really didn’t. I knew doctors didn’t know everything. They thought their skill came from their education and years of practice, but I knew better. God was in control.
I went to see Eli first because I didn’t think I could take seeing Tony. But when I walked into Eli’s room, I had to cover my mouth to keep from gasping. In addition to the tubes and wires and the machines beeping and clicking, his face was bruised and swollen, like he had been beaten up. The thought of my son prone as feet stomped his body and face made me sick. I prayed that he had been unconscious the entire time. Maya and Simone walked in with me and helped me sit in a chair near his bed. I searched for a bare spot on his face that wasn’t covered by black-and-blue bruises, and settled on his nose, kissing him softly.
“You can speak to him. He may be able to hear you,” the doctor said.
I cautiously reached for his hand, which was also covered with bruises. “Eli. Elias, it’s Ma,” I started, my voice breaking. “Maya and Simone are here. Your daddy’s on his way back from New York. We’ll be right here when you wake up, okay?”
“Do you want me to pray?” Maya asked me.
I nodded. She took my hand and laid her other hand on Eli’s cornrows, which were unraveling and in need of rebraiding. Simone placed her hand on top of ours and we all closed our eyes as Maya prayed: “Father God, we come to you in Jesus’ name and place Tony and Elias in Your hands, Lord. We are convinced that You alone know what is best for them and You alone know what they need, Lord. Father, we release them into Your anointed hands, to protect and heal them and we ask that You guide the doctors in their work, Lord. Help us not to impose our own will but pray that Your will be done in their recovery. In Jesus’ name, Amen.”
“Amen,” Simone and I echoed.
I tried to prepare myself to go to the neuro-intensive care unit one floor above, tried to envision Tony with the same tubes and wires, machines, a bandage wrapped around his head. I prayed silently the entire way on the elevator, down the hall, but when I got to his room, I froze at the glass door. My body began trembling and my knees suddenly buckled. My head was pounding worse than ever. Maya and Simone held me up as we walked into the room.
It was worse than I had imagined, worse than the doctor had described. He was connected to so many machines, he looked like some scientific experiment. My son’s handsome face was gone. Someone had replaced it with an ugly monster, a head swollen twice its size. I thought there must have been some mistake.
“That’s not my son,” I said to no one in particular, even though I could see his shaven head under the bandage, a bandage stained with a yellow substance.
And then everything went black.
When I came to, I was on a gurney in a brightly lit room. Too bright. I squinted, trying to remember what had happened, hoping I was dreaming. But then slowly it all came back to me: I was in a hospital in Marion, Illinois, and my boys had been shot. I sprang up and became lightheaded, falling back again.
“You fainted,” Maya said, suddenly appearing by my side.
I had never fainted in my life and for the first time I got a glimpse of what death might be like. You forget about the past, the present. Nothingness.
A nurse appeared at the other side of the bed. “How do you feel, Ms. Clemente?”
“I’m fine.” I sat up on the side of the bed, this time slowly, and moaned. “My head is killing me.”
“She has horrible migraines,” Maya told the nurse. “Can you give her something?”
“I’m fine,” I insisted, even though I wasn’t. “I have my pills with me.”
“Do you want to go back?” Maya asked, handing me my purse.
I nodded. Holding hands like we used to when we were little girls crossing the street, she led me back to the room down the hall. Simone had stayed with Tony, and she quickly wiped her tears when she saw me. This time, I didn’t stop at the door, but walked in, my back straight, and sat in the chair that Simone had vacated, next to the bed.
He looked so fragile, I was afraid to touch him, afraid I’d disconnect some vital tube and cause irreparable damage. I touched his scalp where it peeked out of the bandage at the top, and I thought of how he had been teased as a boy because of his “good” hair, how the neighborhood kids used to call him “Whitey.” He would beg me to cut his hair close to his scalp where his roots were curlier, kinkier. Later, as a teenager, he hated how his hair was the object of girls’ attraction, so he continued getting regular haircuts, opting for the bald look by the time he left for college. Where Eli had used his hair to his advantage with girls, Tony had always tried to repel them.
I slipped my trembling hand under his, my hand disappearing under his big knuckled one so that it looked like he was comforting me. He had Anthony’s hands, wide flat fingers and box-shaped fingernails. When he was born, Anthony took one look at his hands, placing them both on his cheeks, exclaiming, “That’s my boy alright!” as if there had been any doubt. From far away, behind me, I could hear Maya praying, non-stop. And then a line from Adam’s poem, “Choose Me,” came to me: For if you stray from the prize, if you choose their lies, I will take what I have given to you … In my head, I kept repeating, Please God, don’t take my sons from me.
* * *
I was afraid to sleep, afraid to leave Tony’s side, so I asked Maya and Simone to stay with Eli while I stayed with Tony. I didn’t eat or drink anything because I didn’t want to go to the bathroom. Deep down, I knew if I left, he would slip away. I tried to remember my last words to him, the last time we spoke, but my head was hurting too much. I stroked his arm and told him all the things I would tell him when he woke up: how proud I was of him, how much I missed him every day even if I didn’t act like it. A couple of times I thought I saw his eyes flutter, as if he were trying to wake up but it was too hard for him. When I asked one of the nurses if it was a good sign, she informed me that they were only involuntary reflexes, her tone so matter-of-fact I wanted to slap her.
The next day, Eli regained consciousness, and it was then that I reluctantly switched places with Maya.
“Hey, mijo,” I said, my voice catching in my throat at the sight of my youngest son’s opened eyes.
“Don’t get mushy, Ma. I’m alright,” he said groggily.
I pressed my lips to his cheek, my tears flowing onto his face. He moaned and I pulled away. “I’m sorry. Did I hurt you?”
“How’s Tony?”
“He’s in critical condition, up in ICU.”
“How many people died? They wouldn’t tell me anything.”
“Eight so far,” I said without hesitation, because there was no easy way to say it, and because he would soon find out.
“Who died?”
We all looked at each other, debating whether he needed to know. Simone tried to hide the newspaper she had been reading.
“You might as well tell me. I’m going to see it on TV sooner or later.”
; Simone read the names from the newspaper. At the mention of a girl named Rain Dandridge, Eli paled.
“Did you know her?” I asked.
Eli swallowed hard and turned his face away. “She lived down the hall from my dorm. She’s Tony’s fiancée.”
“What?” I asked.
“She wasn’t the girl the killer was after, was she?” Maya asked.
“No. She and Tony have been going together since last spring.” He turned to me. “He didn’t tell you ’cause he knew you’d freak out if you found out he was serious about a girl.”
Stunned, I couldn’t respond. How could my son have been engaged without my knowing?
“You told us to stay away from the girls down here and concentrate on school, so he never told you.”
“I just didn’t want you to get distracted from school, or make a mistake.”
He gave me a weak smile. “He was going to bring her when we came up for winter break. He was crazy about her, Ma.” His voice cracked and he turned away.
The next couple of days were a blur as family and friends arrived: first Anthony, his parents, and various members of both of our extended families. Pastor Zeke drove down in a church van with some of the church elders. The first thing they did was bless Tony’s body with anointed oil, forming a prayer circle around his bed. I noticed the doctors and nurses step aside, making way, some even bowing their heads in respect or perhaps joining in. I felt God’s presence multiplying sevenfold, empowering me with strength, the weight of my burden lifted from my shoulders, if only briefly.
Afterward, the church leaders left to help with accommodations for people staying overnight, preparing meals with the help of a nearby church so visitors wouldn’t go broke in the hospital cafeteria. They offered to sit with Tony so I could take a break, but I kept my vigil, eating little of whatever people brought and washing up in the sink in his room.