been a waste of crying. I cried so hard that if my present crying self could go back in time and see my other crying selves, it would slap them and say, “That shit’s not worth crying for.” My cry was not a cry of sadness. It was not catharsis. It wasn’t me feeling sorry for myself. It was an expression of raw pain that came from an inability of my body to express that pain in any other way, shape, or form. She was my mom. She was my teammate. It had always been me and her together, me and her against the world. When Andrew said, “shot her in the head,” I broke in two.
The light changed. I couldn’t even see the road, but I drove through the tears, thinking, Just get there, just get there, just get there. We pulled up to the hospital, and I jumped out of the car. There was an outdoor sitting area by the entrance to the emergency room. Andrew was standing there waiting for me, alone, his clothes smeared with blood. He still looked perfectly calm, completely stoic. Then the moment he looked up and saw me he broke down and started bawling. It was like he’d been holding it together the whole morning and then everything broke loose at once and he lost it. I ran to him and hugged him and he cried and cried. His cry was different from mine, though. My cry was one of pain and anger. His cry was one of helplessness.
I turned and ran into the emergency room. My mom was there in triage on a gurney. The doctors were stabilizing her. Her whole body was soaked in blood. There was a hole in her face, a gaping wound above her lip, part of her nose gone.
She was as calm and serene as I’d ever seen her. She could still open one eye, and she turned and looked up at me and saw the look of horror on my face.
“It’s okay, baby,” she whispered, barely able to speak with the blood in her throat.
“It’s not okay.”
“No, no, I’m okay, I’m okay. Where’s Andrew? Where’s your brother?”
“He’s outside.”
“Go to Andrew.”
“But Mom—”
“Shh. It’s okay, baby. I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine, you’re—”
“Shhhhhh. I’m fine, I’m fine, I’m fine. Go to your brother. Your brother needs you.”
The doctors kept working, and there was nothing I could do to help her. I went back outside to be with Andrew. We sat down together, and he told me the story.
They were coming home from church, a big group, my mom and Andrew and Isaac, her new husband and his children and a whole bunch of his extended family, aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews. They had just pulled into the driveway when Abel pulled up and got out of his car. He had his gun. He looked right at my mother.
“You’ve stolen my life,” he said. “You’ve taken everything away from me. Now I’m going to kill all of you.”
Andrew stepped in front of his father. He stepped right in front of the gun.
“Don’t do this, Dad, please. You’re drunk. Just put the gun away.”
Abel looked down at his son.
“No,” he said. “I’m killing everybody, and if you don’t walk away I will shoot you first.”
Andrew stepped aside.
“His eyes were not lying,” he told me. “He had the eyes of the Devil. In that moment I could tell my father was gone.”
For all the pain I felt that day, in hindsight, I have to imagine that Andrew’s pain was far greater than mine. My mom had been shot by a man I despised. If anything, I felt vindicated; I’d been right about Abel all along. I could direct my anger and hatred toward him with no shame or guilt whatsoever. But Andrew’s mother had been shot by Andrew’s father, a father he loved. How does he reconcile his love with that situation? How does he carry on loving both sides? Both sides of himself?
Isaac was only four years old. He didn’t fully comprehend what was happening, and as Andrew stepped aside, Isaac started crying.
“Daddy, what are you doing? Daddy, what are you doing?”
“Isaac, go to your brother,” Abel said.
Isaac ran over to Andrew, and Andrew held him. Then Abel raised his gun and he started shooting. My mother jumped in front of the gun to protect everyone, and that’s when she took the first bullet, not in her leg but in her butt cheek. She collapsed, and as she fell to