When the Bad Man Comes

A laminated purple octagon hung from red yarn by the door. It caught my attention because it was peculiar just hanging there by itself, but I shrugged it off. It was a Kindergarten classroom, and they, by their very nature, are peculiar places.

However, my daughter, Conley, caught me looking at it and said, “Oh, that’s for if a ‘bad man’ comes.”

“What are you talking about, honey?”

“That purple octagon,” her soft voice was deliberate and determined in correctly pronouncing each syllable of the new word, “We gotta put it over the window and lock the door if the ‘bad man’ is in our school. Then we gotta hide and be very, very quiet.”

I stood there dumbfounded trying to make the separate words that my smiling, gap-toothed daughter had just spoken form into coherent sentences, but they were so confounding, so nonsensical that it was if they were suspended in the air in a jumbled heap.

I stammered and smiled weakly.

Conley just took my hand, swung it back and forth and asked, “Are you proud that I knew that shape? An octagon…’cause it’s got eight sides – like a stop sign.”

I hugged her and told her that I was very proud of her for being such a smart girl. I breathed her in, rubbed the skin on her pink ‘Toy Story’ t-shirted arm, smoothed her long, wild hair with my hand, held on for just a beat too long. Her kind, but no-nonsense teacher, a 30-year veteran of bewildered, clingy parents, cleared her throat and told the class that it was time to take their seats.

I took the hint. As I was leaving, my hand fluttered to the laminated purple octagon. I needed to feel what, in my absence, would be tasked with shielding my daughter from danger.

I don’t remember the walk to my car, but I do remember crawling into it, resting my head on the steering wheel and wailing until I hiccuped.  I wanted to post up there in that parking lot so that I could watch for the “bad man”. I wanted to pounce on him and ask him what in the hell was wrong with him.

Didn’t he know that my baby had worked so hard to pronounce her “R’s” correctly and that she loved cheese pizza and superhero movies and jumping waves at the beach and roller coasters and rock ‘n roll music? Didn’t he know that she was an old soul with a contagious laugh and deeply brown eyes that sparkled when she was being mischievous? Didn’t he know that my daughter was named after my beloved great-grandmother and that is the living embodiment of all the good parts of my mama? Didn’t he know that she wanted to be a trapeze artist, the President and a Disney ride operator?

I longed to tell him that I was so sorry for whatever had happened to him that had made him this way; that I understood the pain of feeling unwanted and unloved; that my brain felt broken sometimes too. I wanted to assure him that causing so much heartbreak would not take away the ache inside of him

Conley is part of “Generation Lockdown”. Lockdown drills are as common place for her peers and hers as fire drills were for those of us in Gen X. She started school two years after the “bad man” entered Sandy Hook Elementary and killed 20 children and six adults. Since that unfathomable dark December day, there have been, according to vox.com, 2,032 mass shootings resulting in 2,312 deaths and 8,449 injuries.

However, that report came out on April 25, 2019 and, as such, it doesn’t have the most updated statistics. It would now be 2,033 mass shootings resulting in 2,314 deaths and 8,454 injuries.

The latest shooting hit home. Literally. The “bad man” walked down a hall of academia in the city that I have lived and loved for almost 20 years, the city where the love of my life was born, the city that was just added to an ever growing, ever wearisome list.

The alert about the shooting at UNC-Charlotte came across my phone as I swatted mosquitos and complained about the too-soon-to-arrive Carolina humidity as I watched Conley and a gaggle of her sweaty friends run passing drills and offer celebratory high fives for goals and consolatory hugs for missed shots.

It was our turn. It was bound to happen. Charlotte, with its cherry blossom blooms that twirl through the spring air and its indisputable Southern politeness, wouldn’t be spared. We had just been biding our time; waiting for the inevitable.

After all, thoughts, prayers and laminated cardboard octagons could only protect us from the “bad men” for so long.

* In loving memory of Riley Howell and Ellis Parlier

* Sending love and healing to: Rami Alramadhan, Sean Dehart, Emily Houpt, Drew Pescaro

I am so sorry that we failed you.

Soshally Awkward

Sosha Lewis is a writer whose work has been featured in The Washington Post, Huffington Post, MUTHA Magazine and The Charlotte Observer. She writes about her sometimes wild, sometimes hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking past filled with free-lunches, a grimy sports bar, a six foot tall Albino woman who tried to save her teenage soul, felonious, drug addicted parents, an imaginary friend named Blueberry and growing up nestled in the coal-dusted mountains of West Virginia.