Your day is
chugging along pretty well. You got your nine-year-old son to camp on time and
now you click away on your computer drafting an opposition to a motion for a
new trial in a nasty case you've just won. Most of your co-workers sit in the
Ronald Reagan State Building's cafeteria eating lunch and tossing loving barbs
at each other in the way only litigators can appreciate. You didn't join them
because you had lunch plans at 1:00 with a former law clerk who was now a young
attorney in a boutique Beverly Hills firm.
As you type, you
decide that you could use a little jazz so you turn on your RCA clock radio.
After a few moments of music, the disc jockey breaks in and says words that
don't quite register: "shootings" and "North Valley Jewish
Community Center" and "at least three children wounded" and
"there may be more than one shooter." These words finally seep into
your consciousness and you yell, "Oh my God!" and start to call your
wife at work. No answer. Just voicemail. You leave a frantic message telling
her what you've heard.
You try her
parents' house because they live near the Center. Your parents live too far.
You reach your mother-in-law and tell her to get to the camp to find your son.
You run out the door and head to the parking garage. You arrive at the car and
your legs start to buckle so you lean into the cool metal of your Honda Accord.
You realize that you had not taken a breath since you left the building so you
concentrate on breathing deeply while repeating to yourself, "I have to
get to him." You feel in control again and get into the car to start your
drive from downtown L.A. to Granada Hills not knowing.
As you break the
speed limit and listen to the news, you remember when you studied for your
conversion to Judaism. One day, your Rabbi asked you, "Why do you want to
take on the mantle of a people who have been hated and slaughtered throughout
history?" It was a good question but you offered a snappy answer: I am
Chicano. I know prejudice. You acknowledge that you could think of little in
history to compare to the horror of the Holocaust, but you could, in the very
least, empathize with the Jewish people because of your own people's history.
But now you wonder
how you would answer the Rabbi's question. Your mind is bouncing to unspeakable
thoughts, images, sounds. Is he dead? You shake your head to clear your mind
and you think of a song your son learned at camp last month, sung to the tune
of "Louie, Louie" by the Kingsmen:
Pharaoh,
Pharaoh.
Whoa baby, let my people go!
Yeah, yeah, yeah!
You try to conjure
up the smell of your son's hair as you wonder if you and your wife have been
made childless this hot August day.
["There's Been a Shooting" is featured in Devil Talk: Stories (Bilingual Press). Though included in a short-story collection, the piece is based on the author's experience with the hate crimes perpetrated by Buford O. Furrow Jr. on August 10, 1999. Furrow shot and injured three children, a counselor, and a receptionist at the North Valley Jewish Community Center. That same day, he murdered United States Postal Service mail carrier Joseph Ileto who was Filipino American. Furrow was sentenced to life in prison after pleading guilty. Photo credit: Hans Gutknecht/LA Daily News.]
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