Safe Inside
Five houses away from me, three weeks ago, a man was shot and killed by the police, after a car chase with the police ended by a car driving into a house. There were four men in the car. Two were arrested, one escaped and the police spent the next six hours searching for him, and one man was shot on the street, by the police, and died.
I was bringing home groceries. I’d just pulled my truck in t the top of my driveway, and as I turned the engine off, I heard squealing tires, and a boom. The boom sounded farther away than the tires squealing by on 13th avenue, just past my neighbor’s pink stucco house. As I collected myself, there were gunshots. A few, and then suddenly a whole lot more. This was different. This was close. I was not in my house, I could not hit the floor, but I sure did sink way down in my truck, thinking about the density of the window combined with the thickness of the seat sheltering my back and head. I breathed, and listened hard for what might be going on behind me, over the galloping thump of the blood in my ears.
I stayed slumped down, still, while more wheels screeched to a stop on the street I couldn’t see. Sirens called in the distance, and switched off. Then nothing. There was no clock to tick in my twelve year old truck, but I could feel seconds and my tight breath passing as the regular and daily street sounds started to fill the held breath carved out by the gunshots. I stayed there, still, until I heard the birds start to chirp.
The sun shone down, warming the cab, and I remembered the groceries. I had bought the same turkey my mother used to buy, to cook on Christmas day. Naturally reared, they were college-educated turkeys, we used to joke, and worth every penny. If the song birds were safe enough to chirp in the plum tree, then I could risk a slow dash for the garage with grocery bags in hand.
Inside, I felt safer. You can’t really see in my house from the street at all, especially without lights on. Silly really, because plaster and lathe probably can’t stop bullets any more effectively that truck and seat cushions, but once inside I felt safe. Safe and curious. I tossed the dead bird in the fridge, and peered out past curtains at the street and saw my other neighbor - from the green stucco house - out on his porch.
I stepped out on my porch, and saw that up and down the street my neighbors were out on their porches and top steps, looking toward the corner. There was a police car parked diagonally across the intersection. People were calling back and forth, asking if anyone knew what had happened, repeating the sounds we had all heard.
I asked my neighbor from the green stucco house if he knew what was happening, and he said that when the shots had started, he had hit the floor inside his house. His eyes were wide and a bit wild, and then he said that he was going to go back inside where it was safe. He went back inside, and I followed suit, closing my own front door on the sunny street and the police and my neighbors on the porches of their stucco houses.
On my way out to get groceries, only a couple of hours ago, the same neighbor had come over to ask me about one of his cats that he hadn’t seen for a while, and to tell me that he would be gone for four months, starting in January. He has some kind of bone leukemia, and they had found a donor, so he and his partner are going to go live by the hospital in Stanford while they destroy his immune system and try to grow him a new one from transplanted bone marrow.
I had driven to the grocery store thinking about how he corrected me when I said I was so sorry to hear about this. He said he was really happy about this, because the other choice was certain and quick death without a transplant, so the painful four-month process meant that he might live. I had changed my tune and congratulated him on the opportunity to maybe not die from lukemia, and driven off to buy my turkey and kale salad fixings with mortality on my mind, sad that my most wonderful neighbor, who I am sure is also an incredible man beyond being a great neighbor with the best garden on the block, is so sick. He is such a great guy, and it is really bad that his life is in danger like that.
And two hours later, he was hitting the floor and zipping back inside to protect his life - while five houses away, around the corner from my block, two police officers had shot a man I did not know on the street, and killed him. And standing there, Christmas turkey purchased and put away, I did not know a man had died so close that day.
I say that two police officers had shot and killed a man, but really, two men killed a man, quite possibly a man who was trying to kill them. The man who died was likely a criminal, and the men who did the killing have been hired to keep the rest of us safe in our houses… but it was still one man dying and two men doing the killing.
I walked back outside several times - to look at the corner, and the police car blocking the intersection, and the man in uniform standing next to the car. I looked for a moment, looked around the street, saw nothing different, and went back inside. Within ten minutes there was a helicopter overhead, so I knew that the police were looking for at least one person in my neighborhood. And for the next six hours the helicopter circled, while the police cordoned off the next block over and searched house to house for the man who got away. The helicopter was loud, blocking out the sound of the birds, and I stopped going outside to look. A low helicopter frightens me - it means that something dangerous has happened, that someone is out there, hiding, somewhere nearby, and police with guns are looking for them.
Once, years ago, in the middle of the night, helicopters had come swooping in on my neighborhood, searchlights flooding the dark, waking me up with their brilliant white light sweeps through my bedroom window. I had fumbled out of bed, afraid, into clothes, and downstairs to the living room to peer past a curtain onto the street to see what was going on, only to see a clump of uniformed people with rifles draw marching up my driveway, along the side of the house. I heard someone running up the alley on the other side of the house, and jumping the garden gate. Terrified, I scuttled back to bed, only to see movement in the backyard. Pushed too far, I called out the window, “Who’s there?”
“Oakland Police, Ma’am,” came the answer, called from my backyard neighbor’s yard. “We’re searching house to house. Have you seen anything unusual?” I hadn’t, besides the storm-troopers trooping up my driveway. I told him no, but I had heard someone running in the alley. It was likely more police. That time, I turned off all the lights and pulled the cover over my head, and waited for the helicopter to stop circling and lighting up the night, waiting for the men tromping around my house to go away, waited for the neighborhood to get to go back to sleep.
This time, I was grateful not to be inside the cordon for house-to-house searches. I was grateful that it wasn’t my neighbor, any of them, who had been shot. As the invasive beat of the helicopter circled, though, and the police guarded the intersection, I still found myself retreating to my bed, pulling the covers up around my ears, as the bright winter day darkened.
I jumped out of bed once, to call my friend who was dropping by, and tell her not to come, not today. Today my neighborhood was in a police action. And today I was spending the rest of the day wrapping up in Portuguese flannel and stucco walls, relying on the wooden door to keep death out.
Today my neighbor is gone away, hoping to struggle and get sicker to live. There is no news about the man who was shot and killed five blocks from me, outside the AP reports from that very day. And there is bigger and more important violence in the world - from Arizona to Afghanistan and farther east in Oakland, I’m certain. But I don’t feel it, not in my gut. In my gut, I’m praying, mostly when I drive around the corner onto my block, that my neighbors and I may stay safe in our stucco houses.
I was bringing home groceries. I’d just pulled my truck in t the top of my driveway, and as I turned the engine off, I heard squealing tires, and a boom. The boom sounded farther away than the tires squealing by on 13th avenue, just past my neighbor’s pink stucco house. As I collected myself, there were gunshots. A few, and then suddenly a whole lot more. This was different. This was close. I was not in my house, I could not hit the floor, but I sure did sink way down in my truck, thinking about the density of the window combined with the thickness of the seat sheltering my back and head. I breathed, and listened hard for what might be going on behind me, over the galloping thump of the blood in my ears.
I stayed slumped down, still, while more wheels screeched to a stop on the street I couldn’t see. Sirens called in the distance, and switched off. Then nothing. There was no clock to tick in my twelve year old truck, but I could feel seconds and my tight breath passing as the regular and daily street sounds started to fill the held breath carved out by the gunshots. I stayed there, still, until I heard the birds start to chirp.
The sun shone down, warming the cab, and I remembered the groceries. I had bought the same turkey my mother used to buy, to cook on Christmas day. Naturally reared, they were college-educated turkeys, we used to joke, and worth every penny. If the song birds were safe enough to chirp in the plum tree, then I could risk a slow dash for the garage with grocery bags in hand.
Inside, I felt safer. You can’t really see in my house from the street at all, especially without lights on. Silly really, because plaster and lathe probably can’t stop bullets any more effectively that truck and seat cushions, but once inside I felt safe. Safe and curious. I tossed the dead bird in the fridge, and peered out past curtains at the street and saw my other neighbor - from the green stucco house - out on his porch.
I stepped out on my porch, and saw that up and down the street my neighbors were out on their porches and top steps, looking toward the corner. There was a police car parked diagonally across the intersection. People were calling back and forth, asking if anyone knew what had happened, repeating the sounds we had all heard.
I asked my neighbor from the green stucco house if he knew what was happening, and he said that when the shots had started, he had hit the floor inside his house. His eyes were wide and a bit wild, and then he said that he was going to go back inside where it was safe. He went back inside, and I followed suit, closing my own front door on the sunny street and the police and my neighbors on the porches of their stucco houses.
On my way out to get groceries, only a couple of hours ago, the same neighbor had come over to ask me about one of his cats that he hadn’t seen for a while, and to tell me that he would be gone for four months, starting in January. He has some kind of bone leukemia, and they had found a donor, so he and his partner are going to go live by the hospital in Stanford while they destroy his immune system and try to grow him a new one from transplanted bone marrow.
I had driven to the grocery store thinking about how he corrected me when I said I was so sorry to hear about this. He said he was really happy about this, because the other choice was certain and quick death without a transplant, so the painful four-month process meant that he might live. I had changed my tune and congratulated him on the opportunity to maybe not die from lukemia, and driven off to buy my turkey and kale salad fixings with mortality on my mind, sad that my most wonderful neighbor, who I am sure is also an incredible man beyond being a great neighbor with the best garden on the block, is so sick. He is such a great guy, and it is really bad that his life is in danger like that.
And two hours later, he was hitting the floor and zipping back inside to protect his life - while five houses away, around the corner from my block, two police officers had shot a man I did not know on the street, and killed him. And standing there, Christmas turkey purchased and put away, I did not know a man had died so close that day.
I say that two police officers had shot and killed a man, but really, two men killed a man, quite possibly a man who was trying to kill them. The man who died was likely a criminal, and the men who did the killing have been hired to keep the rest of us safe in our houses… but it was still one man dying and two men doing the killing.
I walked back outside several times - to look at the corner, and the police car blocking the intersection, and the man in uniform standing next to the car. I looked for a moment, looked around the street, saw nothing different, and went back inside. Within ten minutes there was a helicopter overhead, so I knew that the police were looking for at least one person in my neighborhood. And for the next six hours the helicopter circled, while the police cordoned off the next block over and searched house to house for the man who got away. The helicopter was loud, blocking out the sound of the birds, and I stopped going outside to look. A low helicopter frightens me - it means that something dangerous has happened, that someone is out there, hiding, somewhere nearby, and police with guns are looking for them.
Once, years ago, in the middle of the night, helicopters had come swooping in on my neighborhood, searchlights flooding the dark, waking me up with their brilliant white light sweeps through my bedroom window. I had fumbled out of bed, afraid, into clothes, and downstairs to the living room to peer past a curtain onto the street to see what was going on, only to see a clump of uniformed people with rifles draw marching up my driveway, along the side of the house. I heard someone running up the alley on the other side of the house, and jumping the garden gate. Terrified, I scuttled back to bed, only to see movement in the backyard. Pushed too far, I called out the window, “Who’s there?”
“Oakland Police, Ma’am,” came the answer, called from my backyard neighbor’s yard. “We’re searching house to house. Have you seen anything unusual?” I hadn’t, besides the storm-troopers trooping up my driveway. I told him no, but I had heard someone running in the alley. It was likely more police. That time, I turned off all the lights and pulled the cover over my head, and waited for the helicopter to stop circling and lighting up the night, waiting for the men tromping around my house to go away, waited for the neighborhood to get to go back to sleep.
This time, I was grateful not to be inside the cordon for house-to-house searches. I was grateful that it wasn’t my neighbor, any of them, who had been shot. As the invasive beat of the helicopter circled, though, and the police guarded the intersection, I still found myself retreating to my bed, pulling the covers up around my ears, as the bright winter day darkened.
I jumped out of bed once, to call my friend who was dropping by, and tell her not to come, not today. Today my neighborhood was in a police action. And today I was spending the rest of the day wrapping up in Portuguese flannel and stucco walls, relying on the wooden door to keep death out.
Today my neighbor is gone away, hoping to struggle and get sicker to live. There is no news about the man who was shot and killed five blocks from me, outside the AP reports from that very day. And there is bigger and more important violence in the world - from Arizona to Afghanistan and farther east in Oakland, I’m certain. But I don’t feel it, not in my gut. In my gut, I’m praying, mostly when I drive around the corner onto my block, that my neighbors and I may stay safe in our stucco houses.