I live just east of Highway I-35 in East Austin, a place that has a history of segregation, and has its share of crime and drug problems. It also has an active artist community and some trendy shops and despite the grit has been a pretty lovely place to live for me and my two-year old son. Given all that, when I woke hazily Thanksgiving night to the sound of machine gun fire at around 2:30 in the morning, I was pretty freaked out. I couldn’t tell how far away it was, or even what it was. When I heard the second round of shots rat-a-tat-tatting, I identified the sound as definitely not fireworks (I’ve lived in lots of sketchy neighborhoods, so I’ve had some practice with this). And I lay frozen in my bed. I have heard shots in the night more than once, but I’ve never heard an automatic weapon, except on movies and TV. It is a chilling sound, ringing through the dead night air in your residential neighborhood. I started thinking up likely scenarios: a Mexican drug cartel deal gone bad. I-35 is a NAFTA route and major drug entry point, and our little neighborhood has had an infamous corner for more than 40 years. With that in mind, I listened to the sirens, I watched the police helicopter circle overhead, I waited for them to make it to our corner, and I watched the alley for perps, phone in hand. All this while my two year old son snored away, next to me.
In the morning I saw what had happened and understood why the sirens never made it quite to us: an active shooter, downtown. The entire interstate shut down while they searched for bombs. At this time, some things are clear about the shooter, who was killed by a police officer just ending his shift. Although it is not clear who it was carrying the automatic weapon – the shooter or the police. Most of what they know does not matter to me. The details, as they come out, only add to the spectacle and allow people to treat it like an individual event, one that they maybe experienced in some small way, like dealing with the highway shutdown as they woke before dawn to score a big screen TV. It is not an individual event. It is one in a long string that we have witnessed for far too long.
As I lay there, last night, thinking what to do, I mean what to really DO, I thought of all those sketchy neighborhoods and the past shots fired and the police tape and how each of those incidents was its own small atrocity that I would never really know much about and that didn’t really effect me other than to remind me that I was, despite a good education and a passable upbringing, something near to poor. It is something I could have done something about (majored in investment banking instead of poetry, married rich, etc.), but didn’t. Too bad for me. Something changes though when you are poor and while some shit is happening you are simultaneously listening to the heavy breath of a small child on the pillow next to you.
It is one thing to say that no mother should have to listen to machine gun fire in their neighborhood while their children sleep. Anyone could say that. Anyone would. It is another thing to feel the wrongness of it in your bones. The anger and the indignation that someone, anyone, would allow it to happen. In Syria, in Jerusalem, in Palestine, in Mexico City, in Austin, Texas.
Little Bug 