1.
Wednesday, September 4th, I was in my home office in Athens, Georgia. I was working on a piece about attending a memorial for Emmett Till in the Mississippi Delta, where I’m from, where I was attempting to address what it meant to be from a region scarred by white male violence. I was trying to make myself break for lunch, when I received a text from my husband, a high school engineering and robotics instructor. “Shooting at Apalachee High. No word but one teacher may be shot. Suspect in custody.”
My stomach dropped. Apalachee High was only 26 miles away. I texted my husband and asked if he was okay. I’m a former public school librarian—I knew what it was like, hearing about a school shooting, while being trapped in a classroom. He told me yes. I sent him a heart emoji, and watched the three dots, waiting.
My heart started pounding when he asked about one of my former library interns: Amanda, who worked with me off and on for five years, had started her career at Apalachee. I rushed to Google on my computer. As I typed I remembered an afternoon in 2018, the semester before she began student-teaching at Apalachee, us discussing the incomprehensible horror of Parkland as we prepped origami—or was it word banks for the poetry station?—for the next day’s library lesson. I didn’t know it, but 2018 was my last full year as a teacher—even then, even though I loved working with my students, I was rapidly burning out, in part due to MAGA attacks on education and the related book bans, in part due to my toxic administration, in part because I worried about school shootings.
Back in 2018, as Amanda and I spoke about Parkland, I’d thought of how, when I was her age, when Columbine happened, I’d been a baby teacher. As I Googled, another text from my husband, telling me that it was probably a complete shit show at Apalachee, telling me not to freak out if I couldn’t reach Amanda—but right then, I discovered her LinkedIn, and realized she was now teaching somewhere else.
“Thank G–d,” I thought as I texted the news to my husband. I thanked God, but then I remembered all the friends I had currently teaching in Barrow County. My husband and I were on the same wavelength—even as I texted to check in with Amanda, my husband texted me the name of one of our mutuals.
There were no words, just devastation. As we texted, I was trying not to picture what it looked like inside of Apalachee.Almost immediately Amanda texted me back—relief. I pictured her shoulder-length blond hair, her blue eyes, that look she gets, almost sarcastic, waiting for whatever’s next to drop. We both agreed that the shooting at Apalachee was horrible. There were no words, just devastation. As we texted, I was trying not to picture what it looked like inside of Apalachee. I knew she was probably doing the same thing. Right around that time our governor, Brian Kemp, was tweeting how he’d directed all available resources to assist in “the incident at Apalachee High School.” Amanda told me she was reaching out to her Apalachee peers. We said goodbye for the moment, the two of us exchanging I-love-yous, as Kemp asked all Georgians to join his family in praying for the safety of those in our classrooms.
2.
By now, of course, everyone knows four people were murdered at Apalachee, two teachers and two 14-year-old children. That seven others were shot. That others were hospitalized for stress-related symptoms. That Apalachee was the 416th school shooting since Columbine; that, since Columbine, 383,000 students have experienced gun violence at school; that it was the 24th school shooting of the calendar year, though the first of this school year; that it was the worst in over a year, when six elementary school children were killed at a private school in Nashville; that it was the first deadly school shooting in Georgia since 1999; that the shooter, the first person under the age of 15 to kill more than one person on a K-12 campus, used an assault weapon, the same kind of weapon used in Uvalde (19 children, two teachers), Parkland (14 children, three teachers), and Sandy Hook (26 people, 20 of them small children). That the number of mass killings—in airports, military facilities, houses of worship, workplaces, music venues, and schools—has skyrocketed since 2005, when the Republican-led Congress, under George W. Bush, lifted the national ban on assault weapons. That the number of people killed would probably have been higher except for the campus warning system provided by Centegix, the company founded by Brian Kemp’s childhood friend and college roommate. That more kids would have died, but for the teachers who died protecting their students.
3.
“Fuck this, I’m getting out,” my husband, who is only a few years away from retirement, and has been on the fence, said the day of the shootings. Two mornings later he repeated it. I’d just slid his breakfast of French toast into the oven to bake at 450°—neither of us had really slept—when I picked up my phone and began reading.
“Oh my God, she took a bullet for her student,” I’d blurted. When he asked, I explained that on September 4th, 53-year-old Christine Irimie, who was the same age as my husband will be in November, had brought a birthday cake to school. Irimie, who had no children of her own, had planned to belatedly celebrate with her students after buying them pizza.
“Fuck this. I can’t do this any longer. I don’t want to work in a prison. I don’t want to get killed,” said my husband, who has been teacher of the year twice, and is, for most purposes, stoic, but in May cried on the last day of school, because he already was missing his graduating students.
4.
Until September 4th, Apalachee was not just the school where one of my favorite interns taught, but was the location of some of my and my husband’s favorite memories. We spent at least seven fall and spring days out in Apalachee’s bleachers with my husband’s parents between 2015 and 2019, back when my son ran track and cross-country in high school. Seven afternoons on the grounds of what used to be farmland back when we were undergrads at the same school Brian Kemp attended, the University of Georgia. Seven afternoons admiring Apalachee’s state of the art athletic facilities, on the same fields where Ricky Aspinwall, who died protecting his students, coached football. Seven afternoons cheering all the kids on, my husband and I decked in red and gold for my son’s school, the same school Brian Kemp graduated from, Clarke Central, the school where my husband now works.
Those afternoons in my memory are pure bliss, occurring as they did, under blue skies, after the heat broke, when the trees changed their colors, or in the spring when the dogwoods bloomed, when the air was perfumed by honeysuckle. Sometimes my husband and I would pick up Mexican takeout from El Real; sometimes we’d get a burger from Apalachee concessions. My father-in-law, who’d run varsity at Case-Western, filmed my son in slo-mo, so they could review technique later. My mother-in-law and I commented on the Clarke Central and Apalachee kids, all of whom seemed sweet, but, because they were in high school, were awkward. Afternoons where, in the background, the soundtrack of almost every cross-country or track meet I’ve ever attended blared, a playlist of 80s essentials: “Eye of The Tiger.” “We Will Rock You.” “Don’t Stop Believing.”
5.
The day after the shooting I went looking for that Apalachee. I was trying to scroll through Twitter accounts from before September 4th, but paused as I stumbled over a video of a 14-year-old boy talking about how he kept replaying the moment over and over in his head, his teacher—I’m assuming it was father of two, Ricky Aspinwall—getting in front of him.
I scrolled past retweets of campaign ads by Brian Kemp and Georgia representative Mike Collins, posing with firearms. Kemp even pointed his gun at a teenager, because in Georgia’s predominantly white conservative culture, pointing a loaded weapon at a teenager is “just joking.” I scrolled past retweets of the AR-15 campaign signs for our other gerrymandered representative, Andrew Clyde, the one who passed out AR-15 lapel pins on the floor of the House to other Republican lawmakers, which they wore to symbolize their opposition to gun violence prevention legislation. I looked up the distance between Apalachee and Clyde Armory—18.9 miles—and decided that the shooter’s father having at some point shopped at Clyde’s gun store, Clyde Armory, was within the realm of possibility.
“Almost all school shooters, have been white men, and now white boys, and we have not made a national emergency about how white families raise their kids.”Still, I kept going further back in time until I found the Apalachee I was looking for: the Apalachee that hosted Family Fun Day, the one where the CheerCats debuted their new look, the one celebrating various athletes. However, when I discovered a picture from the spring before, giving a shoutout to one of my former students, I almost lost it.
B. had been five the year of Sandy Hook. I could still picture him in kindergarten, crooked smile, close-cropped hair, in his khaki shorts and navy polo, lined up on my library’s yellow brick road, clutching his copy of Elephant and Piggie, or was it Pete the Cat? B., now a senior, still had the same sweet smile, but wore his hair in locs. His uniform had been replaced by sweats, slides, and a Buc-ees long-sleeved T that my own son would envy. I stared at B.’s picture, wondering if he had been near the math hall, knowing, regardless, that he must’ve been terrified.
I was about to get up when I found a video online from a fellow Georgian, @sunnydaejones. Sunny sat close to the screen. “White folks, do you notice, no matter how often this happens, nobody’s having conversations about how you raise your children? Notice how there’s no ‘stop the violence’ conversations on your TV?”
I stared into her wide eyes as she spoke, thinking how I liked her hoop earrings. “I’m not on my revenge arc. I’m not saying that happened to Black moms, so that has to happen to everybody else,” she went on.
You should watch the whole thing. I cannot begin to do Sunny justice.
“I’m saying white people should reckon with the fact that that’s not happening, and ask themselves, why, for the better part of 70 years, Black people have been consistently told that our circumstances were because of the culture that we create?
“So, yes, given that information, it absolutely does matter that almost all mass shooters, almost all school shooters, have been white men, and now white boys, and we have not made a national emergency about how white families raise their kids.”
6.
Exhausted, I put down my phone, and went outside. I switched out the flag in my front lawn, changing it from READ BANNED BOOKS to one which says PRACTICE RADICAL EMPATHY. I tried to empathize with Brian Kemp, who grew up attending the Episcopal church where my son attended nursery school, a half mile from my house. I wondered how it felt to be Brian Kemp, who refused to give back $50,000 in campaign contributions from Daniel Defense, the company that manufactured the weapon used in Uvalde, even after being asked by a parent whose child was killed in the Parkland shooting. The contributions included $25,000 to Kemp’s personal PAC, given less than a month before Kemp signed a bill into law making it legal for Georgia gun owners to carry a concealed firearm without a license.
Georgia’s opposition to gun violence prevention policies had empowered a 14-year-old to kill two kids and two teachers in our community.I thought of something a neighbor who’d attended Clarke Central with Kemp told me a few years ago. How when he’d said something to Kemp about pointing his gun at that kid in that campaign video, Kemp had said, “C’mon Roy, it’s only for votes.”
I thought of how, in Georgia, it’s been all fun and games and let’s fuck with the libs for at least the past decade, how I hoped it would now change, now that Georgia’s opposition to gun violence prevention policies—and weapons sold by state reps—have empowered a 14-year-old to kill two kids and two teachers in our community.
I looked at the sign, a reminder for me, to PRACTICE RADICAL EMPATHY, and tried to feel empathy for Kemp, who would rather regulate women than guns and who, in 2019, signed one of the most extreme abortion bans in the country. I tried to feel empathy for Kemp, who, when asked the evening of the “incident” what he could do to prevent school shootings, said, “Today is not the day for politics or policy. I would ask everyone to continue to keep this community… in your thoughts and prayers.”
7.
That evening, I showered, braided my hair, and put on one of my prettiest dresses. My husband drove me downtown to the Foundry, where our friends Elf Power were opening for one of my favorite high school bands, Drivin N Cryin. The Elves played with a frenetic energy, channeling the tension of the past two days into their set, and even though I was mostly sober and everyone around me was stiff, I danced with abandon. “It’s like shaking qigong!” I yelled at my husband and he smiled in my direction. Even though I knew he couldn’t hear me, he knew what I meant, how great it felt to shake all the tension from my body.
As Drivin N Cryin’s Kevn Kinney sang about those abandoned by the promised land, I thought about broken white boys. I thought about what happens when a nation rewrites her history. I thought about how, after Apalachee, I did the thing I do every time a white male shooter attacks a school, and thought about the Mississippi Delta, meaning I thought about my former friend and high school classmate, Edwin Hart Turner.
Hart shot and killed two Black men when I was 21. He was executed 12 years ago, and is, to date, the only white man Mississippi ever executed for killing a Black person.
I wondered what would have happened if Hart and I were not Gen X but Gen Z, if Hart had had access to an assault weapon?I thought about how both Hart and the shooter, Colt Gray, came from violent homes where their fathers attacked them and their mothers, homes where the abuse was intergenerational. All four of their parents struggled with substance abuse—and, even though they came up in different states, in different times, neither of their families had access to adequate mental health care, in part because their Republican governors, like Georgia’s Brian Kemp, refused to expand Medicaid, in part because in 2022, the Republican-led House voted against expanding access to mental health in schools.
The band sang about Mother America brandishing her weapons and I thought about how even after the FBI questioned Colt about online threats, Colt’s father bought him an assault rifle. I thought of how, when we were high school seniors, Hart blew off the lower half of his face in a failed suicide attempt. I was away at school; I only saw him once after, and I begged him to leave the Delta—Hart looked like an actual monster. I thought about how, despite struggling with mental illness for years, Hart still was allowed access to firearms. And because of that, two different wives lost their husbands, and two different sets of children lost their fathers.
I wondered what would have happened if Hart and I were not Gen X but Gen Z, if Hart had had access to an assault weapon? What if Hart had grown up with social media where—I’m just spitballing here—Russian trolls influenced teenage kids to become mass shooters? Would I have grown up to share my love of reading with thousands of kids? Would I even be here now, writing?
Kinney sang about being haunted by the past, and I thought how both Hart and Colt grew up in cultures that sought to erase how, for generations, white people believed they were superior to all other races, how for generations participating in racialized violence was not seen as something abhorrent, but as a white man’s civic duty. I thought about how participating or even just witnessing this violence psychologically damaged all of our white ancestors, leaving them with harmful defense mechanisms. These defense mechanisms led them to target others outside the intended group, including their wives and children.
The band played and I danced and thought again about what it meant to be from a region scarred by this history we refuse to talk about. How our refusal to face the past is why this culture of violence and mental illness and psychological mutilation continues.
“So, what do you know about revolution? When all I was taught is patience, and waiting,” Kinney sang, and I thought about Kemp wanting us to wait, wanting only our thoughts and prayers. I thought about my prayer for Apalachee: how I prayed that Kemp, Clyde, and Collins would hear the innocent blood crying from Apalachee’s halls, that they would repent, and quit sacrificing our children and teachers to arms dealers. I thought about how I’m hoping against hope—but I won’t stop believing—I’ll even pray that, after Apalachee, everything will become different. I pray that, after Apalachee, we Americans will collectively recognize that the jig is up and demand that our leaders pass common sense gun laws to protect our children and reinstate the ban on assault weapons.
As the band played, I danced, even though I was sad. I danced and I thought about us—the families, the friends, the survivors—all witnesses to this absolutely preventable tragedy. I danced because I still have hope that together we Americans can come to our senses. I danced because even if we don’t, I’d decided to take a stand, to say it doesn’t have to be like this, that we can protect our children and our teachers.
I danced, picturing the dogwoods in the Apalachee spring. I danced because I could feel the southern breezes blowing. I danced because I was alive. I danced because we—all—are still living.
