If I Don’t Make It, I Love You

FIVE CHILDREN BETWEEN the ages of six and nine were killed in the Stockton schoolyard in under five minutes. These were the children of refugees, Julia Schardt, a second-grade teacher at the time of the Cleveland Elementary School shooting, told me on June 5, 2018. Their parents came here from Cambodia and Vietnam to escape persecution only to have their children murdered in America.

When Julia submitted her essay, I was fixated on the red shoes. I reread the lines Oeun loves jump rope. So close to the door. The police officer uncovers the little girl and I look at a still, beautiful little face marred by blood from a wound to her head. I see the red shoes she loved to wear. I see them, too. When I go shopping. On random people’s feet in the city. I see them walking alone on the side street where I walk my pup. These shoes fill my mind. They come for me in the night, before bed, at early rise.

Oeun . . .

I never knew beautiful little Oeun Lim. But I know she is still eight years old, wherever she is. She is there with her skipping rope in her red shoes. No blood on her face. No holes. No pain. Whole, again. Returned. The children Julia describes in her essay are not silent, anymore. They laugh. Play hand slaps. Run. They continue to play through the bullets. They don’t fall. Instead they jump rope. Cheer each other on. Rathanar, Ram, Sokhim, Oeun, and Thuy. All of their smiles lighting up the sandy schoolyard. I pray for this after hearing, reading, and rereading Julia’s story.

LOREN KLEINMAN, EDITOR

SEPTEMBER 2018

The following students were shot and killed at
Cleveland Elementary School:

Sokhim An, 6

Ram Chun, 8

Oeun Lim, 8

Rathanar Or, 9

Thuy Tran, 6

THE RED SHOES

By Julia Schardt

Julia Schardt was a second-grade teacher at the time of the shooting.

JANUARY 17, 1989

On a mild winter day the quick, sharp sound of firecrackers broke the quiet of my classroom. It was recess for my second grade students. Ordinary because the routine of teaching can make some minutes ordinary. The firecrackers made it unusual.

Then it became extraordinary because the sound breaking the silence was not firecrackers. It was gunshots. Distant but loud, sharp, shredding the peace of my classroom.

CHANDRA

Chandra had a cold and her mother didn’t want her to be outside. She was sitting in the quiet of my classroom, reading a book. The gunshots were on the playground where my other twenty-eight students were jumping rope and playing tetherball or kickball. I grabbed Chandra’s hand to rush her out the back door of my classroom, to where it should be safe.

Her mother didn’t want her outside.

And where are my other students?

We stayed inside.

There was complete silence after the shooting stopped. Was it five minutes? Ten minutes? Longer?

Children began filing in from the playground in a single-file line, just as they would on any ordinary day, walking behind or beside me. I wasn’t there to lead them, but they came in quietly, silently, unable to process what had just happened. Their safe place was the classroom. What must I have looked like to them? What did my eyes say?

I met them at the door, and they came in and sat down

VANN

Vann is a class leader. Such confidence, intelligence, charm, wit . . . So much promise. He’s the last one to walk into the classroom, and he says nothing.

Another child says, “Teacher, Oeun is dead.”

Vann still says nothing.

I say, “We don’t know that,” honestly believing that an eight-year-old announcing another child’s murder can’t happen. The murder can’t happen. A child can’t be telling me this.

I don’t want them to think about this.

They all sit down on the floor around my chair. This is the routine whenever we come in from recess.

I take roll and two of my students haven’t come back from recess.

I look at the faces of my second-graders after they’ve seen their friends mowed down by bullets and all I can think about doing is reading a story.

They say nothing. They look. They trust me to do what’s right, and I read them a story.

And Vann still says nothing.

I pick up Two Bad Ants by Chris Van Allsburg, which they always ask to hear. I’m a fan of Chris Van Allsburg, so they are as well. He writes with the kind of imagination I want my students to feel free to express. What can they imagine after this?

MALINN

The children are quiet, but in a way I’ve never seen them. Their faces are almost expressionless, there’s no squirming. I look for any kind of expression, for any typical wiggling or movement from them, but there’s nothing. Their eyes are all on me. What must I look like to them? What do my eyes say? I wonder where my two students are, but they must know.

Our principal’s voice comes over the intercom to ask if all my students are in the classroom.

I have to say that two of my students are not in the classroom. I didn’t know that other teachers are having to say the same thing, that not all of their students have come back from recess. Thirty-five students and a teacher have not come back into the school building from recess.

Then, “Teacher, Malinn is bleeding.” A little boy is pointing at Malinn’s backside.

Malinn is bright, adorable, charming, sitting in absolute silence. She’s been hit by shrapnel from the bullets that broke the innocent silence of our school on that mild winter day.

The reality of this day begins to cast its cold, quiet horror on me.

Malinn is bleeding, but only a little and she’s carried up to the office by my classroom aide.

I don’t remember the sounds of the sirens or the helicopters, but they came.

OEUN

A fireman walks into my classroom, and I think he’s ill. The color has drained from his face, and he is sweating. I want to offer him a place to sit down or a glass of water.

But he is there to check on us, my students and me.

He has been on the playground, bringing the sound of the sirens I didn’t hear.

When he leaves, we go back to the book.

Someone’s voice comes over the intercom telling the teachers to walk our students up the inside hallways to the multipurpose room.

My students line up in silence, an extraordinary silence that is cold and surreal. The hallway carpet is splattered with blood but no one says anything. We step outside to the short walkway between the classroom building and the multipurpose room where—dozens, hundreds?—of parents are waiting to find their children in the lines making their way from the safety of the classrooms to the large open meeting place where they can unite with their children.

Unless they can’t.

We have roll sheets, and one by one we let stunned, silent children and their frantic parents meet in relief.

Unless we can’t.

My principal pulls me aside and says she needs to speak to me.

She needs me to come onto the playground to identify my student whose name is not on the list of thirty children given over to the sirens to be taken to a hospital.

Oeun’s name is not one of the thirty.

Oeun’s name is one of the five.

We step outside, my principal and me, only the two of us. The sun is shining, harsh and unreal in the cold.

The playground an hour ago was full of beautiful, busy, noisy, playful children. Now there is no one but a police officer to meet us as we take the long walk toward my part of the building. The tetherballs are still, there is no sound other than our steps. The principal tells me only that I must look at a child lying on the playground, and I must say whether or not she is Oeun, my student. The principal holds my hand and I see a small, almost shapeless form covered in a blanket on the blacktop near the tetherball and close to the door into our part of the building. This is the space where my students play jump rope. Oeun loves jump rope. So close to the door.

The police officer uncovers the little girl and I look at a still, beautiful little face marred by blood from a wound to her head. I see the red shoes she loved to wear. And I say I’m not sure it’s my student, Oeun. I can’t bring myself to make the final call about this loss, but I know it’s Oeun.

My friend who is Oeun’s reading teacher has to come help and we know it’s Oeun.

The walk back to the room where some of my children are still waiting, where some of the parents are still waiting, is long and cold and I must walk by myself.

TOKLA

Tokla is a quiet, studious little girl. She doesn’t come into my classroom from recess. She lies bleeding on the playground where a bullet shattered her leg at the hip. An ambulance takes her to a hospital forty miles away. She is one of the thirty, plus a teacher, who don’t come back into classrooms that day.

ROBBY

Robby is a first-grader, and he is one of my son’s best friends. They climb, run, ride bikes, make up games. Robby lies on the playground with a bullet wound in his left foot and a round in his chest. He is carried inside by a teacher and almost dies before an ambulance takes him to a hospital nearby.

MIKE AND RATHANA

Mike is a third-grader who runs to his classroom door when the shooting starts. By the time he gets there, the door is locked because the teacher fears the shooter will come into the building. Mike is uninjured and watches as Rathana, his playmate and family friend falls to the ground. Rathana doesn’t come back from recess and he isn’t taken away in an ambulance. His teacher has to identify his body on the playground.

AMY

Amy is in sixth grade. The older students are in their classrooms waiting for their lunchtime to start when the sound of the firecrackers become the sound of bullets for them. Amy’s classroom is a portable building with a window facing the playground. She and her classmates see the shooter use his weapon to spray bullets back and forth across the playground. The bullets hit tetherball poles, leaving holes or ricocheting back toward the playground. The bullets go through the school building, causing a flurry of cottony soundproofing from the portable walls to float in the kindergarten classrooms.

The bullets go through children. Amy and her classmates watch as the bullets explode through children.

Amy and her classmates watch as the shooter puts a bullet through his own head.

After the shooting stops, Amy’s teacher lines up her students to walk them to the multipurpose room to be reunited with their parents. Amy grabs a pair of art scissors to take as protection because she’s not sure there’s a safe place waiting for her. She’s left-handed and worries because the scissors she picks up are right-handed scissors. Can she make them work if she needs protection?

We learn the shooter hated our population of Southeast Asian children and specifically targeted our school. We learn that five of our children are killed—two first-graders, a second-grader, and two third-graders. Thirty others are wounded. A teacher on the playground trying to protect the children was wounded.

We learn much later the survivors will carry the awful memory of this day for the rest of their lives. We also learn we can find ways to live and raise families and be with friends, although it doesn’t come easily for some of us.

VANN

The confident, intelligent, charming class leader came to school the day after the shooting, as we all did, except for those who couldn’t. He said then, and he said many more times throughout the school year that he should have helped the children who were killed. He should have gotten them inside to safety. He felt the burden of true leadership and he was only eight years old. The promising young leader became an alcoholic and can’t keep a job.

MALINN, ROBBY, MIKE, AMY

Malinn’s family moved away from Stockton to Southern California. When her older sister graduated from the University of the Pacific (Stockton), Malinn could not bring herself to return to the town where she was wounded and where she saw her classmates and playmates die. Malinn was able to come back twenty-five years later to visit the school site and her classroom, but it was an uneasy visit for her. She is still the bright, charming person she was as a second-grader and has a successful career as a writer and fashion blogger.

Robby stayed in Stockton, and although he recovered from the bullet wounds, he still carries the round that entered his chest. He is a police officer for a local school district and an inspirational leader for youth, including his two children.

Mike is still seared by the memory of the murder of his friend, Rathana. It informs his work as a senior program director of the YMCA, and as the father of three sons.

The weight of the memory of the shooting still weighs heavily on Amy, but she is stronger than the challenges and hurdles life has sent her way. As the mother of two teenagers and two toddlers, she finds time to take care of other family members as well.

Chandra and Tokla have slipped away to other places, to live and raise families and be with friends. To me they are still little girls who like to read or play jump rope.

Like Oeun. I don’t think about who she might have become or what she might have given to all of us. That is too painful.

Instead, Oeun is forever an eight-year-old little girl, jumping rope, wearing red shoes.