I keep thinking about the baby’s broken fingers.
A wise friend said to remember one victim of the shootings, remember the name, and act on that person’s behalf to end this nightmare. And so I think about Jordan Anchondo. She was 25. Shopping for school supplies. With her husband and their two-month old son. They had dropped their 6-year-old daughter at cheer-leading practice. They were having a birthday party for her later that day.
How do we think about this? She and her husband were shopping on an ordinary summer Saturday. An American summer day. A summer day in America 2019.
Don’t you find them in random pockets, too, those shopping lists—reminders—milk, cereal, butter, coffee? Or notebook, pencils? It’s what we all do. You pull into a shopping mall parking lot with errands to do and think you are lucky to find a parking space. You have to get the errands done quickly so you can pick up your daughter when her practice is over. You have to get the errands done quickly because you have to rush home to prepare for the party, the guests arriving. School supplies, maybe some last-minute snacks for the party. There is always a lot to do on a summer weekend. Especially when it’s your daughter’s birthday and school is starting soon.
It’s what we all do—trust the tree limb will not break off as we are walking underneath, trust the sidewalk will not crumble under our step, that the cars will not move forward until the light turns green. And, with each other, that the people on the street do not wish us ill, or, not caring about us in particular, wish ill on anyone they pass, and have the means in hand to do that ill. Living without that trust would be too painful to contemplate, and yet our habits change, we become wary, we think of what is possible.
Jordan Anchondo must have heard the gunshots. Did she know right away they were gunshots? Who thinks about gunshots when they hear noise in a store? The sound must have been loud. Nearby. People running, panicking around her while she was thinking about her errands. Maybe she was puzzled, then comprehending, then terrified.
Who realized later that her daughter needed to be picked up?
Jordan fell to the floor, on top of the baby, protecting him. She died. Her husband died. The baby was unhurt. Except for two small fingers, broken in the fall.