Chapter 1: Reflections on Life

Shawna stared out at the gentle arc of mud that ran across the windshield of her Dodge Caravan and wondered, for what she thought might be the millionth time, why she didn’t feel more fulfilled. By all rights, the 38-year-old pretty Catholic mom should be happy for she had almost everything she had ever wanted. True, there had been a time through high school and college where she had wanted to be an actress, but that would probably be her one unrealized dream. Instead she had fallen in love and, after graduating as valedictorian from College of the Sacred Cross with a Master’s in Theatre, her boyfriend had proposed.

Shawna often wondered if that was because she refused to have sex before marriage, but, in any case, she had immediately said yes even though it meant putting aside her dreams of becoming a star on both stage and screen. Instead, she had embraced her one other true passion and that was to be the best stay at home mom possible. In the 15 years since getting married, Shawna had achieved everything she had ever dreamed of other than being a great actress. She had a comfortable middle-class life more refined than her blue-collar upbringing, as well as a nice home in a decent neighborhood and a loving son and husband. Still there was that ache inside her.

It was a longing for something more than making lunches and keeping house, something more than being President of the Green Tree PTA and Chairwoman of the Prayer and Worship Committee at Saint Mary Margaret’s Catholic Church, and Shawna didn’t know if she would ever be rid of it. She only knew that, even though she had almost everything she ever wanted, everything except that fantasy career as an actress, she was wholly unsatisfied. Her life was just too routine, too dull and too monotonous and there was a part of her that craved excitement. After all, the only exciting thing that had happened recently was not the kind of change for which she was looking.

That one exciting thing had landed them here, in the parking lot of Eglin Junior High School for Boys, the innocuous name for the local school for kids with behavioral problems. It had happened out of the blue. Jason, Shawna’s fourteen-year-old son had always been just a sweet and quiet boy, right up until the day the police called to say he had brought a gun to school. Her baby being led away in handcuffs and being placed in the back of a police cruiser with the shiny metal bracelets clamped around his wrists was a sight Shawna would never forget. Then there had been the expense of a defense attorney and a court date. The only way to keep Jason out of juvenile detention was to agree to send him to this school; a school with kids, Shawna thought, who were probably all nuts.

It was better than the alternative, she supposed, for whatever bad ideas Jason might pick up while going to this school, the pretty Catholic mom was sure it couldn’t be as bad as if he were actually in juvenile detention. After all, these kids were just crazy. Shawna didn’t like to think such things even if she knew them to be true, and, in her sheltered, suburban, white middle class mom’s mind, she figured crazy kids wouldn’t be as bad an influence as would the little psychopaths locked up in kiddie jail. In any event, her life was what it was, and Shawna knew she wasn’t going to solve the problem of Jason’s schooling or her own dissatisfaction by staring dreamily off into space. There was only so long she could put off the inevitable and that time had come. Shawna now opened the door to her minivan and then stepped out on to the hard and gravel strewn asphalt...

“Come on Jason let’s go.”

The 38-year-old soccer mom’s voice was soft and somewhat sad for, even as she got out of the minivan, her mind was still caught up in her own dissatisfaction. A moment later, she heard the minivan’s passenger side door open and then there was the sound of Jason’s feet hit the parking lot, but it was the slam of that heavy metal door a moment later that finally snapped her out of her morose contemplation. Now she was back in the moment jolted out of her daydream at the sudden clash of metal coming together. The late September morning sun still hung low in the sky and its yellow-orangish rays made Shawna squint as she looked towards the school bus on the other side of the parking lot.

It was cold for this time of year in Pennsylvania and the bite of the air on Shawna’s skin caused it to pop with gooseflesh as she wondered if maybe the temperature was too low for her to be wearing her favorite jumpsuit. If it was too cold, it was too late to do anything about it now for there was no time to go home and change. She could only move forward, and focus on the day ahead. Jason was already walking several steps in front of her and now Shawna hurried after him. At the moment she didn’t even realize it yet but the 38-year-old Catholic mom didn’t want to be left alone. The bus on which they would travel today was an old cantankerous dinosaur whose yellow side was caked in a layer of mud, and, as Shawna walked towards it she could see, surprisingly, that the only parts of the bus visible from under that mud were the windows that ran, horizontally, all the way from its front to its back. These were so clean and clear that it almost looked like someone had gone to the trouble of washing just those specific areas although why a person would do such a nonsensical thing was certainly lost on her.

“Come on mom.”

Jason’s voice was impatient, and Shawna realized she had been daydreaming again. At the sound of it she now looked over at him; he was already dressed in his soccer uniform though the game wouldn’t be for several more hours, and the long twisted curls of his thick and sandy blond hair were hanging down in every direction almost obscuring his face. He was her angel, despite the incident with the gun, and it still troubled her, most of all because neither she nor her husband could get an answer as to why he had done it.

“Right” Shawna said resignedly and the tiny stones that littered the school parking lot crunched beneath her black Gommini flats as the two of them started to walk towards the bus. Now, her previous unhappiness faded away and, as each step carried them closer towards the towering, hollow piece of yellow metal, her anxiety grew for Shawna noticed something terrible. It was supposed to be racist to say so but Shawna knew it was true; she could almost always tell a person’s race just based on the sound of the voice. Now, the cacophony that came from inside the bus was telling her that every single voice she heard sounded as if it belonged to somebody black. Shawna hated to think of herself as racist but, in the end, she could not deny her thoughts nor her feelings. She wanted to be like Jesus and love her neighbor as much as her own family but there were just certain types of people that she would always try to avoid. Her parents had scraped and sacrificed so that they could afford a small home in one of Mount Lebanon’s decent neighborhoods and it had been worth it. Almost everyone she had grown up around had been middle class and white and the poor people that she couldn’t avoid, who had always seemed to be black, brown or yellow, had behaved like animals.