Luz Belliard sat on the edge of her bed in Manhattan, on Tuesday night (24), in the room she shares with her 9-year-old granddaughter, Victoria, and thought about what she would say to the girl.
Victoria, a third-grader, was sitting on her own bed, covered in stuffed animals; she had already seen on the evening news that children her age were killed in a Texas school shooting.
Now Belliard had to assess exactly what he would say to Victoria on her walk to school the next morning: “Obey your teachers. Lie on the floor. Remember the exercises you do in class.”
“She’s young, but she understands — sometimes too much,” Belliard said Wednesday outside Victoria’s school, Duke Ellington Public School 4 in Washington Heights, New York. “Take your son to school and then come back to see him dead, that’s not fair. It shouldn’t happen.”
Victoria was standing beside her grandmother. “It’s sad that many children died like this. These children had a great life ahead of them,” said the girl. “When I hear that kind of thing, I get scared.”
In New York and across the country on Wednesday, children, parents and caregivers faced the aftermath of the massacre in Uvalde, Texas, where an 18-year-old boy killed 19 children and two teachers before being shot dead by authorities.
They hugged their kids a little tighter and took a little longer to let go. They could easily imagine a sniper invading their own children’s class. And once again they were faced with a haunting question: is there any school in the United States where children are really safe?
Some schools in the country took extra precautions after the massacre. Schools in Texas and Florida banned backpacks from entering buildings on Wednesday. Authorities in some states, such as Georgia and Virginia, sent extra police officers to schools as a precaution.
In New York City, home to the country’s largest school system, officials are considering ways to tighten security, including locking school doors after children enter.
The shooting set a somber tone to the final days and weeks of the school year.
“Sometimes I don’t know what to say in public,” wrote Deborah Gist, superintendent of schools in Tulsa, Oklahoma, in a Facebook post. “I feel a huge responsibility to use the right words. But how can I express the horror, outrage, frustration, disappointment, pain and fear caused by an event like the shooting in Uvalde? It’s a parent’s worst nightmare or mother, a teacher, a principal, and a superintendent.”
In Buffalo, New York, not far from where a racist gunman killed ten black people in a supermarket less than two weeks ago, the Texas shooting has multiplied fear. Patricia Davis took a break before dropping her 13-year-old son off at school Wednesday morning.
Be careful, she said. If something happens, “throw yourself down”.
As she walked away, she couldn’t help but wonder, “Will I see my son again?”
“All this is meaningless,” Davis said. “We’re not safe anywhere, it just makes you want to stay home, lock yourself in and not go out for nothing.”
The Texas massacre also reignited old grief over the devastating shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, a decade ago, which killed six employees and 20 children, some as young as 6 years old.
Scarlett Lewis, whose six-year-old son Jesse was killed in Sandy Hook, said knowing about each slaughter is “like a punch in the gut, every time” that reactivates the pain and sadness.
“For me it never gets easier,” Lewis said. “Especially since they’re all preventable. It’s so hard to lose a child, and you always have this pain.”
In New York City, even with some of the strictest gun laws in the country, some parents said they were on high alert after the Texas massacre, the Buffalo massacre and another in Brooklyn in April in which a gunman opened fire on the busiest hour in a crowded subway car, killing ten people and injuring at least 13 more.
“Feelings are everywhere right now,” said Victor Quiñonez, whose 11-year-old daughter attends a school in Brooklyn. “It’s anger, frustration, sadness.”
“It’s difficult because there’s a sense of absolute vulnerability for everyone in this country, because you can’t control what people do,” he said.
Parents have also struggled to reassure their children that it is safe to return to school.
In Buffalo, José Esquilin, 43, was sitting at the table when his daughter, Avalynn, 7, walked in wide-eyed after watching the news of the Texas deaths on television in the living room.
“‘Is this here? Did this happen here? Did they kill the kids? Will it happen at my school?'” she asked, according to Esquilin. He explained that there were many schools across the country, and that such things were rare.
When she replied that the same thing had already happened in their neighborhood, Esquilin paused.
“As a parent, well… what can you say? It’s true. It’s very hard to face it.”
