The Gift of Our Wounds Page 13

  Choking back sobs, my mother asked if I’d heard from Dad. I told her about the call from the priest. “Please tell someone to help us,” she whispered before hanging up.

  Where the hell were the police? I wondered. They were obviously aware of what was happening. Had they even tried to enter the Gurudwara to help the people inside? Was it still an active shooting? How long would they allow this to go on?

  Desperate, I called my former partner from the Milwaukee PD, Mark Harms. He said he knew about the shooting but had not yet been to the scene to know exactly what was going on. I told him about my conversation with Mom and with the priest. He was asking questions and taking notes. I appreciated that this was his job, but my parents’ lives were in limbo. I didn’t have the time or the patience to stay on the phone. “Listen, Mark,” I said. “I need to get to the command post. I can help if they’ll let me in. I can translate and make introductions. I can help them with the layout of the Gurudwara.” I would have promised anything to get beyond the police barricade that was keeping me from my parents.

  Mark asked a few more questions and finally gave me the name of the person in charge. Within minutes, I was allowed to pass through the barricade, leaving my brother, my wife, and everyone else behind.

  * * *

  THE MOBILE COMMAND center was located in the parking lot of the bowling alley across the street from the temple. It was parked alongside armored SWAT vehicles, police cars, ambulances, and the Red Cross. Swarms of people wearing badges and FBI jackets rushed around frantically. I saw people in riot gear. I asked an officer if anyone from the temple was there. I didn’t know how many were inside the Gurudwara when the shooting started. Services usually attracted in the neighborhood of 150 worshippers, but it had been early, so I figured probably forty or fifty were there. He pointed to the bowling alley. There were some people inside, he said.

  I was stopped again when I tried to enter the front door. Security was tight. Explaining my situation, the official at the door contacted the head guy and I was finally allowed inside. Distraught people milled around aimlessly. Walking through the crowd, I heard bits of conversation that did nothing to quell my fears. My husband is still in there. She was lying on the ground in a pool of blood. Are we still in danger? Are they still inside? So many questions, but no one in authority seemed to have answers—or they just weren’t willing to share them.

  I moved about, searching for my parents. Faces seemed to melt together. Stay calm, I told myself. This is no time to panic. I looked from person to person, finally spotting my mother at the end of a long hallway. She was sitting against a wall, looking like a lost child. Flooded with relief, I ran to her, dropped down, and lifted her up off the floor. She said that she and the others who’d been in the pantry were rushed out of the temple and into an armored police vehicle. They had seen people lying on the floor. We hugged for a long time. “Find out what is going on with Dad,” she said, tears filling her eyes.

  I didn’t get the chance. Mom was summoned into a large conference room to be interviewed. I wasn’t about to leave her alone. While she told her story to a pair of investigators, I did my best to translate for others who were questioning victims who spoke little or no English. I picked up whatever information I could. We were going about our morning routines … preparing for services … waiting for classes to begin … cooking in the kitchen … praying in the main hall … We heard shots outside … At first we thought it was in the neighborhood … He came in through the front doors … He was white … I don’t know if there was one shooter or more.

  When Mom was excused, I left her with friends from the temple and went in search of Dad. By then, the crowd inside had swelled with more victims and family members, many of whom I knew. One of the first people I saw was Gurmail Singh, the head priest who’d called me from Dad’s cell phone. I watched as he steadied himself against a wall, and then I approached him to ask what he knew.

  He said that the priests had gathered in the lobby of the temple, preparing to welcome the congregants who would soon be arriving for services, when a gunman walked through the door and started firing. Everyone scattered, he said. He found shelter in a bathroom at the far end of the temple and barricaded himself inside. My father was shot in the adjoining room. “I heard him praying and calling out for help,” the priest said. “Do you know what happened after that?” I asked. Gurmail said he’d been rescued by a SWAT team and brought to the bowling alley moments earlier. He thought the police were still searching for gunmen inside the temple. They had made him come out of the bathroom with his hands held high in the air. He hadn’t seen Dad again, but he thought he was transported to a hospital. His answer allowed me to hold out hope that my father was still alive.

  I thanked Gurmail and moved on. Talking to everyone I could, I learned about a family who survived the shooting and witnessed a lot. They were there, somewhere in the bowling alley. I asked around until someone pointed to a woman and two young children huddled together in a corner, looking lost and afraid.

  Taking a deep breath, I walked over and introduced myself.

  * * *

  I CAN SEE in their eyes they have witnessed something terrible, something so traumatic that their warm brown skin has turned a drab shade of gray. They are staring ahead, saying nothing. I don’t recognize them. Normally I wouldn’t dare to approach them at what is obviously so painful a time, but I am fraught with worry about my own family, so I muster the courage to introduce myself. They look at me uncertainly. What do I want from them? Am I there to help?

  I ask if they need anything, and they politely decline. They speak Punjabi. I can’t bear to ask them what I want so desperately to know. What happened inside? Are people dead? Do you know my father? Please, what did you see? I start to walk away and see the little girl is looking up at me with pleading eyes, as if she wants to tell me something. I ask the mom if I may speak to the girl. Hesitantly, she agrees.

  “What is your name?” I ask the girl.

  “Palmeet,” she says.

  “How long ago did you come from India?”

  She tells me they arrived in Wisconsin a few weeks earlier. Her dark eyes dart back and forth, up and down. I think about my own daughter, who is about the same age, and I want to wrap my arms around the little girl, to comfort her and tell her that everything will be okay.

  “My father is dead,” she says, so suddenly that my head jerks back. “My mom and my brother and me have seen it with our own eyes.”

  “Do you want to tell me about it?” I ask.

  Just as I suspected, Palmeet speaks very little English. This is one of those times that I deeply regret I’m not fluent in Punjabi. I struggle to understand, and she is patient with me, often repeating things I don’t grasp until I am finally able to piece together her story.

  Palmeet says that she and her brother were in the Gurudwara, in a room next to the kitchen watching the Indian version of an American crime drama on TV, when they heard a series of pops. At first they thought it was the show, but a moment later her father rushed into the room, frantic. He threw her the keys to the basement and ordered her to take her brother down there to hide, then he ran back toward the danger. She knew from the tone of her father’s voice that something bad was happening. He is usually so soft-spoken. I ask her father’s name. “Prakash Singh,” she says. I know him. He is a young temple priest my dad sponsored to come to America from India seven years ago. He must have finally gotten clearance to bring his family here after all that time.

  By the grace of God, Palmeet says, just as she and her brother headed toward the basement door, her mother found them and they all rushed downstairs. There were already a dozen or so people down there, adults and other children. They could hear gunshots upstairs. Pop-pop-pop-pop-pop! Everyone was panicked and crying.

  When the shooting stopped, Palmeet, her mom, and her brother waited awhile and then crept upstairs to find her father. They got as far as the prayer hall when they saw the bloodied body of a wo
man lying by the doorway. They were horrified, she says, but the woman was beyond help. Cautiously, they moved past the dead woman and walked on. They came upon a second body, an old man lying outside of the library. He, too, was dead.

  After that, they went room to room, not knowing if they would run into a killer. When they reached the room at the far end of the temple, they discovered her father’s body. He was covered in blood, but even worse, one of his eyes was missing. He had been shot in the face. Her mother became hysterical, draping herself over the body and crying for her husband to wake up, but Palmeet knew he was dead. She touched her father’s face around his missing eye and got blood on her hand. That really frightened her.

  “Did you see anything else?” I ask gently.

  Yes, Palmeet says. She saw another man in the room. He was bloody and lying in a fetal position with his back to the door. She could barely get a look at him when, suddenly, the bathroom door swung open and a priest motioned her and her family inside. The priest locked the door behind them and told them to be very, very quiet. It was then she heard the cries of the injured man, she says. “And what was he saying?” I ask. The man was saying Waheguru, Waheguru, Palmeet says. Waheguru is the Sikh call to God. Wondrous Enlightener who eliminates the darkness of our mind with the light of divinity. After a few minutes, she says, the chanting stopped.

  Palmeet says they stayed in the bathroom for an hour or so when the police came knocking. They were ordered out of the bathroom with their hands held in the air. By then, the room outside was empty. Neither the body of her father nor the other man was there, she says. She is sorry for not having any more information.

  I am sorry for what her innocent mind has had to endure.

  * * *

  BY TWO O’CLOCK, we still didn’t know anything definitive about my father. My brother, who had by then made it into the staging area outside where the reporters were, said some of the networks were reporting that several people from the temple were being treated in local hospitals. All were men and all were in critical condition. Family members had scoured all of the area hospitals with no luck. Someone suggested that maybe our father had been released and went home to rest. As ridiculous as the idea sounded, he had sent a relative to check the house, but Dad wasn’t there.

  The authorities continued to be tight-lipped. All we had to go on were conflicting news reports and social media feeds. There was one gunman … There were two or more shooters … Three people were in critical condition … Several people died … Hostages were being held in the temple … The shooting was an act of domestic terror … White supremacists were responsible … The shooter was a racist skinhead. “What is that?” my mother asked.

  The sun fell in the sky. I begged Mom to go home and get some rest. She was coming apart. At one point she had become hysterical, screaming, “Where is Satwant? Where is Satwant?” Finally, she agreed to leave with Jaspreet and wait at home.

  I walked out of the bowling alley and into the night air. Nearly ten hours had passed since the shooting. The parking lot was brightly lit. The crowd had dispersed, except for official types, members of the media, and the few of us who still didn’t know the fate of our loved ones. My heart broke for two teenage boys who had been there almost as long as I had and begged for any news of their mother. They had repeatedly called the police hotline and even posted inquiries on Facebook, trying to find out something, to no avail.

  Looking out over the Gurudwara, I saw my father’s pickup truck parked in the same spot it had been that morning. Amardeep walked up behind me. He looked tired. I had watched with awe as he met with reporters, exchanging information and carrying what he’d learned back to us. I was proud he was able to put on a strong front when I knew his heart was breaking. He was the embodiment of Chardi Kala, maintaining relentless optimism in the will of God, even in this time of adversity.

  We stood there in silence for quite a while, two brothers alone with their thoughts, when Amardeep finally spoke. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” he asked. I nodded slowly. “Yes,” I said. “Dad is still in that building and he isn’t coming home.”

  SEVEN

  HATE CRIME

  The tongue is like a sharp knife; it kills without drawing blood.

  Guru Nanak Dev Ji

  Pardeep

  On a different night, I might have taken time to appreciate the majesty of the stars shimmering against the black sky, but now everything looked ominous. With every moment that passed, my heart plunged deeper into darkness. Joyful imaginings of seeing my father walk out of the temple were fading into despairing thoughts about what was to come.

  My brother and I continued to watch the Gurudwara in silence when we spotted a familiar face walking toward us from the police staging area. Harpreet Dulai and I grew up together. Our families were friends. Our fathers were founding members of the temple. They pooled their money to help with a down payment on the land and oversaw construction of the building, pitching in wherever they could be useful. Mom had photographs of them digging trenches and lugging concrete blocks for a retaining wall they helped build together. Our parents were all still deeply involved in the running of the temple. Harpreet and I lost contact when he moved out of town to work for the FBI, but we’d kept in touch through our parents. The last I’d heard, he had been transferred back to the Midwest. Seeing him gave me a sense of relief. Finally, we would get answers.

  “Harpreet!” I cried.

  We greeted each other warmly. Harpreet said he came to the scene initially because his mother called him from the pantry to tell him that the temple was under attack. A bullet grazed her foot as she ran for cover in the pantry, but she wasn’t seriously injured. He and his father spent the afternoon triaging some of the survivors until he was called upon to serve as the FBI liaison between investigators and the Sikh community.

  I told Harpreet that we still didn’t know about our dad, only what we’d heard secondhand and on the news, and so much of it was in conflict. We heard reports that seven people died but, if that was the case, why hadn’t their names been released to their families? Every official I’d asked about it gave me the official “I can’t tell you much” response. When I was a cop I’d made dozens of notifications and I couldn’t imagine allowing loved ones to dangle as long as we had. A badge didn’t mean you couldn’t have a heart. With nothing to encourage us, my brother and I were left with a sinking feeling our father wasn’t coming home with us. If I had to, I would stay all night, and the next, and the next, until I knew something. “Please, man,” I said, “you need to find out what’s going on with our dad.”

  Harpreet seemed sympathetic. He said he was making his way to the Gurudwara for the first time that day and as soon as he knew anything about Dad he would come back and tell us. As he walked away, I noticed he was wearing a bulletproof vest. Why? Was there still some threat in the temple? Was there even a slight chance Dad was alive in there? Did he know more than he was telling us?

  The mind is a funny thing. Mine wouldn’t allow me to wholly accept the only explanation for my father’s absence that made sense: that Dad was among the seven who didn’t make it. Denial was my armor. I couldn’t bear the thought that my father, a man I always saw as invincible, could be gone.

  Only a day earlier, we’d been together at a family party, drinking Patiala Pegs, a whiskey drink that is legendary in northern India. It was my thirty-sixth birthday and we’d all gathered at my cousin Gary’s house for a family get-together. For us, that meant anywhere from twenty to fifty people, and the house was full that day. Jaspreet, the kids, and I had arrived a bit late, which was customary. In fact, we called it “Indian people time.” We were never on schedule. That day, at least we had a valid excuse. Jaspreet was seven months pregnant and we had two little ones to dress for the party. Even so, we got there before my parents, which was also typical. Mom liked to get all dolled up for family functions, and getting ready took her forever. Dad, on the other hand, was never one to worry much about what
he wore. He would have arrived home from work with just enough time for a short shower and a change of clothes. Most of his time was spent tying his turban. It had to be meticulous. Just so.

  I had just poured my first Peg when Dad came in. His turban, as always, was perfect. He had this way of tying it that made him look regal and even taller than he was. He had turbans in different colors, but that day he chose his favorite: gray. When we complimented him on it, he answered the way he always did. “Ko budhi gul ne hai,” which literally translates to, “It’s not a big deal.” Everyone greeted him, which in our family we did by closing our palms together, pointing our fingers to the sky, and saying, “Sat sri akal” (God is the ultimate truth). Dad took a seat across from me while my uncle poured him a drink. I lifted a toast to our family and everyone clinked glasses.

  It said something that we had gotten to the point of having a drink together, especially that drink, which Punjabi tradition held was a measure of a man’s masculinity.

  It hadn’t been all that long ago that my father still treated me like a kid. I had spent my early life trying to earn his praise, but he was tough to please. His measure of character was how hard someone worked, and I knew of no one who worked harder than he did. Up until just a few years ago, he constantly challenged my work ethic by outworking me, which made me feel inferior. I had finally moved out of his shadow with my own family and career—first as a police officer, now as a teacher at a high school for at-risk kids. Over the last few years, we had reconciled our father-son tug-of-war and come to a place of peace. Now, when Dad showed up at my house to pick weeds or shovel snow while I went off to my job, I knew it wasn’t to show me up but a token of his love. He was proud of the man I had become. We respected each other. We were finally able to be openly affectionate with each other. My mind flashed back to the last time we were together and Dad allowed Amaris and Jai to ride on his back. He was glowing, as were they. He couldn’t be taken from us!