An excerpt from Prepared for a Purpose: The Inspiring True Story of How One Woman Saved an Atlanta School Under SiegeBy Antoinette Tuff (with Alex Tresniowski) Tuesday, August 20, 2013I got pretty good at making it look like I haven’t been crying. I knew how to pull myself together pretty quick. None of my co-workers were aware of my divorce, because I kept all of those problems inside. So I knew how to act like nothing was wrong. Some deep breaths, some last sniffles, and I was okay. After the devastating call that came in on my cell phone, I heard my desk phone ring and I knew it was the receptionist, wondering where I was. I was already ten minutes late. I answered and told her I’d be there in a minute. I wiped away the evidence of how I felt and headed for the front office.One of the young teachers at McNair, Belinda, stopped me just outside my office.“Ms. Tuff, do you have a minute?” she said. “I could really use some help with my insurance forms.”“Sure,” I said. “I’ve got to cover the front desk. Come with me.”In the front office the receptionist was talking with a parent. Belinda and I joined the conversation. Mostly it was idle chitchat. After a couple of minutes the receptionist left for lunch, and the parent said goodbye and left, too. The main door to the front office closed quietly behind her.In that front room there’s a desk for the receptionist, a counter, a few chairs, a sign-in sheet, and a monitor so you can see who’s out front and buzz them through the main entrance, which is just a few steps from the office. It’s a small and ordinary space that is the starting point to everywhere else in the school. Its whole purpose is for people to pass through on the way to where they’re really going.I got behind the desk and had Belinda spread out her papers, and we got to the matter of her insurance. That is one of my many jobs at McNair. My official title is bookkeeper, but really I do a lot more than pay the bills and keep the books. Anything that involves paperwork or forms usually ends up on my desk.Belinda needed help understanding her benefits. She was a new teacher, and she had a new baby, and she only had thirty days to sign up for our insurance program, so she needed help enrolling. Belinda was a friend of mine, and in fact I’d helped her get hired at McNair. She sat behind the counter and I stood next to her, going over her papers. We talked a little about her baby boy. I helped her pick the right plan for her family. The front office seemed quiet. Everyone was somewhere else, having lunch.Sometime around 12:45, just five or so minutes after I’d relieved the receptionist, the main door to the front office swung open.I looked up and saw a man dressed completely in black. Black pants, black T-shirt, black shoes. I could tell he was young, and I could tell he was angry about something. His mouth was twisted into a frown and his brow was wrinkled up. He had short, cropped brown hair and his nose looked like it might have been broken sometime. In his hands he held a big, long black rifle—one hand on the barrel, the other on the trigger. The rifle was on a strap slung over his shoulder. I noticed the rifle without any sense of alarm, because my first thought was, Is this a joke? Some kid with a fake gun playing a prank? Or maybe a real gun, but he’s just fooling around? The danger of the situation didn’t dawn on me right away. I guess my brain didn’t want to process what I was actually seeing.What changed all that were his eyes. They looked crazy. I don’t know how else to put it. Eyes don’t lie. If anyone had looked closely enough at my eyes that day, they’d have known I’d been crying. Now, the man’s eyes were telling me the truth of what was happening. His eyes were wide open and burning with something. This man wasn’t just serious, he was deadly serious. I felt that terrible squeezing in my stomach that terror brings. I knew before he said a word—I was in trouble.“This is not a joke!” he yelled. “I need you to understand this is not a joke. I am here. This is real. We are all going to die today.”He was waving his gun at Belinda and me as he spoke, using it to demonstrate that he was in control. The gun was all he needed, but the yelling and the gesturing added to the terror. I snuck a quick look at Belinda, and she turned and looked at me. I saw dread and panic on her face. I am sure she saw the same in mine. Neither of us dared speak. We turned back to the gunman, silent and in shock. “Listen to me,” he went on. “I need you to do exactly what I tell you. This is not a joke. This is serious.” He took one step toward us and looked straight at Belinda. “You,” he said. “Go tell everyone in the building I’m here. Tell them this is not a joke, this is for real.”Belinda looked at me as if to say, “Should I go?” She was worried about leaving me behind.“Go ahead,” I said aloud. “Do what he says. Go on, go.”I don’t know why the gunman told Belinda to go and not me. I may never know that. I just know that he did.Belinda paused for a moment, trying to steady herself. If she was as scared as I was, her legs must have felt like jelly. Then she turned on her heels and walked quickly out of the office, out a back door that leads to the teacher’s lounge. It was lunchtime so there were plenty of teachers in there, and through the wall I could hear Belinda yell, “Intruder alert!” That is the phrase we’re instructed to use to indicate a real security breach.As soon as she said it I could hear chairs dragging against the tile floor and shoes scurrying and the whole commotion of a room emptying. I knew the gunman could hear it, too. I looked at him and saw the noise was making him even more agitated. He was pacing fast, like he couldn’t control his energy, like he wanted to scream or bust out of his skin. Instead he raised his rifle to eye level and made a move for the side door.The side door is the door that leads to the classrooms where the kids are.“What are you doing?” I said. It was the first time I spoke directly to him.“All this movement!” he said. “Tell them to stop moving!”“They’re just doing what you told them,” I said. “Don’t get alarmed.”But the gunman wasn’t listening. The commotion was rattling him. He swung open the side door and aimed his rifle down the hallway. Just a few steps away there were two doors that led to the media center, where teachers and students were doing classwork, and further on down to the classrooms for second and third graders, and beyond that to the technology and music classrooms and the cafeteria. Probably two-hundred and fifty kids on this floor alone. In classrooms above and below our floor we had another six hundred or so children. If any of those kids were to wander into the hallway at that moment, they would be square in the gunman’s sights.Just past the gunman I saw a familiar face in the hallway—Russ, a staff member at McNair. Russ was scrambling and trying to duck into the media room, which was just outside the front office. He’d heard the cries of “intruder alert.” Now he was running for safety.The gunman spotted Russ and raised his rifle. He pointed it straight at him. Time seemed to stop. He’s going to kill Russ, I thought.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 05:15:11 +0000
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