May 8th’s insomniac manual is Maggie Smith’s New York Times Bestseller, "You Could Make this Place Beautiful." Aching in empathy for this other Ohio author’s loss, I find myself believing her − that she can, that I can, that we can make this place beautiful.
It’s past 2 a.m., and my 22-year-old comes downstairs for a soda in the cellar fridge. They holler hello across to the sofa that backs beneath our nine-foot-wide window overlooking Elm Street where I’m tucked into my cat and Smith’s pages. Soft footfalls to the cellar fade, and through the thin historic glass, close, on the walkway outside, a scuffle ensues. Too close. Three loud pops sound off in my ears and travel a slow second to my brain, only then realizing the pops are gunshots and I should duck down.
Four more shots fire in quick succession, mere feet behind me, and I’m sinking as low as I can beneath a window ledge.
Another pop. I’m bent at an odd angle, reaching a hand over my cat, when I hear masculine voices outside speaking and then shout, "Get down" from my sidewalk. Then, is it two or three more pops? I’ve lost count.
An uncertain head pokes up from the cellar, and I’m motioning to "get down" to a child. From the floor I am dialing 911, saying, "Shots fired on Elm Street. No, I don’t want to answer questions. It’s scary. I just need to report it," before hanging up. My family is safe now, I suppose.
Report "the incidents," we’re told by Cincinnati Police Department at community meetings. I do and have. Don’t touch the bullet shells or they’re no longer evidence. In other words, the shooting won’t count. And we need it to count if we want protection and the area more regularly patrolled by police. And do we? Want more police? I don’t know. It’s not a fail-safe for so many of us. Habit and folly allow us to think dialing three numbers on a phone could yield a satisfactory outcome.
The last gunshots were outside on Elm Street while my dog made good use of mulch around a tree in front of our brownstone. Walking perpendicular away from me down Magnolia Street, a young man began raising his voice only seconds before raising his arm. Thankfully, his gun pointed away from me as loud gunfire had me and my dog quickly scampering inside. The time before that, I was worried the two shots had hit my mother or daughter living above me − both with Elm Street facing bedrooms. Soon after, some of us tried to rally the neighbors for a watch group, but I’m no spy.
Move, if you’re afraid, they’ll say. Yet, I’m not afraid 99% of the time. Tragically, yes, there’s gun violence here, and it was scary tonight, yet I don’t consider it scary to live where I do, in Over-the-Rhine, Cincinnati, Ohio. I walk this inner city’s streets comfortably most days waving at neighbors and strangers alike. I love loving here and seeing the world for everything it is. Not all of the hard stuff is ugly, and pretending it doesn’t exist from a gated community offers no guarantee and fewer solutions.
It’s dark out, and I’m trying to make this place beautiful. And I think a lot of us are. I’m struggling to know how though when guns can’t be blamed, and a perpetuated fiction of "bad guys" serves one narrative and legislation is the antagonist in most stories anyway.
And where would I move to? How is fear in my home any different from a grocery store (2022 Buffalo, New York), a church (2015 Charleston, South Carolina) a mall (2023 Allen, Texas), at a concert (2017 Las Vegas, Nevada), or near a school (Sandy Hook, Parkland, Uvalde… and too many to name) or the more than 200 other places mass shootings have occurred in the first five months of this year in this country. These shootings are happening everywhere; in the Greek bakery in broad daylight a block away, in suburbs and across every city and small town in this nation. And a family can’t ask a rifleman to cool his guns at 11 p.m. or he may come inside and kill your family (2023 Cleveland, Texas).
But it’s not the guns, they say.
Well, it isn’t the bad guys either, because there’s no way to tell who those are anymore with guns protected over children's safety. There’s no ombudsman, no clear wisdom or truth if all sides think they’re King Solomon. These days a man scared by his own bigotry shoots first at a 16-year-old at the wrong address (2023 Kansas City, Missouri).
Who can we blame? Certainly not ourselves.
Shall we blame the young man fraught with mental-wellness challenges when we’ve tied health care’s good arm behind our backs? Can we continue to fault the young man who grew up on the streets best he could without wealth and opportunity?
Another book recently completed is "Poverty, by America" by Matthew Desmond. Unfolding a dastardly plan that has served up financial desperation for the majority of our nation’s citizens, and will for a long time to come. Poverty invites more guns and their wielders into unsettling realities.
I’m still trying to make this place beautiful. My children deserve that effort, and my heart cannot quit hoping or it will break. Maybe enough of our thoughts and prayers have been spent to finally invest in real change.
It’s getting light outside. I’m up. And we are all still sleeping.
Holly Brians Ragusa is a writer and poet who lives in Over-the-Rhine.
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