Brooke knelt down, unzipped her daughters little backpack, and pulled out a crayon drawing, a picture of a lady in a basement with a dozen little stick figures around her and music notes over their heads.
Travis, she said, you said somebody has to wipe the noses. Let me tell you what this woman did with fifteen of them.
In August 2023, Brooke said, during the tornado warning, a daycare teacher got all fifteen of her toddlers into the church basement in under two minutes and sang to them for an hour while the sirens screamed, so none of them would be scared. My daughter was one of those fifteen. She drew this picture of it. She calls that teacher the singing lady. She is alive and she was never even frightened, because of her.
The room had gone silent. Shelby had the birthday candles still burning in her hand.
Travis mocked the woman who sang fifteen toddlers through a tornado, and one of those toddlers was the little girl his own new girlfriend was holding all night.
Brooke said she had only recently learned that her daughters daycare teacher was the same Shelby her boyfriend never stopped belittling, and she had decided, tonight, that she could not sit through one more toast and say nothing.
I am Shelbys mama. She lit the sweet sixteen candles and said thanks for coming, Travis, and took the joke, because a woman who sang through a tornado does not need a man in a captains hat to tell her what she is worth. Brookes little girl ran to Shelby and hugged her knees, and Travis watched his own girlfriends daughter do it, and his buddies stopped laughing.