She's still waiting for normal

Chrisceda Clemmons' colorful life sits in a drab storage unit in Kent.

The kids' clothes, the painted furniture. The African art, the first-edition books. And the instruments with which she and her family helped make their living as the steel-drum band, Bakra Bata.

All of it is dusted with tear-gas residue that makes your eyes burn. And the house it once filled is boarded-up, uninhabitable.

"Sometimes," Clemmons told me, "I just stand there and cry."

This is what her nephew, Maurice Clemmons, wrought. This is the result of his twisted belief that four Lakewood police officers sitting in a coffee shop Nov. 29 deserved to be shot to death.

Maurice Clemmons fled that bloody scene and, police say, included friends and relatives in his two-day run from the law. Some are accused of driving him places. Others, of tending to his wounds and giving him temporary shelter, or money.

But not Chrisceda Clemmons and her husband, Michael Shantz.

When Maurice Clemmons called, saying he was coming to their Leschi home, they refused him. They left the house and notified police, who descended on the place, releasing some 70 canisters of tear gas in the hope of driving Clemmons out. It turns out he wasn't there, and was shot to death two days later on a South Seattle street.

In the wake of the ordeal, Chrisceda Clemmons and Shantz have, literally, been picking up the pieces of their life.

The community has helped. Both the Leschi Community Council and Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences, where their son is an 8th-grader, have raised money to help them buy clothes and food and put a deposit on a rental house on Beacon Hill.

Clemmons said they received hundreds of letters from people, and that she and Shantz have read every one.

"The donations have been crucial to helping us bridge our family through this period of time," Shantz said. "When people step up like that, you see there are a lot of well-intentioned, considerate, loving people in our community."

The couple are especially grateful because they have been unable to work. Shantz is a builder whose tools are covered in toxic residue, and in storage. So are the musical instruments he hoped to use to teach steel-drum classes at two Seattle schools. He couldn't risk students' health, so he had to turn down the work.

"The health repercussions of (tear gas) is a big concern to us," Shantz said.

The city of Seattle has pledged to make things right for the family. But no one yet knows what that will take. Gutting the house? Replacing the soil around it? And how to clean toxic residue from a lifetime of belongings?

It feels like a long journey back to normal. It might be time for Mayor Mike McGinn to check in with Clemmons and Shantz to let them know he's watching.

For their part, Bakra Bata will perform Wednesday at Neumo's in Seattle. The whole family will play, except for Atticus and Juno, the couple's younger children.

They will use the only instruments they have — the ones they left in their van on the night Maurice Clemmons said he was headed their way, and everything went south.

"We're still functioning," their son Teo Shantz told me. "This is something everybody wants to do to get us back on track."

Nicole Brodeur's column appears Tuesday and Friday. Reach her at 206-464-2334 or nbrodeur@seattletimes.com.

She'll be there in spirit.