Nine Eleven
I stayed curled in bed in a fetal position extra long that morning, ear plugs pressed in, legs tucked up and arms wrapped tightly around my down pillow. I didn't want to move. It's sooooo peaceful…I never want to move…
Despite the earplugs, I began hearing the muted wailing of sirens. Fire engines…lots of ‘em. They kept coming and coming and coming from the south, the east, horns blasting with insistent urgency "Get out of the way! Get out of the way! Get out of the way!” then fading into the northwest.
Must be quite a fire! I pondered, wonder where? Had to be downtown Brooklyn. Carroll Gardens? Cobble Hill? Maybe the Heights? I thought of my catering friends on Atlantic Avenue hoping they were okay. I’m sure they’re fine. I’ll call them later. They’ll know what the commotion was all about.
I don't budge. I savor the peace of being motionless, suspended in time for as long as possible. I hear the phone ring in the distance. I glance at my clock. Jeez…its already after 9:00…might as well answer it. I drag myself out of bed, pull out the earplugs and pick up the phone.
“Hello?” It's my mother.
"Do you have the TV on???”
She sounded uncharacteristically serious. No "hiya!" her usual upbeat greeting, which, I was loathe to admit, somehow always seemed to annoy me. As a dedicated brooder, its cheeriness would get on my nerves. In general, my family considered emotions, particularly the darker, unsettling ones, unworthy of attention. Suppression was the only acceptable method of dealing with such distractions. Think positively! Don’t dwell on the negative! Let go! Allow everything to roll off your back….like a duck!
I did my best not to get "caught up" or “be attached". Again and again, life would trip me, fling me around, run me over, back up, run me over again. I'd drag myself up, brush myself off, slap on a few bandaids, box up and bury my feelings like a good girl and plunge back into the game. But not lately. A vague feeling of dread weighed on me that I just couldn't shake.
“Ma…why on earth would l have the TV on this early?”
I was more then a little defensive. I was a little addicted to the "idiot box" as my family referred to the TV, but only at night when whatever was on basic broadcast was interesting enough, and never during the day. Sort of like the alcoholic waiting until 5:00 PM to pour their first drink.
"Put on the TV…the World Trade center has been hit by two airplanes.”
Mom's voice was incongruously matter-of-fact, which didn't jive with the words I heard her say. My mother was particularly loathe to express alarm about anything. Yet, underneath her efforts to modulate her tone lurked barely disguised distress.
"Whaaat???
“Turn on the TV!!!” she ordered.
“Okay….okay…talk to ya later!”
I hung up and put on the TV. Nothing. No reception. I don’t have cable, only access to basic OTA channels. In my mind’s eye, I picture the antenna piercing the sky on top of one of the towers. That’s a broadcast antenna... right? My stomach started clenching like a fighter’s fist and I frantically start turning the channels until I find CBS, fuzzy but discernible.
Unobstructed images of angry black smoke billowing from the towers began flooding my living room. I stare transfixed. The second airplane bearing down followed by the spectacular unimaginable fireball. People fling themselves out into the sky and fall like leaden birds. The footage is coming in raw and is playing over and over. People are running and screaming “OH MY GOD"! and “HOLY SHIT!” Others are watching paralyzed one hand over their heart, the other covering their mouth.
The fear of the newscasters witnessing and reporting the unimaginable is palpable. They tell us there was an explosion at the Pentagon, that an airplane crashed into it. Smoke billows furiously into the sky. We hear that yet another plane crashed into a field in Pennsylvania. All air traffic has been suspended. Someone reports there may be 8 airplanes still unaccounted for, and the numbers change again and again.
I look out my bay window at the day’s glorious western sky. Streaking south through the brilliant clear sky is the gigantic plume of black smoke savagely slicing through the blueness across the horizon. It rises exactly from where the towers could be seen if I were on my roof.
My buzzer rings. It’s my doorman. UPS just delivered me a package. It’s the Epson photo scanner I just ordered and had been looking forward to playing with. I tell him I’ll pick it up later. My brain struggles to put the savage imagery of the burning towers together in my mind with "playing with my new scanner”.
I stand sit stand sit staring at the TV’s grainy coverage. Suddenly, horribly, unthinkably, one of the towers pulverizes and and disappears into a enormous mushroom cloud of incomprehensible destruction.
The cameramen briefly try filming while running backwards but the blast races towards them hellishly fast so they turn and run and run for their lives, their cameras wildly filming the debris strewn ground, sky, ground, sky until all is consumed by black dust and and darkness and settles into an eerie cessation of all sound save for panicked voices and people choking.
I try calling my friends. All anyone can say is "Oh My God!"
The world watches the second tower implode. Our hearts are crushed within the ruins. It’s more then any of us can bear. Collectively we cover our mouths, our hearts and together we cry “OH MY GOD!" “OH MY GOD!" “OH MY GOD!”
Time stalled as our breath was held, suspended, on a tightrope of fear and disbelief while we witnessed the extermination of thousands of our neighbors, friends, family, co-workers, acquaintances, fellow human beings. A few years earlier we were entertained by aliens annihilating the earth in "Independence Day”. THAT we could imagine. But not this. Never this.
I call my parents again. My 81 year old father answers.
"Oh my god daddy! I can't believe the towers collapsed! I can’t believe they’re gone! The towers are gone!"
Oddly, my dad tries to reassure me. "Oh no, honey, the buildings didn't collapse…they can't! It’s impossible! I see them on TV! Honey, don't worry...don’t worry sweetheart…it’s impossible!
Stunned, I don't even try to convince my father of the inconceivable. It dawns on me he was watching the footage being played over and over and what he was remembering were the buildings in flames. Why insist that yes, those giant towers we witnessed being built were gone? That they had collapsed? That it was possible? Let him be, I thought, as I hung up the phone. Two days later, my dad was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s.
I have no children, no husband, no significant other. Being alone suddenly took on a frightening new reality. As a freelance caterer, things hadn't picked up yet after the summer slump, so I didn’t even have any of my catering buddies to be with. In reality, most of my close friends had already passed or had moved out of New York City. At least I had my parents who still lived in the apartment I grew up in Brooklyn.
Torn between an overwhelming urge to remain paralyzed in front of the TV and being around people I threw on some clothes on and ran downstairs. Neighbors were crowding into the super’s office trying to see the TV. Someone recounts a commotion at the corner deli where somebody was screaming at the Arab owners to “go back to their country”. The air is thick with cigarette smoke. I can’t breathe. Incongruously I begin craving a bagel with cream cheese and a coffee so I plunge outside and walk up Cortelyou to John’s Bakery.
It is truly a glorious day, the air is cool, crisp and clear, the sky is so so very blue.
I live close to the Prospect Expressway which leads directly into the Brooklyn Battery Tunnel and out right under the World Trade Center. Without traffic, it’s a ten minute drive. I am so close, yet so far. Cortelyou Road is eerily "normal". Cars and buses crawl up and down the street. Pedestrians roam around. I want to shout…What’s wrong with all of you? How can you look so normal? Don't you know?
I rush back home. I have to get back to the TV. Mayor Giuliani is holding a press conference. He looks stricken. No trace of his usual brash offensiveness. Barely able to look up he tells us that the amount of people lost will be too many for us to bear. Feeling simultaneously hungry and nauseous I scarf down the bagel. Unsurprisingly, stuffing down the food helps to calm and ground me. Eating, especially quickly and without thought, is my family’s go-to coping mechanism for dealing with pesky emotions.
I pour the undrinkable coffee down the drain. I can no longer bear being alone. I get into my car and drive to Park Slope. I park easily and start walking. I know, I'll go to Starbucks, there’s always plenty of people there. It's closed. It’s early afternoon on a beautiful Tuesday and practically everything on 7th Avenue is closed.
I decide to drive to my parents home in Bay Ridge. The cars on the Belt Parkway creep along, holding back allowing others to merge, no tailgating, no horns blowing; and then suddenly, there along the trench, is the panoramic view of the devastation in lower manhattan with immense grey clouds of smoke obscuring the skyline and the blistering black smoke savagely tearing the gorgeous clear blue sky apart. Our cars slow to a crawl and our hearts stop. OH MY GOD.
My parents have cable. I'm getting vivid, perfectly filmed versions of the footage. I'm glued to the TV, mesmerized. “Come eat!” Mom says, “Dinner is ready!” She apologizes that its only leftovers, had she known I was coming she would have made something else. That’s my mom. Despite the unfolding apocalypse, had she known I was coming, she STILL would have made something else! After all…life goes on!
I try picking at my food but instead go back to the TV in the den. I hear forks and knives clinking on the plates in the adjacent kitchen. Mom suggests that I take my plate and eat in front of the TV. I'm not hungry, even though ordinarily I can eat under the most adverse circumstances.
For too many days, the beautiful view of the open sky from my 5th floor bay window was scarred, slashed in half by the angry black smoke, and for days on end, when the wind blew a certain way, the acrid smell of incinerated metal, concrete, plastic, chemicals, paper, upholstery, rubber and human flesh drifted into my window and coated everything with grey dust. New York City, fearful and depressed, slowly began adjusting to its "new normal", focussing on the insurmountable task of recovering human remains clearing the ruins and negotiating color coded terror alerts. The last thing anyone thought about doing was throwing a party. Catering events and holiday celebrations were cancelled or never booked. There was no reason to leave the house. I'd laid on my sofa and listened for the sound of low flying airplanes. Then I'd freeze, hold my breath, and wait for them to crash.
The one party I did cater was for a family in Brooklyn Heights who said they’d be damned if they were going to let fear prevent them from gathering and feeding their loved ones during the holidays. It was at that party, for the first time in my life, when one of the guests came into the kitchen to tell me that the broccoli rabe was delicious, that I must be Italian! I didn’t say “no, actually, I’m Syrian and Lebanese!” I merely said “thanks, I love broccoli rabe, it’s my favorite vegetable.”
And with that, another little piece of my heart broke apart.
