World Trade

September 11, 2001. The day of terror found me watching the news as I always do because I can't go back to sleep so quickly after the children go off to school and I see that a special report is on all the stations about a plane accidentally flying into one of The Towers. While I'm watching and the newscaster are having conversations that seem mindless, I see another plane plow into the other Tower, and the newscasters don't see that happen. I am stunned because I saw it, but think perhaps I didn't because no one on the news has mentioned it. It never occurred to me that it was a terrorist attack because it was stated that the initial plane's collision with the Tower was speculated to be accidental, but when I see the another fly into the other Tower I know it is a terrorist's attack. I am a typical New Yorker and worry about how this will affect me monetarily. Will I be able to go to work today or will they shut down? The Towers are less than a quarter mile from my job. I ponder how this tragic turn of events will affect me.

It is then that I call the job to ask if there will be a shift tonight, and I am told no, and that the building is being evacuated. I am not pleased because my check is not going to have overtime hours on it because of this. And then it happens before my eyes on the television screen. People are floating out of the windows of The Towers. What!!! My mind cries. They are stepping out, some quite dignified, as if they are taking another in a succession of steps on a sidewalk, but this step is in mid-air. One woman holds down her skirt when the air hits it and makes it balloon. She is modest when knowing she will die. These are people who have chosen to die this way. The planes have hit the floors below them, and they are trying to escape what I know must be hellish heat. What!!!!!! I can't believe my eyes and I am upset that I am seeing these images. I call a co-worker that works another part time job on 14th street during the day and works my night job with me and tell her the news that our job, her other job, will not be open, and we both commiserate about it screwing up our overtime, and then it happens. The first Tower collapses before my eyes on the screen and we both gasp on the phone.

There are sirens going all over my Bronx neighborhood and I surmise they are fire engines racing the 12 miles to downtown Manhattan with the hopes of helping out. What is going on! I just had lunch at the book store in Tower One. Every other Tuesday go to work early to get my check, make a quick U turn out of the office, cash my check, leisurely stroll over to The World Trade from the bank, go up to Borders Bookstore, get lunch, and because I have a whole paycheck in my pocket, fantasize about buying any and all of the books that I want, but usually don't because I am on a tight budget, but love the thought of the possibilities as this excursion to a fantasy land of books relaxes me and prepares me to deal with the world. And it is now gone as are many of the people who have occupy the Tower. Something is wrong with my world!

I think to myself that I have to get the children from school because stuff is not quite right with the world. I must have them close to me. My youngest is home with me. My other son's school was dismissed and he's coming home, but I must get my daughter. The trains are working uptown and I get to 116th street in Manhattan with no problems. I look across second avenue and am in sensory overload. I see down the hill about 20 blocks and on the horizon I see smoke and hear sirens. Is that smoke from the World Trade? Yes, I say to myself, it is. It has wafted uptown. The smell is indescribable. Acrid, plastic. I must get my daughter. She is the only child in her class as other parents have picked up their children. She is somewhat oblivious to the tragic events taking place, and is helping her teacher clean up the classroom. We walk to the train, and she asks about the plume of smoke she sees downtown and I tell her the truth. We are both quiet. We board the #6 and connect to the #4. The trains uptown are still working well in the uptown area and arriving home is effortless, but I am weighed down by what I have seen on TV. When I get home, my son had arrived before me and is safe. Hubby gets home shortly after and my immediate world is safe and correct. All the most important people are with me in the place I call home, and this bolster me into a state that allows me to think about the tragic events that have happened.

I know one of my best friends works across from the WT and her boyfriend works in it at The Mercantile Exchange. I worry about them, but know, in my heart, that they both, upon hearing the first plane hit, would have left immediately. I talked to her that night and she is calm and we discuss that she and her boyfriend are safe. We discuss the enormity of what has happened and I tell her I am glad she and her boyfriend are safe.

Some days after the attack I tell her I am having horrible nightmares, and can't understand why? I was not in the midst of the destruction. I was home. Why am I acting this way? It seems so ridiculous. She, in her wisdom, tells me that I have watched many minutes, hours, of people perishing. I have seen horrific events unfold before my eyes. I have heard terrorist's acts unfold and take down an entity that I visited regularly since I was a child; it is an edifice that my mother and friend's mothers have worked in. I have dined in Windows on The World several times and remembered it as the place where I have had some of the most exhilarating dining experiences of my life, and now it is gone, and in a so horrific way, in a terrorists way. My friend then told me of her experiences that day. She told me she heard the first plane hit, and not knowing what to do. And of people at her job debating what to do. Some were arrogant, and upon learning that a plane had flown into a Tower they stated that everyone should go back to work because nothing else would happen. At that point she knew she should leave because she thought to herself that those were the statements of arrogant people. How can anyone know what will happen to a building that has had an airplane flown into it? Those who utterred the statement were not engineers. They had no more knowledge of the situation than she did, and she relied on her common sense, and that propelled her to get her purse and walk out the door. Many of her co-workers joined her. When they hit the plaza in front of her office building located a block away from The World Trade the first Tower came down, and a cloud of white debris came their way. It was a massive cloud that was floors high. They tried to run inside, to the lobby of their building, but were blinded. My friend recalled her falling a few steps after she started running and she joked with me that she would never laugh at movies that have the stereotypical white-girl-falling-after-taking-a-few-running-steps-from-danger scene again because she did just that when she saw that dangerous cloud coming her way. The Cloud. It was a cloud that she knew was the building once known as a Tower of The World Trade Center. It was now descending upon her and enveloping her with its debris. And as she was speaking to me she knew it was a cloud that contained all that was a building and its occupants. The cloud consisted of many things, including people, pulverized, and my friend shuddereds. This cloud of people, machinery, asbestos, computers, insulation, came upon her and she tasted it, them, breathed it, and them, and had it, them, embedded in her skin. As she layed on the ground, after attempting to run, for a split second, she looked for her shoe that she lost, desperately, by feeling the ground she could not see, and when she finally got up and moved to the lobby door, she could only do so from memory as she could not see more than a foot in front of her.

She was covered in debris when finally she reached a seat in which to sit. My friend was completely white from the debris that was The World Trade Center, and its content, and its occupants. Her co-workers, her friends, tried to brush off the debris from my friend desperately. One friend obsessively kept saying, "We have to get this off of you," and worked her way over every inch of my friend's exposed skin with a water-soaked napkin to wipe away the debris. My friend expressed her gratitude to that woman as it served as a loving testament of her and her co-workers coming together to help each other. Her story continued as she relayed her boyfriends experience of 9/11 and having his supiors say to him that he was silly to leave The World Trade as terrorist had not been able to take the buildings down in 1993, so they would not be able to do it in 2001. The logic was totally and inconceivably stupid, and he left the building. When walking away from the structure he heard large bangs on the atrium ceiling he was walking under and saw bodies hitting the glass structure that made up this ceiling. These were the bodies of those who chose to jump out of windows. It was unbelievable. He walked over a 100 blocks to get home to the Bronx.

None of us, the four mentioned in this story, received professional counseling. All have been counseled by the conversations we have had with friends who talk of the experience of being in NYC 9/11 openly and honestly. We talk of returning to work under deplorable conditions, I in Jersey City, New Jersey. I remember being able to see The Winter Gardens, the gateway to The World Trade for many, directly across the river from my job's Jersey office, and see it illuminated at night, ominously, with clouds of smoke from the still simmering fires two and three weeks after the attacks, and breath in the putrid air that drifts all the way to Jersey. My friend, who goes to work too soon, as ordered, 2 weeks after the attacks, across from what was The World Trade, knows that the air quality is unsafe, and that the headaches she's getting as she works are from breathing in the acrid air, but she continues to work, because she needs a paycheck. I, and many of the workers of the area continue to work. My job opens up its main office, and I go there that first night with an eerie feeling. There is no bustling on Wall Street, it is somber. There is an acrid smell in the air for over 2 months. A smell of computers and of foulness. But we all continue to go to work because we have to.

I walk to the bank were I usually cash my check shortly after my job has opened up its main site and allowed its workers to return. This is the bank located a short distance from The World Trade in which Borders Book Store was located. I would go there after cashing my check to luxuriate in the knowledge of books but now can't because it is gone. When leaving the bank that first time I try to walk the short distance to what was the World Trade to see the pit that was once its foundation. I cannot do it. I, to this very day, have never gone to that pit. I've never liked going to cemeteries.

These memories will live on in me and others who experienced 9/11 from different perspectives as New Yorkers.