After 9/11

by Helaina Hovitz

  Grandma always used to tell us that when she started to “go” we should just do something called “pulling the plug.” My aunt, too, still proclaims that she is going to “take the pills” and “live La Vida Loca” right up to the end. Throughout all of my grandma’s cooing and kissing, one thing always gnawed at me: for a small kid, I had this unusually pervasive fear that Grandma was going to die. What if she dies now, what if she dies tomorrow, what will I do? Some nights, I would cry and cry, worrying about when Grandma was going to die.

  One day in fifth grade, I picked up Grandma’s phone when it rang—the cordless one in the small room, as she picked up the white phone in the kitchen.

  “There is a lump ….” is all I heard someone tell my grandma.

  I knew what that meant from some TV show I saw, and I immediately burst into tears when Grandma came into the small room.

  “I don’t want you to die!” I wailed.

  “Grandma isn’t going anywhere,” she said, kissing the top of my head.

  A few weeks later, when Grandma was scheduled for surgery, my mother brought me to school on the subway instead of making me take the bus. I always, always had to take the stupid bus, so I knew this was bad. I cried in public on the train, feeling, for the first time, very self-conscious while crying. My mom explained to the teacher why I was upset, and my teacher reminded me that I was supposed to go sit in on another class for an article I was writing for the school newspaper.

  “You should go,” my mom said, nodding.

  I nodded too, took out my notebook, and went. The assignment was the only thing that kept me going, the only thing that got me to stop crying. It was the only thing powerful enough to pull me out of my sadness and into the present.

  At the end of fifth grade, I faced my fear and went on a mandatory, two-night trip to Bear Mountain with the rest of the school. We got stuck in the rain, and I had to slosh around in wet socks and sneakers, which made my feet shrivel up and caused painful sores to form. (My mom had tried to buy me special waterproof boots before the trip for eighty dollars, but it turned out the salesman was wrong and they weren’t waterproof, so we returned them, after she got a major run-around, between phone calls to the manufacturer and several trips to the store.) We got to see a guy holding a big snake, and on the last night, we had a dance. It started off as square dancing, for some reason—not exactly the official state dance of New York—then turned into an actual dance, where we all shook our butts to Sisqo’s “The Thong Song” and Madonna’s “Music.”

  That summer, during our sleepovers, Gina and I danced to all of the female R&B groups: Mya’s “Case of the Ex,” Toni Braxton’s “He Wasn’t Man Enough,” Brandy and Monica’s “The Boy Is Mine.” From Gina, I learned what a condom was, I learned that wearing bracelets on your biceps was cool, I learned that a dick looked like a pickle, and I counted down the days until I would have to go to middle school, which I didn’t even want to go to. I didn’t like any of the middle schools I toured, so I figured, why don’t I just pick the one that’s closest to home?

  * * *

  I had always loved back-to-school shopping—it helped ease the sting of the sadness of going back. The Lisa Frank folders, the stickers, the pencil cases covered in dogs and unicorns, the brand-new notebooks, the “nice” pens that wrote in liquid ink, the fresh pencils just waiting to be sharpened. I.S. 89 itself, however, was all wrong: for one thing, the kids sat on the floor, in a circle, instead of at desks like they were supposed to. But since my dad had helped get the school built (he was always involved in that community volunteer board stuff, and he knew the principal), I felt like I had a bit of an edge.

  Every morning, on the walk to school with Ann, Charles, and Nadine, we left extra time so Charles could feed the squirrels in City Hall Park. Nadine and I would swing our violin cases in place and roll our eyes while he called them over. City Hall Park was still lush then, with winding paths, a fountain, and a statue of Nathan Hale that my grandfather used to point out to me every time we passed it on the way home from Buckle My Shoe.

  “Who’s that?” he would ask.

  “Nathan Hale!” I would proclaim, not knowing who the hell Nathan Hale was.

  “Nathan Hale!” my grandpa would cry, and he would chuckle, which he didn’t do much of.

  Along the way to school, Charles would sing show tunes or recap entire episodes of shows like The Simpsons, retelling everything quickly, with more speed and volume as he got more exited and closer to the punch line, and I always said “Heh” to be polite.

  Here are the key things I remember about sixth grade.

  A kid named Tyler, who I peed my pants with, literally, in kindergarten, made fun of the combination lock I used for my locker because it was pink and used to be my dad’s. A Filipino boy named Henry had an insatiable crush on me and I didn’t have one back. I had developed a crush on a kid named Peter over the summer while in camp. He used to lick his knees, didn’t have a crush on me back, and I got to see him every day.

  “Ew,” Gina had said. “He’s so not your type.”

  I didn’t really have a type, and chose not to “crush” on celebrity boys. What was the point? I wanted someone I could actually have, but the pickins were slim at I.S.89 that year.

  One morning, on the way to school, Ann told us a story about how an angel had pushed her out of the way of a falling block of cement while construction was being done on a nearby building. I thought she was kind of crazy, and Nadine made a face, but secretly, I half believed her, because I believed that angels were real.

  There was a small special-ed class of about five kids at I.S. 89, and I always got upset when people made fun of them or instigated trouble with them, feeling weird, like something was wrong with me because it deeply bothered me and it didn’t seem to bother anyone else.

  Nelly’s “Country Grammar” was a big song on the radio, as was Missy Elliot’s “Work It,” but my dad always turned it off in the car, because he hated rap, and I would groan.

  The first time we were allowed to go out into the neighborhood for lunch, I went with my new friends, Jasmine and Ali. We headed down Chambers Street, and I suddenly decided I wanted a burrito, even though I had never tried one before. Since they wanted pizza, I told them I’d meet them on the corner in five minutes.

  I carefully counted out the cash and waited in the darkly lit, empty Burritoville restaurant.

  When my food was ready, I searched for them up and down the block, but they were nowhere to be found.

  I sat on a ledge and took a bite of my burrito, and it was awful. I threw it out.

  I started to cry, sitting outside the gate of P.S. 234, and a woman came up to me and asked, “Are you ok?”

  I told her my friends had left me and that I couldn’t find them. She walked me back to school, where the eighth grade math teacher found me whimpering in the lobby. She invited me up to her room and told me I could stay until lunch was over. When I approached them at gym, they shrugged and simply said, “We couldn’t find you,” making my tragedy seem like nothing at all. I remember feeling, as I always had, that everyone else was friends in way that nobody was friends with me.

  It was the year Shane started calling me “Helaina Ho-vitz—‘Ho’, if you know what I mean.” The fact that people happened to keep emphasizing that “o” was clearly being half Jewish’s fault.

  Later that year I developed a new crush on a kid named Will, who was at my “math table” and didn’t believe in anything. His family, he said, were Atheists, and just celebrated holidays for fun.

  “Do you really think there’s someone in the sky watching over you?” he laughed.

  Yes, I did. In fact, to me, God was the only thing that was hypothetically keeping everything ok in the world. He watched over you and protected you and kept you safe, if you were good.

  It made me uneasy when Will laughed at me, and being uneasy made me even more uneasy. If I truly believe, can he make me feel doubtful? If God doesn’t exist, who’s
protecting me?

  When it was time for me to receive Holy Confirmation, my teacher told me I’d have to renounce all other religions. I said I wasn’t going to do that, I liked being both. Despite the crisis over the pronunciation of my last name, I was not going to “renounce” my father’s traditions, my dead grandfather’s Haggudah, the electric menorah perched on the window by our dining room table in December.

  “Well, then, you’ll go to hell,” she said.

  After Mass was over that day, my mom walked me home past the J&R music store, where a bunch of people were waiting in line.

  “What are you guys waiting for?” my mom asked.

  “NSYNC tickets,” someone said.

  “Oh, Mommy, can we?” I asked. I had never been to a concert before.

  “Sure,” she said. After about an hour, my dad showed up—my mom had just gotten a cell phone, so she must have called him—and I told him, while we waited, “Daddy, I don’t want to go back there. I don’t need my Confirmation.”

  “Okay, honey,” he said, without asking questions, and we were second in line from the front when they announced the tickets had sold out and they wouldn’t be adding any more shows.

  We had our own rituals, as a family. Friday night was when we ordered takeout, usually Chinese food, sometimes pizza. Mom and I watched TGIF on ABC, which had Boy Meets World, some show called Popular, Sabrina the Teenage Witch, and a show about a Genie who becomes human and is totally baffled by everyday things, like the mind-boggling urge to pee that he has no idea how to address. Saturday night was for SNICK, or Saturday Night Nickelodeon, which had shows like All That, Keanan and Kel, and The Amanda Show. I was starting to also really enjoy a show called The Saddle Club about a group of equestrian preteens just trying to navigate the throws of life while growing up in the horse world.

  What I did not enjoy was Disney’s version of the diary of Anne Frank, which aired in May 2001. It was Disney, so I figured it would be educational and “safe,” even if they did plan to tell “The Whole Story” picking up where her diary left off.

  I loved that diary when I read it in fifth grade. Anne Frank said that despite everything, she still believed there was good in people, and there would be many times in the years to come that I picked up the book and read parts of it.

  Writing in a diary is a really strange experience for someone like me. Not only because I’ve never written anything before, but also because it seems to me that later on neither I nor anyone else will be interested in the musings of a thirteen-year-old school girl. Oh well, it doesn’t matter. I feel like writing.

  Anne knew any day could be the day—and then, it was—and she still had hope in the world.

  It’s difficult in times like these: ideals, dreams and cherished hopes rise within us, only to be crushed by grim reality. It’s a wonder I haven’t abandoned all my ideals, they seem so absurd and impractical. Yet I cling to them because I still believe, in spite of everything, that people are truly good at heart.

  As soon as Anne and her father, played by Ben Kingsley, were torn away from each other after arriving at the camps, the violence with which I burst into spastic tears shocked even me. My mom tried to call me back in and get me to finish watching, but I knew plenty about the Holocaust and knew I wouldn’t be able to watch anymore.

  That night, I pictured them ripping me away from my parents to starve and die alone, watching others suffer. I spent the night curled into a ball, crying, and rocking back and forth, raw with grief.

  The next day at school, this girl, Paige, said with a laugh, “Did you see when they were all barfing in the cattle cars?” She was kind of weird, kept to herself, had Argentinian parents who lived in a huge SoHo loft and let her and her friends write in Sharpie on her wall and eat whatever junk food they wanted.

  Her reaction to the movie disturbed me for the rest of the week.

  In early September 2001, we were coming back from a trip to Colonial Williamsburg when I pointed out the Twin Towers as they came back to view.

  “There they are,” I said. “Almost home!”

  “You’re right, baby, that means we’re almost home,” said my dad.

  As we inched toward the Holland Tunnel, the news on the radio recounted that a singer named Aaliyah died in a plane crash, the president, George Bush, had just detailed his defense priorities at the American Legion, and I thought dreamily about how I was just a year away from finally becoming a teenager.

  CHAPTER THREE

  We are going to go live right now to a picture of the World Trade Center, where I understand—do we have it? No we do not. We have a breaking story though, we’re going to come back with that in just a moment.

  First, this is Today on NBC.

  —Matt Lauer, Today, September 11, 2001, 8:51 a.m.

  Don’t look up, don’t look back, just keep going!” Ann shouted as we jostled through the crowd. I was tiny, so I had to fight my way through walls of people. At eye level, all I saw were peoples’ backs, their arms, their necks. Cameras and backpacks were slamming against my face. That feeling of being knocked around in a crowd was one that I’d experienced so many times as a small child in a big city, but it had never felt like this before. Before, it was fun. An adventure. Now, it suddenly felt like I couldn’t breathe, and maybe I couldn’t. In fact, I felt like I was going to faint.

  Charles kept turning around to look at the Towers over his shoulder. When I tried to look away, my gaze met people packed shoulder to shoulder, looking up and taking pictures, watching dark things falling off of the sides of the buildings.

  As we pushed through the crowds of people, I kept wondering, Why are they all just standing there, watching?

  We were at the corner of Chambers Street, standing almost underneath the Towers when I turned right and saw something fall and hit a car, making a snapping noise on impact.

  “Oh my God, they’re jumping!” Ann said.

  What? Who’s jumping?

  I kept hearing similar sounds, but still couldn’t see much. Some reminded me of the crashing and grinding of garbage trucks, others, of a heavy box suddenly dropped on the ground, others still, hail hitting a window, only heavier, like a giant bag full of nails, creaking, slamming, booming.

  Maybe they’re small explosions. Are bombs being dropped on us?

  Eventually, the crowd disbursed a little, and we began to change direction on Chambers Street, going straight toward City Hall, while everyone else moved to the left to head uptown. Ann suggested we duck into a pizza place to get a plastic bag for my notebooks and pencil case, so we did, then tried to continue down Chambers Street, which would lead us to the Municipal Building.

  I had no idea what we were going to do, but I knew I had to stay close to Ann.

  A policewoman standing in the center of the street abruptly stopped us, shouting along with other police, “You can’t go down there! We don’t know if there are bombs in the cars!”

  If you need help, find a police officer. Tell him your name and address.

  It was close to 10:00 a.m. when we tried the next block, but another officer who saw my plastic bag, barked, “Suspicious package!” and stuck her hand out to stop us. She didn’t even bother looking in the bag.

  “But we live this way!” I said in disbelief. “We live there!”

  “Too bad,” she said. “You have to go uptown.”

  Just then, a sound—one, then another—rumbled and rippled through the street. The noise shifted, erupting into millions of sharp pieces of chalk screeching in unison against the blackboard of the sky.

  Boom.

  Boom.

  Boom.

  The sky was suddenly full of gray smoke, and it was gaining on us.

  Where is it coming from?

  “Kids, pull your shirts up over your faces and run!” yelled Ann.

  We turned and ran without looking back. People everywhere were doing the same. Middle-aged men ran alongside seven-year-olds and toddlers, all screaming and crying in unison. My ent
ire body was throbbing, my feet, my face, my stomach, one huge pulse. More buildings are being bombed. Fighter jets are shooting at us.

  I felt very dizzy, and suddenly I could feel my heart pulsing on the outside of my shirt at a speed so fast it scared me. I shouldn’t be able to feel that without touching my hand to my chest. My vision suddenly blurred into nothingness as I tried to run as fast as I could. Confused, I ran a few more steps, cursed myself for wearing a skirt, and turned to see one lone woman in a magenta-colored skirt-suit covering her mouth and running toward us, screaming, “Oh my God!” abandoning her high-heeled shoe, her purse knocking against her side as she ran.

  You’ll see Mommy again after school. You have to let her go now. Say, “Bye, Mommy! See you later!”

  * * *

  The next few minutes are blank in my memory, a void where the next part should be—but Ann and Charles remember.

  Voices shouted, “Get inside! Quick!”

  A group of maintenance men and janitors pulled the three of us inside a building with a giant lobby, where we waited a few minutes for the smoke to clear.

  When we stepped back outside, we saw people running, stumbling, and sobbing. I looked down and saw what everyone was tripping over: underneath at least three inches of beige ash were dozens of shoes, bags, and backpacks. Everything had been abandoned.

  That’s how fast everyone is running.

  For the first time since we left school, I saw my face reflected in a dark store window, and only then did I realize I was crying, that the top of my shirt was wet with tears. For a moment, all of the noise stopped. There was a look in my eye I had never seen before, whites of my eyes that I didn’t know existed. I looked so grim and so forlorn amid the white ashes whirling around us. Seeing my reflection didn’t make anything feel real; it confirmed that this had to be a nightmare. I looked like I was already dead, a ghost coming to a terrifying realization.

  As the three of us began to run again, my ankle-length khaki green skirt constricted my steps to six-inch strides and my clogs irritated the skin on the sides of my feet and my toes. I tried to move faster. I’m going to die because of the outfit I picked out today. We slowed, then started running, then slowed down again.