After 9/11

by Helaina Hovitz

  And then it was quiet.

  Unable to see even his hands right in front of him, the entire world became black like night. He could feel pieces of debris blowing against and past his face in the darkness. Thomas clutched Eddie’s cage and stayed this way for what felt like twenty minutes, barely able to breathe.

  Once the darkness began to clear, he emerged from underneath the benches of Wagner Park and he and his father felt their way to the bathrooms by his favorite restaurant, Gigino’s, where he’d always watched the fireworks on Fourth of July.

  The bathroom was full of children, whose cries and screams were deafening. Fifty people were covered head to toe in what looked like gray powder, many of them trying to comfort the children.

  “Mommy, the sky is falling, like Chicken Little said it would,” Thomas heard one little girl say.

  Adults were splashing their faces with water from the toilets. Some people ran into the bathroom, ripped their clothes off, dunked them into the toilet, then ran out again, wrapping them around their faces.

  Thomas and his father stood in there for what felt like an infinite amount of time.

  Then, he heard another noise.

  Boom.

  Boom.

  Boom …

  More people were shouting and running by the bathrooms, fanatical screams of strangers crying, “the Sears Tower got hit” and “planes are dropping all over the city!”

  Thomas and his father left the bathroom and found themselves standing knee high in singed paper. An ambulance speeding by slowed down for a moment to ask if they needed oxygen. Thomas and his father quickly boarded the back of the ambulance speeding toward the Towers, riding with the back door open. They took two puffs and were promptly told to leave.

  “We’ve got to go,” said the medic, barely stopping for them to get off, and leaving them alone again once more.

  They stumbled toward Gateway Plaza again, barely able to see, everything still smokey and dark. They found their way into the packed lobby of a building by Liberty Court, where people fruitlessly tried to make phone calls. Almost everyone was covered in gray ash; those who weren’t brought phones downstairs and thrust them into their powdery hands, insisting, “Try mine, try mine.” But nobody was getting anywhere. This call cannot be completed.

  Suddenly, cops rushed the building once again, shouting.

  “The island is going to blow up!”

  “There’s too much fuel!”

  “We don’t know if there are bombs, you have to get out, go toward the boats!”

  Thomas didn’t bother trying to cover his face as he pushed his way through a shower of papers, knowing that no matter what he’d still be breathing it all in.

  At the dock by the boats, it looked like a scene from the movie Titanic. Grown men were hopping the fence, people were swarming the boats, fighting and screaming “I’m here, I’m here,” into the darkness.

  Men were dangling off the railing trying to jump on, people were climbing lampposts, and everyone was pushing each other.

  Still carrying Eddie, Thomas and his father stumbled down the ramp leading to the dock, but had to hop the high fence. Thomas looked around scared and confused: what he and his father were being pushed onto wasn’t a boat, it was an inflatable raft with a little motor on the back.

  It was built for ten and was being swarmed by three times as many people. Thomas was elbowed and slammed into and smacked in the eye as everyone tried to push their way on, like in some sort of stampede. The cops were still shouting the same message to everyone, “The island is going to explode! Everyone has to get out of here!”

  They departed, and, barely off of the dock heading to Jersey City, someone suddenly screamed, “There’s water! There’s water!”

  The back of the boat was sinking.

  People tried to move to the front as the boat continued sinking lower, the back eventually disappearing entirely. The engine beginning to sputter.

  Everyone’s feet were wet, and by the time they made it across the river, half of the boat was under water. But they hadn’t made it yet. The docks in New Jersey were six feet high, built for bigger ships and ferries like the New York Waterway. It seemed there was no way to get on land. Who was around that was going to help them? Thomas thought.

  As if materializing through some sort of miracle, five businessmen on land arrived and began pulling their clothes off, their suit jackets and shirts, and dangling them over the railing. They were bringing everyone within arms reach, to the point where they could grab their hands and hoist them up onto land. They hauled up every single person on the boat this way as it sunk further by the minute.

  Thomas was smashed into the side of the wall on his way up, and his father looked on silently. Once they made it over, they watched the city burning, waiting for his mother to possibly arrive in a boat, if she wasn’t dead. One crowded boat after another arrived, and the same men stayed on the docks for two hours, pulling everyone off of each one. His mother was not on any of them.

  Eventually, Thomas and his father wandered into a nearby office building, and a man took them upstairs to use the phone. The offices they passed were practically ransacked; people were hanging out of windows, just staring across the water, gaping at New York.

  Thomas and his father tried every number they could think of, aunts and uncles, but every answer was the same. Your call cannot be completed. His father’s face, by now, had turned to stone.

  Busses started to line up by the docks, but, as they tried to board, the driver said, “You can’t go on yet, we have to get you decontaminated.”

  They pushed everyone into a makeshift coral and hosed them down, making Thomas feel as though they were in a concentration camp. They even sprayed Eddie. Just hours after he had narrowly avoided drowning, Thomas was soaked; but instead of washing away, the gray ash, the debris, the dead people, the building, were all caked onto his body.

  Thomas boarded the bus and sat next to a man, who in a matter of seconds began screaming, “Get down, get down!” as the sound of planes roared overhead and sent everyone into a panic. Everyone hit the floor of the bus and covered their heads, except one woman, who ran off.

  “They’re attacking again!” screamed another woman, over and over.

  A Chinese lady got down on the ground, hovering over her child as though protecting him from an air raid, just before a man came on the bus and said “It’s ok, the planes are full of Americans.”

  Everyone started clapping; everyone except for an eleven-year-old boy clutching his one-year-old dog, who thought, so were the other ones.

  After ten minutes, the bus dropped everyone off at something resembling a YMCA. Thomas and his father used a working pay phone to call every number they could think of, but still, no calls placed to New York would go through. They tried to call one of his dad’s friends collect. At first, he wouldn’t accept the call, but they kept trying, and, eventually, headed to that friend’s apartment. Thomas fell asleep after watching Tower 7 fall on the news, thinking about the woman in a puddle of blood, then the woman in the blue dress, and wondering if his mother was alive.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Children need predictability, a sense of control, after being in a state of alarm and waiting for the next catastrophe every minute.

  They need the stability that comes from routine, or they won’t know what to do when they have to make the simplest choices. Having been deprived of the basic choices most children get to make as they begin to discover what they like and who they are, these children have no sense of self and turn to others for guidance.

  We make memories, but memories make us too; and though its effects may not always be visible to the untrained eye, when you know what trauma can do to children, sadly, you begin to see its aftermath everywhere.

  —Dr. Bruce Perry, The Boy Who Was Raised as a Dog

  On December 22, passengers on Flight 63 complained of a smoke smell coming from somewhere in the cabin shortly after a meal service. A man was sit
ting alone near a window and attempting to light a match on his shoe. He pushed the flight attendant to the floor when she tried to stop him, and bit another who tried to do the same.

  Because he had worn his shoes for an extra day after the flight was delayed, because it had rained, because maybe he had sweaty feet, the fuse was too damp to be ignited. The “Shoe Bomber” was foiled.

  That was right around Christine’s birthday, and it was tradition for her brother, her mother, and her aunt to join them for a walk over to Police Plaza. They always had elaborate holiday lights set up over there, and even though it was just a short walk from home, they treated it like an event. She hoped, one day, to be able to take her own kids to see it, even though police headquarters seemed like an odd destination for something like that. That year, Police Plaza was closed off. The stunning decorations and light displays that brightened up an otherwise drab, concrete street, were nowhere to be seen. So, they turned around and walked back home.

  Reena spent the night before Christmas in her Gateway Plaza apartment, even though they weren’t supposed to go back yet. They had snuck in to have Christmas at home. This might be our last Christmas here. It might be our last Christmas anywhere.

  As for me, the night before Christmas Eve, I went with my mother to Toys ‘R’ Us in Times Square, which was packed. My mother must have thought that the setting would be festive: the candy, the miles of toys, the Ferris wheel.

  When we got to the back of the store, joining mobs of other people cradling Barbie boxes and holding stuffed tigers, something shifted. I became seized with the certainty that bombs would fall on us and the mob would trample us. We would watch everyone screaming and sobbing and dying, since we were in the back, and Grandma would die of grief after my mother and I died, and who knows what would happen to my dad.

  I suddenly thought about a day back in first grade when, during some ball game, everyone dog piled on me, and I couldn’t breathe. There were ten kids on top of me, I was gasping for breath and crying, and none of the outdoor “aids” tried to help me. I just stood there, alone, in shock, gasping for breath, thinking I was going to die.

  “Mom, we have to go,” I said, pulling her toward the door.

  “What are you talking about? We didn’t pay yet.”

  “I don’t care. Let’s go,” I said, starting to pull her by the arm.

  Something washed over me, this warm feeling, and I started to lose my breath.

  “We have to go! We have to go!” I said, starting to cry. “Please!”

  I was practically yanking her, trying to get her to move toward the revolving doors that would release us back into the chaos of Times Square, stifling the screams that were trying to push their way out.

  I don’t remember what happened after that.

  Journal Entry, 12/31/01

  We went to St. Vincent’s today.

  We visited a social therapist and he just stared at me. He was bald and dressed very unprofessionally.

  The waiting room was empty. The magazines were ripped.

  He took us to his office and slumped in his chair and said he was confused by the Red Cross papers. There were weird drawings around his room. We talked about our new guidance counselor Wendy who is from St. Vincent’s.

  My mom started talking about the fires in 5 WTC and how we were in constant lockdown, and how I was in intensive care when I was a baby for a week projectile vomiting and screaming and disturbing the other babies, so they sent me to another room by myself, and my mom thought I was dead when they got there because I wasn’t there. The only things that could put me to sleep were car rides and my grandma. I get nervous and anxious.

  We think I have PTSD. I’m more jumpy with sounds and have panic attacks in crowds, and I’m nervous about planes, and my mom gets nervous when other people are nervous. We still can’t really open the windows.

  My teacher wrote this on a post it:

  It’s a very tough time and you probably do have PTSD. It’s a completely normal reaction. Now they are saying that 40 percent of people downtown have it. You will feel better, but it takes time.

  * * *

  The waiting room in the hospital was dank and reminded me of my old elementary school. It felt germy and dirty and small, with pale yellow walls that had marks all over them and floors covered in scuffs from peoples’ shoes.

  I saw a therapist named Donna for a few months. I liked Donna well enough.

  She was middle-aged, I guessed, with white, pasty skin and bright red, shiny hair. There were crinkles around her eyes, which had been rubbed with a copper colored shadow.

  We’d fill out some paperwork in the lobby, and then we’d get called upstairs.

  My mom would wait outside while Donna asked me what I was scared of, what was going in my life, what was stressing me out.

  I liked having someone to talk to, but after a few weeks, I got kind of annoyed. I didn’t want to talk about it all the time if she wasn’t going to be able to change what I seemed unable to change, or control, myself.

  What are we going to do about it?

  As I would later learn, I was the only patient Donna was seeing. She mainly did intake, giving extensive evaluations to children coming in so they could get assigned to a therapist.

  We were going to be taking a trip to Disney World, my mother had announced, so I had to try and get ready.

  I told her I was afraid to get on the plane, and Donna asked me what I was afraid of. She listened, and she nodded, and told me to take a book with me. The book would help change my thoughts, she said. She also said I should wear a rubber band and snap it to stop a bad thought when it came.

  As an exercise, she told me to come up with a safe place.

  “My safe place is a beach, with waves, and warm sand. What’s your safe place?”

  “Grandma’s house,” I said.

  “Where in your grandmother’s house? Is she next to you? What does she smell like? What are you doing together? Watching TV? What are you watching?”

  I answered the questions, and she said, “When you’re on the plane, go to that place.”

  I was only covered for twelve weeks of therapy, and so we stopped, right before we left for Florida.

  Even with our talk behind us, I doubted that she could ensure my plane wouldn’t be hijacked. She didn’t have any control over the situation at the airport. If something happened, she’d be alive, wrong, but alive, and I would be dead.

  Journey Entry, 3/31/02

  4:00 p.m.: Going to Disney. We’re getting out of the rental car into American Airlines. I am extremely on edge and nervous.

  4:02 p.m.: Outside getting luggage tagged. I have to keep telling myself Floridians aren’t murderers.

  4:08 p.m.: We’re checking our luggage and I’ve been ok, but after he starting asking us questions about our luggage I got anxious again.

  4:14 p.m.: We’re at the security checkpoint and it’s a long line moving fast. There’s tons of security but I don’t mind. I know we’re ok, but what about others. My dad has to say “yes sir, no sir,” because Joe made a wise remark in Arabic and they cavity searched him. I’m lashing out and being nasty to them.

  Aside from getting sick after eating French food at Epcot, we had a great time. It was my third trip to Disney World, but it never got old, and I didn’t remember much from the time I was seven, anyway.

  They had this new thing, “pin” trading—you bought a bunch of pins in the gift shop, and you could trade pins with other staff and kids, so it was like you were always on the hunt for something, the thrill of the pin-chase, which was exciting.

  In the back of my mind, the stubborn thought that Disney was a target buzzed around like a mosquito, but there was enough to do and see, enough distraction, to keep swatting it away.

  The nightmares followed me there, too.

  Journal Entry, 4/5/02

  I had a dream that ten planes were circling and two crashed into Pace University down the block, one crashed into my angel on top of t
he Municipal Building. Aunt Fran was at Grandma’s but disappeared, so me and Dad and Grandma were trying to escape. All these buildings were on fire so we got on a train and went by I.S. 89, which turned into the Brooklyn Botanical Gardens, and nobody acted like anything was wrong. I can’t believe I have to go back to my stupid life. It would be easier to go home if I didn’t live by Ground Zero.

  As we boarded the return flight, sad to go back to reality but excited to see Grandma, I saw a man with dark skin board in first class that made me nervous.

  He looks like a terrorist.

  What’s he doing with his shoe?

  Oh, he’s tying it.

  Then, a group of college guys, some student athletes, sat scattered all around us back in coach, whooping and shouting.

  “We have to tell the flight attendant to throw them off of the plane for being too rowdy,” I told my mom. “And that other guy up front has to go, too.”

  I clutched the armrest of the seat, saying “Mom, Mom, Mom” over and over through gritted teeth. My parents couldn’t calm me down, because—well, they just couldn’t. Parents were supposed to be able to walk into your room and explain that thunder is nothing to be scared of, that it’s just a change in weather and pressure, open your closet door, and show you that there are no monsters inside. But there was no way for them to disprove the fears I had now.

  My dad leaned over and started talking to one of the rowdy college guys, asking them to keep it down because loud noises made me nervous, explaining why it made me nervous. He did it in this cool, friendly way, and they actually listened—well, some of them, anyway.

  We landed in one piece, and when we arrived at the baggage claim, people started crowding around the man with the dark skin from first class, holding out their boarding passes and pens. They were asking him to pose for photos.

  It turned out to be Ramiro Mendoza, a pitcher for the New York Yankees.

  * * *

  Allison and I kept that magic of Disney going through our shared love of princess movies, and we would have sleepovers to watch them.