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After 9/11

Page 15

by Helaina Hovitz


  They mostly walked around on their own, sniffing, frolicking, but when I said, “Come here boy!” the Shih Tzu came teetering over. The Scottish Terrier wasn’t as interested. My mother proceeded to bend down and scoop the Shih Tzu up, and he lay quietly in my mother’s arms.

  “Can we get him?” I asked, sensing a win.

  We got rung up at the register—$1,100, but we could have him for $900—with a leash and some food thrown in.

  “His name is Gucci,” I proclaimed, inspired by our recent Roman holiday.

  We took him home, and for weeks, I could barely concentrate on anything else: the puppy was everything. I knew Grandma loved him too. When she came to watch me—she was still my “babysitter,” which was fine, I loved spending time with her even though I was too old to need to be watched—she would give him enthusiastic tummy rubs and coo at him in her high-pitched, sweet-as-syrup voice.

  About a month later, when we had to start touring high schools, I had a very hard time leaving Gucci behind in his puppy gate, stuck in the kitchen. His cries could be heard into the hallway, all the way by the elevators, and I reasoned that maybe we didn’t have to go after all.

  “We’re going,” my mom said as she ushered me onto the elevator and pressed 1.

  I could barely concentrate on anything else the whole night, worried that Gucci might die of grief while we were gone, or that I might die of grief being separated from him.

  As he got older, Gucci decided he didn’t want to sleep in my bed, or give kisses, or learn tricks. He decided he just wanted to lie around, and teetered away and sat under the table when I tried to play with him. He did not sense when I was sad, or scared, and needed to cuddle. In fact, he wanted nothing to do with cuddling. He was supposed to by my best buddy, my sleepover pal, my source of love and affection. Despite the fact that it did not work out that way, I loved him anyway. He couldn’t help how he was, and he was still mine to love.

  Around this time, a weird “splitting” of thoughts began to occur. I would feed Gucci and instantly think upsetting thoughts at the same time about someone torturing a dog by not feeding it.

  Or, I would smile at a baby on the street and think about someone abusing a baby somewhere else.

  If I got cold, I immediately thought about homeless people freezing. When I was hungry, I thought about starving children in Africa.

  I still stayed up all night, unable to sleep, watching three hundred disturbing images I couldn’t turn off flicker across the backdrop of my closed eyes. Attempting to sleep at all was like surrendering into a black pit of quicksand, just waiting to be swallowed up by ominous visions.

  * * *

  Sarah sat in her advisory at Baruch College Campus High School during the one-year anniversary of 9/11 pressing her pen down so hard that a blue puddle was forming on her notebook.

  Everyone had been instructed to write “about that day,” what went on, how they felt about it. The first people to share said that they were in a school on Eightieth Street and heard the announcement over the loudspeaker. Sarah shared honestly, and angrily, practically spitting her story at them because they had no idea what suffering meant. They had no idea what it was to be scared that day.

  She was immediately sent to the guidance counselor.

  “How can I help you?” she asked.

  “You can’t,” Sarah said. “Can you go in my mind and erase everything I saw?”

  This was the first time somebody asked her to confront her experience of that day, and Sarah startled even herself with this response. She’d never been rude to a teacher or an adult before.

  Still, her voice grew even louder.

  “What are you going to do for me? I don’t want to talk about it, especially not with you. I want to forget about it.”

  She ran out of the guidance counselor’s office and called her mother from the bathroom.

  “Call the school right now and tell them I don’t ever want to do that again,” she sobbed. Heading back into the hallway, she was completely broken down. Her friends rushed to her side.

  “She just made me feel worse,” she sniffed. “She singled me out and completely belittled the whole the situation. She made it seem like it was an ‘easy problem.’”

  But her friends didn’t seem to understand what got her so upset either.

  “Oh … she meant well, though,” they said, shooting each other looks.

  Nobody could understand. My own friends think I’m crazy. Soon, they were no longer her friends. She felt like a freak, and longed to be downtown again with people who “understood.”

  When I got there, a year later, I didn’t even know Baruch had a guidance counselor.

  * * *

  My year wasn’t shaping up to be too hot, either. A girl named Lily told me I had saggy tits and a big Jew nose and fought with me over Henry (AXE body spray was working wonders for this kid). We went on a mandatory eighth grade trip where I got no sleep, as I expected I wouldn’t, and where I got seasick on the boat ride we took on the last day. On the bus ride back to the city right after, I fell asleep on Christine’s chest.

  I was touring and applying to high schools that I hated even more than the middle schools I had toured three years earlier, I still hadn’t had my first real kiss, and my period was taking forever to arrive.

  Thomas, who was still mostly a quiet kid, didn’t respond to me in person much, even though we were in the same class. But he made me mix-tapes on CDs because he knew how to download the songs and burn them for free. I’d use AOL Instant Messenger to send him my requests, and he’d deliver them later that week, with a playlist printed right on the cover of the case and everything. I had no idea that his father was going completely off the deep end, transforming from a fun and outgoing guy into a man who had emotional outbursts, spewing anger and aggression, then retracting quietly into himself for days. Thomas and his mother never knew when he would snap, and lived in constant fear of his moods and reactions.

  The police were still doing ID checks, even in 2003, on people who lived in Gateway Plaza, and there were notices on the bulletin boards that proclaimed warnings of bomb threats for Lower Manhattan residential buildings. A man in Thomas’s building went door-to-door selling parachutes, so if they had to escape the building, they could “get out when the elevators broke down and the stairs were on fire.”

  “Did you hear that a man in Columbus, Ohio, was arrested for allegedly feeding information to al-Qaeda about how they might go about bombing the Brooklyn Bridge?” he asked me one day in March. “You should pack a bag.”

  Rose had become my best friend, replacing Allison, and we took ridiculous pictures with my new digital camera and had sleepovers at her apartment on Ocean Avenue. We prank-called Henry and Lily using her computer’s voice converter, this guy named Microsoft Sam. We would type stuff about penises and poop and have him say it in a robotic voice, trying not to laugh too loudly as it happened. We were fans of Clay Aiken on Season 2 of American Idol, and were devastated when he lost to Ruben Studdard.

  Christine and I became friendlier, too, sharing a love of a show called Degrassi, which later became well-known for producing stars like Aubrey “Drake” Graham who played Jimmy, and Nina Dobrev, who later went on to star in the Vampire Diaries. But while they were still at Degrassi Jr. High, these kids melodramatically got their periods, came out of the closet, and suffered through teen pregnancy while simultaneously discovering their parents’ devastating financial troubles and flirtations with other parents.

  When one character named Terri found herself in an abusive relationship with a kid named Rick (the kid who would later bring a gun to school and paralyze Jimmy, aka Drake, and put him in a wheelchair), I shook my head and thought that it was so obvious she needed to break up with him. How lame was it that she couldn’t see what a psycho he was?

  “What do you mean he loves you and he just gets mad?” I’d shout at the TV. “Get out of there!”

  The year carried on like any other year might; ru
mors circulated about the gym teacher being a secret child pornographer, I accepted Trevor’s invitation to go to the dance with him, then took it back because I couldn’t get past his severe acne, and Devin and some other boys ran around with sanitary pads stuck to their foreheads after a particularly riveting science presentation on the subject of female menstruation.

  My mother will tell you that by the end of eighth grade, I had cut everyone off. Somebody was talking to Lily, and I didn’t want them to. Somebody else couldn’t be trusted. I left with about two friends that I’d stay in touch with for a little while, and eventually, I’d lose both of them too.

  My mother took me to an expensive hair salon that specialized in curly hair to do my hair for graduation, and bought me a new dress from Express. I made and memorized a speech at the ceremony that was a real crowd-pleaser, and while I couldn’t prove it, I knew that bitch Lily broke the star cookie with my name on it at the reception before I could get to it. Afterward, I left to take a walk and sit on the swings of Hudson River Park with Trevor’s cute older brother. I thought he was so cool, wearing a baseball cap with his suit, and so sweet, too. I waited for him to kiss me, which he didn’t.

  Eager to get it over with already, I ended up having my first kiss with another guy, Isaac, who was a “man whore” as both Gina and Jasmine described him. He was a sure thing.

  I chose a group movie for the big moment, which was a mistake, because right after I smeared on my cupcake-flavored lip gloss and let him shove his tongue literally down my throat, the other kids started throwing ticket stubs at us.

  We left and went back to his apartment on Murray Street, where he kept trying to put his hands up my shirt. I kept stopping him.

  “All the other girls let me,” he said.

  Well, that was too bad.

  I left, disappointed once again that I hadn’t found the boyfriend I’d always wanted, but maybe I could find one at Downtown Day Camp that summer. It would be my first year working as a counselor, not a camper, and Trevor was one of my co-counselors.

  I loved being around the kids. We had a group of first graders, who were just the best.

  For one, they were adorable and sweet and funny. But more importantly, they had the ability to pull me into their world with them, which was a much simpler place. Those summer days were full of the sound of bare, wet feet slapping against the tiles around the swimming pool, the smell of pretzel rods wafting off of them as they spoke, crumbs falling off of their lips, the piles of pictures that they drew “of me” where my stick-figure body sported two big, round circles up top, a mass of curly hair with a giant bow, and a big purse that said Coach on it.

  On a day that it poured, Trevor and I decided, at the end of the day, to just go frolicking through the empty schoolyard while the kids all stayed in their rooms watching movies. For five minutes, we just laughed and kicked at giant puddles. It would have been incredibly romantic if I felt the same way about Trevor that he felt about me.

  It was a sticky afternoon a couple of days later, in mid-August, when, suddenly, the lights shut off and the video games and the air hockey table all shut down in the room known as “Fantasy Land.” An announcement over the PA system told us to take our groups to our classrooms and stay there.

  Oh my God. Not again. Not again.

  Trevor and I looked at each other in a way that no other counselors were.

  We walked with the kids back to our room, and I asked to use another counselor’s phone, because I still didn’t have my own.

  If it’s happening again, I have to stay until all the children are picked up, like Alex did.

  “The power’s knocked out all along the East Coast,” another counselor said as I called my mom’s cell. I began to cry.

  “Mommy? What’s going on? Are you coming home?”

  “What? No. Nobody’s saying anything on the news, it’s probably fine,” she said. “Just walk home. It’s okay. I’ll be there soon. Daddy’s home.”

  Eventually, we were allowed into the yard for pick-up time.

  Trevor and looked at each other in “that way” again as we took in all of the cars stopped in the streets, the people rushing to P.S.234 in confusion. I looked outside the gates, at the corner where Ann, Charles, and I had stood two years earlier, looking up at the burning Towers.

  “Go ahead,” our head counselor said, interrupting my thoughts.

  Trevor offered to walk me home, through stalled cars, honking like crazy, through gangs of teenagers in tank tops shouting and cursing and running, through babysitters hurrying along with small children, and mothers pushing strollers a little too quickly. He made sure I got there safely.

  It turned out to just be a blackout after all, according to our battery-operated radio, but still, I wasn’t so sure.

  My mother and I walked over to the Seaport that night, where restaurant bars opened up their coolers and sold drinks at half price.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  When you feel that you aren’t like everyone else or feel tainted by what has happened to you, it’s hard to be optimistic about the future. In fact, for many survivors, it’s nearly impossible to imagine the future at all. Many of us are caught in a state where we’re still just trying to survive, our sole focus during trauma, and can’t think much beyond that.

  —Dr. Jasmin Lee Cori, Healing From Trauma

  Saddam Hussein was captured on my grandmother’s eighty-seventh birthday, December 13, 2003.

  Before that news broke, I had been busy losing myself in the process of mixing, measuring, and baking brownies for Grandma. I loved baking, loved the smell and the way the heat of the oven whooshed over me when I checked and checked again to see if they were done, impatient to get upstairs already.

  I rang the doorbell, balancing the tray of brownies in my other hand, a shopping bag with a card, flowers, and a gift box dangling from my wrist.

  “Oh my goodness, you shouldn’t have done this!” she cooed as she opened the door. She looked so surprised, so shocked and delighted, you would have thought I’d just delivered the winning lottery numbers. She had lipstick on, as always, a shade of dark mauve. Her light blond hair was colored and perfectly coiffed as always, and, that day, she was wearing a floral print housedress, the one with the large tropical flowers.

  “You are so thoughtful,” she said. “Let’s share.”

  As soon as we sat down at the table, she began chewing in a dainty but meaningful way, going “Mmmm!” in an exaggerated tone meant to make me feel like the world’s best brownie chef.

  I took in the slightly musky scent of her feet in pantyhose and slippers mixed with her perfume. I felt calm, in the gentle warmth of the room. Nobody could ever get between the two of us, at that table, at our special place underneath the chandelier that shimmered with smiles and shouts of “I love you more!” This was still my safe place, even if it had been modified to “as safe as any place could ever be.”

  When she finished her brownie, I shouted, “Happy Birthday!” presenting her with a card and a present, the blouse my mom had picked out for me to give her. If anyone could receive a present and make you feel that you’d done right, it was her. I also showed her an article I wrote in the school newspaper.

  “Oh my God, I am so proud of you,” she said. “You are going to be something special one day.”

  Grandpa hadn’t bothered to come out of the small bedroom, where he was sitting in the blue plush recliner that propelled his legs forward, watching the OTB channel.

  Some daytime talk show was on in the living room, and we barely paid attention as Grandma went on to tell me some of the same stories about my mom, how that one time she tricked the teacher in Catholic school, making her think she wasn’t paying attention by looking out the window, but she was. Some of these stories, I later learned, were actually not entirely true.

  But our focus shifted when the program was interrupted by a photo of Saddam on the screen in front of us, followed by footage of a bunch of m
en in army gear, looking just like they had two years before, right outside the window, in front of the hospital; was almost like someone had lifted them up from the street outside and plunked them into the TV.

  “Saddam Hussein was captured like a rat,” said a news anchor.

  Grandma seemed hopeful, at first.

  “Now that we caught him, maybe it will all be over,” she said. The same way she had said, “This means war” two years ago, she seemed almost certain that this, somehow, might change things.

  I felt a bit hopeful too. Maybe this would be a new start—not only for the country, but for me.

  “But maybe, they’re going to get us back for this,” she added.

  I tried to push the thought out of my mind as we play poker for pennies, which I got to keep. I was old enough to know it couldn’t buy me much, but I accepted graciously.

  She always made dinner on Saturdays, and I wondered if we’d make pizza like when I was little, when I impatiently waited for the crust to cook so we could spread the sauce around, put it back, cook it more, then do my favorite part, sprinkling the mozzarella cheese over every centimeter, which we shredded ourselves.

  Maybe she was making London Broil the way I liked, with the salty gravy and milky, creamy mashed potatoes.

  I let my thoughts wander to all of those years sitting on her kitchen counter, watching her dip veal cutlets into egg yolks, bread them, and somehow fit them all in to the pan of bubbling oil when I thought there was no way she could possibly fit one more. I would shriek when the oil popped and a drop landed on her arm, which she didn’t even seem to feel.

  In a year or so, when Grandma no longer had the strength to make pizza, my mom would start using store-bought Boboli pizza crust, and I would protest, sometimes stopping at Burger King first and using my lunch money so I didn’t have to eat it.

  That night, it was London Broil.

  “Can I help?” I’d asked.

  “Go sit down!” she said, gesturing with a hot pan in both hands.

  She didn’t take any for herself, no matter how many times I said, “Eat, sit with me.” I ate everything on my plate, which impressed her even more, and told her that I loved her cooking, and I hated Mommy’s cooking.

 

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