After 9/11

by Helaina Hovitz

  There was this “every day could be your last” mentality that I had picked up as a result of what happened, which made me feel like nothing could wait. If we were fighting past the time I needed to get home, or go to sleep, we could not “let it go” and pick it up in the morning after we cooled down. There might not be a morning. We could not “take a break,” because then, if the city was bombed, I would regret it instantly, thinking, Oh no, I loved him, and now I’m going to die alone. I was holding on with a death grip, to make sure everything was “okay” and I was not letting go.

  Neither was my mother. The more she tried to bring her hand down on the doorknob to try and get some control over me, to block me from going out with him, the more intensely I fought back, with, I believed nothing to lose.

  “You’re not leaving! It’s not safe for you to leave!” my mother shouted one day in May, blocking the door.

  I need to get out of here.

  “Move!” I shrieked in her ear.

  “Helaina!” my dad interjected, trying to get us both to stop, his face awash with concern and desperation.

  I was being cornered, and that was the final trigger, being crowded in. Too close. Everyone was too close. I started screaming at the top of my lungs, just screaming without words, feeling that I was going to die. Suddenly I had darted into the corner and cowered into in a ball, pulling at my hair.

  “Helaina!” they were crying desperately. “Helaina please, stop! Calm down! Take a Klonopin!”

  Dr. C had begun to prescribe me the Klonopin for when I had these “reactive, panic” episodes. Or rather, the generic, Clonazepam 0.5 milligrams, which was supposed to calm me down. I ran into my room to take the pill, slamming the door on my way in. The full-length mirror on the back of my door crashed to the ground, shattering everywhere. I just kept screaming, screaming, throwing things against the wall, hyperventilating. My breath was becoming shorter.

  I’m going to die, I’m going to die, I’m going to die. I’m trapped, I’m trapped, I’m going to die. I have to get out, I have to run.

  I exploded back out of my bedroom door and made a run through the living room and to the front door, but my mother was able to throw herself back in front of it in time.

  “Move! I hate you!” I shouted, physically pulling at her.

  “No!” she gripped the doorframe even harder, sprawled across it like she was up on a crucifix. Her skin still smelled like a combination of cotton and unscented body cream, with hints of whatever perfume she had on that day, a smell that intoxicated me when I was little, a smell that meant safety, comfort, familiarity. The smell had soothed me so often as the child who clung to her soft, delicate skin, and now I was ripping away at it.

  After a final big reach, I was able to pull my mother off of the door and ignored her shouting and ran as fast as I could down the stairwell.

  I kept running down the sidewalk, and instantly recognized this behavior, and all of the behavior like it, as insane, wild, monstrous. They were trying to protect me, and I was taking them down with me. It all happened so fast, when that invisible girl grabbed my hand and put it on the steering wheel. I was speeding further and further from where I should have been, unable to stop, soaking in sweat and shame. I don’t remember where I went or what I did—only that I always ran west, toward Ground Zero, toward Vin, away from home, and that every direction was the wrong way.

  * * *

  The day I decided I was ready to lose my virginity was a day I had decided to stay home sick from school. Vin said he’d cut his afternoon classes and come over. My father had gone back to work for the Board of Education, so he wouldn’t be home until 3:00 p.m., and my mom didn’t get home until about 6:00 p.m.

  I remember I had my period that day, and I figured, If I’m going to bleed anyway, I’m one step ahead. Maybe it’ll hurt less.

  He came over with a plastic grocery bag full of rose petals and told me to leave my bedroom so he could scatter them around.

  “Are you ready?” he asked.

  I nodded, knowing it wasn’t going to be some epic, big deal, and doubting it was going to feel good at all.

  He put on a condom. He had a scared look in his eyes, his thing in his hand, and then in me, which felt like little more than just inserting a hot dog–shaped block into a hot dog–shaped hole in a wooden box, almost like a preschool toy.

  He went in and out, in and out, and obviously, nobody “came.” The whole thing was anticlimactic, and we decided to head across town to his house after, crossing the rickety, make-shift bridge over Ground Zero. I ignored my mom’s angry voicemails, the ones she left when my dad got home and told her I wasn’t there, after they had specifically called me in to school sick.

  “I was feeling better,” I said later when I came home for dinner.

  The next time I went to Dr. C, I told her I would like to go on birth control, but that I was scared to ask my parents. She said we could call them together.

  I can’t remember now if she made the call for me, or if we put it on speakerphone.

  I do remember feeling the hot flush of embarrassment and frustration when my mother said, “No, you’re too young,” and the hot-headedness of my saying, “Fine, but we’re going to do it anyway.”

  One night, Vin and I took the train out to Park Slope, to a party in a brownstone. It was the usual suspects and a few people I didn’t recognize, beer bottles and weed and loud rap music. Doug, the kid whose house it was, was different from the rest of the group. He was a Brooklyn Italian wearing a Yankee cap, a gray wool pullover sweater over a white T-shirt, and a short gold chain.

  I was sitting on the couch next to Vin, who kept his arm around me protectively, until someone suggested we all went for a “joy ride” in someone’s car.

  The roar of the engine, flying down the street, sent my adrenaline rushing again, did something to me that I tried to hide, giggling and whooping with the rest of the people in the car, pretending to be enjoying myself, to be having harmless fun, when I really wanted to cry, like a child. I want to go home.

  When we got out, I felt sick, I reacted to something Vin said strongly, I reached out and hit him in front of everyone, he stormed out, and I called Uncle John to see if he could come pick me up.

  I didn’t remember how we got out there, and I certainly wasn’t going to try to figure it out by myself, at 11:00 p.m. I didn’t want to call my dad, and I hoped that maybe my uncle would come bail me out of trouble without my parents having to know, like uncles did on TV and in the movies. The cool uncle coming to save the day.

  I walked three doors down and collapsed onto a stranger’s stoop as I held the phone to my ear and watched Vin pass around a forty of Coors Light, my own Yankee cap tilted far enough over my eyes to mask tears, although by now he had to have assumed I was crying, because, these days, I was always crying in public.

  “I can’t come to get you, but what’s wrong, are you ok? Put Vin on the phone,” he said gruffly.

  I walked back over to the stoop where he sat with his friends, but Vin waved me away, refusing to talk to him. That was the beginning of my uncle hating Vin.

  I could have called 311, found the number of a car service, and asked Mom to come downstairs to the corner and bring me cash to pay with. The options floated there in the night, right in front of me, but they were choices that felt like they belonged to someone else, a girl who could be stronger, who could feel empowered enough to walk away from something toxic. Another girl, one who had enough going on in her life, more to show up for, confidence in herself, solid enough to be able to go through the motions of a break-up until it felt a little better, would have made those choices.

  Instead, I drank three Smirnoff Ices, waited around by myself in another room, stood by his side, silently, and finally, traveled home with Vin.

  “I still love you baby,” he said, high or drunk and probably both.

  That seemed to bring him bliss, the weed, the drinking, where tonight, it only made me see more clearly al
l of the bad omens hovering around us.

  Report Card Comments, May 25, 2005

  Chemistry: Helaina is fitting in very well in chemistry. She is working hard on staying current with the material and catching up on old topics.

  Spanish: Helaina has made some great efforts in class. She has been working hard to better her grade and overall performance, has been more focused, and is undoubtedly attempting to genuinely understand the concepts introduced in the course. Helaina is an intelligent individual who has great potential. She still does need to better prepare herself for exams.

  One night, I found myself running after Vin during a fight, hurling myself at him on Maiden Lane, jumping on his back to try to get him to stop walking down the narrow streets lined with puddles and garbage bags.

  A bald man wearing a windbreaker appeared out of thin air, stepping out of the shadows, coming toward us. Vin tossed the knife I got him for his birthday under a car.

  “What’s going on here?” the man in the windbreaker had asked, flashing his badge.

  “Nothing, we’re fine,” I’d said.

  Suddenly, my dad appeared from around the corner. He had followed me.

  “They’re just having a fight that got out of control. I think we’re okay,” my dad said. Whatever else my dad said to the officer, it made him go away.

  Vin came back to our apartment, and my father got him a heating pad for his back, setting him up on the couch.

  Sometimes, my dad had to call Vin himself when I had an episode, asking him to please talk to me, because he was the only one who could help calm me down.

  Report Card Comments, June 6, 2005

  Chemistry: Helaina did a fantastic job in chemistry this quarter.

  Spanish: Helaina has overall made good progress in the course. She needs to better enhance her study skills, but exhibited genuine determination in her efforts to improve her performance in the course.

  Adv. Mod. World History: Helaina’s only shortcoming is she has not studied comprehensively for her exams and quizzes

  Science Fiction: Helaina’s work is undoubtedly excellent across the board. She writes beautifully, both creatively and formally. Her formal essay was sophisticated and well originated.

  Despite my major fuck-ups, I was still able to end the year on a high note and make Grandma proud.

  First, I won second place in an essay contest for Marymount Manhattan College. The essay was about learning from pain and moving forward, something that was very wise beyond my years, probably a little contrived, and good enough to get me noticed.

  Then, there was the school newspaper; the school didn’t have one, so I started it, and I ran it myself.

  What my mother did or didn’t tell Grandma, I was never sure, but she didn’t seem quite as giddy about my accomplishments. Of course, she was proud, but there was a sadness to her now, and she would sometimes say what she had said when I was expelled from Loyola, now repeating, “I don’t know what happened to the little girl I knew,” over poker games and Friday night dinners, when we took her out to eat and I sat next to her.

  The guilt kept me from visiting as often as I used to, forging a gap in the memories of us—just us in our little world—that year.

  My parents threw me a sweet sixteen party on my birthday, June 30, which felt like a disaster, or rather, a disappointment, because for me they were one in the same.

  There were about fifteen guests, Charles included. We had hired one of Vin’s friends to DJ, paid in cash, and gave him a playlist of songs we liked. I had gotten my hair done, curls done up on top of my head, and I wore a beige dress that looked kind of like Marilyn Monroe’s famous white street-vent dress. We had it at T. J. Byrnes, the nearest and most convenient space that could host a DJ and give us food, and not charge us extra for the space.

  My mom would tell you that night went like this:

  Someone showed up with alcohol. Matt—from P.S. 116—went home drunk, so his mother called my mother and then, Charlotte from I.S. 89 accused us of serving food that gave them food poisoning. I cried because nobody was dancing, which didn’t make anybody dance. I felt awkward because my parents, Charles’s parents, and my grandma were sitting nearby watching. My aunt showed up drunk, which made my grandmother furious. I felt especially guilty that my parents had gone through so much trouble of throwing me this party, spent all that money, and it felt so somber, despite Vin feeding me cake like it was our wedding, and Jordan and her date reassuring me that it was “so great!”

  It was supposed to be happy, and crowded, full of people and dancing, and it felt like one of the saddest nights of my life.

  * * *

  A couple of months later, my parents and I went on a trip to Montréal and Quebec. We were eating breakfast at some outdoor café, and my dad was drinking coffee, and I didn’t want the sweet crepe with chocolate I had ordered, because I couldn’t really stomach anything anymore. I had recently begun to see a stomach doctor because I was nauseous, had diarrhea all the time, and had lost much of my appetite, unable to eat more than a few bites of anything. I was told to take Prilosec, which didn’t solve the problem. I was almost afraid to go anywhere, to even leave the house, because I would have some sort of horrific bathroom-related emergency.

  “What’s your name?” My dad asked the waiter, and I sunk lower in my chair, wanting to die, knowing what was coming next.

  “Hi Sean, I’m Paul. This is my wife, Denise, and my daughter, Helaina.”

  Who the fuck cares!

  This was the embarrassment equivalent of taking a gross dump at a party, realizing the flush was broken, and having to exit past a long line of people waiting to use the bathroom.

  I sighed audibly.

  After an uncomfortable, strained lunch, our key had barely touched the door handle of our hotel room when I made a snarky remark about my dad smelling like the salmon he ate. He pushed me out of his way to get to the bathroom, and it was like someone flipped a switch.

  I started screaming, blood curdling screams, like I had to fight for my life.

  My hand shot out and sent the lamp crashing to the floor.

  I grabbed and threw the chair at the small desk across the room, screaming and screaming like I was possessed.

  “No!” I was screaming. Just the word, “No!”

  My dad left the room, and I stood there sobbing, and my mother stood there doing whatever it was she did when this happened.

  A few moments later, there was a knock at the door.

  “Everything ok in here?” security asked.

  I sat hunched in the corner, trying to hide, panting, like a rabbit hiding from a dog.

  My mother had given me a calling card, so I used it to call Vin, getting his voicemail over and over, leaving him voicemails, crying and just about willing him to pick up, until my calling card ran out of minutes.

  I was furious at him for not answering his phone, when really, he hadn’t done anything at all except play basketball. But not being able to reach him was like an extra circle of hell, in that corner next to the broken lamp and the curtain.

  When we got back, a second stomach specialist at NYU Medical Center prescribed me Prevacid, since it now felt like barbed wire was churning inside of me, like something was squeezing me from the outside. Heartburn, cramping, nausea: you name it, my stomach was doing it. I began losing a lot of weight, a time my mother still remembers, almost wistfully, as the time I was a size 0.

  * * *

  During my Junior year, in history class, we read about nuclear war and the Atomic Bomb and Truman. We studied suicide bombers closely, learning that young men were selected and then prepared to be martyrs. They were observed to see if they could be discreet among other people. They were put in these suicide cells for months and months at a time to study religion, reading chapters of the Koran and praying. They prepared wills and video testaments of their last words. We also learned that, according to Mohamed, it is inappropriate and unholy for martyrs to be vengeful.

  �
�According to suicide bombers, where does fear come from?” our teacher asked us one day after reading from a textbook.

  “There is a natural fear of not knowing what lies beyond death,” I said. “The fear is not in actually committing the act. They want this success so badly that they are more anxious over something going wrong and not pleasing Allah than his fate or the fate of others.”

  I took an Advanced English class as well, where we studied the philosophies of Sartre and Nietzsche.

  “Hit an old lady, eat a puppy, none of it matters!” our teacher declared at the beginning of class.

  The last thing I needed was to hear about more ways that people rationalized acting like monsters and hurting each other, but it was the only Advanced Placement English class the school offered, and I needed all of the academic advantage I could get at that point.

  The class focused on topics such as the Weatherman terrorist group, the Khmer Rouge, and the Holocaust. My brain was a horrifying enough place before having to worry about people chopping off my clitoris or making me throw up and then eat it, or ripping my teeth out with pliers, or making me watch as they tortured and gagged and killed my parents. But they entered right into the nightmarish narrative.

  We had to watch documentaries about the Viet Kong and Vietnam, and as a class, we went to see the documentary “Ghosts of Abu Ghraib,” about the military who tortured prisoners, at the Lincoln Center movie theatre. Great, I thought. Now they’re really going to kill us. I would want revenge if I were them too.

  We read No Exit by Sartre and Lolita by Nabokov, we also read plays by Edward Albee like, The Goat, or Who is Sylvia, and essays like “Spock’s Brain.” We read “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World,” about children who play with a dead man’s body, thinking he is a whale. We learned that it was Nietzsche who said, “Hope is the worst of all evils, for it prolongs the torment of man,” and our midterm and final exams took about seven hours, for no good reason other than that teacher felt like it.