On the Other Side

by Michelle Janine Robinson

  “Are you a survivor?”

  Her eyes were vacant and lifeless. The words of others meant nothing.

  Maybe I’m dead, she thought.

  Suddenly, she remembered her suitcase and considered going back to retrieve it.

  “It’s gone,” she said to no one in particular.

  “Are you okay?” someone else asked.

  “The whole building is gone. Everything is gone,” Damita said.

  When she did talk the pain in her throat was excruciating. “I want my mother,” she said.

  “Where do you need to go?” someone asked.

  “She’s home.”

  “What borough is your mother in?”

  “My mother is in the Bronx,” Damita responded.

  “Ma’am, I’m going to get you some help. Stay here,” she heard a voice say from the distance.

  As soon as the person walked away so did she. She looked at the street signs. She was already on Fourteenth Street. She wasn’t sure how she had gotten there. She could barely remember how to get to her mother’s place in the Bronx. She did know that she would have to ride the subway. She attempted to enter the first subway station she came upon. She didn’t know what train it was or where it would take her; she just wanted to get to where her mother was. She soon learned that subway service had been suspended and the city was in utter and complete chaos.

  She began walking, once again. Each time she passed a street she counted it. It was if saying the numbers calmed her. She understood the numbers. It was something she could focus on that had nothing to do with all that was going on around her.

  “Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen,” she said aloud.

  Before she knew it, she was someplace familiar. For a moment she wondered if she was in the right place. She had become so accustomed to the uniformed gentleman greeting her outside. There was no one there. There was also no one at the desk and for the first time in a long time, she rode the elevator completely alone. She got to the apartment door and looked for her non-existent pocketbook. Fortunately, the door was open. She pushed it, came inside and for at least five minutes, stood in the middle of the living room floor.

  As if a light switch had been turned off, she was struck by an overwhelming feeling of exhaustion. Her adrenaline levels stabilized, she could think of nothing but sleep. She curled up in a ball on the floor and slept. The tragedy she experienced somehow erased the memories of what her life had been like in this place in which she found herself.

  Neal stirred in his sleep, glanced at the clock radio next to the bed and jumped up. The time read six minutes after noon.

  “Bitch!” he yelled.

  He walked around the bedroom, talking to no one in particular.

  “She wonders why I get angry. I ask her to do one simple thing; wake me up. She can’t even do that. I bet she did that shit on purpose! She probably did do it on purpose! Well, she’ll see what’s waiting for her when she gets home. I’m the man, dammit! I won’t have some woman calling the shots in my own home!”

  He went into the middle dresser drawer and pulled out a bag. He then deposited some of what was in the bag, on top of Damita’s vanity tray, arranging several lines of coke. He snorted first one, then two lines into his right nostril and did the same with his left nostril. After shaking his head vigorously, he went into the kitchen for coffee.

  It was his assumption that Damita was still at work. He had so much cocaine and alcohol the night before, that he had crashed hard. When he finally walked into the kitchen, he was shocked to see Damita lying dirty on the living room floor. He walked over and nudged her with his foot.

  “What the fuck are you doing lying on the floor? Have you lost your mind, or did you go traipsing about and get attacked again?” he asked, chuckling.

  Damita began to slowly stir. She looked up at him, slowly remembering the first half of her nightmare. As she attempted to rise from the floor, he kicked her hard in the stomach.

  “Didn’t I tell you to wake me up this morning before you left for work? Can’t you do anything right? You’re useless, you know. You’re a waste of space. You can’t fuck; you can’t cook. What the hell can you do?”

  “Neal, wait. You don’t know what happened. Turn on the news.”

  Damita still, somehow, believed in the intrinsic good in people, even people like Neal. From her way of thinking, once he was aware of what a horrific experience she had been through and how she had narrowly escaped with her life, he would be somehow changed. She wanted to believe that he would embrace the fragility of life and realize that the life both of them had been living was forever changed because of this one single event.

  “What are you babbling about?”

  She held up her hands. “Wait. I’m going to turn on the news,” she said.

  Every channel had coverage of the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers.

  She was surprised to see him sit for a moment.

  “Whoa,” he said.

  “I made it out. I still can’t believe it, but I’m alive. There was a man there. He helped me. He helped a lot of us. He may have died. The building came down right after I got to safety.”

  Even amidst his drunken and drug-induced haze, Neal couldn’t help but be awestruck by what was unfolding on the television screen.

  Damita watched as his look of shock dissolved into a smile. He turned and looked at her. “So what are you going to do now?” he asked.

  “Huh?”

  “You heard what I said. What are you going to do?”

  “I need to call my mother and let her know I’m okay. I also wanted to check on the people in the building and see if they’re okay. Mr. Underhill and Wendy were with me one minute and the next minute they were gone.”

  “I’m not interested in your mother or your job and I’m definitely not interested in that bastard Underhill. What I want to know is what do you intend to do now that you have no career, no V.P. at the end of your name. What do you plan to do?”

  “I’m alive. None of that stuff matters. Maybe, at some point, the company will find new offices or maybe I’ll get another job. I’m not really thinking about any of that right now.”

  “Are you kidding me? Those people are all dead. You have nothing. So, what do you do? You come crawling back to me. Well, I’m going to tell you something. Things are going to be a hell of a lot different around here.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  If she had never had a full understanding of the kind of man she was married to, she did now. He hadn’t changed a bit. Even in the wake of great tragedy, his sickness continued to prevail.

  Damita got up from where she was sitting and walked toward him, unafraid.

  Neal looked at Damita’s wild-eyed expression. “Have you completely lost your mind?” he asked.

  “No, Neal, I’ve finally gotten my mind back. I don’t know how I could have ever allowed a loser like you to dictate what my existence would be like.”

  For a moment, he was so stunned by her defiance he didn’t react and simply listened.

  “I don’t need to think about things like a job or plans. Those things are not the most important to me. They never were. You’re the one that lives by your possessions, not me. I’ve got love in my life. I’ve got a mother and friends who are probably waiting to hear from me as we speak. What have you got? You had me, but you lost that a long time ago. Now you have nothing. And, as far as the monetary comforts I believe you were insinuating you would either offer or withdraw based on your whims and desire to control, I can even have that if I want to. I’ll be fine, especially when they find out that you were the one that had me attacked. I can’t believe there was a time when I actually felt sorry for you. I hope you rot in hell!”

  As Damita turned and walked away, Neal dove at her, taking her down to the floor. This time, however, Damita fought back. She used everything she had to make up for the fact that Neal was bigger and crazier than she was. She picked things up and hit him over the head. She bit him. Alm
ost every time he tried to deliver a blow, she came up with a way to deflect it. It was as if she was suddenly endowed with some kind of Herculean strength.

  She dug her fingers into his eyes and struggled to her feet, so that she could meet him on more even ground. Once on her feet, she ran toward the bedroom. This time, however, she was not going to cower in the closet or lock herself in the bathroom. Neal caught up with her and tried to throw her down on the bed. He was successful and landed the full weight of his body on top of her. She was sickened to see that all of this had actually aroused him. He pulled at her and hit her and then put his fingers around her throat. She clawed at his neck, his face, anything her hands would reach. She began to think he might actually kill her this time, despite her best efforts. He was strangling her and she felt like a black veil was slowly coming down over her eyes. She knew this was it. Just when she thought she would never see the light of day again, all of her struggling and fighting paid off. She dug her nails into him long enough for her to gain control. She shoved him as hard as she could off of her and when he was laying face up on the floor, at the side of the bed she stomped on his groin area with all the force she could muster. She laughed when he made a sound that, to her, sounded like a yelping dog.

  She was exhausted from fighting but proud of herself. She went into the living room and continued to watch the news. He lay there for quite some time, curled up on the floor, writhing in pain.

  Damita kept yelling things into the bedroom.

  “Not so much fun being the one that gets their ass beat, huh?”

  “Carmella was so right. You’re nothing but a pussy!”

  “How’s your dick feel?” she asked.

  “I don’t think you’ll be raping anybody with that little noodle for quite some time,” she said, chuckling.

  Eventually, she stopped yelling at him and calmed down. For the first time since they had married she wasn’t afraid of him.

  Neal was starting to show signs of being ready to stand and recover.

  Although Damita was no longer afraid of him, that didn’t mean that she could trust him. She sat steadfast and ready.

  “Get out of my apartment!” he yelled, once he was up.

  “You mean my apartment?”

  “Nothing in here belongs to you,” he said.

  “You are quite mistaken, Mr. Westman. Everything in here will belong to me eventually, including this apartment. You’ll be lucky if you can afford a room when I’m done with you; that is if you’re not in prison, getting butt fucked. Have you forgotten you’re a rapist, an abuser, maybe even a murderer? You better be nice to me, you bastard, or I won’t even leave you with the clothes on your back. It will give me such pleasure to move my new man into this place and think of you every time I make love to him.”

  Damita knew the last comment was too much, but she was finally starting to feel her anger. She didn’t mean much of what she was saying, but she so wanted to push his buttons. She felt he more than deserved it.

  The moment she mentioned another man, Neal walked quickly into the living room and dove at the chair she was sitting in. Her and the chair landed face down and he continued what he had started. His fingers once again went around her throat and she fought him with all that she had. This time, however, she was in a bad position and she was sure the outcome would not be the same. Just when she thought it was all over, the ironing board fell and the iron that was on top of it landed right next to her. She picked up the iron and crashed it down on top of Neal’s head. When he released her, she scrambled from under him and came to a sitting position on the floor.

  For a while Neal was prone and posed no threat. As soon as he came to a sitting position, she hit Neal dead center at the top of his head again. He fell to the floor and she continued to hit him, over and over again. Neal tried to block her blows, but his efforts were useless. She continued to bludgeon him with the iron, ignoring the blood that sprayed and attached to her clothing, the floor and the surrounding walls. It wasn’t until her arm began to hurt that she stopped. When she recovered and saw what she had done, she sobbed into her hands and as quickly as she started, she abruptly stopped. She reached down and caressed Neal’s blood-stained cheek. She whispered close to his ear.

  “ ’Til death us do part,” she said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Damita took a shower. She put on a comfortable pair of sweatpants and a T-shirt, then went into the kitchen and fixed herself a turkey and cheese sandwich. She searched for a can of tomato soup she thought she had bought, but couldn’t find it. She got pissed off all over again when she realized Neal had probably eaten it.

  “Motherfucker doesn’t even like tomato soup. He ate it just because he knows it’s my favorite,” she said aloud.

  She sat in the living room and ate her sandwich and looked at the television. The coverage of the Towers collapse was beginning to get to her, so she searched for something else to watch. She was able to find one channel with old sitcoms that didn’t mention the World Trade Center, terrorists or anything even closely related. She felt good. She kept thinking she would feel even better if she had that tomato soup. That’s when she extended her foot and kicked Neal.

  For a moment she considered calling her mother and Carmella. They were probably both out of their heads with worry. But, she needed a moment to herself. She had to think. For the first hour, she thought Neal would simply get back up and start ranting and raving all over again. When he didn’t get up, she checked his pulse. She remembered seeing people do that on television. She didn’t think she felt anything, but wasn’t sure if she was looking in the right place, so she checked her own in the same place.

  “Definitely dead,” she said matter-of-factly.

  A bit of food in her stomach and clean clothes on her back, she was able to start to see things more clearly. She looked around the apartment. There was blood all over the place. The apartment itself looked like it had been ransacked. There were not only drugs out and visible to the eye, but she was sure somewhere in the apartment there were probably more illegal substances. She remembered one of her last conversations with Wendy.

  “Wendy, if you had it to do all over again, would you make the same decision? Would you still leave it all behind; your family, your friends?

  “I absolutely would. That’s what we do, isn’t it? Whatever we have to in order to stay alive?”

  She realized that was exactly what she would have to do. She would run. She would miss her mother and Carmella, but if she could speak to them, they would agree with her. After all she had been through, she had no intention of going to prison for killing a piece of garbage like Neal. She tried to help make it easier, by telling herself that one day she might be able to see her loved ones again. However, logically, she knew she was lying to herself.

  She remembered that Neal kept a large stash of money in the house. She assumed it was the money he used to buy his drugs. She would have to sneak out undetected and would not have an opportunity to go to a bank. She had much more in her account, but there would be no way for her to get to it. After searching for at least twenty minutes she found twenty thousand dollars inside of a box in Neal’s underwear drawer.

  “It’s mine now,” she said.

  The more she thought about it the more she realized that no one had probably ever been presented with a better opportunity to disappear. The world had watched while the building she worked in collapsed to the ground. No one would ever question where she had gone or what had happened to her.

  She felt remorse about the agony her mother would be forced to endure as she hoped upon hope that she had survived. At some point, her mother would probably try to find her at Carmella’s and the apartment she once shared with Neal. Damita’s only hope was that someone else would discover Neal’s body and her mother would at least be spared that.

  She went online to figure out where she should go and if there was anyplace she could go under the circumstances. All of New York City was a mess. Fly
ing was out of the question and even if there hadn’t recently been a terrorist attack involving an airplane and flights weren’t grounded, she didn’t think flying was the way to go. She considered using Amtrak, but that would delay her departure, since the train station would take some time to recover. The only way to go would be by Greyhound bus. She booked her trip to Seattle and a motel room in New York until it was time for her to leave. She wanted to wait until things calmed down, at least a little bit, before she tried to get out of New York. She didn’t want to risk anyone coming to the house and finding her there, so she would have to find a way to leave the apartment before morning. She contacted a car company that could care less who she was and booked a ride to take her to the Staten Island motel room she had gotten. It was cheap and out of the way and no one she knew would ever find her there.

  While she was packing, she thought of Brandon and smiled. His motto was to always travel light.

  She booked both the trip to Seattle and her hotel room online. Under the circumstances, everyone would probably assume that someone had either stolen or found her credit cards, and that was if anyone even noticed that her credit cards had been used.

  As Damita fully expected, it was at least a week before it made sense for her to travel. During that week, she never left the hotel and ordered all her meals in. She considered using her credit cards to order her food, so that she would have more money available for use when she got to Seattle, but she didn’t want to take any chances. She decided she would, however, stop at an ATM machine on her way to the bus station, when she was leaving, and get as much cash off her cards as possible. There were cameras at most of the ATMs and she realized that she would have to cover and disguise herself as much as possible, so as to be unrecognizable, if it should come to that. She colored her hair dark ash blonde and cut it severely short. She wore a sweatshirt with a hood, pulled securely around her head, so as to disguise her features—just in case.