Nine Eleven

Our mountain bikes flew downhill over twigs and rocks on the foggy park trail in Ann Arbor. The trail curved along the edge of a steep drop-off. My muscles ached but adrenaline was helping me keep up with them. We went over a patch of tree roots, slick with rain. I watched my front tire hit a wet root the wrong way and slip sideways. I went over the edge and crashed through the brush on the hillside. Later, sore and limping slightly but bandaged, I rushed to the airport to catch my Monday evening flight to La Guardia.

The tech company I worked for in Ann Arbor sent me to New York for a Tuesday meeting with NYMEX at our office in the financial district. I checked in to my room at the Marriot and had a late dinner in Tower One of the World Trade Center. The next morning, I was supposed to be outside catching a cab, but having forgotten the key to the Manhattan office, I had no reason to hurry downstairs. I stood in the bathroom brushing my teeth when I heard what sounded like the pipes bursting in my hotel room ceiling. I looked up. The sound grew louder and louder until I started fearing the ceiling wouldn’t hold. I imagined being crushed by the weight of floors above me, so I left the bathroom and heard pounding on my windows on the 18th floor. I saw burning debris landing on the roofs of surrounding buildings and flaming chunks flying past my window, some striking the glass like fastballs. It seemed like the window was about to shatter, so I ran for the door. I didn’t want to get stuck in the elevator, so I headed for the stairs.

After the barrage against the building, I expected the stairwell to be full of people, but when I stepped through the door, it was deserted. Then I heard the eeriest sound. Faraway wails were coming down through the long stairwell, and as I started to run down the stairs, it was like I was being chased by howling demons. After a few flights, I realized I was hearing screams echoing down through the stairwell. When I came out of the stairwell, there were four or five people already there, and we tried to figure out where we were. It wasn’t the lobby. There weren’t any signs. Even after we found a railing and saw the lobby below, we couldn’t figure out how to get down from the mezzanine; everyone was anxious. We ran in different directions trying doors and someone finally found one unlocked leading to more stairs.

There were about 40 people in the lobby, and more were rushing in from the street bleeding and crying; some were in shock. Someone was shouting about broken glass, and I realized the sound I had mistaken for bursting water pipes upstairs had been glass, pouring down on the building. Discussions were going on throughout the lobby about what could have happened. I heard a few guesses about a construction accident because there were renovations going on in the hotel; someone remembered seeing a crane. Maybe there had been an explosion. Someone said something about an airplane. I pictured a little twin engine plane. But how could it have caused so much damage? Security guards stood at the hotel door and wouldn’t let anyone leave because the street was a mess. I looked out the front window and saw piles of burning debris, pieces of jagged sheet metal sticking awkwardly into the fronts of buildings and vehicles, and clumps of unrecognizable stuff of all sizes. Hotel staff were covering the clumps with white tablecloths.

Someone at the front desk heard that hijackers had flown a plane into the World Trade Center. The hotel staff tried directing everyone up to the second-floor lounge by offering free drinks. It was around nine in the morning. They didn’t want anyone to look out the windows, but the entire front of the lobby was windows, so they pulled curtains shut. I stayed in a corner acting like I was using my cell phone although it wasn't working. I was afraid that if I didn’t look busy they would make me go upstairs to the cocktail lounge and I wanted to be as close to a door as possible.

Injured people were still stumbling in crying or panicking, but a few of them seemed mostly annoyed that they couldn’t get to work. One such man got on the front desk phone and made a call. “I’ll be over there in 15 minutes; part of the road is blocked so I can’t get a cab, but I’ll run over. Don’t let the meeting start without me.” I thought he must have lost his mind. As he spoke, he dabbed a bleeding spot on his face with a handkerchief.

A pretty girl next to me in the lobby was in tears because her cell phone wasn’t working. She said her family was staying in another hotel nearby and she didn’t know how she would meet up with them. Suddenly we heard an explosion, screaming, and a large group of bloody people rushed in from the street through the revolving doors and that’s when an overwhelming panic began. It turned on and off for the next five hours, with brief interludes of people trying to make sense of a senseless situation. Then the wind would shift and bring a cloud of debris back overhead, or a piece of glass would break somewhere, and the screaming and panic would surge again. Once panic took over the crowd, I wanted to try to get away from the adrenaline driving everyone into fight or flight. I went behind a curtain that was blocking off an employee-only area from the lobby. There was a small foyer at the bottom of a stairwell and an open doorway into what looked like a kitchen. About five other people followed me behind the curtain. We could see an employee exit nearby, but a hotel security guard was blocking it.

The plaster walls in that small corridor felt safer than being near all the windows in the lobby. I crouched in a corner thinking that, if the building collapsed, maybe a small pocket of air would form there where I could survive for a few days until someone rescued me. Others moved around nervously trying to decide what to do next, including the girl whose family was in another hotel. After a while the guard moved and I slipped out the door with a man who was pulling a suitcase.

We spoke for a moment about which direction to go. The man looked about 35, medium build, had dark hair thinning on top, and was dressed professionally. He said he was in the middle of giving a presentation in a hotel conference room when he saw the giant Marriott sign drop past the window, and he decided to stop and ask everyone to leave. We hurried south, then stopped and looked behind us and saw someone jumping out a window of the north tower towards a glass awning below. The man held my elbow a moment and asked if I was OK. We continued together, maneuvering around debris. Behind us, we could still hear glass breaking at the towers and the impact of people falling. Most people around us were walking as fast as they could without breaking into a run, heading south since the road was messier to the north. People were abandoning belongings everywhere so they could move faster. There were strollers, bags and briefcases, but mostly shoes. Suddenly nobody wanted anything they would normally stop to pick up; they just wanted to shed their possessions and stay alive.

At the first intersection we crossed, I looked up the street and saw giant wheels attached to twisted metal buried about two feet into the asphalt. “Landing gear,” said the man. I never realized how big the tires on landing gear were -- I’ve always seen them from a distance. I wished I had a camera because that sight was so surreal, I didn’t want to take my eyes off it but we kept moving.

The man quickly turned me when he saw something, trying to prevent me from seeing it. It was too late. The inside-out body reminded me of a school science lesson when everyone is surprised to hear how long the intestines are when uncoiled. I imagined someone was at an airport waiting for this person.

We passed another car divided almost in half by a sheet of metal. It looked as if someone had taken a Matchbox car and hammered a razor blade through it. Other large pieces of metal were jammed into the fronts of buildings, the road, and other vehicles. About six blocks farther on, we stopped and looked back, along with others in the street, and just stared at the gaping holes burning in the towers. That’s when the man introduced himself as Mark from Connecticut. One woman in the group said she thought she’d go back to her apartment and get her shoes. We all told her to forget it. A woman rushing by heard us talking and tossed the barefoot woman her gym bag and said, “Take my bag, there’s a pair of shoes in there for you.”

As we stood there, I told Mark that when Hudson’s department store was imploded in Detroit, the debris cloud surged through the surrounding streets much farther than expected. I suggested we keep moving. A gray-bearded guy overheard me and said with a heavy New York accent, "There's no way in Hell the trade center is coming down." Mark agreed that the farther away we got, the better, and we continued south. He said water could get scarce if we ended up stranded somewhere or the water supply was tainted, so as we headed toward Battery Park and he bought a few bottles of water from a vendor and stuck them in his bag.

People without phones were begging strangers to use theirs, running up to each other: “Can I use your phone to call my wife? I think she’s still in there.” But there was no cell service. I hated to keep trying my phone for fear someone would see me and get their hopes up that I had service.

A few people were huddled calmly trying to decide on a plan of action. Most were falling apart: in shock, crying, men in disheveled, dusty business suits sobbing, some bleeding, everyone walking in a daze. Then we heard the thunder of the first tower coming down. A wall of people came running toward us screaming, followed by a massive gray cloud that was overtaking them. We ran with them and crouched under the ledge of a small brick building where you buy tickets to get on a ferry. There was another woman under the counter holding her baby. The crowd rushed past us in a frenzy, their faces full of fear and shock, as the dense cloud quickly surrounded us. Some people running by would yell at us, "Run! You're going to die there." Others would yell, "Stay there! You're in the best spot." People were trying to be helpful, but even the security guards were confused and frenzied.

We finally decided to go toward the ferries and stepped out in the air thick with debris. Mark wished the woman with the baby good luck. We came upon an area where there were a few parked vehicles. The back of a linen truck was open, and a man was throwing cloth napkins to people to tie over their faces. We joined the crowd, and he tore up a large tablecloth and gave us pieces. Everyone walked around looking like bandits with their eyes showing above a white triangular mask. I looked at my new friend Mark and noticed a pile of debris settled over his balding spot making him look like a Jewish man with a grayish-white kippah on his head.

We continued toward the ferries when the wind suddenly shifted over the Hudson and blew the debris back toward us. Everyone in the direction of the ferries started screaming and running toward us while people were still coming from the opposite direction. It seemed there was nowhere to go and we’d be trampled. We crouched behind a small, white car. I peeked out at the charging crowd and didn’t think the car would stop them, but it did. We shared some of our water with a couple of women behind the car who were crying and couldn't speak English. We heard military planes flying above the debris and looked up to find them. It was too thick to see anything. I was afraid they weren’t American planes and thought I kept getting closer to a different but not easier death.

The crowds finally diminished and Mark and I admitted to each other that we had to find a restroom, so we stepped away from the car. A woman suddenly ran up to me and asked, “Are you a doctor?” I felt useless and said no and she ran off. It made me think about how I worked for an e-commerce company: I helped people shop faster. When it came to life and death, and possessions were suddenly meaningless, I couldn’t find any purpose in that.

Mark and I found a building with a heavy back door that wasn’t closed all the way and went through it. It turned out to be the kitchen of a large restaurant or cafeteria. The kitchen staff in their white shirts didn’t mind us coming in; they were listening to the Spanish news on the radio. We walked through to the seating area at the front of the café. Then we heard thunder again. This time, everyone in the room recognized the sound. We knew the second tower was collapsing. Crowds of people ran in all directions screaming again and it looked like a blizzard outside. You couldn't see a thing. We ran back into the kitchen and hid under a large, stainless steel counter until the mayhem started to die back down. A panicking woman ran into the kitchen and yelled, “My baby quit breathing from too much debris and needs a tracheotomy, can someone help me?” Again, I wished I was a doctor, but one of the cooks grabbed a knife and followed her. He had the confidence to try. Under the stainless counter we listened to the radio. Maybe hours passed. I found a place to plug in my cell phone to charge it. Although I still couldn’t make any calls, I thought the charge might come in handy later if we ended up stranded somewhere without electricity. The manager of the restaurant asked me to watch the back door because there was too much mayhem in the streets and only unlock it for people who worked there - he said they’d knock three times. But I let everyone in who came to the door and hurried them through to the main seating area. One woman who came in was in shock and couldn’t speak. I led her to a chair and got her some water. The employees were pouring glasses of bottled water for everyone in the restaurant.

Mark saw a patch of clear sky out the back door and went outside to figure out an escape route. He was gone so long I started to worry. He came back and said we could get a ferry to Jersey City. He was surprised that there wasn’t a line. We went to the ferry and walked on and sat down. Mark said it was like a lifeboat from the Titanic: there were only about fifteen people on the ferry while thousands were stranded in the destroyed streets. One New York couple actually got off the ferry - we heard the guy tell his girlfriend, "There's nothing in Jersey."

Once in Jersey City, a woman came up to me and asked if she could use my phone - I had been trying but it still wasn’t working. Her parents were behind her and couldn’t speak English. She said her sister worked in the World Trade Center. I handed her my phone to try, and miraculously, the call connected. She spoke a moment in another language and started crying and she said to us, “Her alarm clock didn’t go off. She’s still at home!” She turned and told her parents in their language, and they all hugged and cried in relief. Things you fear telling your family crossed my mind: financial problems, a bad marriage, wrong decisions. But when you could be dead, none of that seemed important anymore. I still couldn’t get a phone call through to Michigan, so I tried calling an old boyfriend that had moved to California. The call worked and I asked him to call my parents for me.

We walked until we came upon a Marriott Hotel and were relieved thinking we finally found refuge since we started at a Marriott. The guards at the front door wouldn't let us in because we didn’t have a reservation. We told them we had just come from the World Trade Center, but they said we had to prove it. Of course, we had nothing from our hotel with us, so they made us leave. We walked to the seawall and gathered with others watching the scene on the other side of the river in disbelief. The fires and smoke continued, and we watched the #7 tower collapse. A young man wearing his baseball cap backwards shouted across the river, “We’re going to get you back, ragheads!” He needed someone to hate and decided an entire people were responsible. Mark and I exchanged glances and moved away. I sat against a tree and found a pair of nice sunglasses on the ground. It seemed odd, after all the pairs of sunglasses I’d lost in my lifetime, to find one here.

Mark recognized the name of an apartment complex as part of the same company that owned where he lived. We went in and the employees were very kind to everyone. They had put out a large table covered with food and drinks for anyone who wandered in. There must have been 100 people sitting in different areas watching the events on TV. That was the first time we understood what had happened: those massive jets, full of human beings and fuel, those incredible towers, all those people. I couldn’t watch.

My phone finally connected and I called my parents. They were waiting by the phone. We stood watching the city burn across the river as dusk fell. Mark struck up a conversation with a 65-year-old woman who was working toward her law degree. She called her husband and he was on his way down from upstate New Jersey. Mark asked her if we could hitch a ride, maybe to a rest area near Poughkeepsie. He had a brother in upstate New York that could meet us there. The woman agreed and eventually her haggard husband arrived. He said the roads were shut down and he had to drive the wrong direction down the highway to get her.

They dropped us off at the rest area in northern New Jersey and Mark’s brother picked us up. When we got in the truck his brother asked, “How did you two meet?”

Mark told him, “Tripping over the same dead body.”

Mark’s family pampered me with a beautiful guest room and shower, clothes, and hot food back in New York. We turned in, leaving the family watching the news while Mark and I tried to absorb the day we had just lived. In the morning they took me to stores to get shoes and replace some necessities I lost. There weren’t any cars to be rented in New York, so Mark took me to his apartment in Connecticut and arranged a rental car for me for the next day. I noticed he had a picture of the twin towers hanging in his bathroom; he loved those buildings.

The next morning, I drove halfway across Pennsylvania listening to the news on the radio and coughing up debris. I finally had to stop listening to the madness and switched to a classical music station. I stopped for the night and got a room near the Little League Museum. I called Mark to see how he was faring. He said that someone drove past on a loud motorcycle and the sound scared him so badly he started crying and couldn’t stop. I called home to talk to my 7-year-old daughter; I needed some stability. But there was confusion when she answered. First she said she was home alone, then she said she wasn’t. It was unnerving.

My daughter wrote a letter that said, “Dear God, Thank you for safeing My Mom! from My Mom to crashing into the twin towers.” I keep it with my dinner receipt from Tower 1.

Dreams, day and night: mostly plane crashes and other disasters. An old recurring dream returned with an unsettling familiarity. Sometimes I wondered whether one trauma had somehow awakened another. In the dream it is the late 1800s and I’m on a train dressed in a black Victorian traveling suit. A small boy is with me and we’re crossing the Midwest when a bridge collapses and the train plunges into a river. I open a window and see shallow water near a rocky bank. I take the boy and pass women in Victorian dresses who are screaming, crying, trying to collect themselves. In the back train car, I push him through a window into the shallow water, put one high-buttoned, black boot through after him, and maneuver myself out into the river. We wade through the water and escape the crash.

People in Michigan were devastated too, but they had experienced September 11 from a distance. When I went to my daughter’s school the secretary asked me what happened. I barely said anything and she was crying. I found a therapist and when I started telling him some things that were keeping me awake, he started crying. I learned to keep it to myself. I told people it was just like what they saw on TV, that it was good to be home, and left it at that.

Back at work, I was told I could take some time, but I didn’t understand what time. Use my vacation? I might need it later and if I took it now, what would I do, stay home by myself and re-live one moment after another? A few months later, I went to work and found a collection of post-September 11 photographs from the Museum of Modern Art highlighted on our intranet home page. The president of the company had specifically asked that no one post 9/11 photographs there. I couldn’t understand why someone had posted them after he said not to. In my mind I saw the towers as I had last seen them in person. I sat there frozen at my desk crying for over two hours. People sat around me at their desks, but no one acknowledged that they noticed I was falling apart. I finally was able to move my arm and send an email to a co-worker. She came and helped me out of the building and walked with me. Eventually I calmed down enough to get in my car and drive, by myself, nowhere. I finally took a week vacation. My manager had told me I was “the last person that would ever be let go,” but the day I got back from vacation she told me they had laid me off while I was gone. Then there was nothing else to think about but the train going off the tracks, car crashes, shipwrecks, explosions, body parts. Later, someone from work called and told me the company had forgotten to schedule the meeting with NYMEX. I didn’t need to be in New York that day at all.

That day I had watched strangers help one another: sharing water, giving away shoes, offering phones, rides, and food. For a little while, everyone seemed to belong to everyone else. But thousands of people never made it home. Their cars remained in parking garages, their pets waited to be fed, and their children, spouses, parents, and friends waited for people who would never come back.

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Hear water rushing through a house’s plumbing and think of breaking glass and of the people who chose to jump.

Drive down the road and see an animal that has been hit and think it’s human.

See them in slow motion: the bleeding, the people wandering in shock, unable to comprehend what surrounds them. The people screaming and running because they’re surrounded by crowds of people screaming and running. Always hear the screaming. Stop going to events with crowds.

Enter a building and immediately locate the stairs, the windows, the exits.

Look in a closet or by the front door and straighten any disheveled shoes, or put them away, so you don’t feel like running from them.

Remember YOU’RE LUCKY TO BE ALIVE, YOU’RE A SURVIVOR; LUCKY, SURVIVOR.

Someone cracks a joke at a 4th of July party with “burning flesh” in the punchline. Toss and turn for the next few nights crying on and off.

Call Mark in Connecticut and ask how he deals with the images of the body parts. He says, “When I accidentally stepped in the first body, I immediately told myself I was walking across my kitchen floor and had slipped on spilled ketchup. You’re still trying to find a face in those pieces, thinking of them as people with names and waiting families.” Yes. He says, “I force myself to think of them as inanimate objects like they aren’t people, but stuff … like chunks of chicken.” Stop having ketchup or eating chicken.

Wonder when I will start doing something that makes a difference.

A plane flies too close over the house and I think, “This is it, they’re getting us back. Our government invaded a country and now we’re going to get it. What kind of plane is that? Is it us or them?”

Knew the towers were going to come down but didn’t go back. There’s the logic of “you could have been killed,” but still: you knew, and you didn’t go back and try to help them get out. That’s the rub this year. Last year it was “why them and not me?” Next year will be coping with people saying it was fake, then it will be something else But Never Forget.