Memory has its own idiolect. It doesn’t recall the past the way you or I would. It prioritizes the oddest phrases, while relegating the most seemingly crucial subjects.
I was in my bedroom at my parents’ house in Tennessee, packing to return to Chicago the next day, for another year at Northwestern. I had a small television in that room, but it was turned off. Then I heard my mother screaming up the stairs: “Turn on the TV! Terrorists are attacking the World Trade Center!” I tend to under-react to my mother’s shouts, but this directive I followed.
When I turned on the TV, to NBC’s “Today Show,” I believe, I saw the towers burning. I think they were both burning – I think that by that point, they had both been hit, but, oddly, I don’t remember. I remember staring at the gaping holes in the sides of the buildings, and I thought, “There is no way that they will stand.” But bizarrely, to my physics-challenged mind, I thought that the top portion of the buildings, above where the planes had hit, would just fall off. I thought that the desecrated upper floors would just crumble over, like an unstable layer cake, leaving the floors below the impacts exposed to the sky. When the south tower did crumble, the north, upright, tower obscured the view of it from the news helicopter. I heard Matt Lauer say, “It looks like a piece of the south tower just fell off,” confirming my suspicion. Then, the smoke cleared; the helicopter moved across the sky, and the whole world and I saw that it wasn’t a piece that fell. The whole tower was gone, leaving a gaping hole in the earth, the sky, and our hearts.
I don’t remember what I felt.
I remember silently pleading, praying, imploring the other tower to stand: “Do not fall. Do not fall. Stay.” It felt like hours that I stood there begging, until. In horrifying, excruciatingly slow motion, the second tower sunk into the earth. I remember its large, white antenna leading the fall, bending gracefully down, as though it were solemnly bowing to greater powers.
I know that there was coverage of the Pentagon and Pennsylvania, but it was all so confused that I can’t clarify any of it, except for one vignette – Jim Miklaszewski, NBC’s Pentagon correspondent, reporting from inside the Pentagon, that he had just felt an explosion or bomb of some kind. He did not know what had happened, nor would anyone else for a few precious minutes. We were all ignorant to the scope of the horror. As the events unfolded, I, like many Americans, thought that this was the new Pearl Harbor, only much, much bigger. I knew this experience would matter for the rest of our lives. But I can’t remember so much of it.
I stood glued to that tiny, 12-inch television. I think I was there for hours. At some point, I must have looked away. I must have finished packing. I must have walked, ate, slept. I don’t remember.
I was desperate to get to Chicago. I knew I was so safe, in that sterilized suburb of Knoxville, Tennessee, and my whole body ached for empathy of their collective fear. I couldn’t do anything to help or save my people in those day-long moments, but I could join them in their shell-shocked urban anxiety. I could run towards the fire, in some small, futile way - so I thought. So I went.
Unbelievable as it is, and seemed at the time, I had never been to New York before the attacks. The only New York I know is the one I now inhabit, a New York of flea markets and dog parks and comedy clubs. I don’t wear the residue of that day on my sleeve, like so many who watched it, not on their televisions, but out their windows. I breathe it on the subway, though, beneath signs that warn, “if you see something, say something.” I smell it in the crowds that engulf me on the sidewalk as I push past tourist attractions, on my way to somewhere less conspicuously iconic. I taste its bitter tang whenever I fly into or out of New York airports. It’s a latent fear, a very specific and deserved world-wariness that defines everyday life in New York City as much as everyday life in New York City defies it.
I am planning to walk across the Brooklyn Bridge today, even thought the news warned of possible anniversary attacks. So I’ll walk quickly towards the tower rising from the ashes. But I’ll still go.
Image © Cate Sevilla for BitchBuzz.com