nmah5208.xml

nmah5208.xml

born-digital

story

yes

no

2002-10-04

I love makeup. And as a consultant whose client list included BRIDGE Technologies (58th floor of the South Tower) and Merrill Lynch (World Financial Center), I'd spent the past two years of my career in World Trade Center, frequently shopping for makeup at Sephora on the WTC lower level, and planned to head down there that day, after my morning appointments. It was on my TO DO list.

I was checking my TO DO list on the Metro North commuter train that lurched through the Bronx and paused for a long time before crossing the Harlem River Bridge at about 8:45 that morning. It was a heartbreakingly blue fall day, still warm. Suddenly the young man sitting next to me pulled the headphones off his ears, turned to me and said OH MY GOD, A PLAN JUST HIT THE WORLD TRADE CENTER. He began to cross himself.

Things slowed now, the train lurched forward and stopped, but a few minutes later we got onto the bridge, and I had a clear an unobstructed view of the southern skyline of Manhattan. There stood the North tower with a huge gash ripped into its site. It reminded me of a gored bull, oozing gray blood. It was very far away, but against the white-gray of the initial smoke I saw what I believed to be birds falling down, then flying back up on the drats. Why would birds be flying around there? I wondered as I stared.

I thought about my friends in WTC and reassured myself that they worked in the South tower, and in the World Finanical Tower. I wondered if Sephora was ok. Then, as I stared at the burning tower, I remembered all the times I'd sat in meetings as helicopters and small planes cruised close to the building, so close they made me nervous. Sometimes I thought they might even hit us, and wondered "what would happen if one of them lost control and smashed into us?" Now it had happened, I thought.

By the time we crossed the bridge and began to enter the GCT tunnel, the second plane hit, he heard it on his radio and began to almost weep. I knew then that this was no accident. People on the train were for the most part still oblivous, still on their way to work as usual. The man next to me began to panic. "We've got to get out of here, they're going to bomb Grand Central Terminal next," he said. But there was no way out of the slowly moving train. I tried to calm his fears, fighting my own rising panic, and spoke to him in soothing words tho I dont' remember what I said to him anymore.

When we finally got of the train, I remembered there was a new back entrance out of GCT. The young man was so afraid, and so convinced that we were about to be bombed that I said, "follow me," and we began to run. I lead him at a dead run through the tunnels, up an escalator, and out onto Madison Avenue. Then I never saw him again.

When I got up to the street level, I began walking toward the burnign towers as fast as I could push my way through the crowds. The streets were jammed with people watching the drama unfold, but all I could think of was "why aren't you going down there to help." The air reeked of jet fuel, and the smoke completely obliterated the southern skyline, but if you looked North, everything was blue adn normal. It was very wierd, a juxtaposition of tradgey and normality.

I stood for awhile in a group of construction workers, who were more upset than any of the rest of us and some of these big strong men with huge muscular arms were crying openly. I know now that it is because, knowing much more about construction than I did, they realized how many people were dying as we stood and watched.

One construction worker pointed at the sky above me. "It flew right over us," he said, "so close you could read the numbers. Then it turned right and there was the explosion." I looked at him and asked, "Do you think many people got out OK?

Then the first tower fell, you could feel the ground rumble. I was very frightened, even in my ignorance. People were kneeling in the streets were praying and crying. I thought that it might be the end of the world, and there was so much gray smoke, everywhere now, it was creeping up over the blue and it stunk.

Still I worried about my WTC friends... "Oh my God, I wonder if Jennifer got out..." and so forth. I kept trying to push my way south and West... down Madison Avenue, and then through Bryant Park and over to Fifth AVenue, and pushing down it. I wanted to go and help out.
My sandled toes were stepped on, my bare arms gouged by bags and I was almost knocked down by the fleeing people.

When I got a little further south, some of the early victims began passing me. They were covered in gray soot, weeping, limping, all full of little cuts like schrapnel. I realized that I was not equipped in any way to help people in this state. Finally I got through to my husband on the phone and he said, "They've hit the Pentagon, there's another plane in the air, get OUT OF THERE anyway you can. I heard there's one train being allowed out of GCT, you be on it."

I was shaken by now, my hero dreams gone. So I ran all the way back to GCT and squeezed onto one of the last trains they allowed out of town that afternoon. But it was a slow trip...they kept stopping the train so the conductors could get out and check the tracks for bombs. This was unnerving. There were also victims on the train with us, clearly in shock. I took first aid before and always wondered how you'd know if somebody was in shock. It was abundantly clear....they were in SHOCK. People were either stunned into silence, or weeping, or talking about what happened in tones of disbelief.

That afternoon I just got into my car and drove. I drove as far as I could, listening to the great music being played on the public station WFUV, and I cried. Drove and cried. When I finally composed myself, I came home and began to make calls and get on the internet and find out how and what I could do to help.

The next morning, September 12, I was back on the empty commuter train, dressed in jeans and work boots and ready to do whatever they would let me. I reported to Chelsea Piers, please let me help, I said. My friends are in there. My coworkers.

Are you an ironworker? They asked? Do you have any experience in search and rescue? No. OK, then you can sort socks. So I began by sorting socks that thousands of other New Yorkers brought, for the firemen and the rescue workers. Then I moved on the next day to join the REd Cross, who sent me to work on the Missing Persons Hotline for the City of NY.

I worked in many different volunteer jobs for the next couple of months, nearly every day, serving food to workers, comforting families of the lost, and so forth. Until I could no longer stand the immersion and emotional overload of being down in the grief pits every day. I think I nearly lost my focus on my own life for a while I became so involved in trying to help.

The entire lower half of Manhattan stunk of death. I had never smelled death before--its sweet. Sickenly sweet, I couldn't eat for days. Especially meat, especially anyting red or gooey. I coughed and choked on the air and smoke, I wept and had an emotional breakdown right in the middle of 8th Avenue when I first saw the fabulous Bronze statue for Firefighters. I had a psychic sort of "experience" where I melded with the figure on the truck, I totally LOST IT in the middle of the street. I thought they would take me away, but you know...the soldiers and policemen just stood guard over me and let me freak out. They understood.

It took hundreds of pictures of the memorials erected spontaneously by people on the streets after September 11th. That was a very heartening thing. I made new friends and held hands and wept with total strangers. I got saved on a street corner by a Baptist preacher and confessed my sins and prepared to meet my God, right on the corner of 7th Avenue, right here in Manhattan.

It's all over now, but sometimes in the dark of night I lie in my bed and I think about the way the old WTC Sephora used to look. Its rows and rows of colorful makeup arranged under high-tech lights, and how I still carry makeup in my makeup bag that I bought there.

I don't think my husband understood why I was doing this. We couldn't talk about it, it put a major strain on my marriage but I didn't care anymore. I was there...it was a lot different if you were there, if you stood and watched people die and buildings crumble before your very eyes.

I have put away my WTC badge now, but I still keep my volunteer badges tacked to my bulletin board. My involvement in the WTC recovery is the one thing in my life of which I am most proud.

After the towers fell, I lost my job and my career. I made my living in Wall Street, and when their economy collapsed, so did mine. Since that time the only work I could find was to go into teaching college part-time, which I am still doing. So my life changed in that way, and instead of being one of the privileged techno-elite, I am now still struggling for survival.

But my life also has changed because I came to understand two things that day: (1) life is very short. Enjoy it. Dance the tango, eat the best chocolate you can afford, drink champagne anytime it's offered; and (2) be kind. You never know what someone else is going through.

The people who died, and the people who struggled to save them. The spirit of the whole country and how we rose up against the oppressors. And that freedom is not free.

From the day after the attack, people in Manhattan started flying flags. We didn't have enough of them at first, so we drew them and painted them and sketched them in chalk on the sidewalk.