The End of the World (Trade Center)
Dispatches from out of the dust
Jo Kadlecek | posted 9/01/2001 12:00AM
9/11/01 11:30 am
Our city is bleeding. My phone has not stopped ringing. The news reports are horrifying. This is my backyard and I have to go, to try to get my head around it, to listen and respond. My bicycle will be the surest way to get 60 blocks from here. I ride.
Scores of people are walking north, heading north. A mass migration of broken people head north looking for safety.
Has this happened before?
Along the Hudson River, I ride my bicycle past a golfer who practices his putting; runners jog by, sirens and fire engines rush by. Women in power suits and no shoes walk north past workers who gather around truck radios listening for the latest updates on the attacks. Mobs of teenage students also stroll north, chatting as if nothing has happened. As if life in New York City is always chaotic and terrifying. Every other person is trying to talk with someone on a cell phone, trying to meet up with friends or find a colleague. Everyone is looking for someone as the smoke lingers over this southern end of the most powerful city in the world, but certainly not the most invincible. Not now.
People with suitcases walk up out of their hotels that were in the shadow of the now-blazing towers. I hear a tourist comment on the weather: "It's a nice day today, isn't it?" Commuters walk in the hot September sun, stranded, numb, eager to get home. Home will never be the same.
Reporters turn human and cry on air in the television I see inside a diner. Someone shouts that eight planes have now attacked the U.S. Terror invites dramatic terror.
I stop at 42nd and 10th, unable to ride any further south because so many people crowd the streets and the bike paths. Police are directing traffic. One woman in a van frantically tries to flash her credentials to a traffic cop so she can go through a red light. On the back window of her van is a bumper sticker that reads, "Who Cares?" Children in cars behind the van stare out the window with adult faces: heavy, bewildered, terrified.
I listen to the conversations of people trying to get to the ferry at the Hudson River in hopes they can get to New Jersey. Or wherever. "This is like Pearl Harbor. No, this is worse than Pearl Harbor," says one tall man in a black suit. A young Asian woman walks with her friend behind the tall man, oblivious to what I just heard. She tells her friend, "I like watching Frasier." I stare as the girl blends into the sea of battered faces, smoky streets, and vague conversations.
I get on my bike and I, too, head north. Jittery, moved, and suddenly intent on getting back to my apartment. Safety seems a tenuous gift.
* * *
9/12/01 11:30 am
I ride again down traffic-free streets on the Upper East Side to 310 East 67th Street—the New York Blood Center. Lines and lines of people waiting to donate, to do anything, spill around the corner. Most of us are given a ticket by other volunteers and told to come back. They're maxed out and don't have the capacity to take any more blood. One man in a shirt and tie challenges one of the volunteers: "I'm just trying to understand why you're doing it this way, why you're having us all line up. Why?" She smiles graciously.
We're all trying to understand. That's why we're here.
Most centers are "overburdened" because of the offers to help.. Over 300 people stood in this line alone since 8 a.m. I hear one light-hearted woman tell another: "I'm a volunteer too, just giving out cheese and crackers to you guys. You come and volunteer tomorrow at 8 a.m. and we'll both be doing something even though we don't know anything." A child in a stroller sits under a sign that says, "We need your Blood!" while her mom talks on a cell phone. As great as this tragedy has been, so great is the outpouring of people who want to help.
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