IV: Pilgrimage
I keep looking around myself and seeing things as they might look in poignant newspaper photos if we had died. For example, on the refrigerator is a message from my niece's recent visit, decorated in drawings. "I will miss you," it says.
The thing of it is, I was unscathed. I didn't lose any friends or family; everyone I know who worked in or near the towers made it out alive. Although once the full list of victims is known, I suspect I will find a familiar name: an acquaintance of some years past, a friend of a friend--I can't believe you can take thousands of people out of the world without it reaching within a couple degrees of separation of pretty much everyone.
But because today the faces on the posters, the names in the newspaper (which I scan like the old Chicago South Side Irish do the daily obituaries) are unfamiliar, I feel as if I'm not entitled to my grief and mourning. And without a funeral to attend, where will I find closure?
Baseball came back a week after the atrocity. The people of Pittsburgh greeted the New York Mets, as ambassadors of this injured city, with "I LOVE NY" buttons and a giant banner inscribed with messages of support, reading ³NY and Pittsburgh: We Are Family.² How to tell them thank you, that this means so much? The banner came back to New York on Friday the 21st, along with the Mets.
There was better security at Shea Stadium that night than at some airports I've been to. Long lines swirled around the circular exterior, as fans and their belongings were inspected with metal detector wands, and asked to open purses, empty out bags. Plainclothes security officers, known by their earpieces and the black bands on their sleeves, walked up and down the line, eyes scanning, stopping, scanning. Police and uniformed stadium security circulated.
But inside it was the World Series. Even though it wasnıt. It was the celebration of something miraculous, extraordinary: ordinariness.
Finally, after a week that had lasted years, there was something to cheer for. At the seventh inning, when Liza Minnelli led us in singing ³New York, New York² backed by an impromptu kick line of rescue workers, tears ran down my face for the first time.
Because if we could make it here, in a city ripped apart . . .
==
If you don't know, lower Manhattan doesn't work like its upper parts. The grid of numbered avenues and streets doesn't exist downtown. Streets splay out in assorted directions and carry names, not numbers, as they grew up in the original New York, when uptown was suburbs and farmland. In its plan, in certain remnants like Trinity Church (currently inaccessible, as it sat in the shadow of the towers), it reflects the oldest of the city; but in those twin towers, it reflected the powerful modernity of this place, as if striking out from the foundation of New York and rocketing toward the heavens.
Today, it evokes a new future, a dystopia of disaster, desecration, and death.
There are many who hate that there is a constant stream of people from all over who are coming, they say, to gawk. To make the deaths of thousands into disaster tourism.
The frozen zone began at 14th Street; now it begins at Canal. The Village, shut down for days, is busy but subdued, with streetside restaurant tables more often empty than full. There are flags in windows and messages of sympathy and remembrance, but you don't see the red, white, and blue ribbons or flag pins on lapels here. That's for tourists, for people who weren't exiled from their homes then returned to clean away the dust of destruction.
There are candles. At a memorial at Canal Street there is a note asking that the lights not be allowed to go out, that unlit candles be relit. Most of the candles are out. No one makes an effort to relight them; if they did, the stiff breeze would undo their efforts. It has been a week now, and there isn't much hope left of finding anyone alive. Giuliani has gradually withdrawn that hope, first saying that the chances of finding anyone were growing slim, then allowing that many families might not ever have anything of their lost loved ones. We've known this for some time, but he is in charge of deciding when to say it out loud.
I have to see. It's not tourism; it's pilgrimage. "What are you looking for?" Rob asks me. I can't put it into words. I'm not even sure I know. I think maybe it's catharsis.
==
On the way, above the frozen zone, there is a store window is filled with giant coffee cups decorated with the skyline and marked ³In loving memory.² The Starbucks at Union Square has a Red Cross computer for people to register that they are safe, for anyone who might be seeking them. (In the hours after the attacks, my sister, who lives in the Midwest and wasnıt sure where I might be relative to the towers, left a series of increasingly terrified messages on my home voice mail, begging me to report in, until she got the message Iıd left with my grandmother that we were safe. How many other peopleıs family members not familiar with the city, or friends not in close touch, were left wondering?)
The world changes a bit at Canal and Broadway. Vehicles are pulled over and searched by troopers; passengers must alight from cabs; a truck driver provides ID and a bill of lading; everyone in a vehicle must prove they have reason to be there. A couple in a car try to turn downtown, the woman with a map spread open in her lap. Disaster tourists.They are denied passage.
The world changes a lot below Chambers Street. The streets are lined with armed Guardsmen and concrete barriers. Most of the stores are closed; a few operate with little light and signs that say SORRYCASH ONLY. There is a piece of paper with a handwritten note taped outside a bank that is closed: ATM ON LEFT SHOULD WORK.
Deeper into the zone the air tastes crunchy; as the breeze shifts, people pulls scarves and collars over their mouths. Everything is chiaroscuro grey. The only traffic is a truck loaded with armed soldiers, standing, staring outward. We have entered another country, an alternate reality.
There is a jewelry store window filled with debris, dust inches deep forming hills on the displays. Dust limns the colonial gravestones of Trinity churchyard. On the sidewalk, a woman hawks flag pins, but no one is buying.
Clots of people form, mostly silent, at the points where you can see the wreckage. Some of the offices have reopened, some of the workers are working behind smoke and dust-stained windows. A man hovers just outside an office building sucking hard on his cigarette as he stares, brow crinkled, at the ruins.
Near me a woman prays in a whisper. People move away, give her space. Three women speaking a language I canıt identify take turns taking pictures of each other with the debris in the background. They are not smiling. I take pictures, not of people but of the place, for the same reason I am here: I cannot believe such an unimaginable thing is real until I see it with my own eyes, and even then I fear I will have only imagined it if I donıt come away with proof. A cop, voice breaking, shouts at us to stop taking pictures: ³Itıs a graveyard!² he pleads, turning back to the banner-covered respite center for the rescue/recovery workers at St. Paulıs. A man stands with a small child sitting on his shoulders. ³Remember this,² he says to the child. ³I know you donıt understand it, but remember.²
V: Coming of
Age in an Imperfect World