Old Miss
By
She was called Old Miss. She was old when she first appeared outside
the World Trade Center in the late 1970’s and grew older through the years that
she sat there, outside the main door of the North Tower. Black like soot, tiny and wrinkled, Old Miss
was there rain and shine, with a paper coffee cup held out in her hand. She would shake it just enough to let the
coins inside shift in silver music.
When someone added some coins to her cup, her voice was as southern as
gumbo, dark and murky, with enough spice to make the recipient smile as she
said, “Thank yah suh” or “blest yore soul ma’am”. She never begged, just added a deep, bluesy hum to the silver
song of her change.
She was occasional topic of water
cooler conversation, and coffee station speculation. How old was she, where did she live, why didn’t the cops and
guards move her along like they did with the other homeless and begging souls
that crept into the financial district looking for a handout? Our best guess was that she was so
unobtrusive that no one had ever complained, and she added a bit of color to
our drab, green-backed world. We would
joke that she was a better financial barometer than the Nasdaq, for in bad
times she would have a battered cup from Dunkin’ Donuts or McDonald’s that she
used over and over before replacing it with another, more sturdy cup taken from
the garbage and rinsed carefully. But
during the golden days of DotCom day trading, she had a new cup from Starbucks
every morning.
On this beautiful late summer day, she
had a new cup from McD’s, reflecting the not great, but not horrible economic
times. I reached into my pocket and
withdrew a handful of change. Because
of the bright sun in the azure sky, I was feeling generous and poured the whole
handful into her cup in a delightful jangle.
Most days I would pick out a few quarters and plunk them in, but like I
said, it was a beautiful Tuesday morning.
“Thank yah suh.” she said, her fading
black eyes meeting mine for an instant.
I could see the milky gleam of cataracts before she lowered her
lids. It bothered me in a back of the
mind way, a small ethical part of me disliked an old woman going blind sitting
there living on the spare change of strangers.
But it passed from my mind before I could do more than acknowledge the
thought and I made my way up to the 43rd floor.
I got into my office, nodded to the
secretaries at the coffee station and made my way to my desk by the
window. I booted up the computer and
began arranging my day’s work. I was
sorting accounts when my window started to hum and vibrate. One of the secretaries said something about
a plane flying too
low
when the entire building shook and boomed.
Screams erupted as alarm bells clanged and emergency lights
flashed. My first thought was another
bomb, like the one back in ’93. I stood
and tried to speak above the din, telling folks to calm down and remember the
evacuation drills we had every 6 months or so.
A very
pregnant, young woman was standing by the elevator, relentlessly pushing the
down button as tears streamed down her face, repeating in a monotone “I can’t
die today. I can’t die today.”
I put my arm
around her shoulder and led her away toward the stairwell. “Good.
Stick with me, cause I can’t die today either and I like being with
positive thinkers.” I gave her a big
goofy grin and she startled herself by grinning back. Then she gave me a smile in quiet thank you and joined the procession
of those who had lined up to orderly go down the stairs. Most people were calm, some joking about
getting a week off from the gym after the workout they were going to get.
My
administrative assistant finished checking out our suite of offices and gave me
the all clear. “One of the supervisors
from upstairs said that it was a bomb up by the 90th floor and it’s
confined there. Sure you want to climb
all the way down?”
“Let’s go for it.” I told her. “We’ll all go for brunch and then get back
to work. Why waste a reason to go out
on such a beautiful day?”
Her smile lit up her face and made me momentarily
sorry that I was forty years her senior, and happily married. Such beauty and such youth made me long to
be her boyfriend and skip off to Coney Island with her. I sighed and settled for a leisurely walk
down the stairs.
Within the stairwell, the crowds pressing together
made a human ocean, pulsing downward.
Some of those surrounding us were bleeding from cuts and smudged with
soot. It made me think of Old Miss, and
I wondered if she were OK in the tidal wave of humanity pouring out into the
street. I no sooner thought this when a
scream echoed down the stairs.
“A plane flew into the South tower!!!
Oh God, a plane full of people hit the Tower!!!” Gasps and sobs filled the space between the
physical jolt we all felt. The tide
moved faster and with more purpose than before. The verbal worries bounced from the walls. Some were worried about friends, lovers,
spouses. Others were fearful of what
might happen next. A wave of panic was
building when a firefighter came squeezing upstairs.
“Everyone stay calm and keep going.” His Brooklyn accent was as broad as he was
big, and there was an authority about him that reassured all within reach of
his voice. “Youse continue out to the
street and then get clear for my boys to do their work.” He marched past us, going up and continuing
his instructions.
I looked at my lovely assistant and saw fear in her
eyes. I gave her hand a squeeze and
made her continue walking down the stairs.
I felt fear myself, a fear that increased as smoke began to filter down
the stairs among us. We passed the sign
for the 30th floor, then the 20th. There were a few people who had pulled off
and were sitting on the landings, trying to stay out of the way while obviously
trying to catch their breath. A woman
stopped me with her hand, grabbing mine from her seated position by the wall.
“They are jumping from the top.” she said tonelessly. “They are falling from the windows. I saw a man upside down, falling, falling…” her
voice faded into a sob. I gently
withdrew my hand. I debated staying
with her for an instant, but a firefighter nudged me from behind. His look told me to get going, so I did. My brain kept trying to wrap itself around
the thought that people were jumping from the top of the Tower. It was impossible to comprehend falling that
distance, or the compulsion to jump out to begin with.
Long after I had wanted, and long before I expected,
I found myself exiting the stairwell into the ground floor lobby. Firefighters were directing the waves of
people into lines to exit the doors into the street. I maneuvered myself to exit the far left door; the door near
where Old Miss always sat. I was
stunned into motionlessness as I first saw outside into the street. My mind tried to convince itself that
somehow 5 months had passed in the stairwell; the sky out of the windows was
black, and a white and yellow blizzard had blanketed the streets. The blizzard illusion left as I exited the
doors and felt heated pressure compressing my lungs.
As I was pushed from behind, I took enough time to
scope out the area where Old Miss had always been. I saw a flattened coffee cup and scattered change, and no sign of
Old Miss herself. My heart sank as I
thought of her being swept along in the panic, blind and helpless. I tried to remove myself from the tide of
people, to stand aside to see if I could see her. I actually managed to shrink up against the wall when my arm was
grabbed and I was pulled along the street in a full run.
When I finally was able, I looked to see a New York
City Cop holding onto my arm, half dragging, half pushing me. He met my eyes and nodded at me, but didn’t
spare a breath in conversation. About a
block away, he pulled me into a deli.
“Stay here, Old Timer. Stay here and out of the way.”
He exited and ran back the way we came, but I no sooner had entered and
closed the door when a black cloud came sweeping up the street like something
out of the Old Testament. The Greeks
who ran the Deli were running their rosaries, but I was glued to the window,
seeing the cloud go by. It wasn’t Old
Testament, I decided. It was Wizard of
Oz, with paper and chairs and people being swept by. Finally the old woman who ran the place came to me and led me
away from the door.
“T’is badness out dere. T’is Devil’s work. You
come to pray wit’ us.”
And I did. I
prayed with them, even though I didn’t know their prayers.
Time passed, I’m not sure how long it was. We waited, and prayed, and cried, and said
very little to each other. There were
no words for what we were feeling, the experience we were sharing. It felt like years passed in that garlic
reeking shop before a young firefighter came for us. He was gray from head to foot, and his eyes were young and
frightened. But despite his fear, he
calmed us down with reassuring sounds and led us down to the ferry landing.
My disbelief grew as I heard the conversation of the
crowd waiting for their turn on the ferry.
Both towers had fallen, complete rubble. There had been no warning before the first collapse and many
rescue personnel were believed to have been trapped. I thought of the brawny firefighter I had seen in the stairwell,
the one with the Brooklyn accent. He’d
been headed to the top floors. Was he
one of those missing?
My mind continued to think of those who might be
missing. The woman on the landing who
saw the people jumping, the janitor who worked in the basement. I hoped that my AA had made it out, and the
young pregnant receptionist.
But no matter how many others I thought of, my mind
kept returning to Old Miss. I don’t
know why she was the one who stuck in my mind, we’d never passed a word other
than our daily exchange. Not what you
would call a relationship. A good
friend from college worked in the South Tower and teased me about his 99th
floor office when we saw each other at the gym. I should have been thinking of him, and so many others that I had
known. But it was that shrunken, old
black face that haunted me.
I finally got home to my weeping wife and
indifferent cat and glued myself to the television. The images of the plane and the towers falling were
unbelievable. I was there and it
was still unbelievable. Things like
that didn’t happen in the United States of America. I was a veteran of the Korean conflict and knew that this
act of war must have been a collective dream.
We ate something thawed and microwaved for dinner,
never leaving the TV, waiting for… I’m not exactly sure what we were waiting
for, but our nation was waiting together, tied by the glowing screen in our
living rooms and bedrooms.
It was well after midnight when we went to bed. We undressed, made clumsy, survivor love,
and wept in each other’s arms until sleep took us.
I woke as I did every morning at 5:45 AM and began
my morning as I always did; shower while the coffee perked, news on at 6. Then I remembered and I started to cry
again. My wife came out to hold me
while I cried, then I held her while she cried, and then I lost my temper. I screamed and yelled and threw things and
wanted to kill something. The cat, in
infinite wisdom, decided to hide far away from me. So I went outside and killed a rosebush. And then my wife mended my torn hands and
held me while I cried some more.
I felt pretty stupid and useless by then. I sat in my chair with coffee cup gingerly
held in my hands and watched the news.
Something made me pay attention in between the droning talking heads and
horrific images. It was a shot of a
crowd that was forming near where the towers had been. They were all holding up flyers with
pictures of their missing loved ones, looking for information. I almost forgot to breathe as an idea formed
then stormed my mind. I went into my
den and ignoring my inflamed, wounded hands, found an old charcoal pencil and
some drafting paper. I sat at my desk
and tried to draw Old Miss from my memory.
I crumpled sheet after sheet in failed attempts to recreate the face in
my head, until my hand found the rhythm and I was able to get a good likeness
of the wizened old face with the faded eyes and floral head wrap.
My wife drove me down to the office supply store
where they copied the picture and added a request for any information
concerning “Old Miss” and made a flyer for me.
The girl behind the counter confided that it was close to the hundredth
information flyer she had made in the past 24 hours, with many in the
neighborhood missing family members.
“But ya know somethin’?” she added. “Folks like, look at each other now, like
we’re all people on the same planet, ya know what I mean?” I did know what she meant. People met my eyes as we passed in the
street, something they hadn’t done much two days before.
“I know,” my wife answered the girl. “It was like this when President Kennedy was
shot. Everyone felt very connected in
their grief.”
“Yeah!” the girl vigorously agreed. “Everyone connected in grief. That’s a great way of putting it.” She nodded to herself as she rang up our
bill. “It’s a bitch it takes somethin’
like this to make folks get connected.”
There was no answer for that comment, so we didn’t
even try.
It was hard to sleep that night, but I suppose I
must have, for I awoke Thursday morning at 5:45AM. I took my shower, drank my coffee, watched the news, and then
caught my train. I had to get off two
stops before my usual stop because my usual stop and the one before it no
longer existed I was informed. Those
tracks and tunnels were currently buried in the rubble.
The stench took my breath away and I tried hard not
to vomit as I rose to the street. I
steeled myself and walked towards what they were beginning to call “Ground
Zero”. I didn’t begin to get close when
the crowds of people began to clog the streets. Candles burned along the wall and in the gutter, and every space
had a flyer plastered on it, thousands of faces staring from paper tacked to
walls and held in shaking hands.
I made my way into the crowd, showing my flyer, but
everyone was either to grief-stricken or numbed out to even look at it. Everyone had their own flyer, their own
search, their own loss. They couldn’t
begin to try to deal with another’s. So
I took my place within the ocean of humanity and held my flyer up, just in case
someone saw it and knew something, anything.
As the morning grew older, we all started to break out of our individual
grief and joined in a collective grief.
Stories both touching and funny filled the air. Spontaneous cheers arose everytime a police
or fire vehicle passed us, and at some point it became the purpose of the
gathering to cheer on these latter-day heroes.
We gave them our support and love in lieu of finding our own missing
loved ones.
Volunteers came around with bottled water and snacks
for us sometime around lunch. One woman
handing out water had a deep southern accent and told us she had driven all
night and day to come from Georgia to help out. She was hoping to be working with the rescuers, but so many
people had shown up that she was directed to help with the survivors
crowd. She gave my flyer a double take
and asked me who Old Miss was. I told
her my story and found myself talking to everyone in earshot. That I was there for a stranger, that I was
looking for someone without family perhaps, it was something different to these
people gathered. I became the recipient
of the most beautiful outpouring of love and support. People hugged me spontaneously, other’s opened up to me about
those who had made a difference in their lives. But as the sun began to set, the quiet mourning overtook us. We all stared into the western sky, the
black smoke all but hiding the brilliant red off the sunset. Tears began to flow as more people showed up
with candles.
I couldn’t stand there anymore, I was physically,
emotionally and mentally drained. I
carefully folded my flyer and turned back towards the train to home. My wife greeted me with tears, the cat eyed
me suspiciously, and we once again turned to the news until exhaustion drove me
to bed.
I let my wife talk me into staying home the next
day, Friday. There was the National
Memorial Service to watch, and my wife was concerned about the rain that was
due to fall that day. She reminded me
that at my age I needed to take care of myself, which meant I needed to spend a
day resting and eating well. I let her
take care of me, and I knew that by doing so I was helping her out of her
sorrow, just as being with the crowd had helped me.
Saturday I awoke to find a true autumnal nip in the
air. I did my usual Saturday morning
routine; coffee and newspaper, 20 minutes on the treadmill in the basement, and
fixed the leak in the toilet that I had put off last Saturday. But still, it was only 9AM when I had
finished. There was an incredible,
undeniable urge within me to go back to the city. I needed to be with the crowd on the sidewalk, I needed the
connection. That was my driving need now, Old Miss had only been the key to
understanding what I was longing for.
Yet I carefully placed the folded flyer in my
windbreaker pocket before I left. My
wife had packed food enough for a dozen in a large paper bag and pleaded with
me to take it easy, to find a place to sit, and not forget to eat. I promised her I would with half a mind,
driven by my need to get back to the city.
The train ride passed in silence, the car was nearly
empty. I could see the black smoke
still over the skyline, the stench permeated the air. But I was greeted almost as soon as I reached the street with
hugs and shouts of support. I took my
place among those I’d seen two days before, and with hundreds of new
faces. The new faces were just people
from all over who had come to stand with us, to cheer on the rescue vehicles,
and to sob with us when another body was recovered. The atmosphere was lighter, and something close to a church
social air had replaced the heavy grief that had characterized the gathering
before.
It was after lunch when a firefighter crossed the
barrier and approached me. He took the
flyer from my hand and looked at it closely, then asked me quietly to follow
him. No one had been taken across the
barricade and I heard the crowd talking excitedly about what was
occurring. It was like a small city had
sprung up beyond the barricades, a city of rescue workers. There were dry goods piled up on storefronts
and people trading in their old boots and socks for fresh ones. There were water and food stations lining
the street, all attended by happy, smiling volunteers. But as I looked closer, I saw the smiles
were pasted on and that tears were flowing freely.
I was asked to sit on a barrel that sat on the
sidewalk, and I was grateful to not have to break a path through the
rubble. My curiosity was making my mind
whirl, and I was about to scream at someone to find out why I was there, what I
was waiting for. The fireman had left
me momentarily and returned with another, a police officer and a priest.
They seemed to all be waiting for the other to
speak, and finally the priest stood in front of me. He asked my name, and asked to see the flyer. He showed it to the others and they all
nodded. He gave it back to me and asked
who Old Miss was to me. I told him the
story of how I knew her, that I knew of no relatives she may have had and that
it was just important to me to know what happened to her.
The cop came over and squatted next to me. Looking down at the ground and removing his
hat, he drew a deep breath, unminding of the stench and smoke, and started to
tell me about his partner.
“Joe was a real rookie, fresh out of the academy,
but brave as all get out. That morning
he was excited and hyped and ready to save lives. He was a real ballsy kid.”
The cop wiped the tears off his cheeks and looked into my eyes. “He was a great kid with more courage than I
have ever seen.” He looked down again
and gave a little sound that might have been a sob.
“I told him to clear the people off the streets and
keep them moving out of the area while I went to check with the Chief on what
was needed. I didn’t get back to
him. The first tower came down and I
lost him.” Now a true sob broke from
his throat. The priest leaned down and
put both hands on the back of the cop’s shoulders. It seemed to do the trick, for he continued speaking in a steady
voice.
“We found him this morning. He was next to our squad car, exactly where
I had left him. He stood his post until
a piece of concrete landed on him. If
he had been in the car…” His voice
trailed off.
A hugely pregnant pause filled the air as my wonder
at why I was here being told this grew to be almost unbearable. I could hear the crackle of the fire in the
spaces of this silence, as well as distant voices. I felt my eyes boring into him like I could see the answer
if I looked hard enough. He must have
felt my gaze, for he met my eyes shortly.
“We finished digging the vehicle out a little while
ago. Joe must have seen your old lady
and had put her in the backseat for safety.
We found her curled up there, like she was sleeping. There’s not a scratch on her.”
My heart stopped an instant, thinking they were
going to tell me she was alive, but the priest spoke up quickly, seeing the way
my thoughts were headed.
“She was dead, but it doesn’t look like she suffered
any. She looked just like she went to
sleep and slipped off to heaven.”
Four pairs of eyes focused on me, awaiting the
reaction. I was even waiting to see
what it would be. With the greatest mix
of emotions I’ve ever felt, tears sprang from my eyes, a smile split my face,
and a torrent of hysterical yawps forced their way out my throat. I had no control over what I was doing, even
though I fought for it with every ounce of resolve. The men surrounding me allowed me to go through whatever I needed
to, giving me privacy by turning their backs and blocking me from view of
others in the area.
Very slowly I gained control of myself and the men
turned back to face me. They looked at
each other and nodded at the priest.
“We had heard about you from some of the guys
passing through, about how you were out there for this homeless woman. It’s been one of those stories that have
been circulating around the meal tables and rest areas.”
“We’ve taken to thinking about you as one of us.”
the firefighter who brought me in said.
The others nodded their agreement.
The cop looked at me with compassion and another
look I can’t define. Maybe it was a
look of brotherhood.
“We thought
it only fitting that you help carry her out.” he said with a shaking
voice. “I think that’s the way Joe
would want it.”
My head nodded of its own volition, closer to a
tremor than a nod. They helped me to my
feet, put a hard hat on my head, and led me to the makeshift morgue. Such a small little bundle on the stretcher,
a little lump under the green bag. I
was handed the end of an American flag and assisted in covering her, then took
my place on her left and lifted the end of the stretcher. All the workers stopped what they were doing
as we passed them, uncovering and bowing their heads for a moment before
returning to their tasks.
As we passed through the barricades, I heard the
murmurs of the crowd build as they saw that I was one of the pallbearers. As we reached the ambulance and slid her
onto the waiting gurney, I could hear the questions being directed at me.
“Is that her?”
“Did they find her?” “Is this
the one?”
Over and over they asked in a multitude of ways,
looking for that miracle that would boost their own hopes. As I released my handle, I turned to the
crowd and wordlessly let them know that yes, it was Old Miss. Then just as wordlessly I shook the hands of
the other four men, then turned and headed for the train home.
It was over.
I wish I could say I went home and started a great charity for all the
forgotten lost of September 11th, but I just went home. I don’t know where they buried Old Miss, or
if she was buried. I believe that I did
her justice by getting her out of the wasteland, and whatever it was that
attracted me to her was not contained in her body. I think being able to know what happened has allowed her to take
a place in the corner of my heart, and I achieved a modicum of closure. And I think that’s the best I could ask for.
