We Heart It
My morning of September 11, 2001 started off as any other morning. It was sixth grade, I was 11, and I hated all of my classes thanks to getting stuck in the same block as my crush who hated my guts and made it his goal that year to remind me of the fact every day until summer break. But it was from him that I first learned of the Twin Towers.
“Did y’all hear about the World Trade Center?” he said, walking into class that morning. “It’s all over the news.”
Our teacher, Mr. Clifton, a robust man with red cheeks and round glasses, clicked on the television. We watched while footage showed smoke bleeding from the necks of New York’s two tallest buildings. I wasn’t sure what to think. I was 11, and up to that point in my life, my biggest concern was trying to look somewhat attractive to Mark Collins*. But here were two towering gray landmarks looking as though they’d been hung with chords of black smoke. Grisly. That’s the word that’s always come to mind when I picture that scene over and over again.
The following Sunday night at my grandparents’ house, I stood by the bar between the kitchen and living room watching the footage roll on. New information on the attacks had been discovered and made available to the public. We watched as one plane hit, then another, cut to Secret Service whispering the news into George Bush’s ear during a reading at an elementary school, still image of Bin Laden’s face. Theorists came out with conspiracies about the airlines not doing their job, this could’ve been prevented, lives could’ve been saved. I rolled my lips under my teeth as I walked to the bathroom, before shutting the door and crying in the dark.
Eleven years later, walking through the streets of Times Square, I wondered what it was like for the average New Yorker to have heard those sounds. Could the subway riders hear it? I was nervous for the Freedom Towers as we navigated the Financial District. I stood on a street corner as men tried to sale my family 9/11 memorials. Around us, people walked through the grooves of their daily lives. Men flicking through documents on their iPads, women with briefcases and sensible heels. One man flipped out a package in front of me. “You’ll get the book, this replica, and it comes with DVDs.” Didn’t they know? Standing on that street corner with the trees and the people and the iron gates and the sun perched at an angle that created a shaded awning over us all, watching the sleeping fraternal buildings, gave me more awe than any memorial they could sale me.
When I looked at those buildings, I forgot about that rushing smoke hanging the Twins like butchered meat. I forgot about the men jumping from buildings, what it must have felt like to see the planes coming in the moments before they hit, or what it must have been like watching yourself dive faster and faster toward your last moment. When I looked at those buildings prepped with construction, as though biding their time for something great, I could see only the sun and the promise and the hope.