The following is a short story submission for @jasonbu's historic fiction short story contest.
First, a bit of a backstory. This story has a few true elements besides the historic and devastating events that transpired on 9/11/01. I was awakened by my husband from a sound sleep to hear the news. We had 3-month-old infant twins at the time, and a very precocious 3-year-old daughter. As we learned what happened, we tried to do everything possible to shield our daughter from the news. But at one point, in a brief flash during a TV channel change, she saw. And she said the very same thing the little girl in the story says. Time has passed, and today our little girl is a sophomore in college, and the twins are high school juniors, but I have vivid memories of that day, and everything that was to follow.
With that, please read on. If you lived through 9/11, and remember where you were or what was going on in your life at the time, please feel free to share your story in the comments.
Nine Eleven
Image source: CBS New York
Sonya slept that morning, catching up. It was the sleep of angels, floating on a puff of clouds and feathers. Then a tap and a nudge and she was coming to, through foggy, feathery layers.
Her husband handed her a baby as she sat up. Sonya was crabby, and wanted to go back to that dreamy floating place where no one needed anything, and no one wanted to suck on any part of her. He was holding the other baby, and from behind him their 3-year-old daughter, Angelica, peeked out at her. “Peek-a-boo, Mommy!”
“Good morning, sweet girl.” Her cranky mood faded with the last of her sleep fog. They needed her. There was no ignoring that. She looked up at Dirk and saw with a bit of alarm that his face showed “the signal.” He was biting his lip, the agreed upon sign that something was wrong. She frowned at him questioningly. So, Dirk had awakened her for a reason other than baby feeding, then.
She sat up further against a stack of pillows, set up the double nursing pillow, and began settling the first baby in for breakfast. It was Penny, she saw, finally. Sometimes in the blur of caring for infant twins, she forgot to pay attention to which one was which, even though at three months they were two very distinct little people. Penny required constant attention by day, Peter by night.
Dirk handed Peter to her and she got him settled in too, as Dirk opened the window shades and let in the light of a bright September morning. She blinked. “Angelica, honey, can you bring mommy a toaster pastry?” Angelica smiled and ran off on her errand. She was a clever girl--startlingly precocious and bright--a child who latched onto every adult word, asked a ridiculous stream of challenging questions, and fretted like an old woman about anything out of sorts. For that very reason, Sonya and Dirk had devised ways to communicate without words.
Sonya glanced at the bedroom door and then looked up at Dirk. “What is it?”
“I’m sorry, honey, I let you sleep as long as I could. It’s… I don’t even know how to tell you this. It’s bad. There’s been an act of terrorism.”
“What? Where?”
“New York City. It appears that terrorists have flown two planes into the Twin Towers.”
“Oh my God!” She shook her head, disbelieving. Crazily, she also felt a bit of relief that the catastrophe had nothing to do with her family, and then another wave of relief that the act of terrorism wasn’t here in the Twin Cities. And on the heels of those thoughts, guilt hit her with an awful thud. What a sick human being I am, she thought. She adjusted Penny, who was slipping off the nursing pillow. “How can that be? I mean, what the heck?”
Dirk looked pale, sleep deprived, and dismayed. “I know. The two planes hit the top floors of the two towers just a bit ago, about fifteen minutes apart. Mom called to tell me.”
Angelica came back. She carried a little tray with a cold toaster pastry and a glass of milk, which she surrendered proudly. Dirk arranged it on the bed. Sonya took a bite. She needed protein, frankly, and this cold dry, over-sugared pastry was a bad idea. But sending Angelica off to get it had given Dirk a minute to spill the news. Angelica now swung on his arm, saying “Whee!” Sonya exchanged looks with Dirk and shrugged. There would be no more discussion under the circumstances.
She looked down at Peter, who was fussing. His face looked a little flushed, and he didn’t seem very interested in the breast. “Does he look alright to you, Dirk?”
Angelica climbed on the bed with a bounce and Dirk peered over at their son. “Hmm. I don’t know. Want me to take his temperature?”
But then Peter began to cry, and abruptly vomited on her.
“Ew!” Angelica squealed and jumped off the bed. Dirk reached for the small stack of burp towels they kept on the bedside table and helped to clean up. Three-month-old babies didn’t puke up much.
“Poor baby boy,” Sonya said. “He must have caught a little something.” She had considered keeping Angelica home from her half-day preschool while the babies were young, to avoid bringing all the infectious diseases home that seemed to come with the whole school territory. But Angelica’s energy and need for friends had won out.
“I’m going to play in my room,” Angelica said.
Sonya put Peter up to her shoulder and he slid limply against her neck. She could feel that his skin was overly warm. She wanted to ask Dirk more questions about the attacks. But just then, Penny vomited too. As they cleaned up again, Peter made a grunting sound, and a brown ooze squirted out of his diaper onto her nightgown. “For goodness sakes!”
They got the babies into fresh diapers and onesies, and the bedding and dirty laundry in the washing machine. The babies were both running fevers. Angelica wanted to be the mommy and hold one of them, but Sonya told her to keep her distance from them until they were well again. “I’m sorry, sweetie. I don’t want you to get sick too.”
As a consolation prize, Dirk set Angelica up in front of the TV with snacks, and turned on Barney, her favorite show. Sonya had never felt so desperate to watch the news. It would be a few hours before Dirk took Angelica to preschool and she could turn on the TV. For now, she found herself retracing her steps--changing table, washing machine, kitchen sink, dryer, changing table. Both babies seemed programmed to spurt fluids regularly from both ends, and it occurred to her this was her own kind of armageddon. She carried Penny in a sling, and Dirk did the same with Peter, which seemed to help them rest. Then they had to wash the slings. Fortunately, they were able to get the babies to take some milk from a bottle, and a call to the doctor eased their fears.
Who did she know in New York?
Angelica finished her dish of goldfish crackers. “Barney’s over. Can I watch Dragon Tails?”
The babies were finally sleeping quietly in the baby swings. Sonya had just begun to imagine sitting for a moment, and maybe getting to eat something other than a Pop-tart. She looked at Angelica. Under any other circumstances, one half-hour show would be plenty, but today was a day like no other. A day of altered lives, helplessness and death. Sonya said she could.
Angelica had the remote in hand, and began changing channels. Before Sonya realized the danger and could stop her, Angelica had landed on a news channel and the footage of the planes flying into the towers. The explosions. The plumes of smoke. Debris falling. People falling. It looked like the world was coming to an end.
Angelica gasped. “Mommy! What is going on?”
“Sweetie, no. Please give me that!” Sonya grabbed the remote, and Dirk stepped into the room to see what the problem was. At that moment the footage showed the South Tower disintegrating and collapsing into clouds of debris. It looked like a volcano erupting in slow motion. Here was Sonya with her little family of five, experiencing this event remotely, in horror. It was like passing the worst imaginable roadside accident in a car, taking in every horrible detail, unable to look away. Sonya turned off the TV. “It’s… just a movie,” she said quickly. “A very bad movie.”
Angelica had her hands over her eyes. “I don’t like it! I don’t like that movie!”
They sat with her, one on each side, holding her. “Images are scary sometimes,” Dirk said. “It’s okay.” They looked at each other over the top of Angelica’s head.
And then Sonya suddenly remembered who she knew in New York. She had known, of course she had, but it was as if she had pushed it away. Bryan, her ex-boyfriend worked in a financial services office in the South Tower. But she never thought of him in New York because they had lived together in Minneapolis, in a little Uptown apartment, until the terrible, ugly, damaging breakup. Then he moved to Boston, and then to Washington D.C., and then to New York, as if he couldn’t stop running from her. Dear God. Had she just watched him die?
Dirk was looking at her, a shadow over his face. He couldn’t know. Sonya smiled. And he smiled back, reassured.
She thought of all the things coming up. Halloween, and the holidays, the family gatherings and the new year. In a matter of months her babies would be crawling, getting into things they shouldn’t, and learning to walk. She would take them to the parks in the spring. All things considered, she was very, very lucky.
Thank you for reading.
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