9/29/01: I AM NOT A VICTIM. So Why Do I Feel Like One?

Last week I talked to the Red Cross.  They had tables set up in my apartment building lobby.  They were counseling people and handing out cash grants to help people replace all of their spoiled food and the clothing that they purchased while displaced and reimburse people’s hotel bills for their period of displacement.

There is some disagreement among residents about receiving financial assistance from the Red Cross and from FEMA.  Someone even posted a letter next to the elevators in my building saying basically, “We’re all rich yuppies here.  Don’t take money that should go to people who legitimately need it.”

Now I was undecided about this.  I make good money.  I pay fairly high rent, I eat at whatever restaurant I want, whenever I want and I pretty much buy what I want.  Though here in Manhattan I am decidedly middle class, I am still living a good financial life.

However, this will all change if I lose my job.  I could soon be right back where I was a few years ago, buying $1.49 frozen dinners and making them last for two meals.  But even if I don’t lose my job, why should I pay for this disaster?  The rich businesses and land owners are getting their losses covered, why shouldn’t I?

After rationalizing this way to myself, I sat down to talk to the Red Cross woman.  One of my neighbors, a woman in her late twenties, was talking to the other Red Cross rep next to me. She was crying.  She was crying about her cat.  It was difficult to understand her through her sobs, but her cat seemed to be okay, she had just been scared for her cat and felt bad about leaving the cat alone.  Her cat was traumatized.  I didn’t quite get the whole story, but I could so totally relate to losing it over something small and personal like that.  After seeing the horror of thousands of people murdered and being displaced and losing friends and neighbors and being afraid of what terror lies around the next corner, to just lose it over something like your cat’s mental welfare made complete sense to me.  Anyway the thought hit me hard, Woman, it’s not your cat that’s traumatized, it’s you!  I started choking up, hearing this woman cry and feeling bad for her, but I fought back the tears.  I was on my way to work, after all, I had no time to cry!

So I talked to this Red Cross woman and she was very nice, very much like what you think a Red Cross volunteer would be like.   She told me right away, and unprompted, don’t feel bad about taking relief money, there is no reason why you should pay out of your own pocket, none of this was your fault. 

I told her I stayed with a friend while I was displaced so I didn’t have any hotel bills.  I told her what I bought at Kmart and what I had to throw away from my freezer, which was spoiled after the power had been out for over a week.  She gave me a food voucher for $50, good at the Food Emporium on Greenwich, and told me they’d send me a check for $250 to cover the clothing and toiletries.  She told me to go to the Disaster Services Center on Centre Street.  And talk to a therapist.

So that was last week.  Today I went to the Disaster Services Center.  It’s a few blocks North of City Hall on Centre Street.  I don’t know what space this was, maybe a bank or a City building, but the room was massive and there were long stretches of tables with state, city and federal relief agency reps.  Like a Holiday Disaster Bazaar.  People waited in rows of folding chairs.  I filled out a form and waited with them.  When I was called, I talked first to an intake-type counselor.  I told her, I’m looking for cash assistance to move out of my neighborhood.  I have been having headaches and nausea since I’ve moved back in and I can’t take looking at the Pile everyday and dealing with the checkpoints, people in uniform stopping me all the time, demanding to know what my business is in my own neighborhood. 

I have a hard time saying this, I know my eyes get all wide when I talk about September 11, but she just nodded, yes, okay, mm-hmm, and checked off agency names on my routing sheet.  She numbered the agencies, this is the order of when I should talk to whom.

I cruised the agency aisles and decided to start with the NY State Bar Association, although it was not on my sheet.  There were four women sitting at the table but no residents were talking to them.  I went through my whole story again, all wide-eyed I’m sure.  I told them that I am thinking I should move for my health.  What are my options if my building management holds me accountable for the remainder of my lease term?  They were fascinated with my stories of how the residents were organizing tenant associations, etc., but they didn’t have any advice for me (which they were careful to point out that none of what they said to me was to be taken as legal advice anyway.) 

It’s hard to get good answers when you can’t ask good questions.

So I moved on to a housing agency that was checked on my list.  They had very complicated options for me, they wanted to try out an experimental housing solution on me, letting me choose from a list of properties on a list.   Where are the properties?  I asked.  Brooklyn, Queens and Harlem.  Well, I said, that sounds like a great program but that’s not really going to make my life easier to be so far away from my work and life here in Manhattan.  They nodded, they looked at me kindly, but they recognized me as a WASPy career woman who doesn’t want to live in Queens and wouldn’t make it a day in Harlem.  Their programs are, after all, for people who legitimately need them.  I asked them once more, really, what I’m looking for is cash assistance to move.  I can find the apartment.  They don’t do that here, they said.  Okay, thank you.

I talked to three different  housing agencies.  They all said the same thing.  They don’t just give people cash to move.

I followed my little routing slip and ended up in a very long line.  I was not sure what the line was for, but I signed my name on the waiting list and sat down to wait.  Someone handed me a clipboard with forms, I filled them out.  Lots of questions about how much you’ve spent as a result of the disaster, how long were you displaced, did you lose your job, how much do you make.

An hour passed before I was finally called.  I was led to a seat at a ring of tables, where many people were talking to workers and shuffling papers.  The worker I talked to was very young.  She looked at my forms, made calculations on her calculator and proclaimed: “You are not eligible for food stamps.”  I’m not asking for food stamps, I said, I am looking for cash assistance to move out of my neighborhood.  “Well…” more calculating, “we can give you $5,700,” she said.  I said, that’s great!  That will cover moving expenses and security deposit on a new apartment!  She had me follow her to an inner office, they were going to cut me a check right there!  I stood outside the office, waiting, trying to stay out of the general crush of people, feeling calmer, like the fact I was getting this money to move means I would really be better off somewhere else.  After a while, a different woman came out of the little inner office and said to me, there’s been a mistake, we can’t give you this amount, we can give you $90.   And since we’re closing, you’ll have to come back another day to get it.  Wait in the checkout line for your return appointment time.

I was disappointed and winded by the sudden reversal of my destiny.  The checkout line was long.  I had been there over four hours and had learned little other than I don’t qualify for food stamps.  I felt out of place, humiliated that I was asking for help and I suspected they were right in not giving me any.  I should just go back to my yuppie apartment and decide for myself that if I need to move, I need to make it happen for myself.  In a long and tragic line of legitimate victims, I do not qualify.

I got my return appointment slip, but I’m not going back there, even for $90.  Outside of the building, the sunlight was bright.  The sidewalks along Centre Street were barricaded off from the street, like every other street in Lower Manhattan, but there was no vehicle traffic on Centre Street.  I felt shame for not taking charge of my own destiny, frustrated for not knowing what my destiny is and desperate that I wouldn’t qualify for help even if I did figure out what I needed.  I am not a victim, I didn’t lose family in the attack, I didn’t lose my home and I didn’t lose my livelihood.  Even if I do lose my job, I would have lost it anyway, not as a result of September 11.  I’ve just been in the wrong place, the wrong business, at the wrong time.   I am truly grateful to have survived the attack and that so many people did survive.  I grieve for the people who lost loved ones.   But now is the time, I tell myself, to suck it up and get on with life.  I don’t need help, I need to give it.

This was apparently not what I wanted to hear today.  I had a massive meltdown, right there on Centre Street.  I started sobbing while I walked, until I couldn’t walk anymore, then I just sat on the curb and cried.   People walked by, but no one stared as they did when I cried on the street in Soho on September 10^th.  After all, random people sobbing in the streets is no longer an unusual sight in Lower Manhattan.

When I finally got it together enough to walk, I was still crying.  I couldn’t seem to stop and there were no cabs to jump in and be whisked away to avoid further humiliation.  So I walked the entire length of Chambers, bawling all the way.  I passed through groups of people that had come from all over to see the damage.  At least walking through them, I was not the only person crying.

I showed the checkpoint guard at Chambers and Westside Highway my license.  He gave me the usual once-over and looked like he was going to question my suspicious California Drivers License with New York address on it.  But I was still crying and I don’t think he wanted to deal with a weeping woman so he just let me pass.  I climbed up the steps of the Tribeca Bridge overpass, which seemed to take an inordinate amount of effort.   They had started making residents go over the bridge instead of just crossing the street because some bright eager resident pointed out to them that crossing Westside Highway at Chambers Street was very dangerous with all the trucks and workers not paying attention to pedestrians.

Like nine out of ten times I pass this way, I didn’t look at the Pile.  I looked north, up Westside Highway and tried to focus on the massive cranes loading the barges with rubble.  They are really actually magnificent creations, I told myself.  Look at how big they are, how gracefully they move, and what large pieces of twisted building they can pick up at once.

 They dredged the Hudson River just north of Stuyvesant High school to move these massive cranes in and to allow barges like the one below to dock for rubble loading.  The debris was taken to the Fresh Kills landfill in Staten Island to be inspected for toxins, clues and DNA. 

The landfill was already named Fresh Kills.

The photo above is the Checkpoint at Chambers and Westside Highway, taken from Tribeca Bridge Overpass in late September 2001.  The building is PS I89, used as headquarters by many agencies until mid-October.   I didn’t get a lot of pictures during these weeks because they did not allow photographs.  If they saw you taking pictures they would take your camera.

On the other side of the overpass, on the high school patio where they were funneling pedestrians entering North Battery Park City, they built a fenced funneling system –  a stretch of five parallel chain link fences, set just far enough apart to allow people to walk through.   A National Guards tent was set up next to the funnel.   I don’t know that they ever really used this pedestrian control system to its fullest extent.  I only had to walk through it a few times, but it was extremely disturbing.  I wondered if they had x-ray or some other detectors aimed at me from the tent, searching me surreptitiously for explosives, counting the cash on me, etc.   On one hand, I felt safer that they were protecting me from follow-up attacks, which was a very real threat.  On the other hand, I felt like a lamb of democracy going to slaughter.

 Church pamphlets handed out on Chambers Street to people who came to view the Site. 

Perhaps the only Church street handouts I’ve ever read in my entire life

 One of many recovery seminars advertised in Manhattan following 9/11.

 One of many agency fliers and hand outs.  I don’t know if the “etc.” is circled because it’s misspelled or to indicate that September 11 was an event covered in the “etc.”

Red Cross fliers left in the lobby of my building.  God bless the Red Cross.