Another oneshot dedicated to 9/11, because today is a really damn important day in US History.
This time set in a different setting. Still in the building, though.
Our favorite orange-head and the tragedy revolving around his family.
Today my mother went to work at the World Trade Center. She's a really cool person. She can translate things from Japanese to English, from English to French, from French to Spanish, whatever you want. She works there helping people from all around the world make trades with each other.
I remember it. Last night, my mother and father were fighting because he had gotten drunk at a bar and she'd had to pick him up. I guess she told him that he wasn't being a good father and the whole big argument started. So this morning, while I was eating breakfast and Daddy was reading the newspaper, she called him a lousy slob that didn't deserve to have children and the roof he lived under and all sorts of other bad things. Daddy didn't say anything, and the door slammed before I got to tell her to "Come back safe."
It's...hard to explain what happened later that morning. I didn't have school that day, teacher work day or something like that, and Daddy was staying home because he said he had a really bad headache. So I was drawing a picture with crayons for Mommy to hang up in her office at the World Trade Center and Daddy was watching the news when it came on.
It had that red heading that means it's an emergency, and it really was an emergency this time. They were showing live footage, and there were clips of a plane ramming into one of the Twin Towers. I remember Daddy jumping up and screaming, I remember him frantically trying to call Mommy, but I guess her phone was on silent or something, because she didn't pick up. But then, the news reporter said, "Tower Number One..." and he sat back down, still clutching his heart. Mommy works in Tower Number Two. So she was safe.
Well, I mean, that's what I thought at the time. When you're a child, you're naive, and you don't know that bad things happen in rapid sequence.
I remember Daddy praying, praying with the cross he wears on a necklace clutched between his fingers. I remember him praying. And I remember asking him why he was praying, because that wasn't Mommy's building. He didn't answer me. But now I know. I know why he was praying.
I recall Daddy telling me to get in the car, because we were going to go get Mommy, NOW, because she had to come home now. I remember running upstairs, getting my coat, and I remember Daddy screaming from downstairs. I ran back downstairs, and on the TV, there was black smoke. The camera was cutting out now, panning out to show us what had happened, and I remember thinking, Oh my God. Mommy works there. Mommy works there. Mommy's not going to make it out of there...
And then we were in the car, driving across the Brooklyn Bridge, hurrying to get to Mommy. I was surprised by how little traffic there was, but I guess that's what happens. Everybody's running away from the collisions and not bothering to get their cars.
It seemed to happen in a flash. We were almost over the bridge when I saw a HUGE cloud of black smoke rising up in the sky. I'd pointed out the window and told Daddy to look, and he didn't respond. He just drove faster. Like a madman.
Daddy's cell phone rang when we were off the bridge. He didn't answer it. I could understand why. If he talked on his cell phone while he was driving, he'd slow down and we might not get to Mommy in time.
Blocks flashed by, and we were there. We were at the site. I remember people all around me saying that the second tower was going to go any second now, and I remember reaching up to the sky, as if maybe Mommy would hold my hand again and come back down from the burning tower. I guess, though, that I knew she wasn't going to be coming out. Mommy worked on the 100th floor of the second tower. Even if she could manage to find a working elevator, she...she probably wouldn't have made it anyway.
There...are times when you just know, when you just know that there's nothing you can do about it, and you want to scream, want to curse God for everything that is happening. I didn't scream, but that was because I was watching a body, watching a body plummeting from what seemed like a very great height, turning and twisting in the air, and then disappearing behind surrounding buildings. Then one, two, three more falling. I remember hearing their bodies hit the sidewalk. It sounded like debris falling, but there was more of a "pop" sound to it. I remember people screaming and people with tears running a groove through their dirty faces as they watched the people fall. To me, it seemed stupid that they should jump out of a building when they could have gotten out perfectly fine. I know why they chose that fate now.
I couldn't help but think that one of those people was Mommy, and I wanted to run, wanted to run over there and see if it was. I remember starting to break away from Daddy when someone near me screamed, "Oh my God! OH MY GOD!" The second tower was collapsing, and that was when I knew: If Mommy wasn't one of the people who had died jumping out of the building, she was certainly dead now.
The tower collapsed, and white smoke billowed out, racing toward us. I remember fighting Daddy, screaming that I wanted to go to Mommy, but he held me back, and dragged me through the streets until we found a place to stay, to hide from the smoke. We waited for hours and hours, and I remember Daddy's cell phone vibrating a bit in his pocket to tell him that he had a voicemail.
When he checked it, he started to cry. I wanted to hear it, but he said it wasn't for me at the time.
I remember seeing firefighters and other volunteers carting away the debris, putting bodies in body bags and loading them up into the ambulance, working far into the night and the wee hours of the morning. I remember the next morning, with people from all over the world with signs that said, "MISSING," and had a picture of the person. Daddy and I didn't have one of those, because, looking back now, I think we still had some shred of hope that Mommy would be okay.
I'm 15 years old now and I'm a freshman in high school. Today, Dad finally let me listen to that message that he had on his cell phone, a message that he had received 7 years ago:
"Listen, I'm sorry for what happened last night. I was rude and inconsiderate. To both of you. Umm...I, I'm trapped in a burning building, and I can't get out. The...the last elevator just went down. I gave up my spot for somebody else, somebody who needed it more than me. I...I can't breathe in here. Uh...look, Isshin, I'm incredibly sorry for accusing you of getting drunk and spending money on prostitutes. I'm incredibly sorry for all of that. Please, please, you have to understand, I didn't mean any of that. None of that. I love you, I love you so much. If...If Ichigo's not listening to this right now, please, Isshin, I want you to tell him that Mommy loves him very very much and that Mommy needs him to be a big boy, that Mommy needs him to be strong for her. I love both of you."
The message ended there, and I don't think she was done speaking, but the phone had probably been crushed or something.
To this day, I don't know if my Mom jumped from the tower or was crushed in the collapse. I really don't know. And at first, I'm ashamed to say, I thought that she was selfish. I thought that she was selfish for letting another person go in her place on the elevator. I really, really thought that. But now I know, now I know that what she did showed how selfless she was, to the very end.
The victims of 9/11 were from 83 different countries. There were 3047 casualties, and more than 3200 children that day, including me, went home with one less parent. I can't help but think that if I had just told her to come back safe that day, if I had just said that before she closed the door, that she would still be here. That there would only be 3046 casualties instead of 3047.
It's September 11, 2008. I'm still struggling to get over it, but I'm almost there. I can feel her with me in spirit, and that's all that really matters.