We All Fall Down: The True Story of the 9/11 Surfer (6 page)

Seconds. Only seconds to death.
There were four flashes of light as he was hit with flying chunks of concrete, hit by so many things reduced to bits and pieces. There were just four flashes of light and then a single, last bright flash.

CHAPTER SIX

Nothing but Smoke

“Why did this happen? My son never hurt anyone in his whole life. He’s a good person. He’s never hurt anyone, never killed anyone. He’s a good person. Why would this happen to him?”

~ Antonia Buzzelli

In The Fashion Factory, a coat-piecing company in Hoboken, New Jersey, fifty-nine-year-old Antonia Buzzelli sat at her sewing machine, her head bent over the sleeve she was feverishly working into the body of a coat. For thirty years, she’d been doing the same thing, putting parts together, forming coats for women to wear. She knew what it was to have pain in her back after a long day of keeping her face down close to the fabric, her gaze squinted on the thin eye of the sewing needle. She knew what it was to wipe bits of fuzz from her lips, to sneeze when dust from the cloth got into her nose. Antonia knew what it was to look up into bright and bare overhead lights, into a thick haze. Up and down, needle into cloth, then out for another stitch: This went on hour after hour, day after day—a rhythm she was used to, as if it were part of her body. There was always noise: the clattering of her machine, the scraping of feet around her, the Spanish spoken in women’s voices as they worked at their own machines (a language she fought to understand), universally understood laughter, and the jovial sound of friendly conversation. In her head, through the long days, she was free to think, to plan ahead to when she and her husband Ugo would retire.

It was early yet, only mid-morning, with hours of sewing to go. Antonia’s mind was on later that day, what she would make for Ugo for dinner. Once she’d made that decision, her mind was free to move ahead, to when Pasquale and Louise’s baby would be born.
A grandchild! I’ll be a grandmother! The baby will call me “Nonna”!
Only a few more months, and her dream would be complete. Her child, her beloved Pasquale, would have a child of his own.

Antonia lifted a hand to brush her curly brown hair back from her face. She was tired—already tired and already aging. She could feel it in her hands and in her back. She’d once been a beautiful woman. Back when she was a little girl in Bari, Antonia’s mother had said of her that she had a smile that would light up the world. She’d learned that beauty doesn’t truly buy a woman anything. It did, however, afford Antonia the chance to land a man like Ugo in her life and to have a beautiful boy like Pasquale.
Maybe that’s more than enough. What, beyond this, does a woman need?
When she thought about it, she had nothing to complain about. If anything, she had to thank God for all her blessings.

Her hands stopped. She snapped the presser foot up and bowed her head. She crossed herself and closed her eyes for just a minute.

~ ♦ ~

Antonia had come to America from Bari, Italy in 1967. Almost immediately, she’d met Ugo and thought him strong and staunch, a man of great character, a man she could lean on. Back then, they’d lived in adjacent apartment buildings in Hoboken and saw each other often. Before long, he was there, on her stoop, every time she left her building. The beginning of their dating was tentative, for they were both shy. If they’d have been back in Italy, friends would have created occasions for them to meet, and it would have been safe. There would have been people around them to make the getting-to-know-each-other stage easier. Nevertheless, in America, they worked it out, as all young couples do if they are attracted enough to one another. They fell in love and married on July 27, 1968.

One year later, almost to the day, Pasquale was born, on July 26, 1969. He was a beautiful, big boy—so healthy. Everyone who saw their baby told Antonia and Ugo how blessed they were.
Everything is perfect,
Antonia thought. She’d been in a new country for only a short time before she was happily married and the mother of a beautiful, healthy boy. It was almost more than she’d ever wished for.

Pasquale began walking, talking, holding on to his father’s pant leg, and putting chubby arms up to be lifted. Her little dark-headed boy still fell gently asleep with his head against her breast. On those nights, Antonia hated to put him down in his own bed.
If I could only hold him safe in my arms forever.

Then, when Pasquale was not quite two years old, it seemed to be disaster from one day to the next. One evening, Pasquale began to cough. She gave him a bit of honey on the tongue, but his cough grew worse. He coughed so hard that his little face reddened. He cried and coughed even harder. At the hospital, the doctor told them the name of the disease: Ugo tried to translate. Antonia didn’t understand their meaning completely, but the words still rolled around in her brain:
recurrent respiratory papillomatosis.
The huge, ominous, foreign-sounding words loomed over her child. There would have to be an operation, but until then, poor little Pasquale would have to be placed in a sterile hospital nursery. Pasquale, with his big blue eyes, his small, pursed lips, coughing until he’d bow his head, would stand in the crib, holding on to the rail, his tiny fingers white with the effort to hold him up. His arms jutted out to her to pick him up, to take him away from that place.

Ugo translated again what the tall man in the white coat said to him as she sat there wringing her hands, feeling trapped inside her own language without a way to ask her own questions, to demand her own answers. She sat forward on the hard hospital chair and fixed her eyes on Ugo’s face.
Maybe he will say something that will save them both. Maybe this isn’t as terrible as we’ve been told. Maybe there will not have to be an operation after all. Sometimes doctors give good news, don’t they?

She almost smiled at Ugo, urging him to tell her what the man was saying, but Ugo kept his head bent. When he raised his eyes to meet hers, there were tears there, water pooling in the eyes of the hardworking man who only wanted happiness for his family. Her nails dug into her flesh. She didn’t want him to say the words. She knew if he said them, they would be real. If he said them, she might lose her baby.

“The doctor says Pasquale could die.” Ugo bent his large head, his wiry hair almost brushing against her cheek.

She wanted to put a hand out, to touch his head, to soothe him, but she couldn’t move. In Italy, there’d been many deaths.
In Italy, people know how to mourn. How can I mourn here, in America? How can anyone know that if my son dies, I’ll be dead right along with him?

“He must make it through the next twenty-four hours—just twenty-four hours, Antonia. If he makes it through until then, the doctor says he has a chance. There will be an operation, but he has to stay here. He has to be kept where it is very, very clean. You understand?”

She nodded and thought.
A few seconds have gone by already. Next it will be a minute. He will still be alive, and there won’t be twenty-four hours to wait. It will be less. My boy will keep breathing. He will live. Pasquale will get well again and come home.

Ugo called the family because Antonia couldn’t talk—not yet. He came back to tell her that Elizabeth, his mother, had promised to pray to St. Anthony, the patron saint of all children. Ugo’s mother had told him to tell Antonia not to worry, that her novena to St. Anthony would protect little Pasquale.

Antonia began to pray too, harder than she’d ever prayed in her life.

~ ♦ ~

As she sat in front of her sewing machine, mechanically going through her coat-making work, she remembered the words, her promises to God. She remembered the tears, the dozing off, then jerking back awake, feeling guilty that she would sleep while her child was in danger. She remembered the sterile gown they’d draped around her and the cotton gloves they’d made her wear so she couldn’t touch her own child with her own hands. She’d known then that it was all in His hands, for there was nothing she could do to heal her son’s poor lungs.

Antonia let the presser foot down and began on another coat, a black and white tweed. The material slid beneath her fingers, thick and nubby. It would warm some woman, maybe one who truly needed warming.

~ ♦ ~

Her son had lived, and she’d lived through that terrible day—one day, as if condemned to hell. Afterward, her mother-in-law had sent to Padua for a small black robe, part of the promise Elizabeth had made to God. She agreed that if He saved her grandson, she would see that Pasquale was dedicated to St. Anthony.

After Pasquale came home from the hospital, after he lived and began to thrive again, Antonia saw to it that he wore that rope-belted little black robe every Tuesday. Every Tuesday, she slipped the dark robe over her boy’s small head and tied the pale rope around his growing body and remembered how grateful she was for the child who’d come to her and changed her life. She thanked God for Pasquale not only on Tuesdays, but on every day of her life.

~ ♦ ~

Suddenly, something new invaded the factory: silence, save the noise coming from the loudspeakers. Sewing machines stopped one by one when they shouldn’t have stopped; it was not yet time for a break. The rows of women at their machines stopped sewing and began to listen. They weren’t allowed to get up or leave their places, but they bent their heads to hear the radio, which usually played Spanish music from speakers high on the wall. Now, though, there were only words.

What was that?
She knew a little Spanish.
Maybe a bad fire? Surely the women will explain and let me know what’s going on. They’ll use gestures, repeat words, and smile. They’re kind, and we all work together on this hard, hard job.
Antonia would smile and nod back, then ask her sister-in-law Rose or her cousin. They worked on machines in other rows, and they would tell her what had happened.

The dark heads bowed over their machines as they listened. The women’s backs arched and were unnaturally still. One by one, the faces turned toward her.

Antonia blinked, not liking to be the center of their attention.

But then Alba, the woman who sat at the machine next to her, motioned to her to listen. Alba said, “Antonia,
La Tor! La Tor! Esta…estacadendo!”

Antonia frowned and shook her head. She half-stood and looked to where her sister-in-law had turned to face her. Rose got up and walked slowly toward her. Her cousin Tonette got up from another machine and came over. The women bent beside her, one on each side. Their voices were low.

“Antonia, doesn’t Patsy work there?” her cousin asked gently in Italian, the language Antonia could understand.

“Where? In New York? You mean at the Twin Towers? Yes, but I don’t know if he’s working there today,” she answered. “Why? What is it?”

“Here.” Tonette held out her cell phone. “Call Louise. Find out if Patsy’s okay.”

“If he’s okay? Why would Patsy not be okay? Why? What’s wrong?”

“There’s…trouble there, down at the Towers.”

The worried mother took the phone, but her fingers trembled terribly as she tried to punch the right numbers on the small buttons. She finally got it, only to get a busy signal, and no message came on.

Another cousin, Nicky, a supervisor, came over and told her to use the phone in the office, and Antonia quickly complied—only to get another busy signal. With shaking hands, she dug inside her purse for her little address book. It was too difficult to think clearly.
I have to call someone, anyone—any of my relatives. Maybe they’ve already spoken to Louise, or maybe they got a hold of Pasquale and my son’s home already, letting everybody know he’s okay.

Mima! Yes, I’ll call my sister-in-law,
she thought as the number of the wife of Ugo’s oldest brother jumped out at her. She dialed, and Mima answered on the second ring, as if she’d been waiting by the phone. “Mima, it’s me, Antonia. Do you—”

“Antonia! Where are you?” Mima shouted at her. “Oh my God! You are still at work?”

And in that instant, Antonia knew. She dropped the phone and threw it away from her. She had to run. She had to get someplace where she could find out about Pasquale. She hadn’t driven, though, and she had no way to leave. “I have to go. No, no, NO!” She looked from her sister-in-law to her cousins. “I have to go…NOW!”

“I’ll take you,” her cousin Tonette said.

They left the factory and hurried out to Tonette’s car in the parking lot. As they drove, Antonia urged Tonette to go faster, to get to her home. She focused her eyes out the front window, not looking left or right, wanting time to pass so she could find her son, so she could hold him again.

They drove beside the river. She turned to look; she didn’t want to see, but she needed to know what all the talk was about, what had brought the rare hushed silence over the factory where she worked. There was the Manhattan skyline, and there, rising above the other buildings, was a tall column of smoke.
Smoke? Smoke!
There they were, the black, menacing billows, hovering above the important place where her son worked—her hardworking American son.

She saw nothing but smoke, and she knew what it meant. In that smoke, in that attack across the river, in that horror of destruction was her son.