Joseph S. Walker
Disaster Girl IF I MAKE A REALISTIC ATTEMPT to reconstruct that morning it must have been shortly before the second plane hit the Towers when I left my apartment to go get breakfast. It’s unlikely, then, that the girl who came around the corner just as I was turning from my door, the girl who seemed so startled and who looked at me with wide eyes before hurrying on her way — disaster girl — knew anything of what was happening hundreds of miles away. How could she? At the moment she looked at me so fearfully even people looking at the Towers didn’t yet comprehend what was happening. It wasn’t yet something that could be imagined, even if it was something that had actually happened. In my memory, though, she is so alarmed, so rushed, so anxious that it’s difficult to believe that she wasn’t some harbinger of the news I had not yet heard. I want to be clear about this, and accurate, and most of all careful. Peel away the varnish from almost ten years worth of memory and see the moment for what it was, know the reality of it. I will try to do this even while knowing that it’s not really possible, that the mind forms its own story in which “what really happened” is only one element. Still, almost ten years later, this is what I believe happened. This is how the day continues to live in my mind. (cont’d pg. 218)
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