Mama refused to brew Daddy any coffee, so Auntie August put on a pot. Mama’s silent rage was understandable. She had raised us for six years without any help from him. Three Christmases back, she had opened an envelope filled with five one-hundred-dollar bills and sent it right back to him with a note that read, “Our sorrow is priceless.”
I, too, was stalwart in my contempt. All of us now seated at the kitchen booth, I held my mug and sipped my coffee, never taking a raised eyebrow off Daddy, seated across from me. As a girl, I had loved him more than I loved drawing. At fifteen, I realized he had brought us nothing but pain. And recently he had scared Mya near to death so that the girl wouldn’t move for three days. In my brewing antipathy, I had figured that if the planes fell, it was somehow his fault.
Mama’s arms never left their crossed position. Her eyes were daggers. She sat next to me at our round table and glared at Daddy. Uncle Bird and Auntie August were busy brewing coffee and chain-smoking by the stove.
Silence grew around us, heavy with my mother’s and my unspoken accusations. It was a wonder how Mya stayed asleep with all the earlier commotion in the parlor. It was the first the girl had slept in some days, so Mama had decided not to wake her.
Mya had been near comatose those three days. Days before, when she had refused to move, I took the television that usually sat on top of the microwave, unplugged it, brought it into the quilting room, and put on her favorite show. Mya was just a small brown face in a cocoon of blankets. She did not rouse when I maneuvered the television set so it rested in her eyesight. Even Sailor Moon’s opening theme song did not rouse her.
Uncle Bird was the only person who seemed at ease. He played house. Cigarette in his mouth, he served Mama a cup of hot coffee, asked if she wanted any cream.
“She takes hers black, lot of sugar,” Daddy said quickly, sounding grateful to have something to say. The intimacy of his voice unsettled me.
Then Mama did something so heroic. She reached across the Formica kitchen table, took a long cigarette from August’s pack, lit it, and exhaled a plume of smoke in Daddy’s face.
Daddy showed a hint of surprise, but not shock. I believe he could remember the power my mama had over him. He opened his hands in forgiveness, but said nothing.
In that long moment, I truly believed that my parents, in some past time, would have crossed the Sahara for each other. Arms outstretched, seeking each other out before water.
“You”—Daddy pointed to Mama, then to me—“you were the first thing I came for. When I saw that wall of fire…” His voice caught. He looked away from us. Gathering himself, he cleared his throat.
He started to tell his story haltingly. Said how the burning bodies were what would stay with him. That and the initial sound of the plane’s engine careening toward the building. He said that he and Bird and Mazz had run to one wall, their fatigues and service shirts bandaged over their hands and mouths, so the fire wouldn’t burn them and the smoke wouldn’t choke them as they pulled people out of the burning rubble. Folk were covered in soot. Head to foot. Others, simply on fire. Screaming into melting concrete.
We were quiet, listening. Mama’s arms were no longer folded—she was taking sips of her coffee—but she seemed determined to look unaffected by the hell Daddy was describing. I tried to mirror her.
In a rush, Daddy explained that he had tried calling us, but my aunt had been right: The phone lines were down. For three days the phones did not work. He couldn’t catch a flight. Every airport in America was closed. So, he hopped into that black Mustang of his and drove.
Daddy took a deep breath then and began again, speaking more slowly this time. We were all looking at him, but he was looking only at Mama. That and the desperation in his voice, the way it sounded almost like a plea, gave me the impression he was offering up this story to her as both explanation and apology for something else altogether.
He told us he’d been smoking a Kool with Uncle Bird and Uncle Mazz outside the southwestern corner of the Pentagon. Uncle Bird had flown down from Chicago to see his big brother make lieutenant colonel. The ceremony was scheduled for the morning of the eleventh.