On the Other Side (23 page)

S
he walked past the screams of others, the bodies covered in soot and dust. Amidst the chaos she was invisible. In many ways it was as if the world had stopped. No one noticed her. She tasted smoke and dirt on her lips and filtering into her lungs but welcomed it. That at least meant she was alive. First she ran, still unsure if she was truly safe. Then, she began to walk, as the downtown street names turned into numbers. She moved forward virtually on autopilot. Not for a moment did she even notice she was walking in her stocking feet. She felt and saw nothing. Everything was arranged like tunnel vision. Every now and then someone would stop in front of her, speaking and sometimes gesturing wildly, but she still heard nothing. Once, a woman with a frightened expression stopped in front of her and grabbed her by her shoulders. The woman seemed to be screaming, but Damita heard nothing. She shook her head, hoping to jumpstart her hearing and wondered if her ears had somehow been damaged.

For a moment it seemed as though she was able to hear, but the words that did filter through were broken and the phrases unintelligible. Finally, she thought she was able to make out a full sentence.

“Are you hurt?” someone asked.

Damita kept walking. Speaking to her was a waste of time. Her thoughts were murky and her body devoid of feeling. For a moment
she stopped in front of a store with a television on and watched what she could only assume was a movie. In the film thick black smoke emanated from the North Tower of the World Trade Center. She had the most overwhelming feeling of déjà vu. Her thoughts still splintered and her psyche trying desperately to cling to the notion that none of what happened to her was real, she refused to recognize what she was seeing as breaking news. At that moment, it was easier for her to believe it wasn't real.

“Are you a survivor?”

Her eyes were vacant and lifeless. The words of others meant nothing.

Maybe I'm dead,
she thought.

Suddenly, she remembered her suitcase and considered going back to retrieve it.

“It's gone,” she said to no one in particular.

“Are you okay?” someone else asked.

“The whole building is gone. Everything is gone,” Damita said.

When she did talk the pain in her throat was excruciating. “I want my mother,” she said.

“Where do you need to go?” someone asked.

“She's home.”

“What borough is your mother in?”

“My mother is in the Bronx,” Damita responded.

“Ma'am, I'm going to get you some help. Stay here,” she heard a voice say from the distance.

As soon as the person walked away so did she. She looked at the street signs. She was already on Fourteenth Street. She wasn't sure how she had gotten there. She could barely remember how to get to her mother's place in the Bronx. She did know that she would have to ride the subway. She attempted to enter the first subway
station she came upon. She didn't know what train it was or where it would take her; she just wanted to get to where her mother was. She soon learned that subway service had been suspended and the city was in utter and complete chaos.

She began walking, once again. Each time she passed a street she counted it. It was if saying the numbers calmed her. She understood the numbers. It was something she could focus on that had nothing to do with all that was going on around her.

“Sixteen, seventeen, eighteen,” she said aloud.

Before she knew it, she was someplace familiar. For a moment she wondered if she was in the right place. She had become so accustomed to the uniformed gentleman greeting her outside. There was no one there. There was also no one at the desk and for the first time in a long time, she rode the elevator completely alone. She got to the apartment door and looked for her non-existent pocketbook. Fortunately, the door was open. She pushed it, came inside and for at least five minutes, stood in the middle of the living room floor.

As if a light switch had been turned off, she was struck by an overwhelming feeling of exhaustion. Her adrenaline levels stabilized, she could think of nothing but sleep. She curled up in a ball on the floor and slept. The tragedy she experienced somehow erased the memories of what her life had been like in this place in which she found herself.

Neal stirred in his sleep, glanced at the clock radio next to the bed and jumped up. The time read six minutes after noon.

“Bitch!” he yelled.

He walked around the bedroom, talking to no one in particular.

“She wonders why I get angry. I ask her to do one simple thing; wake me up. She can't even do that. I bet she did that shit on purpose!
She probably did do it on purpose! Well, she'll see what's waiting for her when she gets home. I'm the man, dammit! I won't have some woman calling the shots in my own home!”

He went into the middle dresser drawer and pulled out a bag. He then deposited some of what was in the bag, on top of Damita's vanity tray, arranging several lines of coke. He snorted first one, then two lines into his right nostril and did the same with his left nostril. After shaking his head vigorously, he went into the kitchen for coffee.

It was his assumption that Damita was still at work. He had so much cocaine and alcohol the night before, that he had crashed hard. When he finally walked into the kitchen, he was shocked to see Damita lying dirty on the living room floor. He walked over and nudged her with his foot.

“What the fuck are you doing lying on the floor? Have you lost your mind, or did you go traipsing about and get attacked again?” he asked, chuckling.

Damita began to slowly stir. She looked up at him, slowly remembering the first half of her nightmare. As she attempted to rise from the floor, he kicked her hard in the stomach.

“Didn't I tell you to wake me up this morning before you left for work? Can't you do anything right? You're useless, you know. You're a waste of space. You can't fuck; you can't cook. What the hell can you do?”

“Neal, wait. You don't know what happened. Turn on the news.”

Damita still, somehow, believed in the intrinsic good in people, even people like Neal. From her way of thinking, once he was aware of what a horrific experience she had been through and how she had narrowly escaped with her life, he would be somehow changed. She wanted to believe that he would embrace the
fragility of life and realize that the life
both
of them had been living was forever changed because of this one single event.

“What are you babbling about?”

She held up her hands. “Wait. I'm going to turn on the news,” she said.

Every channel had coverage of the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers.

She was surprised to see him sit for a moment.

“Whoa,” he said.

“I made it out. I still can't believe it, but I'm alive. There was a man there. He helped me. He helped a lot of us. He may have died. The building came down right after I got to safety.”

Even amidst his drunken and drug-induced haze, Neal couldn't help but be awestruck by what was unfolding on the television screen.

Damita watched as his look of shock dissolved into a smile. He turned and looked at her. “So what are you going to do now?” he asked.

“Huh?”

“You heard what I said. What are you going to do?”

“I need to call my mother and let her know I'm okay. I also wanted to check on the people in the building and see if they're okay. Mr. Underhill and Wendy were with me one minute and the next minute they were gone.”

“I'm not interested in your mother or your job and I'm definitely not interested in that bastard Underhill. What I want to know is what do you intend to do now that you have no career, no V.P. at the end of your name. What do you plan to do?”

“I'm alive. None of that stuff matters. Maybe, at some point, the company will find new offices or maybe I'll get another job. I'm not really thinking about any of that right now.”

“Are you kidding me? Those people are all dead. You have nothing. So, what do you do? You come crawling back to me. Well, I'm going to tell you something. Things are going to be a hell of a lot different around here.”

I
f she had never had a full understanding of the kind of man she was married to, she did now. He hadn't changed a bit. Even in the wake of great tragedy, his sickness continued to prevail.

Damita got up from where she was sitting and walked toward him, unafraid.

Neal looked at Damita's wild-eyed expression. “Have you completely lost your mind?” he asked.

“No, Neal, I've finally gotten my mind back. I don't know how I could have ever allowed a loser like you to dictate what my existence would be like.”

For a moment, he was so stunned by her defiance he didn't react and simply listened.

“I don't need to think about things like a job or plans. Those things are not the most important to me. They never were. You're the one that lives by your possessions, not me. I've got love in my life. I've got a mother and friends who are probably waiting to hear from me as we speak. What have you got? You had me, but you lost that a long time ago. Now you have nothing. And, as far as the monetary comforts I believe you were insinuating you would either offer or withdraw based on your whims and desire to control, I can even have that if I want to. I'll be fine, especially when they find out that you were the one that had me attacked. I can't believe
there was a time when I actually felt sorry for you. I hope you rot in hell!”

As Damita turned and walked away, Neal dove at her, taking her down to the floor. This time, however, Damita fought back. She used everything she had to make up for the fact that Neal was bigger
and
crazier than she was. She picked things up and hit him over the head. She bit him. Almost every time he tried to deliver a blow, she came up with a way to deflect it. It was as if she was suddenly endowed with some kind of Herculean strength.

She dug her fingers into his eyes and struggled to her feet, so that she could meet him on more even ground. Once on her feet, she ran toward the bedroom. This time, however, she was not going to cower in the closet or lock herself in the bathroom. Neal caught up with her and tried to throw her down on the bed. He was successful and landed the full weight of his body on top of her. She was sickened to see that all of this had actually aroused him. He pulled at her and hit her and then put his fingers around her throat. She clawed at his neck, his face, anything her hands would reach. She began to think he might actually kill her this time, despite her best efforts. He was strangling her and she felt like a black veil was slowly coming down over her eyes. She knew this was it. Just when she thought she would never see the light of day again, all of her struggling and fighting paid off. She dug her nails into him long enough for her to gain control. She shoved him as hard as she could off of her and when he was laying face up on the floor, at the side of the bed she stomped on his groin area with all the force she could muster. She laughed when he made a sound that, to her, sounded like a yelping dog.

She was exhausted from fighting but proud of herself. She went into the living room and continued to watch the news. He lay there for quite some time, curled up on the floor, writhing in pain.

Damita kept yelling things into the bedroom.

“Not so much fun being the one that gets their ass beat, huh?”

“Carmella was so right. You're nothing but a pussy!”

“How's your dick feel?” she asked.

“I don't think you'll be raping anybody with that little noodle for quite some time,” she said, chuckling.

Eventually, she stopped yelling at him and calmed down. For the first time since they had married she wasn't afraid of him.

Neal was starting to show signs of being ready to stand and recover.

Although Damita was no longer afraid of him, that didn't mean that she could trust him. She sat steadfast and ready.

“Get out of my apartment!” he yelled, once he was up.

“You mean my apartment?”

“Nothing in here belongs to you,” he said.

“You are quite mistaken, Mr. Westman.
Everything
in here will belong to me eventually, including this apartment. You'll be lucky if you can afford a room when I'm done with you; that is if you're not in prison, getting butt fucked. Have you forgotten you're a rapist, an abuser, maybe even a murderer? You better be nice to me, you bastard, or I won't even leave you with the clothes on your back. It will give me such pleasure to move my new man into this place and think of you every time I make love to him.”

Damita knew the last comment was too much, but she was finally starting to feel her anger. She didn't mean much of what she was saying, but she so wanted to push his buttons. She felt he more than deserved it.

The moment she mentioned another man, Neal walked quickly into the living room and dove at the chair she was sitting in. Her and the chair landed face down and he continued what he had started. His fingers once again went around her throat and she fought him
with all that she had. This time, however, she was in a bad position and she was sure the outcome would not be the same. Just when she thought it was all over, the ironing board fell and the iron that was on top of it landed right next to her. She picked up the iron and crashed it down on top of Neal's head. When he released her, she scrambled from under him and came to a sitting position on the floor.

For a while Neal was prone and posed no threat. As soon as he came to a sitting position, she hit Neal dead center at the top of his head again. He fell to the floor and she continued to hit him, over and over again. Neal tried to block her blows, but his efforts were useless. She continued to bludgeon him with the iron, ignoring the blood that sprayed and attached to her clothing, the floor and the surrounding walls. It wasn't until her arm began to hurt that she stopped. When she recovered and saw what she had done, she sobbed into her hands and as quickly as she started, she abruptly stopped. She reached down and caressed Neal's blood-stained cheek. She whispered close to his ear.