by Eve Lopez

Created on: July 30, 2009

On September 11, 2001, I woke up at 5:40 a.m. Pacific, in my studio apartment in Seattle, and was 15 or 20 minutes late to my job that started at 6 a.m., and did not even know anything was happening until close to 10 a.m. My office building was not one where people just stopped by to chat. It was a true office drone space. One of my coworkers was listening to the radio, which was not unusual, but I caught some words (I forget which) and asked him what was going on.

"You don't know?" he asked.

"No," I said.

"They bombed the World Trade Center in New York and The Pentagon," he said.

"Bombed?" I was completely confused. "Who bombed us? Are we, like, under attack?"

He said nothing.

I left my floor without asking for permission, and travelled to the 5th floor of my office building, where the lunch room was. Where the TV was. People were gathered around, mostly silent, looking at the video footage of that morning's events.

My uncle worked at the Pentagon.

My uncle Andrew is an attorney, and had, at that time, worked at the Pentagon offices for more than a decade. He and my father never got along and had not talked in a couple of years, since they both threatened to beat the hell out of each other for some reason or another, and even though I knew many, many people were dead, I thought of my uncle, estranged to me but not by choice, first.

I went back down to my office and made an against-the-rules long-distance phone call to my father. It was about 10:15 a.m. My father was drunk.

"Has anyone heard from Andy?" I asked.

"No, and I don't give a shit," he said, his voice thick. "Phone lines are down. No one can get through. I don't give a shit."

He kept saying that over and over again. I called my grandmother, who was sobbing and incoherent.

He kept saying that, and I knew, from hearing him say it over and over again, that he did give a shit.

I went to the roof of the building I worked in because that was the only smoking section of the building. It was only about 20 stories high, and even though I knew by that time that all flights were grounded, I still stared up at the sky with a feeling of vulnerability and a tiny bit of fear.

On September 11, 2001, my brother, who had been out of work for a couple of months, went on a job interview at Pacific Bell. He had been referred by our father, who was a long-time employee.

My brother listens exclusively to very loud music in his car, and he showed up for his job interview with a tie and good shoes. He went to the receptionist and said his name, and that he was here for the interview.

My brother said she looked at him like he was crazy.

"There are no interviews. As of this morning, we have a company-wide hiring freeze."

"Why?" my brother said, taken aback.

"You haven't heard?" She pointed to the TV in the corner of the room and turned up the volume.

My brother went home and was out of work for another three months.

Later that night, my father called me, by this time, as drunk as I'd ever heard him. "Andy's fine," he slurred. "Turns out they transferred him out of the Pentagon three weeks ago to their offices in West Virginia."

The next day, I went to the Red Cross because they were asking for blood donations for the victims they assumed would need blood after the attack.

The victims who were "missing" but might be found.

A few weeks later, the Red Cross told people to stop. Their blood banks were full. They were turning people away.

Not a whole lot of people in the September 11 attacks ended up needing much blood, because they were all dead.

I am against the war in Iraq. I am against war in general.

But that day, my heart in throat, a knot in my gut, I wanted revenge, too.

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