One day in 1999, I was on my college campus, sitting on a bench and reviewing my assignment when a stranger came up and talked to me. She asked if I was interested in joining the Bible reading club. She said: You know that the world will end at the turn of the century, so we all must prepare for that. I thought it was ridiculous. I tried not to laugh but I thought she was totally brainwashed.
There were a handful of people who talked about such beliefs in those days. Then, she gave me a tiny, cute Bible—the same Bible that was given out right outside my college by a solicitor every week. I always had an interest in learning about the Bible, but I did not want to learn in a group of people who had biased beliefs. So, I said to her that I was not interested.
After we had a little bit of chat, she said, “We have so many Japanese people in our Bible study group.” She told me that the Bible reading club at our college, which was part of the City University of New York, often got together with the other Bible reading clubs from other CUNY colleges in Manhattan. And, according to her, there were many Japanese people from other CUNY colleges in the group. I was very much interested in meeting other Japanese people, period. So, I joined the club.
I attended the study group on several occasions, and I met about ten Japanese people. One of them was Mina who was not a college student. She didn’t even go to CUNY schools. She had graduated from Columbia and worked at a Japanese bank in World Trade Center. Mina was seven years my senior and was like an older sister to me. We were instantly connected because we had a similar past. We often met for tea at an Au Bon Pain on the ground floor of one of the Twin Towers. Sometimes when she could not get out of work in time, she invited me to come up to the 80th floor of the Tower.
The Twin Tower shopping area
The twin towers were only about a 10-minute walk from my college. On the ground floor of the twin towers, there were small shop stalls that sold jewelry and gifts, just like the ones in Grand Central Station. On the second floor of one of the Twin Towers, there was a clinic I used to visit whenever I needed to see a doctor. The post office with my P.O. Box was also located in that area.
Around the towers, there were all kinds of fast-food restaurants. I had seldom gone to some of them with my classmates after school. The shabby Century 21 department store, with salespeople wearing a uniform looking like a smock, was also in that area. J&R Music World, one of the biggest appliance stores next to Wiz and Radio Shack, was in that area as well. My white VHS combo television was from J&R. There were also 99-cent shops and discount home goods stores where I bought things for the house after school before going back to Brooklyn.
Deep thoughts and an epiphany
Not only were Mina’s work and my school in the same area, but our homes were also in the same neighborhood in Brooklyn. I graduated from that college in the summer of 2000, but I continued to meet with Mina sometimes to catch up, either around Twin Towers or in Downtown Brooklyn. We also visited each other’s home. We talked about many things, but we never really talked about the Bible when we were alone. I remember the time she said to me, “Whenever I’m having fun, I always think of the worst. The thought of the ceilings coming down just crosses my mind. Always. It always happens. Then, I be like, what would I do then?”
Why would you think that? Why can’t you enjoy your fun moments to the fullest? And why are you so pessimistic? Why do you have to be like that? I wondered about those things. People might just throw her those questions just because they think they should give her some kind of response. I wondered why, but I never asked her those questions. I didn’t want to be a superficial person just throwing random words at her or forcing her to get out of those thoughts. Also, I knew that those thoughts were important and that there was a reason for them.
September 11, 2001
On the day of the 9/11 attacks, I was at work in Midtown. I had to be punched in by 9:30 a.m. and be ready on the floor by 10 a.m. as a salesperson at a luxury boutique on Fifth Avenue. I got out of the subway around 9:10 and stopped by a deli to get a cup of iced tea. There was a TV on the corner of the ceiling at the deli, but I wasn’t paying attention.
I arrived at work around 9:20. I hurried to the locker room in the basement to change my clothes to the all-black uniform. Then, I tried to get back up to the ground floor in time, and one of the security guards said to me something was happening downtown. I didn’t understand exactly what it meant, but when I got up to the floor, I joined the people listening to the radio. That was when I first realized what was happening. One of the managers of the boutique said, “Oh well, the New York Fashion Week will definitely be canceled then.”
I wanted to be away from “fashion” for a minute, and I went back out to get to the deli across 56th Street to watch the TV. There were about ten people there to find out what was really going on. Later I found out that I was just below the Twin Tower area on the subway train when the second plane hit the South Tower.
Mina’s whereabouts
I called Mina a few times to find out if she was okay after my cellphone line had recovered from the overloaded network crash. I could not reach her; However, she called me about six months or a year or so later. She sounded fine. She sounded totally fine. So, I thought she was not at work that day. But then she told me that she was at work that day, on the eighty-something floor of the South Tower.
She told me that she heard a big sound hitting the North Tower, and she immediately rushed to the stairwell and ran down the stairs. She said that some were waiting for the elevator. But she walked down the stairwell. In the meantime, the second plane hit the South Tower, and the building swayed and rumbled. There were so many people walking down the stairs. She also told me that she saw many things including an arm falling from above. She had almost reached the ground floor. But then she didn’t remember what had happened after that. She said that she must have passed out. Then, she woke up in a hospital in New Jersey.
Instincts
We met once in a while to catch up. I think the last time I saw her was in 2002. I remember the last time I spoke to her. It was when she invited me over to her place on Utica Avenue, which was just several stations away from my place. I was planning to go. But on the day of, I didn’t feel well. I felt that something unpleasant could happen on my way there. So, I called her and said that I could not go because I wasn’t feeling well. She is a very understanding person. Since then, we naturally lost touch.
Many years later, in 2019, we found each other again on Facebook and reconnected. She had moved out of New York in 2003 with her future husband. She seemed very, very happy. I was very happy for her. And I was glad to be able to show her that I’m having a happy life as well.
(The name Mina is a pseudonym.)