(6 of 10)
And then she hears a huge noise--Pasquale describes it as a dozen safes being tossed down the stairs. Lieut. Mickey Kross, who survived with a group of his fellow fire fighters in the lower part of stairway B that didn't collapse, recalls in Report from Ground Zero (Viking) that "there is now a sense of tremendous energy, like being on a locomotive track with a train coming at you." Something big comes through one wall at Genelle and Rosa and pushes them back. They fall, but Rosa recovers her footing. Genelle stays on the floor and starts to crawl downward. All this happens quickly, but there is time for them to separate. Rosa moves as if she is headed back up the stairs.
Genelle is jostled like a pinball and struck by debris from everywhere. As the great noise begins to subside, she is lying on her right side, and her right leg is pinned hard. Her head is now caught between something--the floor maybe?--and some concrete. Finally, it's all quiet, and it's dark, but somehow she is here. She is alive. Soon she says the first of many prayers, asking God to continue to shepherd her to safety. Not far away, a man is calling, "Help! Help!" His voice falters and disappears. She won't hear him again.
Genelle starts biting her nails as she recounts these things. She says she is fine, that last fall's spate of nightmares has ended, that she rarely has a bad day. And when she is depressed, she says, it's not about Sept. 11, but usually about some silly argument she has had with Roger. When she gets sad, she plays gospel CDs and cranks the volume. She weeps. She can sing along with one of her favorite songs, Yolanda Adams' Fragile Heart:
Now I'm standing with the news of a tragedy Standing here with a fragile heart See, I never shed a tear I stayed strong for them When everybody disappears It's only you that keeps me strong ...
These words give Genelle strength; they are also eerie because even though she cries easily, Genelle didn't weep the entire time she was trapped on Sept. 11 and 12. Everybody else had disappeared, and she was alone with God. Within hours of first seeing Roger after she was rescued, Genelle told him that her survival was her calling to God, and that if they were to be together, they were going to change their lives. They couldn't live in sin. They would be going to the Brooklyn Tabernacle every week.
The couple had quarreled just before Sept. 11, and some in her family were angry with Roger for hurting Genelle; they say he wouldn't commit to her. But next to her hospital bed, Roger didn't hesitate. He said they could take the first step on the right path by getting married.
She is asking God for strength now. A couple of hours have passed, and her head is still pinned. It hurts badly. She's not sure if she can move it. "Help me, Lord," she asks. And she pulls free, painfully scraping her head but winning some ability to move it forward and back; she still can't move it laterally.
Everything against her is hard. Her whole body is starting to ache. On her right side, something sharp is poking her groin. She keeps reaching for the object, trying to move it, but it's heavy concrete. Still, she persists, feeling all around the area. Her hand now brushes against something soft. She knows reflexively that it is a body, but she tries to push the thought from her mind.
It's a fireman. He's dead. That's his leg.