Lydia by Cheryl DePaolo
		Lydia was a cleaning lady. She had worked in both the North and South Towers, but for the last 4 years she had worked exclusively for a financial firm occupying 3 floors in the North Tower. Lydia wasn't sure that she wanted to fill out an application for services. As a South American immigrant, she valued hard work and she had never applied for any type of aid before. However, she now had no income and her household bills were starting to accumulate. We gently discussed the guidelines indicating that she was eligible for aid, and assured her that when she got back on her feet she would support herself again. She was anxious about finding another job with so many jobs lost in the city. Her English was heavily accented, and she knew this would limit her job opportunities. Even if she found another cleaning job, she knew she would not start at the rate she was earning after all of her yearly pay increases. Lydia was not at work on September 11; she was scheduled to go to work that day at 5 PM. She had worked long hours over the weekend. She stated that the people at the firm had treated her wonderfully, giving her overtime hours on the weekends. To Lydia, extra hours meant a little bit more money to live on, a bit more money to send home to her family. Lydia was the first client I saw who mourned the towers themselves. She talked about the floors that gleamed, the fixtures she polished. She repeated "My floors were so clean", as if she could not face the thought of the offices and hallways and bathrooms that now lay in twisted heaps of ash and debris. She spoke with longing of the comfortable rubber soled work shoes, broken in just right, and the sweater she had worn every day while cleaning. Both of these, she said, were still in her locker at work.