by Cheryl DePaolo
my husband looked up and said "What's wrong"?. "I was just thinking of the Siberian girl", I answered.
On Sunday I was volunteering at the Family Assistance Center in Manhattan, taking aid applications. All weekend
I had worked with people affected by the World Trade Center tragedy, mostly with displaced workers who were
seeking financial assistance.
The supervisor came by my table. "We have a family member who needs to be seen right away, can you see her"?
Family members of those lost in the attacks have top priority and are moved to the front of the line and seen by
trained counselors in a more private area. He escorted a family of three women to my table, and introduced me to
Tatiana. (Of course that's not her real name, in respect for her privacy).
I looked up into the eyes of a very pretty young woman with light blond hair. She began to tell me her story, with
only a slight Russian accent. Tatiana was 20 years old, a recent immigrant from Siberia, and a newlywed. Her
husband had been offered a wonderful job opportunity in New York. They had set up house in an apartment in
Brooklyn.
Tatiana had not come to the Family Assistance Center until her sister and her mother could get to New York from
Siberia. It had taken them weeks to come to New York from remote Siberia, particularly with travel restrictions
and security concerns after the attacks. As I filled out the aid application, I asked for the names of her family
members. She smiled as she suggested it would be easier for her to fill them in than to spell them for me, and she
took the pen and wrote their names. She was right; their names looked like vegetable soup to me, and smiled and
thanked her for her help.
I explained some of the aid that was available for families. As I listed some of the items she might receive help with,
I mentioned memorial service expenses, catering costs and flowers. I looked at her and asked softly "Have you
done anything yet"? She answered "No" and shook her head. For the first time her eyes welled up. She stated "I
know, but I don't know". She was acknowledging that her husband was dead.
Unfortunately, her husband's wonderful new job had been with Cantor Fitzgerald. The trading firm Cantor
Fitzgerald occupied floors 101, 103, 104 and 105 in Tower 1 of the World Trade Center. The firm lost some 700
of their 1000 employees when an airplane slammed into the Tower. On September 11, Tatiana's 22 year old
husband never came home.
She spoke to her sister in Russian, and her sister pulled from a bag an 8X10 picture of the smiling young couple.
The picture had a huge crease down the middle. It took but a moment to realize that this was the picture she had
provided when she had reported him missing. She had folded it to show only his picture. During the days
immediately following the attack, thousands of flyers with faces of the missing had been posted all over the city,
and now had become memorial tribute walls for those lost.
Tatiana didn't know if he had worked for the company long enough for his life insurance to be in effect. Her mother
spoke no English, and her sister just bits of phrases. But now that they had arrived, she had begun to confront the
future. I asked her if she would be going home, and she surprised me by stating "This is home". Even after the
attacks, after losing her husband, only months after arriving here, she felt that New York was her home, and that
America was still preferable to Siberia.
She was fragile and yet somehow strong, and she was so young. As we completed her paperwork, I reached
under the desk and pulled out one of the teddybears that we had been giving to the children of our clients. Her
sister's eyes lit up, and Tatiana asked if her sister could also have one. I smiled as I handed a teddybear to her and
then one to her mother. As she rose to leave, I came around the table to hug her. She walked away, a widow with
a teddybear.
I had intended to return again to Manhattan tonight, for the fourth time in a week. Feeling weary I had decided to
forego the three-hour round trip and go home to my family tonight. My six-year-old daughter sat in the Chinese
restaurant munching shrimp from the buffet. She was wearing a tiara she had bought today to go with the princess
costume her grandmother had sent her, and I had smiled as I thought "How nice to be six and wear a tiara
whenever you feel like it!". My eight year old was sitting tall, tossing her hair as she felt sophisticated wearing the
dangling hoop earrings she had picked out at the mall.
And so I sat in the Chinese restaurant and tears came to my eyes as I thought of Tatiana. Suddenly eight years old
did not seem so very far from 20, and neither did six for that matter. Even as I wished I could return Tatiana's
happy picture to it's original creaseless state, I again found myself facing the reality that the calendar would not turn
back, the smiling young man would not come home from work, and none of us would ever be the same.
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