Salon.com > A.R. Torres

President Bush: Don’t use my husband as your mascot

Fri, 05 Mar 2004 18:08:00 +0000

Dear President Bush:

My husband, Luis Eduardo Torres, was at his second day of work at Cantor Fitzgerald when he was killed on Sept. 11. He jumped from the 105th floor of the North Tower. Most of his upper body was recovered, identifiable only through dental records. I was seven months pregnant at the time.

It is with him in mind that I'm writing to you, to question your disturbing reelection ad campaign. Yesterday I saw the three ads you're now running all over the country, specifically on cable stations in the "swing states," where you feel you need to come out fighting strong. It was the "Safer, Stronger" ad that shocked me the most. At the commercial's midpoint, the words, "Then ... a day of tragedy" dramatically appear on the somber black screen. And the centerpiece: an image of ground zero, the hulking remains of a tower, alongside a human corpse, carried out by several firefighters. Both the tower and the human are draped in American flags.

The flags were intended to honor ground zero and the remains of the dead, but here they are merely props, used to add a powerful patriotic punch to your message. The tower and the corpse are two hideously broken and disfigured things behind and under the flag, and your image -- with your red tie, white shirt, and blue suit, standing in front of thick strong white columns -- serves as another, symbolic, flag.

Found and lost

Wed, 10 Jul 2002 19:11:00 +0000

Ten days after 9/11, the police came to my door. They wanted to tell me personally that they had identified Eddie's body. One week after that, I buried my beloved husband in Woodlawn Cemetery, in the Bronx. In March, I received some personal property -- his three ID cards. In April, I got more news: They had identified a piece of his muscle mass. Suddenly, I had to ask a difficult question that I had previously avoided: "How much of Eddie did I bury?" The answer was 95 percent -- I was short by just a foot or two.

I've reacted to all the news about Eddie, his body and his belongings in the same way: I am seized by an immediate and intense spasm of grief, which spreads throughout my body, until totally absorbed. After that, to my surprise, I feel peace.

I have tried to feel like a winner. After all, I was among the few who received so much from the recovery efforts at ground zero. According to the news, roughly two-thirds of the 2,823 dead vanished without a trace. Their loved ones still wait and hope that the medical examiner will call with the news that their loved one was "found" among the approximate 19,550 body parts still waiting to be identified. Meanwhile, of the 1,092 bodies identified, there were only about 300 whole bodies. Eddie, was one of them, less his feet.

What if?

Fri, 17 May 2002 19:45:00 +0000

I am angry when I go to the city office to reclaim Eddie's three I.D. cards and get a World Trade Center urn. The city worker there presents me with the urn and a large flag, a tight triangle folded so that the stars and stripes are all showing. I grit my teeth and ask: "What would Eddie's family in Colombia want with that?" I have been steeped in the day's news about how the government may have blundered and could have, should have, stopped the tragedy of 9/11 before it happened. The sight of Old Glory, meant to be a comfort, a talisman for protection, feels like a slap in the face.

"Do you have kids?" the worker asks sternly. She is trying to break me, make me cry, I think. This payback for my being so rude to her. My eyes water when I answer the question. "Yes, my son and my two stepsons." I hear my voice -- little, sad, barely in control -- and am reminded that this person has done me no wrong. She doesn't deserve this. It isn't her fault and it isn't mine that we are still poisoned with grief. Neither of us had anything to do with the powers that be, the powers that forced us together on this day for an exchange of symbolic goods. I apologize.

Getting the goods

Fri, 26 Apr 2002 19:00:00 +0000

On April 22, 1999, Eddie Torres and I got married. Although we were desperately in love, it was a marriage of pure necessity, a quick fix for his illegal immigration status, the means to getting a green card. Just a month before our wedding, our relationship had taken a sharp turn toward domesticity. We were no longer lovers hooking up on the sly for street-corner kisses, odd outings and covert dashes to my bed; we were a live-in couple, happily engaged to be married. Now we brushed our teeth together, smiling through the foam at the novelty of this newfound nightly activity.

The date of our wedding, the only important element of our prenuptial planning, coincided with the moon waxing, not waning; the former is good luck, the latter, bad. Mother and mother-in-law-to-be fussed about me in preparation. I was the conduit between them since neither spoke the other's language. I translated their English and Spanish anxiety to each other. The absurdity of the day needed no explanation; it was clear to everyone.

After our City Hall ceremony, we traversed the downtown streets that led to the World Trade Center. Everyone smiled at us, the newlyweds, on this spring day. A perfect bride, I wore the white glossy dress that Eddie bought me from a Queens black market. He plucked it off the rack, sized me just right from his hands-on knowledge of my shape.

Wrath of a terror widow

Fri, 15 Mar 2002 20:36:00 +0000

I sent an e-mail to cartoonist Ted Rall last week after I read his "Terror Widows" comic strip online in the New York Times.

"Dear Mr. Rall," I wrote.

"I have asked my dead husband to haunt you for the rest of your miserable days.

Shame on you for making our lives just a little bit harder with your ignorant little rant.

Sincerely,

A.R. Torres"

The missive, and an avalanche of ones just like it, did not inspire an apology from Mr. Rall. Instead, he told the press, "I've done a few lousy cartoons in my time that I'd love to take back, but this isn't one of them." And then, in another blast of cruel stupidity, Rall did it again, skewering firefighters in a Gear magazine cartoon.

The Universal Press Syndicate issued a statement in support of Rall, insisting that the cartoonist "is looking at recent news events with the cynical eye of a satirist." And they're right. Rall captured in his cartoon the new view of victims' families as shallow and greedy. Gone is the exaggerated view of the families as noble and tragic, as wounded individuals worthy of unlimited sympathy and support. In its place is the growing impression that we are money-grubbing widows, glad to dump our husbands for a cool million.

Loving a ghost

Thu, 14 Feb 2002 20:07:00 +0000

A friend explains my present circumstances with this story:

There was a woman who had two dogs. When one became terminally ill, she decided to have him put to sleep. On the day of the appointment, as per the veterinarian's advice, she brought the other dog along so that it could sniff the dead dog's body and comprehend its death. Deprived of that experience, the surviving dog would have waited at the door for eternity, always expecting her companion to return.

I am the dog still waiting at the door.

How do you have a relationship with a dead man? How do you love somebody who is no longer near your body? How do you love a body you did not see before it was buried because it suffered so much trauma that it was only identifiable through dental records? According to Helen, my therapist, you continue to have a relationship with a person whom you have lost -- somehow, some way. You internalize the relationship, she says. I look over at her with a smirk, and tell her this new relationship with Eddie is sorely lacking.

Supposedly, with a body to bury, I had an edge in the grieving process over the WTC victims' families who didn't have a body. Supposedly it gave me closure. But having the body is not the same as seeing the body.

The reluctant icon

Fri, 25 Jan 2002 20:27:00 +0000

"Every baby is born with bread under his arm." Eddie reminded me of this Spanish saying whenever we talked about our shaky financial future. I was due to have our first baby in the fall, and we were concerned because I'd be unable to work at that point.

As it turned out, the saying proved true: When our son was born in October, I no longer worked. But there was enough money to take care of all of our expenses, and the promise of more money to come. Eddie, who died on Sept. 11, became the bread under our son's arm.

It is a bizarre time in my life: My beloved husband goes to work and dies when a plane hits his building. Then, as I attempt to deal with the loss, and learn the art of single motherhood, checks arrive in the mail, in various amounts, on a regular basis. One day I may receive $1,500 from the Cantor Fitzgerald Relief Fund and $1,000 for supplemental needs from the Red Cross. Another day I may receive more -- from the United Way September 11th Fund, the New York Crime Victims Board and Social Security. And while the money comes in -- from government agencies, charities and special funds set up in the aftermath of the tragedy -- there is an additional chunk of change to be had from the Federal Compensation Fund, provided I accept it rather than choose to sue.