[question] Wait, I’ll tell you, I’m not finished yet with my telling, if you want to hear. Let me tell it the way I tell it. So then I walked to the corner where I could see the sidewalk on the Washington Place side because I was looking everywhere for my sister, to find her body if she has fallen, and there were bodies everywhere, so I am trying to see their faces. I knew so many of them, so it was one shock after another to look into those faces, and I would be relieved it wasn’t my sister but oh! it’s Dora, or oh! it’s Jenny. I saw this one girl who had a gimpy leg, she worked on eight, she was all burned but I knew her from her shoe she had made special with a block so she could walk normal. I went with her one time to get that shoe fixed by the man who had a shoe repair on the Bowery, and she explained to me if we flirt with him he would fix her shoe for nothing, so that’s what we did. It was innocent. I saw some of the men who died too, who worked on the part of the eighth floor where they couldn’t get out so easy, where the fire started. Some of the dead were burned all black like a cinder. I recognized them by their dress, or like that girl with the special shoe, she was Polish, but then some of the dead girls were perfect, no marks on them at all, they still looked so beautiful and young and full of life, except they were dead from the fall.

[question] I am about to say some more about the firemen. Their ladders didn’t go high enough, you know all about that, it was in all the articles and books. They didn’t go high enough so they were useless, why that was allowed I don’t know, the buildings were going up to ten floors but the ladders they got are still only high enough for six floors, and the other thing that was useless, that was those big nets they had. I saw them holding this net like in a movie in the middle of Greene Street, and next I saw three girls jump together, so they go right through this foolish, cockamamy net that isn’t strong, and those girls hit the pavement, they hit the pavement all at once, with so much force it flipped all the firemen right into the net on top of the dead girls.

[question] So now is when I see Sam for the first time since the fire broke out. I look up to see why is everyone pointing and shouting, and then I see him, I see Sam, my fiancé, in the window, and he was helping the girls. I was sitting on the curb because I was feeling like I might faint, and I can never forget sitting there with blood running past me, it went over my shoes, it was water from the fire hoses mixed with blood, and it was like a river of blood running past me, and I was so shocked I just sat there letting it run over my shoes, they were ruined, I think the hospital threw them away, and I couldn’t even open my mouth anymore like I forgot how to talk English, and I was just watching everything, but I had a feeling like I don’t even understand anything anymore. I see coins all over the street, money was lying everywhere, from the pockets it must be, it fell out when those girls were jumping. People must have snatched it up. What did it matter? Those girls didn’t need it anymore.