September 9, 2011
“Where were you on 9/11?” I’m preparing to answer that question because inevitably it’s asked this time of year and I’ll be working so I’ll be asked by strangers to recount my day. Great. I’d rather not, but if you insist. I was shacking up in someone else’s bed. Probably would have slept through the entire thing if his roommate hadn’t woken us up. I’ve never been a 9-5 girl and at that point I was single in the city and late nights were the norm. His roommate said, “One of the World Trade Center Towers just fell.” My response from the crumpled sheets, “You’re lying.”
Ten years ago I had to admit this to my parents when I finally got through to them on someone else’s cell phone. “No, Dad, I’m not at home (my apartment was on the Soho-Chinatown border at the time) I’m safe. I’m, um, I’m in Queens.” I think he was just happy to hear my voice because back then we had answering machines and landlines and I was nowhere near my landline.
The day as I look back on it was surreal in many ways. The first, of course, is rushing outside and seeing your city wounded as black smoke streams from the one remaining tower. Watching, praying that people are getting out. We watched the tower fall. Shocked, scared, unsure of what to do next. We got dressed and came up with the plan of donating blood. It was all we could think of to do to help. And for some reason it was imperative for us to be helping or trying to do so. We walked to the nearest hospital and offered. But they were already stocked. We were turned away. There were injuries, but not nearly as many as they’d thought there would be. When the towers finally fell you were either in or out.
The next thing we did was walk to Geoff and Amy’s apartment to check on them. Again, I was with a guy I’d been dating for a few months and his roommate. I couldn’t get home because all subway service had been halted. Not that I wanted to rush into the city or away from said guy, as it was a very emotional day. However, I had never met Geoff and Amy, but they were both wonderfully welcoming and full of stories. They both had walked home from the city and had made it safely. They were all friends from college and I was a bit of an outsider, however, I was never made to feel that way and somehow being in Geoff and Amy’s apartment was comforting, being in a group was comforting. Just having people around was better than witnessing this alone. There was talk of other friends and making sure everyone was all right. By then I’d gotten in touch with my own roommate, Michele, and knew she was among friends in the city.
After we left Geoff and Amy’s apartment we went to the grocery store and bought the makings of comfort food. I can’t even remember what it was we made, but there was definitely some binging. As the day wore on and subway service was restored I felt the need to go home. I wanted to see my apartment, and check on my city. I could have stayed another night in the comforting arms of that guy, but there was something inside me making me return to the city as unstable as it was.
It took me quite a while to get home. I remember the sun just beginning to set as I left Queens and not reaching my door until it was very dark. I took a train to 42nd street where all train service stopped. Then took a bus to 23rd Street where all bus service stopped. The bus ride was eerie because there were stations of Army Reserves. Army vehicles far out numbered regular cars. It looked like a scene from a movie I’d never want to see. When I got out on 23rd I was alone on the streets. New York City and I was pretty much alone. The streets were all blocked off and occasionally a police car or rescue vehicle would blow by me on the empty road. Speeding without obstruction faster than I bet anyone’s ever gone on those streets before. I hoped they were able to help whoever they were speeding towards.
When I got to 14th Street the entire road was blocked off. Nobody could go past without showing ID. Again, something I’d never imagined in my life a police line across the entire island of Manhattan. I showed my ID and was let through. I walked down those quiet streets and began to smell the smoke. The acrid, chemically, foreign smell that would become my constant companion for the next 6-8 months. It was a beautiful night, would almost have been a romantic stroll through the city if it weren’t for the smell and the pit in my stomach mimicking the hole in my city.
I made it to Houston Street and another roadblock across the island of Manhattan. This time my ID was even more intensely scrutinized. Though, clearly, I was just a girl trying to get home. They were kind, the policemen, they were a little lost too. Unsure of what they were suppose to be looking for. Keeping out those that were just curious, guarding the place from any more attacks, protecting citizens from the dangers of smoldering buildings. I trudged on, my downtown address a key to unlocking this crazy nightmare. Why did I want to keep going south? My roommate was not going to be there. She was staying with a girlfriend. Why did I want to be there? I still don’t understand it myself, but I wanted to be home, even if it smelt bad, even if it wasn’t entirely safe. I wanted to be in my own bed among my own things. There was a comfort in that.
I had walked about a mile and a half, maybe two to get home. Not a big deal normally, but once I got home I was exhausted. I remember listening to my messages play from the answering machine and crying. I had so many calls from people checking up on me. Some from people I hadn’t heard from in a long time, many from family all over the country. I was grateful and embarrassed that I hadn’t been home to receive their calls. But then I was grateful again that I was not home to receive their calls because then I would have been home alone and far too close to the action. My apartment at the time was about a mile and a half east and a little north of the World Trade Center. It was perfectly fine, but I would have been a wreck.
I will never forget that day or the weeks and months that followed. I will never forget crossing police lines to get home, the unnerving silence of the streets below 14th. I will never forget the thousands of MISSING posters that covered every inch of open space. The reality sinking in that most of those missing were never going to be found. I will never forget the guilt I felt at not having known someone personally that was lost. My roommate, who works in finance, had lost several close friends and I someone I’d met once or twice through her. Her grief seemed so real and substantial. She had funerals to attend. I was in the arts most of my friends weren’t even awake when it happened. It didn’t seem right for me to grieve. What had I lost really? Mine was this intangible poser grief. I didn’t have a face to mourn, but I had lost, something. I felt this incomprehensible sorrow. Sorrow for the heroes that had fallen, for the innocent people who had lost their lives, and for their families. I was surrounded by this sorrow for months, saturated in the smell of a smoldering city. I was grieving for universal losses. Grieving for my innocence. It was difficult to bury. What I remember most is what beautiful weather we had that autumn. As if God knew we needed sunlight to begin healing.
The tenth anniversary is Sunday. What I’d like to remember is the time in-between. I married the man I woke up with that morning, Johnny. I’ve been to grad-school and wrote the non-fiction part of my thesis on “A Writer’s Role in Tragedy.” I read about every fiction book on 9/11 written by 2008 and must say I’m still trying to make my peace with the topic. I’ve written a novel or two. And have an amazing little boy. I’m still living in New York and truly consider it my city.
Geoff and Amy are married and have two beautiful little girls. They’ve moved from NY to Phoenix and then to Philadelphia. They will be visiting us this weekend and somehow that just makes sense.
My roommate is still in New York and is happily married. She and her husband travel often, but always seem to find their way back here.
So when someone asks me, “Where I was on 9/11?” It’s difficult to give a simple answer. So if I tell you, “I was here,” understand that that is answer enough.
