Published to FB Notes Sept 11, 2018
An email I sent to myself on after Sept 11th and found 17 years later
“Doomsday” September 11, 2001 or “9.11”.01
I woke up late today and rushed to turn on my TV to see just how late I was.
Rush.rush.rush. Life is such a chore.
The blue NY-1 box in the lower left-hand corner read “8:50am, 78 Degrees”, but my mind saw “HURRY THE FUCK UP!” I pulled my robe off the back of my door and shared the sink with my two roommates. Three women brushing their teeth ineffectively and hurried. The tense voices from the TV stuck in my head and I thought to myself, So early in the morning and bad news already.
Rush.rush.rush.
I didn’t even get a chance to fix my bed. Pulling on my clothes and half listening to the TV, I absorbed enough to know a plane had crashed into the World Trade.
First Aaliyah, now this. Fuck, I gotta go. God Bless those poor people.
Rushing to the train, my china flaps slapping onto the concrete like duck feet, I nervously fingered the sling backs of the heels that I had hooked in my palm.
Another day, another costume.
I looked in the sky and felt fire, it hung high and threatening like the recurring nightmare that makes you afraid to sleep. I was already defeated by the day. “I wouldn’t go nowhere if I were you. I wouldn’t go nowhere.” A crackhead cackled his doomsday warning at me and, as I always do, I looked straight ahead, my eye on the prize, the C train.
Rush.rush.rush. Please don’t make me miss a train, I have to book Mier Malinsky on a flight.
“BOOM.”
An explosion ricocheted in the sky, against the buildings and in my head. Like a good New Yorker, I remained unfazed; I have become good at being non-reactive to loud noises. I smell smoke; Brooklyn stinks, no matter how gentrified it gets. I sat on the train trying to keep my mind off my restless stomach. It turned over and over again, like an insomniac cat in a sack. I feel sick. I feel sick to my stomach. I just want to get to where I am going. My book proved enough of a distraction to the cat in the sack, but not enough to notice that the train was behaving strangely. I wanted to rock forward to help move the train along, but I didn’t want to look crazy. I decided to resort to my telekinetic powers. No amount of thinking was going to move this train anywhere.
“Because of the problems at the world trade center, the C train will proceed over the F train line to West 4th.”
Even after that announcement we proceeded over the A line. Whatever, I grunt in my thoughts, either one will get me there. We skip Broadway Nassau. We skip Chambers. WOO-HOO! But even with the skipping, we still crawl by. ARGH! I wanted to scream.
Read. Read. Read. Rush. Rush. Rush.
Canal St. station, Ding! The doors open and crowds of people rush on. Breathing heavy, crying, loud voices. AAAHHHH!!! You are upsetting my cat! I almost threw up right there. I pulled my book close to my face as if it would form a soundproof box around my entire person. A Black woman nearby cried, “I saw them jumping out of the building, I saw them.” I can pay attention to no one. My book is all consuming. I have to book a flight I have to get to work. I have to read my book. I have to throw up. Some words made it past my soundproof book, “The pentagon,” “The terrorists,” “The World trade.” The words beaded up and drip right off me, like water on a waxed car. There was nothing in my world except my book, my cat, my destination and Mier.
Rush rush rush.
42nd Street Time Square. It’s a race against the clock. Calling from my mobile proves futile and annoying. GODDAMN SPRINT! GOD FOR NOTHING, OVER PRICED… Expletive. Expletive. Expletive. I was so close, I could taste my office phone’s receiver on my lip. I’m not THAT late, it’s funny how we all relate to time.
Clap clap clap.
I begin to realize how unsound and uncomfortable china flats really are. “Turn around and go home” they say. Yea right! Mier has a flight to get on and I have to get him on it. I shimmy my way past the people waving their arms in air, like a silly dance. Up on my floor, 39, its silence. Just Jan and Jackie here, but they are leaving. I am told to go home. What. The. Fuck. I better not get fired for this, this is not my fault. Go home, they say. Could they have told me this before I left. God rush rush rush. For what? For “Go Home.” My adrenaline high, I run back to the train.
Clapclapclap. Ow!
At the mouth of the station entrance, people ooze out, blood from an open wound, slow, warm and thick. “The station’s closed” someone yells. Another woman is crying, hiccupping, “Í just want to get home.” Another woman cradles her under her armpit and helps her up and out of the stairs. “It’s gonna be ok” her words long and syrupy. The migration is uptown. My phone is dead. The pay phones have lines. And the stations are closed. My cat panicked, it began to claw away at my insides. I have no place to go. I have no friends and family nearby. I wanted to sit on the sidewalk and cry. I still don’t fully understand what is happening. I run to Dr. Prince’s house. He has a penthouse apartment on 48th and once I get in, I march straight to the terrace to assess what is happening and see how dense the street is from above. I point down at the street. “Look! Gary!” He says “No, look at the TV,” I see the first tower crumble and fall inside of itself. My stomach sinks into my hips. I feel all the sudden weighed down and too heavy for my legs. I need to sit down. Sit down or fall down. I opted to sit. I look south out his windows and see it with my own eyes. “I need to make phone calls, I need to call my mom, my dad. Sade. Ahna. Angela.”
I was given to freedom to make all the calls I needed to make. Was I far enough from Times Square? Is this area next? I felt hollowed out and raw, I wanted to run, cry, scream, call my mom, go home and make love all at the same time. But I only had enough in me to sit in front of the tv and helplessly watch what had to be lives upon lives ending. Like office building lights all going out at the same time. It was unreal. It was perfect. It was devastating and beautiful. If it were a film, I would’ve commented on the beautiful cinematography. It was breathtaking and unsettling. It stole every word I ever wanted to say about life, and took them all out from underneath me, a magician pulling a tablecloth out from a setting. I had nothing but my life. And one of these days, I won’t even have that. By, most likely, no choice of mine, it could be all taken away.
“I’m fine.” “I’m Ok.”
I received so many calls that day and the following. I’ve never been so fine and so ok before. People called that I never expected to. Long, lost family. Long, lost friends. They didn’t want to know details. They just wanted to hear my voice. I watch the news and see the footage of the carnage and they replay the crash and the collapse over and over and I feel nothing at all. It’s a movie, my heart says to me.
And then I see the people, with their pictures and their black and white copies of their missing people and the exhausted and hopeful looks in their faces and I start to become unhinged. “I’m looking for my husband, or my daughter, or my lover, or my mother” and the surreal becomes real. I walked in the streets and watch the people take pictures of a forever changed skyline and I sigh to myself, you probably didn’t even appreciate it when it was there. You probably never laid down on the foot of it and bugged out at the sheer enormity of it. You never stood in the windows of the world, toes and nose pressed up against the glass looking down whispering “Whoa” to yourself like a kid. Just like my long, lost families and friends never called me before to find out is I was “okay.”
After the last few months of grappling with so many trivial matters, my heart hurting and my body parts being rented out by unworthy individuals. I realize that I AM ok. That I AM fine.
