On the morning of September 11, 2001, I caught the #6 train at my home station, St. Lawrence Street in the Bronx. It was sometime between 8:30 and 8:45. I was beginning another day in my humdrum life as a paralegal. More mindless copy checking, endless proofreading and document production, and volumes and volumes of filing.
At 125th Street I shuffled across the platform to catch the downtown express, a #4 or 5 train, to the last stop in Manhattan, Bowling Green. At 14th Street Union Square, there was a massive influx of people, not unusual for morning rush hour. Ding dong. The next stop is… The doors slid shut. The train rolled forward. Amongst the incoming passengers was a man, with wide eyes and hurried speech, recounting to another passenger, “A jet crashed into one of the towers. They’re telling people to stay out of the West side. There are body parts on the highway.” His words pierced my ears. From my seat I glanced at him, then at the people around me. Some stared at this man, but most remained absorbed in their morning reverie. The train was supposed to make a couple more stops before reaching my stop, but it bypassed both with no mention of why. The stations that we bypassed, both local and express transfer stations, were desolate. No one leaning against a subway column on the platform; no one manning the ticket booth; no one swinging through the turn style. Normally, these stations were bustling with mission-driven New Yorkers. But on this morning, through the train window, I saw no one.
Upon reaching Bowling Green sometime between 9:45 and 10:00 AM, the conductor announced, “Ladies and gentlemen, last stop. Last stop! All trains to Brooklyn discontinued.” I stepped onto the platform, looked in both directions and saw my co-worker, John, who was in the same car as I. Hurrying to one another, we exchanged furrowed brows, locked arms and gently pushed our way through towards the nearest exit. As we climbed the stairs, the noise grew louder until we found ourselves in the midst of pandemonium. Immense gray clouds engulfed countless downtown skyscrapers. Horns and sirens blared in dissonance. Office papers soared. Small shards of steel rained on us, pelting our faces. The gritty air, with its stench of burning rubber, choked us. People scrambled like loose chickens. We ran towards 125 Broad Street (our workplace), and when we arrived at our building’s entrance, we were given bottled water and face masks by office personnel. Other co-workers decided to seek refuge inside the building.
John, Jae (another co-worker), and I decided to walk home along the east side of the city. Periodically we stopped to look back and could only see the enormous, thick gray cloud that hid a once sprawling southern skyline. Jae had seen one of the crashes and cried as we traversed the city blocks, swarmed by thousands of others also desperate to reach home. I had no cell phone at the time and tried several public pay phones to no avail. We hopped on a city bus running in the 20s but only covered 3 city blocks in one hour, so instead we resumed our foot travel. On the bus I observed a man in a business suit caked in powder. He stared ahead, motionless, silent, his brief case leaning against his leg. Many people throughout the city had white in their hair. John, who lived in midtown, reached home first and had a friend of his call our families to let them know that we were okay. Jae reached her upper East side apartment next, at which point, coincidentally, I bumped into a girl with whom I attended junior high school and whom I hadn’t seen in over 5 years. We walked together all the way to the 125th Street station, where we parted ways and where train service into the Bronx was available.
I rode the train up to the Bronx in relative quietude. It was close to 5:00 PM when I made it home where I was met with warm and tight embraces. I sat down to watch the news and for the first time realized what had actually happened. As I watched recordings of the planes crashing, the fire burning, the smoke billowing, people leaping to their deaths, and those awesome towers crumbling, I wept.
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