I knew it wasn’t an M80. I knew it wasn’t a gunshot. I have lived in the city - LA specifically to know the difference. I didn’t hear the moment planes crashed into the World Trade Center, I was underground , getting closer to the locus of impact, towards my mother.
But I knew something exploded. I was alone in a borrowed house, indulging in reading just to read after swimming. I paused after the boom. Would another one follow? No - ok so then I determined it was safe enough to open the front door and stand in the front , still behind a gate and a stone fence.
No one else was outside. It was quiet. I couldn’t see or smell anything. I determined it was safe enough to take the next step, to open the gate and stand in the driveway. Quiet. No smell but there was a plume of black smoke. If I knew Palm Springs better I could tell the direction relative to the house but all I could think was far enough. It’s far enough. I went back inside and opened the Citizen App but nothing appeared so I put it all aside.
When my boyfriend came back I asked if he had heard the boom from where he was in town. He hadn’t. So I put it aside until I couldn’t.
Hours later the reports started coming in. A bomb at a fertility clinic a mile and a half away from where we were. One person dead, more injured. Windows blown out. My mother texts me.
Are my boyfriend’s parents ok? She knows they have a house in the Springs. She doesn’t know that I am there, not them. I decide to call her directly. Why lie at this point in my life.
She seems to know more than me. My mother watches the news like it’s a competitive sport. She tells me of body parts in the street. It reminds me of what we talked about after she escaped the World Trade Center on 9-11-01. For a brief moment I wonder if there will be more. Will there be another bomb? I remember on 9-11-01 , following along with the throngs of people walking uptown, I looked to the sky and wondered if there would be more planes. I thought my mother was dead.
But this isn’t , this wasn’t 9-11-01. This isn’t Gaza. The babies er embryos er eggs were fine.
On the way out of town, back towards the city, we have to drive past the site. Windows are boarded up. Yellow crime/safety tape waves in the desert wind. A lone police vehicle is at a corner. The front of the IVF center is a landslide of Spanish tile and stucco .
But I had a home to go to. I had access to food and medicine and I knew where my children were.
I'm glad she was OK then and that you're OK now!