I was exhausted my body heaved itself into the gutter in Chinatown-what street I don't know. The sun which a short time ago was my white diamond in the sky turned on my body like a thousand red hot daggers flaming through my soul.

i hopped up from the indignity of the gutter and was a couple of yards from a pay phone that had a long line because the cellphones were out - I would later find out the atennas which serviced them  had been on the towers  and fell  with the buildings. I didn't have a cellphone at that time because I was cheap. No use of me getting in this line for the telephone I better make tracks before more commotion comes up again, I thought.

But what shall I do? the question ringed in my ears. How will I get out of here-go home to the Bronx? A couple feet from the telephone booth was the #6 subway. If I took it uptown I'd be a block from my house-home sweet home. My stomach knotted up-what if I was Nuked in the subway-better get on the bus. My mind was spinning out of control with doubt and fear, so much so, that I was afraid I was going to faint.

Then I heard my grandmother's voice from long, long, ago. "Honey your mind is you, get a mastery over it." Somehow I got off my emotional roller coaster and decided to hop on the #7 bus to 145th Street then take the #19 bus  but which would land me 4 blocks from my house. Despite the indignity of falling flat into the gutter-I would have crawled home on all fours if it got me out of Manhattan and into the Bronx.

A #7 bus steamrolled up the block, stopped and let out a sigh of steam from its engine. This was the chariot that was going home-I hopped on the bus like an excited child jumping on a ride at a amusement park. Once inside it was a regular city bus-crowded with people from every walk of life- except the people looked somber-almost mesmerized.

I plunked my body in a seat in the middle next to a lady with an hourglass figure  who was plugged into a radio.   She became the bus' news anchor and began barking the information: "The supreme Court has  been attack, the White House Been attacked and the Trade Center's Fallen." Everything I would find out wasn't true but the Trade Center Collapsing. I don't know what time all this happened-this news which the woman barked out- for time had been perverted-it seemed to be spinning fast, slow and standing still at the same moment.

A tall man got on the bus, in black robes, clutching religious beads, carrying a humongous plastic bag, everyone seemed to silently, collectively inhale with fear and it was so quiet you could have heard a roach snoring on the bus. Everyone fixed their eyes on  this potential threat-believing that perhaps it was a bomb in the sack he carried. But then we looked in his eyes, they were our eyes not the vacant stare of a sociopath bent on destruction but of a person fleeing terror. We exhaled in relief.

Like us he had awaken to go to work on this day when the sun was a white diamond in the sky and wham he was caught smack dab in the middle of this hate-like we were. Much to my dismay I had been profiling and had forgotten the words of President Abraham Lincoln, "Don't judge a book by its cover." But then again he was way head of his time and still is. If what he believed was practiced the world would be much simpler place.

The tall man sat down in the front of the bus-joining the ranks of newly minted refugees. My brain felt as if it had been boiled in Vodka and fried in turmoil. I spent the rest of the ride to 145th Street believing and hoping this was a bad dream and that I'd wake up to another diamond in the sky day. I wouldn't believe what had happened-what had happened was a lie-a chapter in a book of fiction.

The bus finally clanged and clunked its way over potholes and asphalt and made it to the manhattan side of the 145th Street Bridge. On the other side of it was the Bronx-I'd be home -even if the sky fell to the earth and vice-a-versa I'd be home. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs some victory cry but I didn't.

The bridge was crowded lined with the humanity of city from every walk of life, possibly from every nook and cranny on earth. There were no buses and trains the powers that be had shut them down as a precaution. But I didn't care these hordes of people struggling across the bridge were like Dorthy in the Wizard Of Oz skipping up the Yellow Brick Road. I started by journey to the Bronx-I was going home.

NEXT-HOME SWEET HOME?