Six years ago . . .

Six years ago, I was a brand new bride, just back from our honeymoon and facing a new world of unemployment in a small town in PA, with no one like me (i.e., NOT from Johnstown) in sight.

The ringing phone woke me up, but the sound of my mother-in-law’s frantic voice was like a knife in my brain when she said, “Jessica, we’re under attack. America is under attack. Turn on the TV.”

I thought she was being sensational. But I turned on the TV in time to see the first tower in flames and then watch the second plane hit. In that moment, it was as if my two worlds were colliding together—my home world of the burning tires and exploding buses and army jeeps and sirens and my new world of sitcoms and department store sales and autumn leaves—were suddenly crunching against each other, metal against concrete. This was not supposed to happen. I couldn’t believe it. Why then, did another part of my mind recognize the image, as if I had seen it a hundred times before?

We are in the middle of Nowhere, PA, not in Jerusalem anymore, not even in Washington DC anymore. I tried to reassure my mother-in-law that we would not be the next targets. Why then, was I getting a call from my husband that his governmental agency, fifteen minutes away, was under an emergency evacuation and that the local airport (which has only one possible destination, Pittsburgh, for little baby commutes) had spotted a rogue plane and had called in the National Guard? What could a terrorist possibly want in Johnstown, PA? Don’t be ridiculous.

We formed a plan. Meet at the top of the hill at my parents-in-law’s house. Say up there until crisis is over. Stay off the phones. Watch TV.

So, we watched while the Pentagon burned. And then we watched while the news reported another plane down, a few miles away in a field by a mine. By the news reports, it had flown right over our heads.

We spent the day in one room, glued to the TV, staring in stunned disbelief, weeping. And then the questions started. Why do they hate us, my brother in law asked me, what have we done to deserve such a thing? Who are these monsters? How can someone from the other side of the world hate us enough to do this to us?

I remember being alone. I remember many talks with many people and that I was always alone. I remember the friends and family members who vowed to protect me from vigilante justice, who told me that I needed to stay low, stay at home, avoid the grocery store and maybe even church. They tucked me under their wings and told me that they would keep me safe and that they loved me. I sat on their couches, listening to them ask the questions that I was not asking . . . and while they reeled from this “loss of virginity,” from experiencing the unthinkable, I remembered: the gas masks, the missiles, the tanks on our streets, the burning flags, the twisted bus skeletons, the machine guns, the bullet holes, the curfews, the strikes, the marches, the tear gas, the shattered car windows, the broken arms, the checkpoints, the stabbing in front of my elementary school, the spray-painted graffiti on our front door, the feeling that you are not protected and that if They were to get you and kill you, would anyone really make a fuss?