Where were you?

Q.

A. I was five.

Q.

Sitting on the linoleum floor coloring. I remember my babysitter gasping and clasping her hands to her cheeks. Her daughter, an only child, used to always piss me off by taking the crayons I needed. I was about to complain to the babysitter about losing the blue green crayon to the daughter but then it happened.

Q.

A streak across a sky, I guess. I didn’t really know what was going on. After awhile they looped a montage of footage: the explosion, the teacher-astronaut in her classroom leaning over a student who had a question, a man in a dark suit whose mouth was moving but who made no sound. It was a puzzle to me.


Q.

It was sitting on the kitchen counter, one of those small ones you tuck away so you can watch Wheel of Fortune while you’re washing the dishes.

Q.

My mom came. I think seeing her teary-eyed but all calm-voiced confirmed for me what the situation was. I remember saying that I thought it was pretty and realizing from the looks on my mom and babysitter’s faces that I should have kept quiet.