MY BREAK-IN

A sound wakes me in the middle of the night. I lift my head and see a dark mass at the front door. I take its snapshot, arrested in a stare but, as I’ll realize later, it’s only a nanosecond before I understand the mass is a man, a stranger in my house. Without thinking... the next thing I know… I suddenly find myself…I’m out of bed, screaming “Get out of here. Get out of here,” racing to him, punching him, pulling at him to get him out the door. Somehow, I’ve registered his body language and know he had no idea a person was sleeping five feet from him and he’s scared. I keep pulling at him, fumbling with the lock and chain on the door. He says, “Good, open the door.” He wants to go as much as I want him to. I’m scratching to get the door open with one hand and still punching him with the other. One punch lands squarely and he pulls back. “Hey, stop that,” he says. He punches back and hits me just below my right eye. But I get the lock and chain undone, pull open the door. Another man is standing just outside. I see his silhouette as he stands motionless. I push the other man out, slam the door, lock it and stand still as I listen to them go away.

     I step back from the door and stand in the middle of the room, the perfect picture of someone mulling over an interesting problem. Something has happened but I’m not sure what it is. Maybe a dream? But when I raise a finger and touch my cheek, I feel the swelling that has already begun under my eye. This was no dream. Interesting, I think, odd, very odd. Eventually, I find myself staring at the door. I slowly realize it was locked from the inside –  how then did the man get in? Curiouser and curiouser, I think, an Alice lost not in Wonderland but in SuperCalmland, where everything has slowed down and drifts along in neutral.

     It’s a beautiful night with a cool breeze that billows the drapes and, as they lift up, something catches my eye. It’s a gap in the large louvered window on one side of the room. I move a little closer. Is that really a gap? It takes some time for me to see that it is, and it comes to me this is how the man got in. He removed two of the glass louvers creating an opening and squeezed himself in. For a moment, I picture him, a sinuous ell in clear water, shimmying through. I should do something about that opening. But even assuming the panels haven’t been smashed, they’re outside, and there’s no way I’m going to look for them in the dark. Anyway, I don’t feel especially threatened so I prop up a large wooden folding bed tray to hold the drapes flat against the opening. It seems enough to protect me.

     I stay in the dark. Turning on the lights would make me feel exposed, in a spotlight. A target. Vulnerable. I get on the bed, lean back and make myself comfortable sitting up. I suppose I should call 911, but the men are gone so is there really any need? I keep touching my cheek. The man’s punch caught the edge of my cheekbone directly under my eye and I can feel knots forming under the skin as the swelling increases. So strange that I’ve been punched, by the man, by anyone. How is it possible that I punched him? For a moment, I hear myself screaming, “Get out, get out of here,” and it’s a sound I’ve never heard before, from a movie soundtrack shot in some other dimension. I don’t know what to make of any of it.

     I watch the light change, increase, revealing everything that is familiar and unchanged. When it’s been light for a half hour or so, I crack open the door, see no one, and venture out. The screen has been pulled back from the window and I’m relieved to see the two glass louver panels haven’t been broken. I quickly pick them up, take them inside and lock the door. Working fast, I get them back in their metal slots, close all the louvers tightly and lock them down. The locking sound seems final; now there really is no sign that anything has happened. I’m all right; the house is all right, and it’s as if the whole incident is closed. A part of me believes it is. I can easily go on from here without giving my break-in another thought.

     It’s still early, about 6:15. I make coffee and take a cup to my desk. I work for an hour or so. I take a shower. Something is beginning to catch up with me and around 9AM I think about calling a friend to tell her what’s happened. I hesitate. Once I tell her, it will be out in the world, she will ask questions, and I sense that in answering those questions, I will make it all real in a way it isn’t quite real to me yet. But I do call her and her first words are that I must call 911. I can see she’s right but I’m still not sure it’s absolutely necessary. I compromise. Since the emergency is over, I don’t need 911. Instead, I dial 311, the switchboard for non-emergencies. I’m on hold for twenty minutes but that’s okay. I have nothing else to do. Eventually, a live woman is on the line. Oh, my, she says, are you all right? Do you need an ambulance? No, I say, I’m fine, fine. She tells me the police are on the way.

     I’m beginning to come out of shock, although later I’ll see I’ll be in some kind of low-grade shock for days. Now, waiting for the police, fear grips my belly, my stomach, creeps up into my throat. It dawns on me how easily things could have gone another way. The men could have had a gun; they could have pushed me back in the house; they could have beaten me up or raped me. Just the possibilities make me tremble. But I also see with intense clarity what did happen. I see the dark mass as it resolves into a man. I hear my screams, see myself out of bed before I know it and rushing at the man without any thought, without any decision. I see my fingers fumbling with the lock and chain. I see the grain of the wood as I throw the door open. I see the silhouette of the other man. I feel the strength in my arm as I push the man out, slam the door, turn the lock and replace the chain. What I can’t see is the moment I leapt out of bed. It was an automatic response, reflexive, probably the purest reflex I’ve ever had, straight out of the amygdala, the deep part of the brain that reacts instantly to fear and danger, even before there is conscious thought. I can’t believe what I’ve just done.

     When the police arrive, I talk much faster than usual. I’m also trying to be my most charming. I want to give them as much detail as I can, and I want to impress them, to make them think what a terrific witness I am. The fact is I can give them very little to go on. I have only the vaguest impression of the man in the house, that he was small and possibly had dark hair, possibly was white. I show them the panels the man had removed and realize too late I shouldn’t have touched them; there were fingerprints on them, and now some of them are my own. The police say it doesn’t matter; they’ll run them all through the data base and see if his turn up. A man to take the fingerprints would be along in a few days.

     I told one of the policemen how I had reacted and how much it amazed me. He said it was the right thing to do and probably was what made the man so eager to get out of house. When I said again how amazed I was, he shrugged and said there are just some people who get aggressive in the face of a threat. But that was the point - I couldn’t absorb that “some people” meant me. I’ve never thought of myself as brave or aggressive in that way. In fact, although most people imagine themselves a hero, I’ve thought the opposite. On a forced march, I’d be one of those who fall by the wayside. In the face of torture, I’d collapse instantly. In any show of physical force, I’d surely back down. But it turned out I didn't back down. I got aggressive. I thought I would fold but I didn’t, didn’t shrivel in the face of fear. Here is a completely new idea of myself. This kind of dramatic revelation has been very rare in my life (actually, I’m not sure it’s ever happened before) and it’s been a depth charge going off in my psyche, sending out slow moving shock waves that are the real effect. 
     Those waves are enhanced by something else equally stunning about my break-in. When I told friends about how I had reacted, most of them weren’t surprised. “That’s the woman I know,” one of them said. “You’re a survivor,” said another. I didn’t know what to make of it, that people see things in me – good things – that I haven’t seen in myself. But now I understand. The gulf is very wide between how I’ve seen myself in the world, how I feel inside, and how the rest of world has seen me. It’s wide because, for so much of my life, I’ve filtered my experience through a thick lens, a bifocal made up of negativity and critical judgments of myself. For much of the time I’ve been a witness for the prosecution.

     Now, the universe has picked me up by the scruff of the neck, turned me around and set me down in a different place. There’s a new view and a new story to tell myself. I’m the one who went into action in the face of a threat, automatically, without conscious thought. I’m the one who moves through the world with much more strength than I knew I had and people who know me have seen that strength. It’s a lot to take in and I need some time. But with all this new information, this unexpected revelation, a certain irony doesn’t escape my notice. As with most other things that have been problems and obstacles, experiences that have even caused me suffering, my break-in is turning out to be full of important lessons. It’s turning out to be a very good thing.