There was a man outside my window.
It was early Saturday evening; my husband was at a work event, and I was alone with my two small children when I saw him come down the fire escape and linger outside my apartment. If I had been watching “Law & Order: SVU,” I would have channeled my inner Mariska Hargitay and dispatched him in all sorts of creative and hard-nosed cop style moves. But as dumb luck would have it, I was watching “Winnie the Pooh and the Blustery Day” with my toddler, so I couldn’t just stick my head in a honey pot and hope he’d go away.
My first panicky thoughts went to rationalizing his presence on the fire escape. Maybe he was a construction worker doing some repairs on my building. On a Saturday. At night. Maybe he lived upstairs, and there was an issue with our elevator. And all of our staircases. Maybe he went outside for some fresh air and got locked out.
My instincts told me he was not a construction worker. I had never seen him before. He did not belong there.
Oblivious, my toddler stared at the TV in that slack-jawed, glazed-eyed way kids get when we forget to monitor their screen time. My infant was napping in the other room. There was nobody else- just me- to protect these girls from an intruder. I could’ve screamed, but living in a city apartment, my neighbors would’ve probably just thought I was watching “Law & Order: SVU” and raised the volume on their own TV.
I needed a plan. A cursory glance around my living room revealed nothing useful. Legos? Blocks? Could work, if the man was Joe Pesci and I was defending my house “Home Alone”-style. An open canister of glitter. (Why did I have that? Why would I leave it open?) I could toss into his face. An Elmo potty-training DVD that had sent many others screaming from my apartment.
Goddamn it, what would Mariska Hargitay have done? She’d have probably been carrying a weapon a bit more fierce than glitter. Of course my cell phone was on my bed in the other room, but I didn’t want to lose sight of the man to retrieve it. It’s like when you spot a giant spider on your ceiling, and you can’t take your eyes off it lest it pounce on you, or worse, disappear and show up hours later on your pillow.
Holy shit, now he was staring at us through my half-closed blinds.
My best bet would’ve been to grab the kids and run. If we couldn’t make it out the front door, we’d head into the bathroom, which at least had a childproof handle that might put him off for a bit. But then what? The window was too small for me to squeeze out, and we were too high up for me to push my kids out to safety. I could’ve broken off the wobbly towel rack to use as a weapon (for once, my laziness in getting things fixed would be a good thing). I’d have hidden my children in the cabinet under the sink and waited. Waited until the man made the mistake of threatening my family, and suddenly I would’ve had the strength of three Winnie the Poohs…
Of course, I didn’t do any of this. I sat rooted to my couch, expecting the worst, numb with fear, for what seemed like an hour, but was only a few seconds. His footsteps clanged down the metal ladder and echoed through my apartment. When I looked back out the window, the man was gone.
It was possible he was casing the place and planning to come back later when we were all asleep. Perhaps he saw us inside and was frightened off. Maybe he realized that a woman with small children wouldn’t own anything valuable, and if she did it would be broken, stained, or missing pieces. Rattled, I grabbed my daughter and threw a shaky arm around her shoulder. We watched another segment of Winnie the Pooh, and then another.
But the tremor in my hand didn’t go away, and my heart rate did NOT return to normal.The truth was, I wasn’t so much scared of the stranger outside, but of my own inability to act. As a mom, I’m supposed to be the protector, the savior, the one who knows what needs to be done. I didn’t call the police or move my kids to safety; I sat like a cowardly lump and prayed for the best-case scenario.
The next day I asked around, and found out that the building next door was having construction done, and they had sent a worker over to our building to compare details. He was a construction worker. On a Saturday. At night.
Of course.
My instincts weren’t completely off-base; even though it was not the worst-case scenario, the situation was still unsettling. I hope that if it truly ever came to it, I’d have what it takes to keep my children safe (and not just in my head).
Or at least call Ice-T for back-up.
About the author: Ali Solomon is an art teacher and cartoonist who lives in NYC with her husband and two wee daughters. You can find her work on the Huffington Post, Scary Mommy, NickMom, In the Powder Room, and numerous other parenting sites. Read more of her ridiculous nonsense at Wiggle Room or @Alicoaster.