Breaking Into My Apartment

THE BURGLARY
Abington, PA
October 1984

Up to this point in my life, I have lived in some pretty crummy places. I was a student longer than most people so I sacrificed suitable living arrangements for graduate school tuition. But, at age 29, crummy was getting old.

But now I had been working for a few years and I was moving back to Philadelphia area to work for a year at Jenkintown High School as a guidance counselor.  I found a really nice place to live for that year.  There was a big, old Georgian house that sat off the back parking lot of the local library. The house had been broken up into several apartments and one had just opened up since the old lady resident moved into an assistant living home. I was so excited as this place was quaint, well maintained and right on the bus route to my new job.

The house sat back off a parking lot on a busy street.  If you didn’t know it was there, you probably wouldn’t have even noticed it.   Big, old trees hid the front facade.  All of us who lived there entered through a common, locked front door. The owners lived on the entire first floor.  They had a private entrance off to the left, inside the front door.  The renters went down the hallway and through another locked door and then up the stairs to our individual apartments. Sometimes I locked my door and sometimes I didn’t. I had never locked my college apartments so this was a habit that had been learned. And it was going to be a hard lesson to unlearn because I felt secure in knowing I had to come through two locked doors to get to my place.

I moved in and met my other neighbor, Tom, a counselor at a drug and alcohol clinic. He thought I could refer some of my students to his services so he promised to drop off some literature from his clinic.  And every time I saw him, he snapped his fingers and mentioned that he forgot again but he would some day soon, slide stuff under my door.

 I was sleeping one night.  It was in December and it was a cold night. Maybe it was midnight and I had been asleep when I was awakening by a rustling sound at my door. In my dazzled state I thought it was tom, my neighbor, slipping literature under my door. I slipped back into sleep.

Then I heard something bump against my nightstand. My heart raced. And I rolled over ready to dismiss the sound as just something I had imagined. But as I looked over on my back, I saw someone standing over me, cautiously and intently. He was leaning forward, examining me. My heart and emotions surged through me like an exploded hot wire.

I couldn’t fucking believe it.  I couldn’t fucking believe that a man was leaning over me, watching me in my bed, in my bedroom. I screamed and screamed and screamed, “Get the fuck out of here.  Get the fuck out of here”.

I jumped up to a kneeling position in my bed. And my quick movement startled him.  He moved back and in doing so, he bumped into my floor loom, which poked him in the small of his back and distracted him. Now I leaned forward and continued to scream but now I was screaming more in anger than in fear. And I could see that he was beginning to panic.

“Ok lady, shut up, I’m leaving.”  He gestured with his hands to quiet me but his statement inflames me.

"Don't tell me to shut up in my own home," I tell him with an indignation that should be reserved for someone who could fend for herself. I was still vulnerable and there was still plenty of room for lots of things to go wrong and become even more dangerous.

Then he just vanished. He got out so quickly that I didn’t even see him go.   I sat trembling in my bed, trying to figure out what to do next.  But I didn’t have to think too long because I work everyone on the building.  My door was wide open and Tom was there and the owners were there and moments later so were the police.

The police wanted to know if the door was locked and I couldn’t answer one way or the other.  I was asked I when did I first hear him, and I mentioned that the rustling at the door.  The police said that the robber was probably sliding paper through the door jam, searching for bolt locks.

I was asked which way did he escape and I couldn’t answer that.  The owners said there were two ways out and they didn’t hear anyone go out their way. So he must have slipped out the back.

A police office did a head count of all of us present.  “Is there anyone else in the house?”  He asked.

“Just Mark, he’s upstairs”, said the owner’s wife.

Mark, I would learn later was their son who just today returned from a meth rehab clinic.  He was asleep in the attic. His mother looked at me with shame and anxiety.

“Bridget, do you think it was Mark?” she asked me painfully.

“I don’t know Mark”, I tell her.

"Let’s go up there”, a police office commands as he points his drawn rifle to the attic.  Six of them go up.  Four of them have their rifles drawn and they ascend the steps cautiously but quickly.

Mark is roused from his sleep and he is dragged down the steps as he attempts to zip his pants.

“Was it him?” I am asked by one of the cops.  I look at him and then I turn to his mother, “No. "It wasn’t him". I tell her and she lets out a sigh of relief and the police officer lets go of Mark and he meanders back up to the attic, indifferent to the fact that he was just woken up from sleep by six police officers.

The next day, I go to the police station and work on a composite of my burglar.  He is never found and no one else in the neighborhood reports any break-ins. To the best of my knowledge, this was a singular event for this man.  But I have my suspicions.  I think it was an inside job.  I think Mark was involved. 

He had been away at rehab when the previous tenant, an old lady had moved out.

In order for the burglar to get to my apartment he had to go through two locked doors (unless someone let him in). He checked for extraneous bolt locks. Did he already have a key to my apartment? And I remembered when I turned over in bed, he seemed really surprised. Was he expecting an old woman? And Mark’s reactions were suspicious.  He was the only person who was not awakened by my screams.  He did not seem the least bit fazed by the fact that six police officers woke him up, in his home, in the middle of the night, dragged him down the steps for my viewing.  He didn’t protest.  He didn’t question why they were there. He just dutifully complied as if that was the plan to give his partner more time to escape.  And then, without saying anything to any of us, he just shrugged his shoulders and went back upstairs.

I think Mark’s parents thought so too.  I had to break my lease a few months later and they didn’t give me any opposition.  They just let me go from this first house that was a step up from all my other crummy apartments.