Something happened to me last week, and I am still trying to understand what it is and what it means. Writing helps. But the story will not resolve. Perhaps it is too early. Or maybe it won't. There are different stories here.
In one, a man entered my house in broad daylight while I was home and stole from me. I called 911, but the first two calls were not picked up, and they only answered on the third call. I waited a long time before the operator answered and told me that the police would come to take my statement. They never came that night, nor the next day, but the intruder returned and made his presence known. 48 hours later, they stopped when I was not home. That night, the intruder came back again and tried to enter my house once more. The system failed.
In another, an intruder entered my house in broad daylight. I found him in my bedroom, and it scared me, and I ran away. He came back the next day, and again the day after. On the third day, the police caught him. Now he is in jail. The system worked.
Both are true. Both are distorted. But there are many others.
A mentally ill man walked through an unlocked door. He was hungry, so he ate some food. He made little effort to conceal his identity or actions. Then he returned the things he took from me. He could not communicate, but he meant no harm. Now he is in custody. The system failed him.
Or, a dangerous man came to my house. He stole everything, and he also moved things around in my house in strange and threatening ways. He returned many times, threatening my safety. Now he is in custody and will receive the mental health care he needs. The system worked.
Whether the system works or fails, and whether I did the right thing or not, both can continue regardless of whether he gets the help he needs or not. Now I don’t know, and I don’t know if I know. And that assumes a little help is all that is needed. I want to believe in these mechanical, institutional interventions as if they remove us all. I know better. I don’t know anything.
This is another story. Longer, and true, but still incomplete. I could write twenty of these and still not know what is real. The intruder could write twenty. The OPD officers could write twenty. All of them could be the truth.
…
I had a Zoom call on Wednesday morning when I thought I heard notes being played on the piano downstairs. A neighbor's cat must have come in and walked on the keyboard, I thought. The back door was open, as usual, so Nala, our pit bull, could come and go during the day. I continued talking, but ended the call at the 40-minute mark and went downstairs, grateful for a short time before my next call.
In the kitchen, something caught my attention. On the shelf under the spices, where the glass of water lives, in one of the plastic sleeves that the beautiful tags go into, there was a one-dollar bill that said a lot
Never give
MONEY ALWAYS
for love
This is a line from "This Must Be the Place" (naive melody), a song by The Talking Heads. It’s my favorite song. A list of people in my life for whom these words mean something passed through my mind, starting with my daughter. For my birthday last year, I invited a bunch of friends to see "Stop Making Sense" at the Parkway Theater. My daughter recently emerged from many years of feeling ashamed that I might not be able to speak or move or even breathe or how I would be hurt, I didn’t know how I would survive, and now it seems to think that I’m okay. She came to see the movie, and when "This Must Be the Place" came on, she and I danced in the aisle, in front of two of her friends and a few dozen of mine. No shame, all joy. Others caught the bug and joined us. She also loves the song. But my daughter is in Virginia, with her aunt and cousins. What the hell is this doing in my kitchen? What is it trying to say and who is trying to say it?
I took a picture and texted my best friend, who had stayed over the night before, and my husband, who was in London. What did my friend text back? No, I didn’t leave it there. No, it wasn’t there last night.
Then I noticed that the small box with a piece of cake on the kitchen counter was open. I peeked inside. The cake was gone. Thank God, I thought. I had tasted it, and it was bland, so I had passed on it until now, but in my mind, I knew that eventually, I would wander downstairs between Zoom calls, thinking deeply about something and eat it without even noticing. Someone saved me the empty calories. But wait, what am I thinking? A packet of sugar had been torn and spilled across the counter. I started to clean it up. No, wait, don’t do that. I should leave it. What am I doing? Who is here?
The milk cartons were off the counter. Did I take it out? I picked it up. It felt light, almost empty. Was it low before? Maybe? It doesn’t matter. Who put the never give money on the shelf? Is there a loved one visiting unexpectedly and this is how they announce themselves? Or is someone threatening me? Or am I just going crazy?
I locked the French door at the back of the house. I locked the front door with a chain, which I never do. I checked the door from the kitchen to the driveway. I made myself a cup of tea and added milk at the end. I called the non-emergency number for the Oakland Police. The phone tree has so many options, and for many of them, the voice not only provides a number but also spells out a long URL where you can get more information online, so it will be slow. After about five minutes, I realized I was way off. It was noon, and I had another call. I went upstairs and continued my parade of Zooms.
While I was at lunch, my husband texted back from London. Yes, he said, about the dollar bill, someone gave it to me many years ago. It was in my drawer marked private. Where did you find it?
In the drawer where you keep your cash? Yes, that one. I gracefully ended the meeting a minute early and went downstairs. The cash was gone. Of course. Yes, that explains it. I have a 1 PM Zoom, so I went back to the office, located in the far corner of the upstairs.
It was only 1:45 in Oakland but 4:45 in DC, so this was my last meeting of the day today. I hadn’t eaten lunch. I headed toward the stairs, but I heard a noise in the bedroom and went in. There he was, this tall, very blonde young man, going through the plastic baggie where I had thrown some jewelry when I returned from the East Coast last month. The closet drawers were open. I was seeing him in profile, but he turned to me, and his expression was one of disappointment. Why am I interrupting him, he seemed to say? What the hell am I doing here?
At that moment, my brain and my body parted ways. In my mind, I calmly but firmly demanded that he put my jewelry back (did he really take anything? None of it was worth anything), and leave immediately. But my body did something different, because now I was banging on the door of Jason and Anna, two houses down. At least one of them usually works from home, but I had forgotten they were away. Maybe Diana, across the street, I thought, and only when my feet felt the pavement of our street did I realize I was barefoot. I was holding my phone, and I had dialed 911, and there was a message playing quietly about someone being with me as soon as possible. What would I say? I vaguely remembered being in my bedroom, being yelled at, with great agitation, in a language that sounded Slavic. Was it Russian? He looked a bit like Rutger Hauer in Blade Runner, but dressed for a Maga rally instead of a dystopian future Los Angeles. I decided Rutger Hauer must be Russian. (He’s Dutch.)
Diana wasn’t home either, but from her front porch, I had a perfect view of our kitchen door. Rutger (he needs a name so why not) had come out of it, and was standing next to my car. There’s a pillar on Diana’s porch, and I tried to hide behind it, but I was like a toddler playing Peekaboo, who thinks that because I can’t see you, you can’t see me. I must look ridiculous. I jumped off the porch and now I was standing behind Diana’s butterfly bush, a lattice of stems and flowers that used to have more foliage. I could see him perfectly. And of course, he could see me. I looked even more ridiculous.
But Rutger wasn’t coming for me. He was just standing there by my car, saying something I couldn’t hear. He looked disappointed again, and angry that I didn’t understand him. After what could have been 10 seconds or 5 minutes, a black car pulled up with the window rolled down. “Are you okay?” a woman asked from inside. “I heard screaming.” Did I scream? No, I said, I’m not okay. Can I get in your car?”
Just drive, I pleaded, once inside. We went a few hundred feet, and I asked her to pull over. Her name was Jessica. She lived in the apartment building next to Diana’s house. Her husband was home, and she was texting him. He could see Rutger still standing there, now pumping his fists in the air, still incredibly frustrated with how we were all handling this situation.
I looked at my phone. I was no longer on hold with 911. I redialed. It rang, but then hung up. Whatever. I had read the stories. Oakland has the second slowest 911 response time in California, a state not exactly known for excellent public services. People often get a busy signal when they call. I read a story last year about an off-duty cop who was stabbed, called 911, and never made it through. A stranger eventually drove him to the hospital. He lived, but barely. Many people in Oakland no longer bother with 911. They turn to whatever other resources they might have. Right now, I have Jessica and her husband, Dao. I had never met them before.
Dao texted Jessica to say that Rutger (he didn’t call him that) had finally moved on. He went around the corner, and started down the hill toward Lakeshore. But now he had stopped. He was just sitting on the curb, pumping his fists again. Jessica turned around and we drove very briefly to my house. I went inside. My eyes were darting around. What had moved, what had changed, what was missing? A door slammed and I jumped. Oh shit, the laundry room door. The wind had pushed it shut. I hadn’t checked that it was locked. That’s how he got in. He came into my house, ate my food, took my husband’s cash, and I let him back in just like that.
Once, when I was in high school, one of the drunks from the block came in. Our house, a brick house from the 1920s in the far north neighborhood of Manhattan, faced the street. . Height, you’ve seen my neighborhood, but with a saturation of color.)
These regular drinking episodes were just part of the scene. They were loud, but as a city kid, the hounds and hollers were my white noise. I could sleep through anything. But I hadn’t slept a night when suddenly one of the operators was standing in our living room. The door had been unlocked, perhaps my fault. The way I remember it - and this was a long time ago, I think I was 17 - my mother and sister weren’t home, but I had a friend over. I had no choice but to confront this middle-aged drunk man, spouting off in a positively incoherent way. I remember pushing him out into the foyer and locking the door. That was scary, but I didn’t think I was in real danger. He was big, or at least to me, but too drunk to put up any real fight. For many years after, I would dream about locking the door and then he would come through it, as if it had magically unlocked itself. I still occasionally have it. It’s always the exact same door, the exact death of Jimmy that made that particular thunk when you locked it. Everyone in New York has at least one, sometimes several, unless they live in a brownstone.
But then and now, locks don’t magically unlock themselves. People (okay, I) let them unlock. That’s what I did, once again. I didn’t blame myself for opening the back door in the first place. I had lived in this house for 22 years and the French door opening onto the deck in good weather is part of why I love it. It was a beautiful day. But I knew someone had been in my house, and I had failed to secure it.
Now I was standing next to the door I had just closed. I tried 911 again, and while I waited, I tried to sort out what had happened. There was a padded envelope on the stool by the front door. I picked it up. Right, I had put my daughter’s pencil box in there, which she had left on her last visit. She asked me to send it to her. No case in there. But why was it at the back door? I unlocked the door and stepped outside. On the cafe table, there were some pencils and a few small watercolor brushes neatly placed. They were completely focused, perfectly aligned, as if placed down carefully. However, on the deck beneath the table, the wrapping for a can of sardines had been hastily discarded. Oh well, I thought, we had too many sardines. We always thought we would eat them and then we didn’t. They wouldn’t go bad at some point? And then I looked at the pencils again, and I felt a little sick. I would have to tell C that I had tried to send her pencil box back to her, but now I couldn’t. It was lost? Along with some of our sardines. I would need to work on that message.
Then, I would get calls and texts from many friends, checking in on me. It was a break-in, they said. You must feel so violated. By then, I didn’t. I knew I didn’t because I was 17, pushing a drunk man out the front door, feeling violated. Did anyone say you should feel so violated? I don’t think we said things like that back then. I was also choked and scammed on the platform of the 81st street subway around that time, but I never had nightmares about how I handled that lock. At 54, I only feel violated on behalf of 21-year-old C. I wish he hadn’t gone through her art supplies, taking what he wanted and so deliberately leaving the rest. It was just the pencils that made me shudder.
I went to the front door. I had locked the chain, but now it was off. We keep a key in the lock on the inside. No more. The car key lives by the other door, the door from the driveway. I checked; it was gone. Some cabinets were open, drawers had been rummaged through. But so much stuff didn’t disappear. He had rifled through our drawer full of stamps more than we would use in our lifetimes and didn’t take any of them. There was a bag of foreign currency on the counter, untouched. I had just switched to a new phone, and the old one was sitting on the counter, next to my watch. He had been in the house for at least a few minutes after our uncomfortable encounter. He had plenty of time to come back for any of this if he wanted it. He could have even gone and grabbed my computer in the office, a room he hadn’t entered. It was still there, the Blue Zoom logo always present reminding me of the themes and tasks that seemed so urgent half an hour ago. For a second, I thought I would check my email. That’s the kind of self-inflicted brain damage that happens to me, leading to not reacting when I hear strange sounds in the house, not checking the back door after a clear home invasion. Do I deserve what I got? God, what kind of thinking is that? At least I didn’t check my email. Small victory.
Back downstairs, I had perhaps the strangest thing of all. He had left a note. It was what seemed to be a Slavic name, and then possibly the start of an international phone number, starting with +26? Or it could be fragments of an equation? Is this the beginning of a bad Dan Brown novel?
I was shocked to hear a voice coming through my phone. 911 had picked up. The report didn’t take long: address, man in the house, no physical contact, I wasn’t harmed, there were things missing, a phone number they could reach me at. The police would come to the house as soon as they could.
Jessica and Dao, my new best friends, were texting me. You know he’s still right there, right? Really? Oh. He has my car key. I can’t find a spare. He’s just sitting there pumping his fists in the air. Okay, I’ll call the police back and see if they can come sooner.
I did, but all I got was we can’t give you an ETA. I texted Dao, should I go politely ask for my key back? LOL. I’ll go with you if that’s what you want, he said. Wow, you’re awesome, but is that crazy? I don’t think he’s armed. He didn’t try to hurt you. We meet and discuss further. We walk down the hill and around the corner together. The guy has vanished. I missed my chance.
I’m alone in the house, waiting for the police. I catch a friend on the phone and tell her about the adrenaline. Come with us tonight, she offers. I will, but I have a feeling I’ll be stuck here waiting for the police. Just me and Nala, who is still sleeping under the deck, still unaware.
I was right. It’s now 9:30 and they still haven’t shown up. I packed a bag and drove our old truck to a friend’s house, since I still couldn’t find the spare car key. He might steal the truck tonight, but I didn’t know what else to do. This time I really locked all the doors. I chained the front door. The key he had only opened that door, so if it was chained, he couldn’t get in.
In the morning, my husband woke up, and he texted that he thought he knew where the spare key was. I returned home. The truck was still there, but the key wasn’t where he thought. I looked around more, trying to figure out what he had touched, what he had taken, what he had moved, but I was out of time. I had a 7 AM meeting (Eastern time!) and I needed to get back to my friend’s house, where my computer was. I was heading back to the truck when I noticed, carefully placed on the windshield, my car key.
It was there before? When I was tracking him from Diana’s porch, was that what he was doing, placing the key where I would see it? No, Dao and Jessica and I had been in and out of that door so many times, and none of us saw it there. It was sitting on the wiper blade, positioned to be noticed. I stood there, stunned. Rutger had come back last night and returned my key.
Like I was looking at the Talking Heads dollar bill again: a curious thing had become incredibly scary. Am I happy to have it back, or scared that he was here again? What kind of home invader returns the most precious thing he stole? Is that what he was trying to say while I looked at him from behind Diana’s butterfly bush? I don’t want your stinky car. Please come get your key back. Maybe he was trying to tell me he was sorry he scared me all that time, and the car key was his attempt at an apology?
I worked from my friend’s house that day, went to a doctor’s appointment, had dinner with a friend. The day came and went without a word from the Oakland Police Department.
Now it’s Friday. I’m trying to pay attention to my phone but I remember OPD when they called at 1:30. The message said they had officers on the scene, but I wasn’t there. Now it’s not a scene, just a house, I silently protest, and they said they would call before coming, but all I could do was call the number they left and tell them I would be around for the rest of the afternoon. They didn’t come. By 7, I was hungry and went to meet a friend for tacos, phone in hand with the volume all the way up.
We had just finished when my phone started going crazy. I was getting texts and phone calls at the same time. The call was from an OPD officer. My neighbor (the one texting) had spotted Rutger trying to get into my house again, and called 911. This time, they had shown up. They had arrested him a few blocks away, and wanted me to come ID him.
IDing him would be easy. I saw him face to face, I saw him from across the street, and I had seen him not only on our security camera footage but also our neighbor’s. He went to Jason and Anna’s house, touching and rearranging their packages, and taking none. He seemed unaware of these cameras (pretty obvious), or at least not trying to conceal himself. In the footage from our camera, he lingered around our front door for a while, and at one point, he rubbed his hands together and very deliberately placed both palms on the glass of the window next to it, leaving what could be the clearest and most complete fingerprint one could hope for, so visible you wouldn’t need to dust for it.
Knowing what to do, however, wouldn’t be easy. I pulled up the flashing lights but sat in the car for a while trying to gather my thoughts. The police hadn’t even come to visit, not making a statement, not asking a single question beyond the few 911 operators recorded. The idea that they would actually catch the guy never occurred to me. Now they wanted to know if I wanted to press charges. The obvious answer seemed to be yes, but I had so many questions. Was he actively trying to get caught? Is that why he came back again? If so, it worked. What’s the catch? I was determined not to rush or feel pressured into a decision.
I needed determination. I want to talk to the suspect, I told the officers. Why? I want to ask him why he returned my key, I said, although I didn’t really think this. This man was in your house, he took your stuff, he could hurt you, the officer said. I know. But I want to talk to him. Can you get a translator?
The police seemed to be stumped by me a little, but now I was crazy. A translator? They looked at me as if to say we are the force that didn’t even come to your house for two days, and you think we have a translator handy? The guy speaks English, one officer explained. But he was yelling in my face in something that sounded like Russian, I told them. Polish, they said. He’s Polish, and possibly Ukrainian. But he speaks English - although not well.
They let me talk to him. Up close, through the window of the patrol car, he looked younger than I remembered. He was surprisingly docile. Was I expecting the man who yelled in my face in my own bedroom, or the one quietly returning my car key? I guess I was getting the latter. I decided to start on a friendly note, so I thanked him for that. He nodded, looking down, eyes up and to the side. I asked his name but I couldn’t understand the answer, and still couldn’t when I asked again. I asked why he brought back the key. Again, if he spoke English, I couldn’t tell. The siren of the police car behind us was too loud. I considered asking them to turn it off so I could hear, but I was afraid they would end my little interview. I barked at him to speak up like a stern grandmother and tried another question. You brought back my car key, but not my house key. Why not? Where is my house key now? This time I got a response. Not your key, he said. Not your house. My house. Nodding. My house, he said again.
The pieces began to fall into place. When I walked into my bedroom and yelled, I was disturbing him. That’s why he yelled in my face with such irritation. That’s why he left so slowly, playing the piano and continued to come back. That’s why he returned the car key but kept the house key. He was pumping his fists in frustration at being kicked out of his house. The Talking Heads dollar bill? He was just redecorating his home. And he has good taste. We should always have that.
I stepped out of the patrol car and someone asked for my ID. The police had the suspect’s ID in the other hand and I looked at it. My eyes dropped down to his name. It was the name he had written on the notepad in my house. He hadn’t left me a note, or even taken one for himself. He was marking the house as his own. Perhaps the fingerprints on the window served the same function, leaving his mark.
Did he really believe it was his house? Is this the kind of thing a criminal says when caught to provoke? But he was so easy to catch. Never concealing himself, hardly running away, leaving extensive evidence. If this isn’t exactly the right explanation, then it’s in the ballpark. He may have acted criminally, but he is mentally ill.
If I press charges, what will happen to him, I asked the police. He will be evaluated for mental health. And then? It depends. If I don’t press charges, what will happen? We will release him. Like, right here? A few blocks from my house, the house he thinks is his? Yes. We can’t hold him if you don’t press charges. But he will go back to my house, won’t he? Yes, the police said, I would guess he will.
I am more certain than ever that his behavior, while criminally effective, is the result of mental illness. And incarceration is the wrong response to mental illness. But there is at least one hope that makes him care when he is evaluated. And if I let him go, not only will he not get help, but I will have an unwanted guest every day I am in Oakland. I told the officers I would press charges.
They took my statement. Everything I said was true, but now you know more, and if you stood next to me, you might have yelled, wait, that’s not the story! I’m sure I included that he returned the key, that he never threatened to hurt me. But that’s a line drawing, not even a sketch. Just the facts. Or some of them. I answered the questions I was asked. When I finished, an ambulance pulled up. They were putting him on a stretcher. They were taking him to be a patient, not a criminal. Did they do this for me? To placate me? Is the optics better, as they say? Or does it really mean something? Is there help waiting for him?
The police, having gotten the answer they wanted, now turned to me, face, intense, looking straight into my eyes. Now I need you to express all your anger at me, he said, completely serious. What? I’m not angry, I said. You should be, he said. We didn’t show up for two days. I’m very sorry. You have every right to be angry with us. You should yell at me.
I’m not mad at you for not showing up, I tried to say. I’m mad at the choices you gave me. Incarcerate him as a criminal or let him free to return to my house. I’m not sure I believe he has a meth pipe on him. I don’t know what to believe.
But yes, OPD should have shown up. Every time I tell someone in the last two days, I’m fine, he’s not violent, I’m very lucky, they say that’s great, but you don’t know that, and OPD doesn’t either. They should have come. They are right. I was lucky. Many are not. It’s concerning to live in a city where 911 takes too long to pick up, where the police don’t show up for days.
Yet they caught him. Is that a sign of great priority that they focused on other emergencies, but then acted when they had a chance to do something meaningful? If I’m honest with myself and I really wasn’t harmed, then what damage was done? Is the real story that they didn’t show up for two days, or did they pressure me to charge a delusional, harmless young man? Or is the real story that I agreed?
And once you get to the fault of any of that, it’s turtles all the way down. Whose fault is it that OPD is so messy? I know this cycle. Something bad happens, and the public demands protections be put in place so it never happens again. We set up more layers of oversight to check back. So many bad things have happened in OPD over the decades. So many remedies have been layered on. Every year, a larger and larger percentage of resources go into protections, oversight, reporting, and the like, and less and less into the core functions of the department, like sending police to respond to break-ins. The culture increasingly focuses on shielding against blame like rain, sometimes in torrents, but always with at least a drizzle, on the department. It’s a cycle that seems no one can stop. And no one remembers exactly where it started. But it’s the outrage after the failures that begins, almost everywhere. That outrage is entirely justified - but ultimately ensures its outcome is meant to prevent.
What I know is this officer standing in front of me, asking me to yell in his face, didn’t set the rules about crime at any point in the dealing. I know, because I asked, that officers had twice been dispatched to my house after the incident, and both times a higher priority call had come in. I know, because I study these things, that many times this officer could have come to my house, he was caught up in paperwork, entering the same information into multiple systems, complying with oversight and reporting directives from the 1960s. Perhaps he also decided many years ago that, as a cop, no matter what you do, you can’t win, so it’s not worth it anymore. But that part I don’t know. The rest of it I have seen.
I return the officer’s direct gaze. I look into his eyes. I realize that after all the confusion and clarity and my questions, there is one thing I haven’t said. He caught the guy who was in my bedroom. It’s not simple, but it’s true. I thank you.
He tells me he wants me to run for city council. I tell him I would never do that unless I knew how to fix the system, and I don’t. He tells me he will retire next year. I ask if I can call him after he retires and learn about his work. He says you have my number. I do? Yes, I just called you, about half an hour ago. Oh right. He says he will pay more attention to us, patrol our block better now. I tell him I won’t be there. Anyway, I will be leaving, not because of this. But I know my neighbors will appreciate it. I think of Jessica and Dao, and the note to give them his number, even though I know he shouldn’t give out that number.
The ambulance is pulling away. I can’t see the guy I call Rutger, but I know his name. I still have so many unanswered questions. Who is he? How did he get here from Poland? Is he, as the police keep suggesting, a meth addict? Or is he, as my grandmother would say, a garden-variety crazy? And does he know my name? My last name is Polish. My father’s family came to America so long ago that we don’t have many ties to Poland and I don’t speak a word of the language. Did he choose our house because he thought I was a fellow countryman? What does he know about me, if anything? Surely they wouldn’t take him away for long for stealing $500, a piece of cake, a can of sardines, and my daughter’s pencils. Will I see him again? Will I understand this better then?
I have another thought. Does he know the song? This Must Be the Place, from the album Speaking in Tongues. It’s a classic, from 1983. The guy looks like he could have been born after 2000. Yet it starts: Home is where I want to be, pick me up and turn me around. If he really thinks my home is his, then that’s the message. Now he has been chosen. Maybe he will come back, whatever that means. Whether he is trying to get caught, or just delusional, or something entirely different, I don’t know. This is how the song ends:
I’m just an animal looking for a home, and
Sharing the same space for a minute or two
And you love me till my heart stops
Love me till I’m dead
Eyes that light up, eyes looking through you
Covering the blank spots
Hit me on the head
Ah-ooh, ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh-ooh
The outside is the most beautiful melody you can imagine, so I play it in my head as I return to the space he and I share, however unwillingly, for a minute or two, and try to figure out what happened.