My Mother's Stalker

on neither a first or last violation

Art by Davis de las Haras

I was perhaps fifteen when the doorbell rang, and because I was preoccupied, my brother, who is four years younger, answered the door. The man at the door asked if the Volvo in our driveway was for sale. Never mind that there was no reason to think that the dark green family car would, in fact, be for sale; if it were up for sale, there would be a sign in its window, and it wouldn’t be parked in our driveway where no one could see it from the road. But no matter: my brother, who knew no better than to tell the truth, told the man that he didn’t know about the car, but that the man could call our mother, who would be able to say. My brother gave the man our mother’s cell phone number, and then the man—who had gotten more than he’d hoped for—left.

What luck on the stalker’s part. How could he have known that his gambit would earn him his target’s private number? What had he been hoping for when he came to the house, the location of which he knew from following our mother home from work on a forty-five-minute drive? Did he expect to find children when he got to the house? What would have happened if I’d answered the door instead, bearing an older, more wary face?

Hours later, with the sky darkening, our mother called the house phone. She calmly told me that she would be returning home with Uncle Wayne—not a blood relative, but her boss—to pick us up. While we waited for her to come get us, she continued, I needed to check that all of the windows were closed and locked. I needed to check that all of the doors were closed and locked. We were not to open the door for anyone until she came to get us. We were to stay put until she came home.

I don’t remember being afraid, though I was old enough to know that something was wrong and that it was important to obey her in this matter. In about an hour, she arrived with Uncle Wayne. They swept us into the car. My father, who was away more often than not while my brother and I were growing up, was in China, and he was not told about this man, this stalker, until he returned home and the threat had passed. We stayed with my father’s sister and her husband for the next few nights, and then we returned home.

I learned that the stalker, after speaking to my brother at our home, began to call my mother, whose tendency has always been to protect her children in all ways—and so I am sure that the version of events she told me later, at my aunt and uncle’s home, is undoubtedly far worse than what actually reached my ears. He’d told her that he wanted her. He’d been watching her for months. Now he knew where she and her children lived, and he was going to hurt them—the children--if she didn’t give him what he wanted.