Earlier this week, one of the girls who lives on the other side of my duplex mentioned that there was a car parked in front of our house with its lights off, it was a young white man talking on his cell phone, she said that it made her feel uneasy. The rest of us girls dismissed it as a student who parked near our house and walked to campus. Late that same night I was settling in to work when I heard what I thought was someone fidgeting with my bedroom window, I was positive it was my neighbor trying to scare me. I sauntered over to the window, pulled back the curtain and pressed my face to the glass preparing for her to pop up in an attempt to startle me. Nothing happened. I let the curtains become slack again and continued on with my previous conversation without even mentioning what had just happened. It had been nothing. There was no need to over react.
A few moments later I received a phone call from my neighbor but did not notice until the last ring, she immediately called my roommate. I watched my roommates face grow tense as the person on the other line spoke, I gathered that the neighbors had herd their back screen door slam and seen several men standing on the side of our house. I snatched my phone from its charger and scrambled to find the number for Greenville police. In the time before the police arrived my roommate and I made as much racket as possible, trying to scare off the men who at this point were encircling our house. My roommate flipped on our front porch light and watched a man glide hurriedly across our front lawn, away from our house. At this point I had my dog barking furiously and we were beeping our car alarms to create as much of a scene as possible.
By the time the police woman arrived at my door I was positive that anyone who had been near the house had fled. I walked her to the shared backyard where they neighbors had seen several strange men. The yard was empty, she continued to walk around the perimeter of the yard. My neighbor met me in the back yard of our duplex, and we congregated at the gate of the fence talking about how bizarre this had been. The seconded neighbor exited her side of the house in her pajamas and took the same path has the first down to the gate. When she reached us she softly said “there is a man sitting in the laundry room.” Her roommate and I starred blankly for a second, unable to compute what she was telling us, she repeated her self, this time more urgently. We all understood, there was a strange man hiding in their laundry room. We all scurried to my back door, everyone else went inside, but I stood on my back porch facing the yard that the young man had just ran into.
I called for the police officer, shouting “ma’am!” as calmly as I could. I stood on my back porch and he stood frozen in my yard. I stared at him and he stared back at me. I was infuriated, who was this and what right did he have to be in hiding in my house. My shouting turned to screaming. “HE’S IN MY FUCKING BACK YARD!” I couldn’t contain myself, I trembled as I watched the officers file around my yard and tackle this man to the ground.
The officers pulled him to the side of my yard and the rest of my housemates gathered on the back porch to watch the commotion. The police questioned him, he was said he was twenty years old and I felt a pang of guilt, he was my age. Maybe he was just drunk and lost, he did say that he knew the people that lived here, maybe it was just an accident. Standing on my back porch, still trembling but beginning to feel sympathetic I noticed that this young mans zipper was down. The sympathy drained and I was filled with fury again. I heard him murmur to the officer that he was invited in, and from the safety of my porch, I shouted “None of us know you! We weren’t having a party! You were not invited here!” He glared. Again I asked him “Why are your pants unzipped?!” He glared again and rolled his eyes. The police escorted him away and asked if we intended to press charges.
He insisted that he was trying to go to his friends house, that it was an accident. I would have believed him had he knocked on the door, and not tried to enter through our windows. I would have believed him, if he didn’t claim to be alone when two of my roommates saw his cohorts. I would have believed him if he hadn’t hidden in our laundry room. I do believe that he was under the influence of drugs or alcohol, but I do not believe that his intentions were pure. I no longer feel safe in my own home and it infuriates me. The fact that these boys felt entitled and secure doing this to a house full of young women, who were clearly awake and alert is absurd. Regina Dooley