When I think about the burglar menacing my mother, the memories are slippery. She wasn't chirping. She was screaming

The Guardian

5 hours ago

My mother is chirping, like a small bird. I laugh. What a fun game. And when I run through the house to find her, there is a man in a balaclava with a knife to her throat. She is not chirping. She is screaming. The expectation of one thing when the opposite is true. And yet in my memory it is still a chirp, not a scream.
When I think about the robbery, even now, decades later, it is my toes that tingle. My ankles. I was four at the time. Or five. I do not remember. Time, what a slippery thing. My friend Hayley was over to play. Sometime after the chirping, the man with a knife to my mother's throat told us to go upstairs to my room and not to open the door. I do not remember this happening but, when I reverse-engineer the events, I know it to be true. Until it's not. Maybe it was my mum. Maybe my mum had told us to go to my room and not to come out. What I do remember is sitting on my bed. I remember a dollhouse at the foot of my bed, its white pointed roof. I remember thinking we had to jump from the dollhouse to the bed. We could not let our feet touch the floor. If we did, the burglar (Did I know he was a burglar then? The intruder? The man?) would be able to reach through my bedroom floor and grab our feet, our ankles, his arms stretching up through the ceiling above him. We could not let our feet touch the carpet.
I remember standing on the street. I remember the police. I remember my mum's wrists, bound with rope. I remember begging the police to take off the rope. There is no in-between. There is the chirp/the scream, the man, the dollhouse, the feet through the floor, the wrists bound with rope.
'I don't know,' she says, in the years that follow, when I ask her the man's name. 'I used to know. But I always forget. It wasn't relevant. He was caught. I didn't want his name in my head.'
I don't know his name. I don't know if I ever did. If it was a detail I knew and then forgot or never knew at all. I know he drove a blue van. Whenever I see a blue van now, my toes tingle. My ankles. I think of the dollhouse and the floor, my knees tucked up under my chin.
More than 30 years later I receive a message on a social media account I rarely use. It is Hayley. She apologises, knows it is out of the blue, but wonders if I may be free to talk about the robbery. The incident, she calls it.
I try to identify the emotion that bubbled up when I saw Hayley's message in my inbox. It was not fear. There were no flashbacks of the event. The incident. No terror or anxiety. No apprehension. But the feeling was sudden and strong and all-consuming. Red, hot shame.
Before I meet Hayley, I tell my mum. I ask her if this is OK. Yes, she says. I ask her again if she remembers the robber's name. No, she says. Is he still in jail? I'm not sure how long he got in the end, she says. But is there anything else you want to know?
She says that it was a Friday afternoon. That kindergarten was a half-day on Fridays, so she had picked us up early and taken us home. That my two older brothers weren't home from school yet and my dad was at work. That Hayley and I were playing in the living room after eating lunch, and a man came up behind her. I asked if he had a knife. A boxcutter, she said.
My mother is chirping, like a small bird. I laugh. What a fun game. And when I run through the house to find her, there is a man in a balaclava with a boxcutter to her throat.
She told him that there were two young children in the house and that he could take anything he wanted, do anything he wanted to her, but not to touch the children. Do not touch the children. That when he attacked her, she had screamed and we had rushed in and she said to us slowly, calmly, go upstairs to your bedroom, close the door and do not come out. And that we went upstairs and closed the door. And that the man told her to take off all her clothes. That he had covered her head with a pillowcase so she wouldn't see his face. That he tied her up, and that he led her around the house naked and bound from room to room to room. And that she didn't stop talking. She was a social worker and had worked at a rape crisis centre. She knew from what she heard there that she could not remain faceless and nameless. That she needed to become a person to him, that he was less likely to hurt her; or less likely to hurt her as badly, if she could personalise herself. Even while she was naked. Even with a pillowcase over her head. And so she talked about my brothers and school and holidays and what we liked to do on the weekends and our favourite foods and hobbies and my dad and which music we liked, as he led her from room to room to room. Take whatever you want. Do not touch the children.
At one point, after what felt like a few hours, he threw her on to the couch in the living room, face down, wrists bound, head covered. And then there was silence. She waited a few moments. To make sure it was over. To make sure he had left. She did not move. Did not make a noise. She waited longer. And longer, still. She wriggled her wrists through the rope, and that was when he came back.
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At some point, not then, but later, she heard the front gate slam. That was when she ran, wrists loose from their binding. Ran to throw a dressing gown over her naked body. Ran to my room. Bundled us up into the bathroom, the only door with a lock, grabbing the landline phone as she ran, closing the door behind us to call the police. As she says this, I can picture the loops of the phone cord under the door.
I ask her if he drove a blue van. No, she says. He didn't drive a blue van.
I do not have a memory of the dollhouse, except for in this memory. Its sharp, pointed roof. Growing up I played with my brothers' hand-me-down toys. Trains. Blocks. Transformers. I have no memory of the dollhouse, except for in this memory. A memory in a memory. A house in a house. Did I own a dollhouse, or invent it? Invent the danger of the pointed roof.
I meet Hayley near the hotel where she is staying in South Yarra. She lives interstate now and is down for a few days to visit her parents. Her dad is not well. I ask her how often she thinks of the robbery. Often, she says. I'm so sorry, I say. She says that after her mum picked her up from our house, they went to buy a present and that was that. That they never spoke of it again. Which made her think about it more. That she never came over to my house after that. That whenever her sisters have mentioned my name in the decades that followed, I'm referred to as Hayley's First Best Friend. It's only then that I start to wonder what else was taken that day.
The table where we are sitting is sticky with spilt beer. Yeasty and heated by the December sun. She remembers my mum screaming, she says. She remembers us running in and seeing a man on top of my mother, pinning her down, with a screwdriver to her neck. She remembers he told us to hide, or he would kill us. She remembers the fear. She remembers being told to go upstairs to my room and not to come out. She does not remember who said this. She remembers the waiting. She remembers sitting on my bed reading Mr Men books. She remembers my mum opening the door, the way she grabbed us, running to the bathroom and locking us in. She remembers the phone dragging behind her as she did this. She remembers my mother in her dressing gown. She remembers the phone call to the police. Her memories are crisp and fully formed. They are in her mind's eye, she says. I tell her that because of my mum's experience as a social worker she knew to talk and talk and talk, to not stop talking. That she told him over and over again not to hurt us. She calls my mum brave. She says she's a hero. Hayley is also a social worker. My mum and Hayley are the only social workers I know. I'm jealous that she remembers the phone call. Remembers the bathroom. Remembers the dressing gown. I do not tell her why my mother was in a dressing gown. She doesn't ask.
I ask if she remembers the dollhouse. Remembers that he drove a blue van. No. And no.
She asks if he was caught. Yes, I say. I ask if she was told that there was a trial and that he went to jail. No, she says. She had spent every day since then thinking he could be anywhere.
There is a file in my dad's filing cabinet about the robbery. I know this because every few years when I ask my mother if she remembers the man's name and she says that she doesn't, she says there is a file in my dad's filing cabinet and I can see it if I'd like to. I never ask for the file. Even after Hayley asks to speak to me. Even after Hayley asks me his name and I say I do not know.
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It is years after my conversation with Hayley that I ask for the file. Another hot day, in another December. It feels urgent and important in that moment but I can't explain why. A repurposed manila folder, a thick White-Out block on one side and, over the top, my dad's pointed handwriting: ROBBERY. Inside there is a subpoena for my mother to appear in court. We command you to attend, it begins. It includes the man's name and the charges against him. I wait to feel something. Burglary (eight counts); Aggravated burglary (one count); false imprisonment (one count); indecent assault with aggravating circumstances (one count); armed robbery (one count); damaging property (one count); theft (one count). I wait, and wait, and wait (three counts) and feel nothing.
His name is underwhelming. I feel almost embarrassed to see it. It is boring. There is nothing that hints at the violence it contains. It's comical in its ordinariness. After I see it, I Google his name on my phone. No trials appear in the search. No burglaries. A LinkedIn profile for a plastics CEO in Alabama is the first result. A news article about a sculptor. An obituary for a cinematographer. I check to make sure I have spelt his name correctly and giggle because I realise I have searched for a completely different person. First name. Middle name. Last name. All completely wrong. In the time it took for me to look away from the subpoena and search for him, I have given him a new identity.
I look at my mother's statement, typed and faded. The one that has been in my father's red filing cabinet for 39 years. The drawers that creak when they're opened, the lock that doesn't quite work. My mother was 39 when it happened, and it is 39 years later that I read her statement. I don't know what this means.
Her statement talks about arriving to our house. How she parked in the garage and Hayley and I ran inside first. How she collected armfuls of shopping and then came inside with them. I picture plastic bags digging into her forearms, leaving a mark, the garage closing behind her. I try to picture my mother at the age of 39 but can't. I can only picture her the age she is now. My image of her constantly updating, overriding the previous versions of her. Her written statement describes the way Hayley and I were playing piano in the lounge room. And I can hear the clank of keys. The laughter. And as we were playing, how she was grabbed by the wrists. The way she struggled. Fought back. Was thrown to the floor. And I can hear her chirp, her scream. In her statement it says he held a yellow screwdriver, its shank to her neck. There is no mention of a balaclava.
My mother is chirping, like a small bird. I laugh. What a fun game. And when I run through the house to find her, there is a man with a screwdriver to her throat.
Also in the statement: the things she said. The things he did. The things she pleaded with him not to do. And yet I still feel nothing. Blank. As if I am reading about someone else and not my mother. Which doesn't make sense actually because when I do read about these things in the news, I feel waves of anger. I feel instant rage, my body prickly with heat.
In the statement she described his hands. A plain gold ring on the third finger of his right hand. Wide hands. Short, fat fingers. The hand which held a yellow screwdriver to her neck. It is these hands that make me feel something. Rising bile. I picture them hairy, though there is no mention of this. I have invented it. And in the days that follow, this is the image that returns to me. Wide hands, short, fat fingers. Hairy knuckles. My breath catches and I count to slow it. Three counts in. One. Two. Three. Three counts out. One. Two. Three.
We moved house straight after the robbery. I do not remember the layout of the original house. The colour of its walls. The feel of it. I remember the house we moved into afterwards. Its brown laminate benches. The way the front door swivelled. The sound of the rain on the skylight. The tread of the carpet.
There are memories that I have that don't belong to me. My parents and my brothers lived in San Diego before I was born. I remember the sound of their voices, the cereals they ate, their visit to Disneyland, that time my middle brother almost drowned and was pulled out of the pool by his curly hair. I know these memories as my own, constructed from stories repeated around the dinner table and photos yellowed around their edges. Their hand-me-down toys and their hand-me-down clothes and their hand-me-down memories.
Before the trial my mother was told to stick to the facts. That after the man was arrested, he told the police that he would not contest anything if they were fair with him. I know what 'stick to the facts' meant, she said. Do not be hysterical. Do not play the victim.
I roll the memory of the robbery around in my mind, try to press it like a bruise until I can feel something. Wait for the ache of it. But it's dull, out of reach.
I play with the memory and change it. I open my bedroom door. I run to her. I scream. I flail my arms. I bite and kick. My four-year-old self. Or I don't. I am quiet and I tiptoe to the phone, and I call the police. I do something. Anything. But that is not what happened. Stay in your room. Do not come out.
I write his name in a note in my phone. I scroll back. My car registration. Our alarm code. Our wi-fi password. Another password that belongs to something I can't place. An old shopping list. Canned tomatoes. Red wine. Writing-related questions: Staring at magpies so they don't swoop you. They remember your face. Is this true? I never checked. The robbery. It's there. Between the magpie and a shopping list. A years-old note to self. The robbery. And again, as I scroll down. A Joan Didion quote, an idea for a character, a podcast recommendation, notes from a doctor's appointment, words without context: Longing (for what?). And The robbery, the robbery, The Robbery. Sometimes capitalised. Sometimes not. I look at his name. The last entry. First name. Middle name. Last name. I hold my thumb down on the screen. Press on his name. Four options appear: Mark as completed. Deadline. Priority. Delete. I press delete. I let the other reminders stay there. The robbery, the robbery, The Robbery. I will continue to forget his name. I don't know if I ever owned a dollhouse. My feet will continue to tingle when I see a blue van.
This is an edited version of The Chirp/The Scream which appeared in Australian Book Review's June issue as runner-up in the 2025 Calibre essay prize. You can read the essay in its entirety here