There was a woman at my door— with a knife

“SO

the lady banged on your door, and when you opened it, she was standing there with this knife?”

The detective points to the white knife on her desk.

I don’t know what to answer. Everything she said is true but…

“It’s not the full story.”

The detective rolls her eyes. I doubt this is what she had in mind when she signed up to be a detective — sitting in a musty office with no windows, on a swivel chair with the stuffing popping through, hearing people like me share our stories. The gun on her hip — how many times does she actually draw it? She was expecting drama, and all I have is a sad tale.

But she’s typing as I talk, with every word going on the record, so I want the right story to be written in my name.

“Nu, so then tell me what really happened,” the detective says, and I start the same story again.

I tell her that I heard a knock on the door right after my husband left for kollel. That I looked through the peephole. There was a woman standing there, so I opened to see what she wanted.

The woman asked if I lived here, and I wondered, “Why do you ask?” Her eyes were flitting back and forth — she couldn’t really meet mine.

Then I happened to glance down.

And saw the white kitchen knife in her hand.

The one second it took for me to slam the door shut was the longest of my life. What if I didn’t close it in time? What if she put her foot there to stop me and then followed me in?

When the sound of the door slamming settled, I caught my breath, and I thought, I imagined that, right?

But when I peeked through the peephole again, she was still standing there in her navy dress with pink flowers, knife in her hand.