I was sitting on the couch, going over my legal options for what was going to be a protracted and nasty divorce, trying to figure out how to make this happen with no money and working with a legal system over seven thousand miles away. My five-year-old son was sitting beside me, playing a video game. My eleven-year-old daughter was in her bedroom, door locked, doing whatever she did in the privacy of her own space. Juleen was hyper-adult, and one of the things I did when I rented this apartment was ensure she had her own space. It was a two-bedroom place and Sanjay slept in the smaller of the two rooms. Juleen had the master, and I slept in the living room on the couch.

I was so lost in thought that I didn’t hear the footsteps outside the door. The building was exposed, and usually I heard people walking up and down the steps. Not this time. Had I been more alert, all this may not have happened.

It was only after the door flew open and I screamed “Run!” that everything kicked into high gear. Two Indian men: one immediately grabbed Sanjay, while the other said something about finding the girl. My son was kicking and screaming as I gripped his legs, pulling him toward me with my opponent pulling in the opposite direction: a mortal tug-of-war. The man had covered Sanjay’s mouth, and I remembered telling my son to bite his hand as I scratched the intruder’s arm and yanked Sanjay furiously. But the man was taller and bigger than I was and held on fast even with one hand over my son’s mouth and nose. I kept at it until the second man returned, asking where the girl was.