When she was 12, on the day before Thanksgiving, Fiona Apple was raped in the corridor outside her mother’s apartment. She had walked home from school, and she figures the man must have followed her. At her building she was looking for her keys and she saw this man buzzing the buzzer, then walking outside. It seemed suspicious, so she waited until he was outside again, then ran in. He caught the door behind her. But he didn’t do anything. Not yet. When she caught the elevator, she could hear him going up the stairs, stopping at each floor. That worried her.
There were three locks to open to get into the apartment. She was on the third lock when he started down the hallway toward her. Later she would remember, somewhere in her head, a weird, off-kilter thought: It’s Jimi Hendrix. Maybe she was trying to imagine she was off in some strange fantasyland. The man who was not Jimi Hendrix came closer. She said she didn’t have any money. He said he didn’t want money. He had some kind of screwdriver or tool knife, and he told her that if she screamed, he’d kill her. She remembers letting out a sigh, and her muscles falling.
On the other side of the door, Fiona’s dog was barking and growling. Maybe the dog saved her life. Otherwise, the two of them would have gone into her apartment, and . . . who knows?
When he had finished – maybe 10 minutes – he said something to her: “Happy Thanksgiving. Next time don’t let strangers in.” After he left, she opened the third lock and went into the apartment. Her sister and her mother were holiday-season shoe-shopping in midtown. She phoned for help, and waited. All this time she was paranoid that there was also someone in the house. She started checking all the closets. She would continue to check them for years.
