by Roxane Gay
Maria opens another bottle of wine.
“Why did you leave your island?” I ask. People who leave islands always bring a complex mythology.
She smiles. “Why does anyone leave such places?”
Her manner is infuriating. I look at the clock on the cable box, the green numbers blinking steadily. “I should go.”
Maria touches my thigh. “You should stay.”
My husband and I married beneath a gauzy canopy on the beach in my country. He wore a tan linen suit with a pink tie. His face was flushed, sweat trembling along his hairline as he tried to adjust to the island heat. The bride wore white, a long, sleeveless dress. My feet were bare, much to my mother’s chagrin. The air was thick with salt and the sand burned beneath our feet. We held hands and stared at each other as we exchanged our vows. He surprised me by saying his vows in my mother tongue, his mouth trying so hard to make those words right. Though I swore I wouldn’t, I cried, and smiled so hard my face ached for days. That night, I would carefully massage Caladryl into the skin of his face and whisper sweetly to him. Melinda sat in the front row with her costar from the movie she was filming. Thickly muscled men in dark suits quietly patrolled the beach to keep the paparazzi away. At the reception, his family sat quietly at our table until my father pulled his mother onto the dance floor, and soon all of his relations were drinking rum and waving their hands in the air as they rocked their hips.
Melinda and I stole away for a private moment. We sat near the water’s edge, waves lapping our toes. We shared a cigarette.
“I can’t believe he won you over.” She leaned into me, bumping me with her shoulder.
“He’s quite bearable once he stops being Mr. Hollywood.”
Melinda sighed. “How did you manage that?” She waved tiredly toward the reception. “I keep dating men who can never turn that off.”
I took a long drag. “I made it quite clear from the start that I wasn’t remotely interested in where he could take me or who he knows. Once that was settled, he was very easy to love.”
She began to move damp sand into a small pile. When she was done, she pulled her knees to her chest, resting her cheek against her legs. “Don’t let each other go,” she said.
We honeymooned on a private island off the coast. There were no televisions, few tourists, lots of time for stretching our bodies in the sun and getting browner and drinking too much and eating too much. I told him if I found his cell phone, which is one of his vital organs, I would jump up and down on it. He believed me. I’m small but I have big feet. He made me a small boat out of palm fronds and a pointed hat I wore to dinner. We sucked on sugarcane until the insides of our mouths shriveled. I buried him in the hot sand and teased him by lying atop the mound of his body, flicking my tongue against his ear.
Fabien, one of the boys who worked at the resort, took a fancy to me. Campbell pretended to be jealous as Fabien followed me around. When my husband looked away, Fabien flirted aggressively, leaning into me with his shoulders, dancing his fingertips along my arm. He seemed harmless. He had bright, shining eyes. Campbell and I laughed about it when I told him.
One night, Campbell lay across the bed, his lips slick with rum. We wanted to cool our drinks and our skin so I grabbed the ice bucket and walked to the main building. My body hummed with joy. On my way back, Fabien grabbed me by the waist, tried to dance with me. Ice cubes spilled onto the warm pavement. “What are you doing with the American?” he asked. His hand slid down to my ass and he squeezed, pressing himself against me. His chest was a flat, hard stretch of muscle. I smiled, and twisted away. I tried to laugh. I said, “No, no, no, I’m a married woman but you are very kind.” He tried to kiss me; his lips were salty and thin. I shrieked and bit his lower lip, hard. He cursed, scooping a fallen ice cube from the ground and holding it to his bloody lip. I ran back to our cottage, clutching the ice bucket to my chest. Campbell looked up as I came into the room and slammed the door behind me. My hands shook as I locked the door and set the ice on the dresser and crawled into bed next to him. He asked what took me so long. I stared up at the ceiling fan.
“You’re a beautiful woman,” says Maria.
Her words are slower now. My mind is slower now. My aunt must be wondering where I am. In the morning, she will nag me incessantly about where I was, what I was doing.
Maria traces my shoulder with one finger. I don’t pull away. “You are a mystery to your family,” she says. “I feel like I know you.”
She presses her lips to the bone of my chin.
This time I pull away. “I am a married woman.”
Maria takes a long sip of wine, her teeth clinking against the glass. “I have a husband back home. I hardly remember his face.” She sighs. “It is lonely here.”
I ignore the tightening in my chest. “It is lonely everywhere.”
Maria kisses a gentle line from my forehead to my ear. I stand and go to the window, smeared with a thin layer of grease and fingerprints. I have no idea what is happening. I don’t understand my role in it. Down on the street, a young couple argues, the man pacing back and forth along the length of a bus bench while the woman sits on the back of the bench, her feet tapping against the seat.
I press two fingers against the windowpane. “I suppose we both think we know each other,” I say.
For the rest of our honeymoon, Fabien lurked. His smile was colder, his eyes not so bright. Campbell and I went back to the mainland and rejoined my parents. We sat in the courtyard of my father’s house and told them we had a lovely honeymoon. Heat rose up my neck and through my face as I thought of how night after night, our naked bodies pressed together frantically beneath the mosquito netting, how my husband made me wild for him. Sitting with my parents, Campbell reached for my hand. I laced my fingers through his.
There was a popular market at the center of the capital. On our last day, my husband wanted to see this market. He wanted to be among my new people. I rolled my eyes but indulged him. The sun was high, the air so thick we had to push it out of the way to take a step forward. We walked slowly, sweat beading along the edges of our faces, our clothes clinging damply. My husband bought me an ice flavored with grenadine and oranges. I threw bits of ice at his neck. When we came upon a stall of pirated DVDs, he became absorbed. I grew bored. I pressed my hand into the small of his back and said I was going to keep walking. Every few minutes, I turned back to find him and he waved his arm high above his head, grinning. The last time I turned back, he held a stack of movies in his hand, gave me a thumbs-up.
A new swarm of people started milling between us, their bodies making the distance seem impossible. I continued walking, idly touching woven rugs and boxes of Corn Flakes and Levi’s jeans. I did not see the man who grabbed me, but at the end of the row of stalls I saw Fabien standing square, staring right at me, his lips curled into a small smile. Before I could make a sound, the man covered my mouth with a hand so large, it practically covered the whole of my face. I had no idea what was happening. I did not understand my place in that moment. I kicked, tried to scratch my way free, but there was little I could do. People saw me being taken. Some shook their heads, offered their pity. Most looked away. I did not see my husband until three days later.
We decided to have the wedding on my island because a reporter on CNN said the country was safer now, said the beaches were once again full of pale American tourists, Canadians, too. The troubles, the reporter said, would soon be a distant memory. We believed him because I thought it would be wonderful to marry the man I loved on the soil of the country I loved before I learned how to love anything else.
I was returned to my family in the early morning, when the air was almost cool and the sky was dark gray like Campbell’s eyes. I sat in the back of a pickup truck, holding on to the rusted edge as the broken roads tossed me from side to side. My kidnappers didn’t say a word as they lifted me out of the truck bed and set me on the ground. With a light shove, they pushed me toward my father’s house and drove o
ff, gravel spitting from their tires. I shivered as I knocked softly. I waited. In the distance, a rooster crowed mournfully. When no one answered, I knocked harder, wincing because my knuckles were tender. Finally, my husband answered, his eyes widening. He spread his arms open as he said, “Oh my God.” I planted my hand against his chest and pushed him away. I refused to look in his face and slid past him, locked myself in our room. I leaned against the door as he knocked. He was soon joined by my parents, the three of them pounding their fists against the door, trying to break it down to reach me, pleading for me to let them in.
“Please be quiet,” I said. “I need to think. Please let me think.” When I was ready, I took a deep breath and opened the door.
They spoke fast. I couldn’t hold on to their words.
“Nothing happened. A group of men grabbed me from the market and took me to a sugar warehouse on the edge of the city. They left me alone.” I looked at Campbell. “When you paid the ransom, they brought me here.”
My husband shook his head, slowly. “Baby,” he said. “Baby.” He clasped my shoulder gently and turned me toward a full-length mirror on the wall.
I did not know who I was looking at. The woman in the mirror, her face swelled with dark bruises. The corner of her lip was split and angry. Her tank top was torn along the waist in several places. Her jeans were soiled.
I shook my head. “Nothing happened.”
Maria joins me at the window. “It is so strange,” she says, “living in a place with so much steel and concrete. All these buildings, they don’t even seem real.”
I shrug. “Do you have children?” I ask, turning around.
Maria shakes her head and returns to the couch, the cushion beneath her sighing. “Not yet.”
I hold my hand against my chest and swallow. “I have a son. He is three.”
Maria coughs. “Your family did not mention you have a child.”
“Haven’t you learned, Maria? My family doesn’t know anything about me.”
The captain of the local precinct came to the house immediately. I told him I had no information to help him find my kidnappers. He appeared grateful but spoke of an investigation that would be ongoing, how justice would be served. He drank my father’s coffee and ate sweet cake, his shoulders slumped. There was nothing he could do no matter what I told him, no matter what he said. I excused myself as my parents and husband and the captain spoke and made empty statements about the cruelty of the world. I locked myself in the bathroom, filled the tub with hot water, and sank into it, watching as the water turned pink, the dried blood on my body dissolving slowly. I closed my eyes and sank beneath the surface. The rush of heavy silence overwhelmed me until it comforted me. When Campbell found me, I was sitting on our bed, drying my hair with a towel.
“You need to see a doctor,” he said, sitting next to me.
I slid away but I didn’t mean to. I said, “I am a doctor.”
Later that afternoon, we were on a charter flight to Manhattan where a friend of mine from medical school had privileges at Beth Israel. The plane was well appointed—leather seats, lacquered surfaces, and alcohol I drank, liberally. My skin and muscle and bone hurt. We were silent for a long while. I did not look out the window.
Finally, I cleared my throat. “It shouldn’t be too difficult to get an annulment.”
Campbell’s face rearranged into a hard line. “What the hell are you talking about?” He slammed his fist against the wall. “What the hell are you talking about?”
It was the first and only time he has raised his voice to me. His anger filled the cabin until there was no air. A loud ringing made my ears ache. I started shaking.
He covered my hand with his. “You are my wife,” he said. “You are safe with me.”
I closed my eyes and opened them again.
When I was working crazy shifts during my residency, Campbell brought me coffee, hot food, his smile. We went up to the roof and sat on a pair of lawn chairs. We’d hold hands. Many times, he pushed me to the ground, pulling my scrubs down around my ankles, taking me as I stared into the starry night sky and held on to him as tightly as I could. He whispered, “I love you so much” into the skin of my neck as I rose to meet him.
On the plane that day, I said, “I can’t breathe. I can’t do anything.” I leaned against him, pressing my forehead against the strength of his arm. I held his wrists so he wouldn’t wrap his arms around me. He whispered into the skin of my neck.
Maria and I open yet another bottle of wine. I don’t remember the last time I drank this much. Or I do. My body feels loose, like every part of me is falling away.
“My son is very smart,” I say. “Only three years old and he knows so much. I saw it in his eyes from the day he was born that he would know lots of important things.” I cross my legs, bouncing my foot. “He has a sweet tooth, just like my grandmother. If you give him candy, he will love you all his life. He is perfect.”
Maria nods and smiles. “Why didn’t you bring him?” She is skeptical.
I study the painting on the wall above the television—geometric shapes in metallic colors surrounding a woman carrying a woven basket on her head. “That isn’t possible. Is it hard to be away from your husband?”
Maria slides a hand between my thighs. She kisses my shoulder and my neck and my cheek and brushes her lips across mine. “I find ways to keep from being terribly lonely.”
I sit perfectly still.
When we arrived at the hospital, my friend Natalya was waiting at the entrance. I held on to my husband’s arm and walked slowly. She ushered us into an examination room. I stood in the corner. Campbell tried to sit down. I looked at Natalya and shook my head.
She smiled, told him he should go to the waiting room.
“I’m not leaving you,” he said.
I held on to the wall to steady myself. “I don’t want you to see me differently.”
He closed his fingers into tight fists. “That could never happen.” My knees were on the verge of buckling. He reached for me. “You’re shaking,” Campbell said.
I tried to back away. “Don’t touch me.” I was hysterical, barely coherent.
My husband paled. “You’re afraid of me.”
Natalya gently took hold of his elbow and pulled him out of the room. I wanted to call out to him but my throat locked. I was mute.
Later he would tell me he waited just outside the door the entire time. I would have known even if he hadn’t told me.
Natalya returned. “Alone at last,” she said. She’s the amiable sort, the one everyone got along with, even the med students with claws. “You came to the right person. You’re going to get through this.”
I half laughed then covered my mouth to catch an ugly sob. My face was wet, my lips salty. Natalya wrapped her arms around me and smoothed my hair over and over. She said, “Shhh.” I allowed myself to fall into her.
Later, after the examination; after the revolting terror of my body revealing the truth of what happened; after needles in my arm taking my blood from me; after large pills I struggled to swallow down my raw, aching throat; after stitches on my face, my chest, in places I did not know could be stitched; after my wrist, X-rays of which revealed fractures in sharp relief, was splinted and wrapped in a cast, Natalya said, “I am not going to say anything but I’m sorry this happened to you and you can talk to me if you want, need, anything you need.”
I wanted to tell her, to tell anyone, but the words thickened on my tongue and stayed there, rotting slowly.
Maria slides her hand beneath my shirt, pressing the palm of her hand against my navel. Her hand is surprisingly cool. I exhale slowly. She slides her hand higher. Just before she cups my breast, I grab her wrist and push her hand away. “I am happily married,” I say.
Maria nips the fleshy part of my earlobe. “As am I.”
This time I push her away roughly, stand, and look for my jacket. “You have no right.”
“I would have thought you might appre
ciate the touch of a woman after everything.”
“You don’t know anything about me. Nothing happened.”
“I understand why that version of the truth suits you.”
A hot rush of anger suddenly fills my mouth. I pull Maria up from the couch, and force her hand to my crotch. “Is this what you want?”
“You’re family is right. You are a very cold woman,” Maria says.
“Only to people who don’t know me.”
We did not stay in New York long. I wanted to go home. Melinda was waiting in our loft. I hadn’t spoken since the hospital. Campbell was out of his mind, trying to fix me.
Melinda gasped when she saw me, stood, and held her hands open. “I do not know what to say.”
My face was frozen, muscles locked. I couldn’t look her in the eye.
“She hasn’t spoken in two days,” Campbell said.
I walked past them to the balcony and stood alone, in the waning light.
When Melinda joined me, I refused to turn around. I studied the scenery below and took long drags on my cigarette.
When our eyes finally met, all she could say was, “Oh honey.”
I didn’t make sense of it at first. I couldn’t keep food down. I assumed my body was trying to recover. Four months after our honeymoon, the last of the bruises finally faded, I was back at work. Campbell made me pancakes on a Saturday morning while I sat quietly on the kitchen counter. I asked for one and he handed it to me on the spatula. I grinned as I pulled the warm pancake apart. He smiled back. I reached for him with my feet and pulled him between my legs. I fed him bits of pancake. I let him hold me for the first time since our honeymoon. “Look at you,” Campbell whispered into my neck. I kissed his stubbled chin, his lips, shyly at first and then not so shyly. My mouth and my body remembered him. He groaned, pulling at my clothes and I let him but then my stomach rolled uncomfortably. I had to push him away.