An Untamed State

by Roxane Gay

  “Come inside already.”

  “You forgive me?”

  I smacked his shoulder. “No, but there’s no point in your spending the night in the car, either.”

  We lay next to each other in a familiar bed for the first time in two weeks. I put as much distance between us as possible. When he tried to reach for me, I shoved his hands away.

  “Why are you so angry?”

  I sat up and turned on the light. Michael winced, covering his eyes with his hand. I pointed at him as I got out of bed and started pacing. “Is that seriously a question?”

  “Maybe I was a bit dramatic. Okay, fine, I was rude at the airport but I don’t think my reaction was entirely unreasonable. The trash, the heat, the power going out all the fucking time, the people everywhere, always wanting something.”

  I went to the bedroom window and stared down at the quiet street below, determined to pick a fight for no reason. “After everything I showed you, that’s what you remember?”

  Michael sat up. “How could I forget? We had a blast but we were surrounded by misery. That is hard to take. I’m just being honest.”

  “Michael, if misery is all you saw, you weren’t looking closely.”

  “I looked plenty close, Mireille, and saw many beautiful things but I also saw terrible things. I can’t pretend otherwise. You shouldn’t expect me to.”

  “Right,” I said, still pacing.

  “As if you haven’t said bitchy things about where I am from. You laughed about frozen cows, cows who died where they stood.”

  I grabbed a shoe from the floor and threw it at his chest. Michael caught the shoe and dropped it by the side of the bed, the corners of his mouth lifting.

  “Don’t you laugh and don’t you bring up those poor frozen cows,” I said, my voice rising sharply. “I swear to God. I get it now, how they died was very sad, but it is not remotely the same thing. We’re talking about a country, filled with people I am a part of.”

  “I’m not sure what to say here. You’re going to jump down my throat no matter what I say. Surely we can talk about this like adults.”

  I grabbed my pillow from the bed as well as the duvet, hoping Michael would freeze without it. “Don’t bother saying anything, Michael. You should just kiss the carpet or something to show our bedroom how grateful you are to be at home, alone in your bed, like an adult.” As I ran downstairs, I shouted, “And don’t bother coming after me.”

  I sat on the couch and stared at the ceiling wondering if Michael would follow, if he would apologize, if he would show me he understood how he hurt me, if he could see we weren’t so different in how we felt. I fell asleep waiting.

  I was returned to my cage, locked inside. I was a bloody beast. My cage was madly hot. I held the air in my hands, tried to shape into something that might save me. I was naked, my clothes in a neat pile on the floor next to the small pile of glass shards I had built. My body throbbed as I dressed, as I tried to cover what could not be covered. Everything hurt. My breasts were so full of milk, I thought my skin might stretch so thinly, they would burst open. It hurt too much to sit so I dropped to the floor and slid beneath the bed. It was cooler there, dark. I hoped I might disappear or die.

  I waited for my father to pay the ransom or for my husband to find me. I stared at the door and thought, “It has been long enough. Someone will come. I will survive this.” I waited for salvation. No one came. It grew dark outside again. When I closed my eyes, all I could see was everything that had been done to me so I tried to keep my eyes open. I was so weary. I slept fitfully.

  This morning after rose slowly. I was still beneath the bed. My cage was still madly hot. I whispered my name, my child’s name, my husband’s name, my child’s name, my husband’s name, my name. I whispered these names over and over. The door opened and I froze. I tried not to cry out. My muscles tensed. I saw a pair of boots, the Commander’s. He lifted the bed with one arm. I already knew his strength. “Come out from under there.” I slid out slowly then rose to my knees, paused, held on to the mattress and stood, shakily. When he looked at me I did not look away. I did not cower. He would not break me. I could not be broken. These men had kidnapped the daughter of Sebastien Duval. Even as I became less and less that man’s daughter, my ambition to survive was my only emotion. I swallowed everything else, put it far beyond anyone’s reach, even mine.

  The Commander handed me a copy of Le Nouvelliste. I stared at the date—10 Juillet, 2008. Three days. Only three days had passed.

  “Hold the paper in front of you,” the Commander said.

  I was too tired to refuse. My arms shook as I held the newsprint to my chest. The Commander took my picture, the flash blinding me, then grabbed the paper and shoved a cell phone into my hand.

  “Now,” he said. “You call your father and say what must be said.”

  I nodded. When my father answered, I said, “Hello,” but could barely hear myself. The Commander grabbed my shoulder and squeezed, hard. I swallowed. My throat was too raw. I tried to think of the necessary words, the correct combination of words the Commander wanted my father to hear. I looked up at my captor. I am very stubborn. I said, “May I speak with Michael, please?” There was shuffling and then I heard my husband’s voice. My knees buckled and I fell on the bed, a stinging pain rushing between my thighs. “It’s me,” I said.

  “How are you? We’re working on getting you freed. I swear to God, I’m doing everything in my power.”

  “Michael, stop talking. I need you to hear me. Please come get me. Hurry.”

  “I’m trying, baby. There have been . . .” He paused. “We’re working on getting the money together as fast as we can. You’re going to be okay. Everything is going to be okay.”

  It was the absurdity of his words; it was how little he understood my circumstances. I hung up.

  The Commander folded his arms across his chest, shook his head. He crouched down until we were eye to eye. “You have not yet learned.” He smiled, traced the line of my face from my ear, down along my jawbone.

  I turned away, my skin a hot, pulsing streak where he touched me.

  The phone rang and I answered. It was an unfamiliar voice. “This is the negotiator. Please hand the telephone to the person in charge. We are working to resolve this situation as quickly as possible.”

  “It’s for you.”

  My captor scowled, took the phone. “What is taking so long to get me my money?” he asked.

  I listened to one side of the conversation, to the back and forth about the value of my life. The Commander handed me the phone again. He lifted my shirt. I looked down and noticed a large bruise purpling just to the right and down from my navel spreading around toward my back. I did not try to cover myself. I had no need for modesty.

  The Commander moved behind me, his lips against my ear. “Say what must be said.”

  My father was talking to me, going on and on about the futility of negotiating with men without morals. The Commander began to press the bruise. The pain was breathtaking. I was covered in sweat, filthy, exhausted, starving. I was a mass of desperate need. I needed to step out of my skin, abandon my body the way my father was abandoning my body. The Commander pressed harder and harder until I couldn’t control myself. “Daddy,” I said, gasping. “Please pay for me. Please. I cannot stay here.”

  I begged my father to save what was left of me. Once again, I had an audience while I endured the humiliation, the threat of his indifference.

  I tried to force the Commander’s hand away from my body but he only applied more pressure. I screamed. I couldn’t speak but I screamed. Something wet seeped down the inseam of my jeans, a sharp smell. I wet myself. My father shouted my name, telling me to be strong, telling me he loved me. His lies enraged me into silence. Michael came on the phone. The Commander released his grip and I limped away, my hand over my bruise like that might protect me. I went to a corner, pretended I could hide. Pain continued to throb across my stomach. I leaned against the wall
. “Oh my God, Michael, you need to hurry. You need to hurry.” The Commander’s fist connected with my chin and the phone fell out of my hands, fell to the floor and I fell to the floor, all falls down.

  The Commander and his men left me alone and I stayed in a loose heap on the floor; I couldn’t move. I stared at my engagement ring. It was nice to look at something beautiful. I still had something from my life to hold on to even if it was a silly bauble.

  We were engaged on a Thursday. Michael had been gone for two weeks, consulting on a project in Germany as part of his apprenticeship. With the time difference and my workload as editor for the law review and the work he was doing, we hardly spoke. It staggered me, how much I missed him, his voice, his body, his face. Missing him made me uncomfortably aware that this man I had so little in common with had become a necessary part of my happiness.

  Michael came home near midnight. I heard him at the front door and turned onto my side, pretended to be asleep. He climbed the stairs, leaving his suitcase in the hallway. He undressed and crawled into bed and kissed my forehead. He shook me awake but I refused to open my eyes.

  “I know you’re awake,” he said, turning on the light.

  I turned into my pillow, mumbled, “I don’t like you anymore.”

  He tried to tickle me and I squirmed but soon I was laughing and kicking the covers off and we were wrestling and I tried to ignore how terrifying it was that in one ridiculous moment, I was happy again. I was the worst kind of cliché. He let me win the wrestling match and I straddled his waist, pinning his arms over his head. I grinned, shaking my head when he tried to kiss me.

  “No, no, no,” I said. “My mouth is for men who stay home, where they belong.”

  “What about the rest of you?”

  “The same.”

  “You should let me go.”

  “Why?”

  “I have something to give you.”

  I kissed his lips softly, let go of his wrists, and pressed the palms of my hands to his cheeks, tried to memorize his bone structure. I smiled. “What do you have to give me, baby?”

  I assumed he was going to say something wildly dirty but instead he said, “Hold that thought,” and carefully slid me off of his body. He went to his pants, fumbled with them, and returned with his hands behind his back. “Close your eyes.”

  I shook my head, tried to see what he was holding.

  “Close your eyes.”

  I folded my arms across my chest. “If you went to Germany and brought me back a beer stein, I am going to break it over your head. When I open my eyes I expect to see a German chocolate cake and nothing else.”

  He laughed, too hard, shifted nervously. Finally, I closed my eyes and waited for what I hoped was an excellent souvenir from his time in the Fatherland. Somewhere along his ancestry, Michael’s people were German though he never expressed much affinity auf Deutschland. I closed my eyes and held my hands in front of me. He knelt on the bed next to me and cleared his throat. I opened one eye and he kissed just beneath it, whispered, “Close your eyes.” I shut my eye again. He held my left hand, kissed each knuckle. He slid something cold and solid onto my finger. I was so surprised I immediately felt nauseous.

  I pulled my hand away and opened my eyes. “Michael, what are you doing?” My voice rose. “What the hell are you doing?”

  “Hush,” he said. “For once, don’t say the first thing that comes into your mind. Listen.”

  He told me all the reasons he wanted to marry me. He said he would have given me a ring the first time we made love because he had always known he was going to marry me and he said he didn’t mind that I think I am a difficult woman to love and then I stopped hearing him. The ring felt comfortably heavy on my finger. I didn’t look at it because I didn’t care what it looked like. I only cared that it was there.

  I stared at him and thought about the long speech I had prepared that morning about slowing down, taking some time to evaluate our feelings and priorities, a speech I prepared to better manage the terror of realizing, with a certain finality, that we weren’t playing at this love thing, that I was inconsolable without him.

  “You can say something now, preferably something like yes.”

  I nodded slowly and then the moment overwhelmed me. I wanted nothing more than to run. I’ve always loved running, loved how much it hurts, how good it feels when I stop, how much running makes me feel I have everything I could ever need in my very own body. I slid out of bed and ran down the stairs and out the front door. I ran down the street in my bare feet in the cold night wearing a tank top and pink flannel pajama pants. The moon was full and high and I ran so fast I worried I might outrun my happiness. I didn’t run long, just enough to make my heart pound. When I returned, Michael was sitting on the front porch in a T-shirt and boxers holding my jacket, which he threw to me as I walked up to him shivering. “So is that a yes?” he asked, drily.

  “Yes,” I said. “Of course it’s a yes.”

  He stood and wrapped my jacket around me and shook his head. “I will forever tell anyone who asks about how we got engaged that you ran into the night like a wild woman.”

  I grabbed his T-shirt and started walking backward and fell back into the grass, pulling him on top of me. I said, “With you, yes, I am a very wild woman.”

  Our engagement party was held at my parents’ beach property in Haiti, a beautiful blue and white cottage only a few yards from the ocean. A long veranda stretched from the house to just near the water’s edge and on either side, white, gauzy tents were erected to accommodate more than three hundred of my parents’ closest friends and family. His parents, Michael decided, probably wouldn’t have enjoyed having to make the trip but really, he was protecting me from what they would think of the country. Americans either love Haiti or they hate Haiti. There is no room for ambivalence. Given his mother’s disposition we were fairly confident about where she would stand.

  Wide glass bowls filled with light hung along the length of each tent. Lit torches extended along the shoreline as far as the eye could see. Beneath the tents, the tables were covered with linen tablecloths and elaborate flower arrangements of calla lilies and white roses. There was a buffet with Haitian delicacies and someone’s interpretation of American food—tiny hamburgers Michael stuffed into his face all night even though he loves Haitian food. The champagne was cold and flowed freely. By the end of the night, everyone was floating. It was easier to pretend this was the way life was for everyone. It was a beautiful affair. My mother, who loves to entertain, outdid herself and enjoyed a crowning moment; her friends would talk about the party for years.

  As we pulled up, Michael dressed in a tan linen suit with a French blue shirt, me in a white linen dress, strapless and long, he took in the spectacle of wonder and light, said, “This is just incredible.”

  As Michael and I entered our engagement party, all the banter and social calisthenics stopped for a moment as the crowd stared at us. We walked down the stairs slowly, and I gripped Michael’s hand. The crowd parted and we made our way to my parents. Everyone stared, whispering. Word spread quickly when I got engaged. It was such a coup, my mother told me, finding an American, a white man. When she said this, I told her, “You’ve been in Port-au-Prince too long.” She only laughed and said, “The world is the same everywhere, Mireille. This will be good for your children.” I hung up on her.

  We spent the evening being congratulated. The whole situation infuriated me but I was a good Haitian daughter so I smiled politely. We were given lots of advice about where to have the wedding and where to live (Port-au-Prince) and what to name the children (after my mother and father) and we continued smiling politely and kissed many cheeks. By the end of the evening, we were exhausted and ready to elope. When the dancing started and people began gathering on the dance floor, Michael and I sat at our table, finally alone.

  “My face hurts,” I said. “I hate these people.”

  Michael nodded wearily. “I need to learn how to speak Fre
nch faster. I think they’re talking about me.”

  “They are,” I agreed.

  One of my great-aunts started heading toward us with a look in her eye that let me know we were about to receive more advice about starting our lives in Port-au-Prince even though we had a fine, nicely settled life in the States. I had no more small talk in me. I was out of patience for the comfortable lunacy of such a beautiful party on a perfectly groomed beach in the middle of a land of starving people. The futility of my comfortable guilt was always with me. I stood and pulled Michael after me. The night had finally turned cool, some of the humidity lifting. Michael removed his jacket and threw it over his shoulder. We walked along the beach, following the endless line of burning torches. The air was thick with smoke and salt. The farther we got from the party, the more we could hear the ocean, how it quietly crept to the shore over and over. We found a small outcropping of rock.

  Michael shook open his jacket and set it on the rock for me. I stepped out of my shoes and sat down. I pulled my knees to my chest and looked out onto the water.

  A boat quietly floated by, filled with laughing teenagers.

  “This is the Haiti I love, Michael—the water, the warm nights. I want you to know it has nothing to do with all that back there.”

  He sat down next to me, kissed my bare shoulder. “I know you.”

  We could still hear the music in the distance.

  “You are the Haiti I love,” Michael said.

  “Would you live here with me?”

  He was quiet for a moment. The waves lapped the shore softly and in the distance we could hear the party still going, the rhythmic strains of konpa reaching us. “Yes, Miri, I would.”

  I held Michael’s hand and kissed his knuckles, remembering the enthusiasm with which he kissed the ground in the Miami airport. It took weeks to forgive him even though I too was generally relieved the moment I stepped back on American soil.