An Untamed State

by Roxane Gay

  “You are such a liar but I love you for saying that,” I said.

  We married six months later, in Miami. As we walked out of the church, they played “This Must Be the Place” by the Talking Heads and Michael serenaded me, singing about home as the place he wants to be, always with me.

  Their early courtship kept Michael on his toes. He liked the chase, the push and pull. He liked her eyes and her neck and her sharp tongue, how she was always ready for . . . something, he wasn’t quite sure. Mireille did her best to keep Michael away but he persisted, showing up at the law library, her office on campus, even her house one night.

  It had been a long day on campus and Mireille was exhausted, lonely. She had hours more work ahead of her, no one to talk to, nothing to occupy her attention but legal briefs and precedents. Her only job, her father said when he bought her the house, was to be an excellent student, so that’s what she did. There was no time for romance even though she found herself thinking of Michael, hoping he might suddenly appear, wherever she was. Romance would come later, she hoped.

  Michael was sitting on the concrete stairs leading up to her porch. She was so lost in thought she startled, jumped back as Michael cleared his throat.

  Mireille held her briefcase closer to her body and bit her lower lip.

  “Are you stalking me again?” she asked.

  Michael grinned. “I’m stubborn. I like you.”

  She stepped around him and slid her key in the lock, turning it slowly. “I thought we went over this a few times. I don’t have time for a relationship right now. I’m almost done with school and then I need a job, who knows where, and first-year associates don’t get to have lives.”

  Michael stood and took Mireille’s bag from her. “You spoke, I listened, now it’s my turn.” He followed her into the house and carefully set her bag down, then rubbed his hands together. “I’m going to make you something to eat.” Before Mireille could protest he raised his hand. “I know you haven’t eaten.”

  He pushed her into the kitchen and forced her into an empty chair. There were several wine bottles on the counter, resting in a stainless steel rack. He hummed as he inspected each bottle, finally deciding on a Pinot Noir. Michael held the bottle against his chest as he uncorked it, then he poured Mireille a glass. She was tired and all argued out after a long day of working on a legal brief for moot court. She sat quietly as Michael busied himself in her kitchen cooking something from the sad assemblage of available ingredients—some pasta, green onions, a few soft tomatoes, a block of Romano cheese of questionable origin.

  As he cooked, Michael talked. “The way I see it, I need to prove my case that we should date, get married, have babies, and live happily ever after.”

  Mireille raised her glass in Michael’s direction and nodded, leaned back and crossed her legs. “This should be good.”

  He argued a very good case for himself and cooked a very good meal. They drank two bottles of wine. Mireille had never been much of a talker before she met Michael, never trusted anyone would be interested in what she had to say, but something about his manner made her open up the lonelier parts of herself. Her face grew numb. Michael’s face flushed from the warmth in the kitchen. Finally when their words grew slower, eyes heavy, Michael stood, said, “I better get out of your hair. I’ve imposed long enough. I rest my case, as you might say.”

  She stood too but stumbled. Michael caught Mireille in his arms. She wanted to hold his hand. “I am not the lush I appear to be,” she mumbled. “You keep catching me on days when I haven’t eaten much.”

  They walked to the front door and stood facing each other. Mireille held on to the belt loops of his slacks, her forehead against his chest. “You made a very strong case but I can’t do this.” She sighed, and looked up and pretended not to notice how he wore his disappointment, nakedly. There was a quiet pause.

  “Well,” Michael said, his voice cracking, “I guess you really mean it.” Mireille bit her tongue and nodded. Michael kissed the top of her head, tracing the edges of her face with his thumbs. “I really like you.”

  “Don’t make this hard. You’re a nice guy and you deserve a nice girl. I am not a nice girl.”

  Michael nodded. “I see.” He leaned in, pressing his lips against Mireille’s. She couldn’t help but open her mouth to him, clasping the back of his neck.

  Suddenly she pulled away and opened the door. “I really cannot do this.” Michael stepped outside. Mireille grabbed his shirt just before he stepped off the porch. “I am lying.”

  Michael closed his eyes for a moment, and stepped back inside, his breath wrapping around them. Mireille reached past him and locked the front door. She turned off the foyer light. She started for the staircase and reached back. His fingers found hers. Upstairs, they undressed without talking and crawled beneath the sheets. She lay with her head on Michael’s chest, her legs twisted through his.

  “You have no idea how good this feels,” Mireille whispered.

  He kissed her forehead and held her tighter. “Look how we fit,” he said, before they fell asleep.

  That was the thing about them, Michael thought, whiling away the hours until Miri was freed from her captors. He and his wife fit even though there were any number of reasons they should not. Michael stood in his father-in-law’s office, holding the phone, the dial tone echoing into his sweaty palm. He heard something in Mireille’s voice, something he had never heard before. She was afraid and her fear chilled him. She was normally so fearless. Something terrible was happening. Michael thought again about how well he and his wife fit, about how she overcame herself to be with him, how this couldn’t possibly be how their story ended.

  He set the receiver down, grabbed Sebastien by the shoulders, and shoved him against a wall, causing a brightly colored abstract painting to fall to the floor. “She is your child!” Michael shouted. “She is my wife, the mother of your grandchild. Did you hear her? Pay them what they want. I am begging you.” Michael shoved Sebastien again.

  Sebastien could not look his son-in-law in the eyes. He could not explain to the American that he was doing what he believed to be right. He could not explain to the American that he was not dealing with men of honor, men who would respect an agreement. Sebastien allowed himself to be shoved. When Michael brought his fist back and tried to punch his father-in-law, Sebastien grabbed the younger man’s wrist. Michael was surprised by his father-in-law’s strength. Sebastien held fast and looked Michael in the eye. His voice was cold, steel, resolute. “I am doing what is best. There is more at stake here than just Mireille. If you would allow yourself to think clearly, you might see that.”

  “I don’t know how you live with yourself,” Michael said, shaking himself free from Sebastien’s grip. “I’ll find a way to pay the ransom myself.”

  Michael stepped away and as his breathing slowed, he picked up the phone again, quickly dialing their financial planner, Steve, in Miami—a midwestern transplant like himself. “I need to liquidate everything we have,” Michael stuttered into the phone. He gripped the desk and ignored the people around him. He could do this one thing. He could get the money together and find a way to make contact with the kidnappers. He would work around Sebastien. Enough was enough.

  Sebastien sat behind his desk, his hands trembling. He tried to forget the sound of his daughter’s scream and what might have brought about that scream. He watched quietly as Michael made phone call after phone call. “You are wasting your time,” he said at last, with a finality that made Michael shiver.

  After allowing me to bathe and wash my clothes in the bathroom sink, TiPierre brought me water, a bowl of rice. I was so hungry I grabbed sticky clumps of rice with my fingers, shoving them into my mouth. I didn’t care if the food was drugged or poisoned. I needed something to fill the gnawing hollow inside me. He watched as I ate, smiled kindly. It was repulsive. When I finished, I felt sick, my stomach bloated. I wanted more.

  He looked at me shyly, said, “I gave part of my
share of the ransom to the others so they would leave you alone.”

  I tried to understand, tried not to hope but I was desperate. I allowed myself to believe he had rescued me. “Why would you do that?” I asked.

  “I like you.”

  “You don’t know me.”

  “I know you are brave.”

  I brought my fingers to my lips, shook my head. “This is how you would treat your mother? My child’s mother?”

  “The Commander needed to teach you a lesson. He is a very angry man. He does not like to be defied.”

  “He’s an animal. He is capable of anything. Don’t think he will ever respect you.”

  TiPierre stood and the tightness in my chest began to unravel. I needed to believe I was safe despite holding so much evidence to the contrary in my skin.

  Instead of leaving, TiPierre closed the door. I started shaking, moved to the corner, to the false safety of two walls, tried to become part of that house, part of something bigger and stronger than myself. I held my hands out in front of me. “No,” I said. “Don’t.” I said, “You said you paid for me to be left alone.”

  He wore Nike sneakers, green with a gold swoosh. He bent over and unlaced the shoes, stepped out of them, set the shoes neatly to the side. I wondered how he kept his home, if he was a clean and organized man. “You will be left alone. I can’t keep the Commander away, but the others, yes.” He pulled off his shirt. His torso was lean and long, his skin the color of caramel. He had a birthmark, dark red, in the shape of a ragged diamond, just under his navel. Under different circumstances, he would have been an attractive man.

  “I don’t want this,” I said. Another man inside me would render me further undone.

  “I bought you for myself.” He smiled as if I were supposed to smile back, as if what would happen and who we were made sense. He walked toward me holding his hands open. “I will not hurt you.”

  I ran my hands through my matted hair and took a deep breath, again tried to find the right combination of words to save myself.

  When he reached me, he traced the bruises on my face. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be with someone like you. I see you women, how you wear your designer clothes and your beautiful shoes and your dark sunglasses, your French perfumes. It’s like the shit of this place doesn’t touch you. You never see me but I am there, watching. You are all so beautiful.” He pressed his lips against mine. I shrank from him, from the insistent heat of his tongue, the way he wet my mouth with his. “You are beautiful,” he whispered, hotly.

  He kept caressing my face. The gentleness of his touch over my broken skin made me shiver, broke me further. He kissed my forehead. His lips were cool. His fingers were soft and warm. If I closed my eyes, it would be easy to pretend the man before me was a lover, that our bodies belonged together.

  I fought him. I swallowed the pain. I did not close my eyes.

  Even before I was kidnapped I knew there were lots of ways the body can be broken—our flesh and bone are so weak.

  Michael always said his mother had never been sick a day in her life. As a boy, he would come down with a cold or flu and she would tend to him and nothing would compromise her legendary immune system, her strong German constitution. When the call came that there was something wrong with Lorraine, Michael refused to believe. He said it wasn’t possible. His mother was an impenetrable fortress, made of steel. That is who she was for him. He was inconsolable. There is no graceful way to deal with the fear of losing a mother.

  Michael was in the middle of too many projects at work, he said, but mostly, he couldn’t face his mother as her body fell apart. He told me this when we were in bed, trying to figure out how we could best help his parents. It is one of the only times I saw my husband cry in the before, one of the only times he had reason to cry. I held him, his voice cracking as he admitted he couldn’t bear watching his mother die. “Oh my love,” is all I could say, to see him like that, so exposed and so honest. I surprised both of us when the next morning, I said, “I’ll go to the farm to take care of Lorraine.”

  It was easy enough to take a leave of absence from my law firm. I started the firm with four of my smartest lawyer friends—two immigration attorneys, two criminal defense attorneys, and one personal injury attorney. We were an odd mix but wanted to practice law and be damn good at it without sacrificing our entire lives. We each had offers to go to big firms in Chicago and New York but the thought of having to work a hundred hours a week, eating meals from damp Styrofoam containers in dimly lit offices, all in the name of getting ahead, earning money we would never have time to spend—it was too much. That wasn’t why we had gone into the law. It’s not that we were idealists but we aspired to be. We took the risk, pooled what money we had, and promised we could always take the time we needed for ourselves and our families so long as we gave our all when we were at work. We were lucky. The first few years, we did work crazy hours and didn’t know how we were going to make ends meet but we were working for ourselves. Then we won some big cases. We developed a reputation—the sharks of Biscayne Boulevard. We were able to hire a handful of associates and two paralegals. We were able to breathe a little and live a little. Even my father, who had never approved of our starting our own firm, grudgingly acknowledged we had made a wise gamble.

  My partners would manage my cases until I returned. I had a laptop and a cell phone. Any work I needed to do I could handle from anywhere. Michael and I flew back to Nebraska a couple of days before Lorraine’s surgery. We said goodbye in the hall just outside my mother-in-law’s hospital room. The air around us was stale and antiseptic.

  Michael ran his fingers through my hair. “I don’t know how to thank you.”

  I pressed a finger against his lips. “You don’t thank me for being your wife.”

  He wrapped his arms around me and lifted me off the ground. “Yes, I do. I thank you. I’m going to miss you like crazy. I thank you.” My arms circled his neck and we kissed softly and then we stood, my feet in the air, our lips barely touching. I wanted to say do not leave me here. I wanted to say I cannot sleep without you. I was silent. I patted his shoulder and straightened his tie. He set me down and smiled, almost sadly. “I know you’re going to miss me too even if you won’t say it.” Before I could respond, Lorraine coughed loudly. We returned to her bedside and Michael held his mother’s hands in his. He kissed her forehead and we stood, for a long while on either side of his bed, staring at each other. Finally, he patted the plastic bedrail. He said, “This is my mother.” His voice sounded strangled. He looked like a little boy. The devotion of an only child runs so deep.

  I nodded. “I will treat her like my own.” Lorraine’s lips wrinkled into a frown. “Mostly,” I said.

  He left the room, paused in the doorway, watching me standing over his mother. The room felt smaller and darker. Lorraine sat up, huffing as she tried to make herself comfortable. “I don’t really expect you to stay.”

  I rolled my eyes and studied the pillow behind her head. I’ve seen movies. “Lorraine, I will be right back.” I ran out of the room. I saw Michael standing at the end of the long corridor, waiting for the elevator. Hospitals are so quiet. I didn’t want to shout his name but I didn’t want him to leave. “Michael,” I said, whispering loudly. He continued staring ahead. I called his name again, louder this time. Finally he turned and I ran toward him, my heels echoing loudly.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked.

  “Nothing.” I stood on the tips of my toes and wrapped my arms around him, held tight. He held me against him, sliding his hands slowly up and down my back. “I’m going to miss you too, like crazy,” I said into his shirt. My husband is much taller, so I pulled him down until my lips met his ear, tried to memorize the steadiness of the pulse in his neck. Quietly, very quietly, I told him everything that needed to be said about how I feel about him and us and what it would be like to be apart from him and how I knew he was scared and it was okay for him to be scared but he would n
ever have to be scared alone. I talked for a long time. It surprised me, how much I had, until then, left unsaid between us. I held my husband’s face and looked into his eyes. I said, “Okay?” He nodded. I did not want to let him go. He had a flight to catch so he pulled away reluctantly, jabbed his finger against the elevator button. As the elevator doors hissed shut, he held his hand out to me, palm open and I held my hand over my heart.

  My mother-in-law was in the hospital for just over a week. She was not a good patient nor was she popular with the doctors and nurses. She was scared and she is stubborn—a hellish combination. During the day, we watched soap operas and courtroom dramas and Maury Povich. Lorraine picked fights. I tried to be patient as she criticized my shoes, scowling at me as I walked to the window. “Those shoes are impractically high. Accept your natural height.” When I leaned over to adjust her pillow, she wrinkled her nose and said, “That perfume of yours is too young for you, makes you smell like a teenage tart.” I whiled the hours away, staring at my phone. When she was trying to get my attention, Lorraine said, “You have the attention span of a gnat; you can’t even hold a damn conversation without staring at that thing.” There were blissful moments when I stepped out to talk to Michael. When I returned to her room, she said I was keeping her son from his important work. She stared at my engagement ring and muttered, “That is an ice-skating rink you’ve got on your finger. You are probably going to put my son in debt.”

  By the third day, I had taken to wearing earbuds, pretending to listen to music, occasionally nodding my head. Lorraine smiled and said, “Your people do have a fondness for music and dancing.”

  I perfected saying, “Whatever you say, Lorraine.”

  When my mother-in-law was thirsty and too weak to hold the plastic cup, I gently held her head and brought the cup to her lips as she took tiny, careful sips. Her face was gray, drawn, her skin practically blue, paper-thin. I thought of my own mother and how unbearable it was to imagine her in a hospital bed, small and afraid, something dark and unknown eating away at her from the inside. When the pain was too much Lorraine pursed her lips and held her hand against the incision, shaking her head slowly. When she was hurting like that, we talked about Michael, wondering what he was doing, marveling at how well he was doing in his job. She told me about Michael as a little boy, so curious, always building things. He was a good boy, she said, and I said, “He is a good man.” We were both happy, smiling. “At least you seem to really love him. You treat him right,” Lorraine said grudgingly. I said, “Thank you, Lorraine.”