by Roxane Gay
The doctors treated the cancer aggressively so as soon as she recovered, she had six weeks of radiation and chemotherapy. Three or four days a week, we drove the hour or so from the farm to the hospital in Lincoln. I’d sit with her as the IV in her arm pumped poisonous chemicals into her body; I’d do a crossword puzzle or read, or stare at the wall wondering how much time would pass before I lost my temper. We got to know some of the other regulars who had their chemo appointments at the same time. Lorraine and I confused them as they tried to make sense of our connection. One day Lorraine told the woman next to her, “My boy married this one. I have no idea why,” and the woman said, “Maybe because she’s here with you.” I wanted to high-five that lady.
After chemo, Lorraine spent hours in the bathroom, hugging the toilet. I brought her ice chips, wiped her face with cool cloths, played Willie Nelson tapes from a small boom box. Lorraine loves Willie Nelson, says he’s the only man who would make her leave Glen. “Something about a man with long hair,” she said, one afternoon, me sitting on the bathroom counter while she sat on the floor, with her back against the bathtub. I nodded, said, “I can see that.” Michael has beautiful hair, shoulder length, thick and blond. He often wears the top half of his hair in a ponytail and lets the rest of it hang loose. When we’re making love, Michael’s hair brushes against my shoulder in such a way that makes my back arch at an unnatural but entirely pleasant angle.
There were times Lorraine was so weak she could barely stand. I helped her bathe, running a soft washcloth over her body as she sat in the tub, her knees pulled to her chest. The first time, she stood naked in front of me, shifting nervously, trying to hide behind her arms. I wore a tank top and a pair of shorts. “I never had a body like yours,” Lorraine said, looking me up and down. Her ribs were beginning to protrude and her skin hung loosely but there was no shame in her body, none at all and that’s what I told her. “I ought to be able to do this for myself,” she said. I pulled my hair into a ponytail and pointed to the empty tub, said, “You ought to know when you need help.” She scowled but got in the tub without much argument, said, “Don’t make the water too hot. I don’t want you to boil me.” I started buying fruity soaps from a store in the city and each morning I’d say, “What fruit do you feel like today?” and she’d humor me, grumble, “Raspberries,” or “Green apples,” and we’d go from there. There is something terribly intimate about bathing another person. I learned almost everything a person could know about my mother-in-law’s body—her scars and birthmarks and wrinkles, the single strand of hair behind her left ear. Sometimes I hummed as I washed her and if she recognized the song, Lorraine hummed along too.
Toward the end of her treatment, Lorraine lost all patience with everything. It was understandable. She was exhausted and completely worn down. We were in her bedroom, Lorraine in bed, me sitting in a chair next to her bed, flipping through a glossy magazine. This is how we started every day. Mornings were hard, her body always stiff and unwilling to move. There was the nausea, the aches of aging, and a variety of other complications that made having to get out of bed an ordeal.
“I’m tired of looking at you. I’m ready to go,” Lorraine croaked.
I turned the page but didn’t look up. “I’m ready for you to go too, Lorraine.”
Lorraine sat up slowly, grunting as she moved her body. “Well. Look who’s got teeth.”
I set my magazine down and handed Lorraine her morning regimen of pills and a glass of water. “I’ve always had teeth, Lorraine. Unlike you, I don’t feel the need to use them all the time.”
She made a small sound but sat a little straighter, took her medication without complaint.
I stayed with Lorraine for four months, through the worst of it. It meant that Glen was able to keep the farm running. Michael came to visit every few weeks. He never stayed for long enough and we had no privacy. During his visits, I was usually so tired I wasn’t good company. Even so, we made the most of our time together. We didn’t bicker or talk about inconsequential things. We made frantic, quiet love trying to get enough from each other’s bodies to get us through the time apart. It was never enough.
On the day I left, Lorraine and I sat at the kitchen table, eating cereal. We talked about the episode of Survivor we watched the previous day. I washed our dishes and she walked me to the front door. Glen was waiting to drive me to the airport in Lincoln. I wore a ridiculously high pair of heels and a tastefully slutty dress for Michael, and Lorraine didn’t bat an eye. I was impressed by her restraint. I wasn’t sure what to say as we stood in the doorway. Lorraine isn’t one for demonstration. I told her I would call when I got in, that I’d call often. I meant it. She grabbed me and pulled me into a warm embrace. Just as quickly she pushed me away. She said, “Thank you for getting on my nerves for so long,” and I said, “You’re welcome, Lorraine.” We have talked three or four times a week ever since. She is family.
The Commander called for me again. It was the seventh day. Every day more was taken from me. He forced me onto my stomach and handcuffed my wrists to the headboard. He left me there, bared to him as he talked, mostly incoherent, half-formed political ideas, angry barbs about wealth and women, the ramblings of a man without a real ideology.
“I don’t understand women like you,” he said, winding down. “You could have made things easier for yourself. Would it be so hard to play nice with me?”
“I don’t understand men like you. You could have made things easier for me.”
“You always have something clever to say, Mireille Duval. I like that about you.”
“My last name is Jameson.”
The Commander laughed. “My, how quickly things change. You people are all the same. You live in your grand homes looking down on us in the gutter. You think you control everything and can have anything.”
“There is nothing original about you, not even your ideals,” I muttered.
He waved his arm across his chest. “One day all of you will live like the rest of us. You will know what it’s like to live the way the real people of this country do.”
“As if you do, with your flat-screen televisions and Xbox systems?”
He grabbed me by my hair, yanking my head back. I hoped for my neck to break. “I can see it is difficult for you to learn your lesson. I will try again to teach you.”
There was nothing he could do, I told myself, that he had not already done. I had not yet developed a respect for his cruelty. The Commander reached beneath his pillow and pulled out a long knife, the kind so sharp the blade hummed. He would open my body in a different, more terrible way.
I closed my eyes, breathed shallow, thought of my husband and son at home in bed, cool and clean and happy—the way both Michael and Christophe smiled at me with their whole faces. I made no sound. Later, the Commander left me cuffed to his bed and walked around the room naked ranting about how a change was coming, that the people would revolt. He drank rum from a dark brown bottle, grabbed my cheeks, and dug his fingers into my face, prying my mouth open. He poured rum into my mouth and I swallowed, willingly. It was not long before everything dulled. I did not mind when he doused the cuts on my back with alcohol. My skin burned. Before I passed out, I said, “My heart is safe. My heart is safe.”
In Haiti, it is the father, not the husband, who gets the first dance at his daughter’s wedding. Even though we were marrying in the States, I thought it would be nice to uphold the tradition. Mona danced with my father at her wedding and the way he moved her across the floor, both their faces shining, I wanted that moment for myself. When I told Michael a few days before our wedding, he rubbed his chin, said, “That’s kind of twisted,” and I slapped his arm. I said, “It’s sweet.”
My father and I danced to Etta James, “At Last,” his favorite song. My mother beamed at us from her table, she and Mona sitting so close their faces were practically touching. I was nervous, so many people staring at us, so much aloneness with my father. This was something new for us, sharing
a quiet moment. He smiled shyly as I held his shoulders and he held my waist and we swayed. He said, “I trust that with this man, your heart is safe,” and I nodded, because it was, because I knew Michael would take good care of the softest parts of me I dared to give him. That night, with my father so relaxed, so happy, I thought my heart was safe with him too.
Later, I was dying or losing myself or both or maybe the two states were the same thing. I awoke slowly. I was as far away from being my father’s daughter as I had ever been. My arms were stiff, stretched tautly. When I tried to move, it was difficult. My shoulder popped. I tried to sit up, realized I was on my stomach, my wrists still cuffed to the Commander’s bed. I looked around and standing next to the bed was a young woman, couldn’t have been more than twenty-two. She looked down at me with her hands on her hips, muttered something too softly for me to make out.
“Please, help me.” The words felt dangerous in my mouth. I cleared my throat. “Help me.”
She reached into a drawer in the nightstand and produced a small, silver key. She quietly unlocked each cuff and I winced as my arms fell and the blood rushed back to my shoulders, my raw, abraded wrists.
“Help me get out of here,” I whispered.
She pressed one finger to her lips, nodded. She handed me my clothes. My hands shook as I dressed, tried to fasten the button on my jeans. When I couldn’t, she moved toward me, reached. I stepped away, a rush of adrenaline shooting through me, but she shook her head, smiled softly, fastened my jeans for me. I grabbed her hand, didn’t want to let go. Her skin was soft. I needed someone soft to hold on to, someone who wouldn’t hurt me. I needed to believe a woman wouldn’t hurt me. She didn’t let go of my hand, pulled me after her.
We moved quickly but quietly. The house was still; the city was still, early morning. My heart beat so fast. I felt Michael’s arms around me. I saw his smile. I walked toward his smile, the memory of it.
There were two sleeping men curled up on different ends of a long couch. They didn’t stir. At the front door of the house, the young woman pushed me into the street. She said, “Run,” so I ran. When I looked back, she shook her head, moving her arms like she was pushing me along. I had no idea where I was going. Even though it was early and still and silent, there were people in the street. As I ran past them, they stared. I cannot imagine what I looked like, bruised and bloody and barefoot, running, wild, so very wild, trying to get free, being chased even though I was not being chased.
The slums are an endless maze of narrow streets and alleys lined with small concrete block homes. The blocks rise up into a mountain and dark, narrow, winding staircases hold everything together. The sky is often blocked by a thick and tangled web of electrical wiring. Cars are parked everywhere, sometimes half on the sidewalk, half in the street. Women rarely move through the streets alone. It is not safe, not ever. When they do walk down the street, they often carry large buckets of water or baskets carrying goods to sell at La Saline market. Old women sit on concrete stairs, their heavy skirts bunched between their thighs as they stare at the goings-on or peel vegetables or feel the beating sun on their skin. The streets are covered in trash—plastic bottles, torn paper, shallow pools of dirty water, rusted coffee cans, discarded cigarette butts. Sometimes a stray chicken or goat carefully steps its way through the streets. When a car barrels down the street, anyone in the street jumps out of the way. The music is loud. Car horns wail regularly. The air is thick with the smell of too many people in too little space. Many of the walls are painted brightly; some of the walls have advertisements for Comme Il Faut cigarettes or a local church or barbershop. I ran through these streets and thought, “This is a Haiti I have never seen or known.” It was a Haiti no one should have to know.
I came upon a small café and stepped inside. I refused hope but it was so close, so close my fingers felt electric. Michael’s smile grew brighter. I had a husband and child and if there was kindness in the world, someone in the café would get me to them. Inside, two women sat at a small, square table smoking cigarettes as they stared at a television on a high shelf in one corner of the room. A tall orange drink sat in front of each woman. I tried to stand straight, tried to hold my head high, tried to sound strong. “May I please use your telephone?” I wanted to be polite. I wanted to sound like a woman who deserved to use a telephone to call her husband to come and save her. Another woman shuffled out from behind a bar along one side of the room. She was older, her hair gone completely to gray. She wore a pink T-shirt and white Capri pants, lots of gold bracelets dangled from her wrist. She looked at me carefully, then sucked her teeth, waved her arms like she was trying to sweep me out her front door.
“I want no trouble here,” she said.
I tried to hold it together. “Please, my family can pay you money, lots of money.”
She paused, nodded toward a small table in the corner. “Sit,” she said. I did as I was told and sat carefully, tried to ignore the pain. I gripped the edges of the table. She brought me a glass of water, a napkin. I drank the water quickly, drank so fast my head began to hurt. She disappeared for a few minutes and when she returned she set a cell phone on the table in front of me. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate, tried to remember the exact sequence of numbers between that moment and salvation. I pressed each number carefully, tried to steady my hands, tried to quiet my heart. As I pressed the last number I heard a familiar laugh. I looked up and saw the Commander standing over me, his hands on the butt of the gun tucked in the waistband of his pants. He tossed a wad of tightly rolled bills held together with a rubber band to the woman. I nodded slowly, took another sip of my water. I swallowed the rising bile. I tried to breathe.
The Commander sat across from me. He appeared calm, bemused.
“Don’t look so disappointed. You were never going to get away. Your father may think he owns the city but I own these streets.”
He snapped his fingers, ordered two drinks. When the proprietress set mine in front of me I did not bother to ask what it was. I simply drank it, fast. My limbs tingled as the alcohol took effect. The Commander leaned back, spread his legs wide, as if providing his arrogance room to stretch. He set a pack of cigarettes on the table. I reached for one without asking, and when I put the cigarette in my mouth, he proffered a lighter. I leaned into the flame, took a long drag, exhaled slowly. The cigarette made me dizzy. I inhaled again.
“Well, I enjoyed the run.”
He set his gun on the table. “That is good. There is certainly a lot to see around here. I hope you took it all in, what you people hath wrought.”
“Fancy words. You let me go on purpose.”
He smiled, and I marveled, once again, at the exceptional whiteness of his teeth, how they gleamed, wetly sharp. “You are smart. I like that too.”
I took another drag of the cigarette, ashed on the floor, crossed my legs even though it felt like something new tore inside me every time I moved. The cuts on my back wept angrily. “You are not going to let me go.”
“Is that a question?”
I smiled. “No, it is not.”
He motioned to the proprietress who brought us more drinks. It was all very civilized. We sat, talking, though not like friends.
“You wouldn’t be here if it were not for your father’s reluctance to pay what I am owed.”
“I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t stolen me from my husband and child.” I pounded my fist against the small table. “You took me in front of my child,” I said. “My child.” It was more than I could take, sitting across from that man and his smugness, his righteousness and mine.
He waved his arm widely. “What about all the children who will never know anything but life here?”
I took a long sip of my drink, wanted to numb myself. “I did not create the problems in this country nor did my family.”
The Commander laughed, reached across the table, took my wrist in his hand, and squeezed, hard. “People like you always choose to absolve yourselves. You are c
omplicit even if you do not actively contribute to the problem because you do nothing to solve it.”
I held his gaze. My rage engulfed my fear. The Commander was just a man, I realized, a small and petty man. “You are complicit too. Don’t think for one second you aren’t.”
A strange expression crossed his face. He released his grip, shrugged, then looked up at the television. An episode of Judge Judy was airing. We watched, silently, drank, smoked many cigarettes. I wonder what we must have looked like, me and my battered body, the Commander and his arrogance, the anger hovering between us muted by the sharp counsel of a television judge. The laughter began just beneath my breastbone and soon my shoulders were shaking and finally I gave in, threw my head back and laughed so loudly I am certain they heard me for blocks and blocks.
As we exited the café, the Commander carried me, his arms hooked under mine. I kicked and tried to grab on anything with my feet. I knocked over chairs, a table covered with empty glasses, kicked the doorjamb of the entrance. I would have done anything, absolutely anything, to save myself from returning to the cage, to the men who used my body. There was one moment when I was facing the interior of the café as the Commander struggled to hold on to me. I could feel how frenzied I looked, my hair, flying from my head in every direction, the anger in my eyes, the white heat of it rolling off my body, threatening to burn everything around me. I stared at the woman who betrayed me. I shouted, “How could you? We are both daughters of Dessalines.” She stood perfectly still. She did not blink. She did not look away with her dry eyes.