An Untamed State

by Roxane Gay

  I swallowed hard. I wanted to tell him something, everything. I wanted him to know I was losing myself, that I was all torn apart but I did not want that to be the last he knew of me. “I just don’t want him to forget me. I don’t want you to forget me.” I laughed hoarsely. “I’m not going to be all noble and tell you to move on quickly and forget me if I die.”

  He started to say something but I interrupted. “Don’t talk. Listen.” I walked to the farthest corner of the room. I lowered my voice, turned away from the door, the Commander, what had been done to me. “I have always been in love with you. I wanted you to know that. You and our son are the only things that matter and I hope you don’t forget any of it.”

  “You’re scaring me, Miri. What’s going on? If they lay one hand on you, I swear.”

  I held my hand over my heart as if that might protect the pulsing muscle of it. I wanted to say, what do you think is going on? I didn’t. I said, “I’m fine. I did not want how I feel about you to go unsaid, not this time.” I heard movement behind me but I did not want to turn around. I wanted to stay with my husband, with his voice. “Tell me you’re a pretty pretty princess.”

  He laughed, a sad empty laugh. He spoke slowly, said, “I am a pretty pretty princess.”

  My hands felt so empty and yet I could feel the shapes of my husband and my son against my palms. “Michael, I mean it. Don’t let him forget me or this would all be in vain.”

  “We are coming for you. Hold on, Miri. That’s all I ask. Hold on.”

  A heavy hand grabbed my shoulder and I winced. I nodded slowly, bit my lower lip. “I have to go, Michael.”

  As the Commander took the phone I heard my husband saying my name over and over. I turned to look at the man before me. “You married an American,” the Commander said.

  “Yes, I did.”

  “And he loves you; the two of you have a son.”

  My skin chilled. Something invisible began to wrap around my neck. “Yes.”

  “If your father does not pay soon, I may have to take his only grandson. Maybe then he’ll be compelled to pay. Men are strangely moved to preserve their bloodlines, though in your father’s case, it’s hard to say.”

  When I was a little girl, my mother also told me the story of a little girl and a magic orange tree. This little girl’s mother died when she was born and as fathers often do, her father remarried a woman, who, as stepmothers are wont to be, was cruel and quite evil. The stepmother rarely fed the little girl. One day, after she got in trouble with her stepmother, the little girl ran to her mother’s grave and cried and cried, her tears soaking the ground covering her mother’s body as she fell asleep. When she awoke in the morning, an orange seed fell from her dress into the tear-soaked soil and immediately a perfect green leaf appeared. The little girl started singing to this leaf and it blossomed into a tree. The more she sang, the higher the tree grew. She sang telling the tree how to grow. She ate oranges, delicious oranges from the tree. She knew the tree was her mother. When she brought some of her perfect oranges home, her stepmother demanded to know where the little girl had gotten the oranges. The little girl was a good girl so she took her stepmother to the tree and the greedy stepmother tried to take all the oranges for herself. Again the little girl sang and the tree swept the evil stepmother into its branches and killed her because the tree was that little girl’s mother and a mother will do anything to protect and provide for her child.

  I had to try to forget who I was forever. There was no delicacy or balance with a man like the Commander. I inhaled deeply. I became no one again. I traced the scar beneath his left eye and I held his chin and looked him in the eye. I did not raise my voice. There was no need. “If you touch my child, I will kill you. Whatever happens to me happens but you cannot harm my child.” I dug my fingernails into his chin. “If my father doesn’t pay, I will call my bank, I will pull together what money I can. I will find a way. I don’t know how but I will find a way. It won’t be what you want but it will be more than you have. You also have me. Let that be enough. Let me be enough.”

  My voice was steady. I was calm. I had begun to realize I would never see my family again. It was easy to offer myself in the place of my child.

  The Commander arched an eyebrow and slowly pushed on my arm until I released my grip. He took off his shirt and flexed his pectoral muscles. “Now things are getting interesting. It is a very touching thing to see a mother sacrifice for her child.” He planted his hands on my waist, pressed his fingers into the bruises there.

  I did not flinch. I felt nothing. I held his gaze. “It is not a sacrifice.”

  When he pushed me onto my knees, I slowly sifted through every memory of the life I had once known. I wiped each instance away.

  “I think I will keep you,” the Commander said. I grabbed at my chest for a moment because my heart seized uncomfortably. I thought my heart might stop. I hoped for such mercy. Just as quickly the tightness eased, began to spread outward. I tried to remember why my heart hurt so much. I saw the faint outline of all I loved but it was far away, the edges blurry. It was not easy but I forced myself to erase those blurry edges too.

  I was no one.

  Michael’s father first took him hunting when he was nine. They drove up to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for a week and spent their days in a freezing-cold deer blind, their fingers and faces numb. His father stood behind him, helping Michael hold the rifle in the hollow between his shoulder and collarbone. His father said, “The key, son, is to breathe. Inhale when you pull the trigger and exhale when you release.” His father told him to respect what you’re killing, that taking a life was no small thing. When Michael shot his first deer, he cried, inconsolably, salty tears and mucous freezing to his face as he and his father climbed down out of the deer blind and went to the slaughtered animal, a respectable eight-point buck.

  The animal’s glassy black eyes were wide open and staring at Michael. It was a terrible thing to see. He and his father knelt on the ground, frozen leaves crunching beneath their boots. His father took Michael’s hand and held it just over the entrance wound, its edge blackened, a thin stream of blood streaking the buck’s muscled torso. “You took a life,” his father said, “but you did it well. There is no shame in this. You hear me?” Michael nodded, poked his finger in the wound where it was still warm, slick. They drove home with the buck in the truck bed. Every once in a while Michael would look back at it, those glassy black eyes still wide open, staring at him. He once told Mireille he did not feel shame though he did feel sorrow for the life he had taken.

  Michael, restless, still waiting, remembered Mireille’s stories about her cousin Victor, the son of an uncle in Jacmel. It was an open secret that Victor associated with the wrong element, spent most of his time in the slums running with a gang, was known to handle certain delicate situations requiring an indelicate approach for the Duval family.

  When Michael finally understood Sebastien wasn’t going to capitulate, he called Victor, who showed up an hour later with two imposing friends, JoJo and Patrick, who spoke little and chewed on toothpicks. Sebastien barely acknowledged his nephew but Fabienne, always the epitome of politesse, kissed Victor twice on each cheek, asked after his parents and siblings. Michael and Victor hugged in the awkward way of men who are marginally acquainted and Victor slapped him on the back, leading Michael out of Sebastien’s earshot.

  “This is a terrible thing, man. Anything I can do. I like my cousin. She’s one tough lady, always talking so smart.”

  Michael laughed halfheartedly. “That’s Miri. We need to find her. It has been way too long.”

  Victor studied his phone for a moment, hit a few keys, then shoved it in his pocket. “Fuck that guy. He’s always looking down his nose even though he comes from the same shit as the rest of us.” He squeezed Michael’s shoulder. “We’re going hunting tonight.”

  When night fell, Michael dressed in dark clothing and left Christophe with his grandmother. He kissed his son and whisp
ered into the boy’s head, “I am going to find your mother.” Michael ignored the tightness in his chest, a tightness that never seemed to go away in this strange place where his wife was missing. He climbed into a car with Victor and his friends. As they drove down the driveway, Victor handed Michael a ski mask and a pair of dark leather gloves.

  “What are these for?”

  Victor grinned. “You can’t be showing that pretty hair and those pretty hands where we’re going.”

  Michael nodded as if he understood. Victor also handed him a Glock 9 mm pistol, the weight of which felt good in Michael’s hand, heavy. He traced the barrel with his fingers, inhaled the scent of gun oil as they drove through the worst parts of Port-au-Prince hunting for a woman who could not be found in a place where everyone was an expert at hiding.

  Every so often, they turned down a narrow street or alley and stopped. Victor, Patrick, and JoJo pulled red bandanas over their faces and the four men knocked on doors, threatening to kick them down. Michael always stood near the back, standing at full height glowering and sweating beneath his mask, his gun tucked into his waistband, the grip visible. Victor flashed Mireille’s picture and shouted a barrage of questions and wouldn’t stop until he got the answers he wanted. The answers were always the same. No one knew anything.

  “We are in the Wild West,” Michael thought after they stopped at a run-down, one-story house that looked more like a rambling shack. The door was flung open and a loud television blared into the street. A young man sat in a lawn chair near the front door, cradling a beer. He barely looked up as the four spilled out of their car. Victor didn’t bother with a mask this time. He simply walked up to the young man, who stood and grinned.

  “Victor, man, sa k pase?”

  “M ap boule, TiPierre. M ap boule. Look, man. M ap chache kouzen mwen.” He handed TiPierre a picture of Mireille.

  TiPierre whistled low. “Li anfòm.”

  “Chill, that’s my blood.” Victor looked back over his shoulder. “And that’s her husband. Don’t be bringing that around him. Just tell me, does Laurent have her?”

  TiPierre looked at the picture again and shook his head. “Nah. We got out of that. Too much legwork, too many crying bitches.” He held two pinched fingers to his lips and pretended to inhale. “We’re into something else now.”

  Victor kicked the broken glass at his feet then looked TiPierre in the eye. “If I find out you’re lying and your crew took one of mine, pral gen yon gwo pwoblèm, okay?”

  TiPierre nodded. “I hear you, Victor. I hear you. We wouldn’t mess with your family. Like I said, too many crying bitches, always wanting to go home, thinking they’re too good for you, asking for bottled water and shit. No thanks.”

  Victor stepped around TiPierre and peered into the house, where a woman sat on a couch watching television, holding a young child. “Your woman let you back home?”

  “Today,” TiPierre said, laughing. “I don’t know about tomorrow.”

  Victor rubbed his chin. “Where is Laurent these days?”

  “He’s living with his sister, laid up with some lady. You know how he is.”

  “How he can get women with that face of his, I don’t know.” Victor shook his head and took one last look around before fixing TiPierre with a hard stare. “We’ve got to get going but if you hear anything, you get in touch with my guys. Don’t fuck me on this.”

  TiPierre smiled, didn’t blink. “I got it, man. I got it.”

  Back in the car, Victor rubbed his forehead and turned to Michael. “Someone’s lying but I don’t know who. All these motherfuckers do is lie until they start believing they’re telling the truth.”

  Michael fingered the grip of the gun again. “I could kill a living thing to save my wife,” Michael said. “I would feel neither shame nor sorrow.”

  Victor nodded and started the car. “We’ll see if it comes to that. We have more hunting to do.”

  They drove off into the night, the only sound Victor tapping the steering wheel to an indeterminate beat. Michael held his wife’s picture in the palm of one hand and the gun in the other. He would feel nothing at all until he found his wife.

  I stood beneath the weak stream of lukewarm water, scrubbing my clothes, trying to rinse away all they had seen. When I finished, I wrapped myself in a towel and returned to my cage under the careful watch of an armed escort. They could see the wildness in me, how it shrouded my body, how my body was nothing, how I was capable of anything. I randomly clawed and hissed to remind them that I knew I was an animal. Sometimes, I spit. I did not care.

  Alone, I set my clothes on the end of the bed and waited for them to dry. I refused to look at my body. I hurt enough to understand. Outside, it was fire hot and raining, a heavy, pounding rain and the air was thick with the smell of it. Children ran down the alley, their feet splashing in puddles.

  I was no one so I had little to think about. I sat carefully on the edge of the bed and tried to make sense of living in that cage for the rest of my life, of being meat and bones for a man with cruel appetites. I could do it for the child who belonged to the woman I had been. It was nothing at all to make that choice for her, for him, for his father.

  What you can never know about being kidnapped is the sheer boredom, the violent loneliness, the unending hours alone with nothing to do, nothing to look at, no kindness to be found. To distract myself, I started reciting parts of the Immigration and Nationality Act I had memorized. I thought of my favorite legal statutes and then I reached the limits of such memory. I thought about the ongoing cases I was working. I thought about my clients, so many of them willing to do anything to stay in the United States.

  After listening to their stories, I always told them I understood what they wanted, that I was a child of immigrants, that we were more alike than different. It was a gentle lie. I told them I would fight for them and I did even though I had no idea, at the time, of what I was truly fighting for.

  One of my first well-paying clients was a woman named Chloe Kizende. She was Congolese, the daughter of a wealthy diplomat, and seeking asylum, running from aimless and blood-hungry rebels who were tearing her country apart and doing terrible things to people from families like hers. She sat across from me, in her finely pressed linen suit, her hair piled regally atop her head in thick braids. She was in Miami, she said, because at least the heat was somewhat familiar. I could smell her perfume as we spoke, expensive. She spoke with an English accent. I had so little empathy for her situation, as we sat in my air-conditioned office, me wearing my own finely pressed suit. I thought of how nice it must be for her to buy her way out of a hell too many people were trapped in. That irony was not lost on me as I whiled the hours and days away in my cage between one horror and the next. I finally understood humility and how little I once possessed.

  I had to stop thinking about my old life. I was no one. I had no career. I had nothing. I was nothing. I said these things to myself over and over and over. My stomach growled. I had eaten so little over so many days. I made myself forget the taste of every perfect thing I had ever eaten—pain au chocolat in Paris, beans and rice in Little Havana, my mother’s griyo, thick steaks grilled on the back patio of the farmhouse, Michael’s elaborate pasta dishes. I made myself forget what it was to be full, to be satisfied. I chewed on a fingernail. There was a knock at the door and the Commander appeared. He crossed his arms across his chest. I crossed my arms across my chest.

  I looked up and glared then looked away. I wanted to be alone.

  “You don’t look happy to see me.”

  I looked down at my bare legs, tried to pull the thin towel around me and down my legs a little more. “You shouldn’t sound so disappointed, Commander. I might start to think you’re getting ideas about me.”

  “Maybe I would like to keep you more than I want the money. You offered yourself to me, after all.”

  I raised my head. “I offered myself in exchange for a child’s life. There is a difference.”

 
He shrugged. “The reason matters little to me.”

  There was no choice for me. I could not return to a family I no longer knew. I could not survive the rest of my life in a cage. “I don’t care what happens to me.”

  The Commander laughed, a grating sound, higher pitched than seemed fitting for a man of his stature. “You care, very much, even if you do not realize it.”

  “You know nothing about me.”

  He shrugged. “I imagine you are hungry.”

  My hunger was so intense it could have consumed me but I did not respond. He took me by my elbow and pulled me to my feet. In the kitchen he pointed to an empty seat. The woman who had untied me days earlier was standing at a small stove. When I saw her I lunged toward her hissing, frothing at the mouth. She shrank from me, looked down. “That’s right.” I shouted. “Don’t you look at me after what you did.”

  The Commander grabbed me and forced me into a chair. “My sister was acting under my direction.”

  I sat, gritting my teeth as I crossed my legs. I tried to breathe through the pain, a constant, a second skin, overwhelming me completely. He had a sister. He had people to whom he belonged. It made no sense.

  I twisted my rings back and forth trying to clear my head and understand what he wanted from me. He always wanted something. There was always a ransom to be paid.

  The Commander sat across from me. “Negotiations with your father have stopped. He refuses to pay and I have compromised too much already. I understand why he is so successful in business. He is a man of conviction.” The Commander scratched his chin. “I must say I admire his resolve—to sacrifice his own child, my goodness.” He reached across the table and grabbed my left hand. “We are going to get to know each other very well as you become accustomed to your new life.”

  I closed my eyes for a moment. I sat still. I burned. My heart became smaller and smaller and it ached and blackened. My heart was no longer safe; it never had been. I opened my eyes and stared up at the ceiling, the dim lamp hanging loosely, wires exposed. “You are lying.”