by Roxane Gay
I took a step back and then another. “I should change before we go,” I said. “Work clothes aren’t hospital clothes.” I tried to smile. “What are hospital clothes anyway?”
Michael nodded, forced himself to laugh, and went to sit on the edge of the bed. As soon as his knees bent, I ran for the door. I ran even though it hurt so much I nearly burst into tears. Michael lunged after me. My hands were still shaking as I fumbled with the doorknob and flung the door open, letting a rush of cool air into the room. Finally, I could breathe a little. I ran into the hallway and down the stairs, Michael thundering after me, shouting my name. I ran into the kitchen to find my keys and Marisol, our nanny, was standing near the microwave, holding Christophe. Michael plowed into the room after me, and stopped.
I smoothed my hair, tried to appear normal or what I remembered as normal. “Good morning, Marisol.”
“Mireille,” she said, nervously. “It’s good to see you. I am glad you’re home safe. I was so worried.”
I forced myself to smile wide. “I am fine.”
“Shouldn’t you have breakfast?” Michael asked, his voice strained, clearly trying to salvage the situation without making a scene.
Christophe stared at us from Marisol’s arms, looking from Michael to me and back to Michael, his mouth open in a little O. The keys were sitting on the edge of the counter. Michael and I looked at them as if we were each willing the keys toward us.
“You should sit and eat,” Michael said. “Your clothes are hanging off you.”
I was the kind of hungry I did not know was possible but in its way, the hunger felt good. It was a comfort to be so empty. I had to hold on to that emptiness.
I straightened my clothes. “I don’t want to sit because right now sitting hurts and I don’t want to swallow food because right now swallowing hurts. Do I need to explain why or will you take me at my word?”
Michael reddened. “Mireille, don’t do this. We will go to the hospital and come home, and you can get some rest.”
Marisol began patting Christophe on his back. She looked as uncomfortable as I felt. “I should take him for a walk,” she said.
I limped to the end of the counter, grabbed my keys, and was so flushed with relief when I wrapped my fingers around them, I could hardly stay standing. “I am going to work,” I said. “Today is Tuesday.”
As I ran out of the house, Christophe started crying and Michael kept shouting my name over and over.
I drove out of the neighborhood and followed the familiar route to my office, the steering wheel slick against my sweaty hands. Nothing seemed familiar. It was quiet in the parking garage as I pulled into my space. I took a deep breath and studied the distance between my car and the elevator entrance. I calculated everything that might happen to me over that short distance. I opened my car door and planted one foot, then the other on the ground. I stood and closed the door softly behind me. A car slowly drove by and headed for the exit. I straightened my spine and tried to keep moving toward the elevator. I began sweating everywhere, my blouse clinging to my body. When I reached the elevator, it slowly hissed open but I couldn’t bring myself to step inside, to put myself in a cage from which there was no escape. I slowly backed away, then turned on my heel and ran back to my car.
I didn’t stop shaking until I was safely locked inside. I refused to look at myself in the rearview mirror. I couldn’t go to work. I couldn’t go home. I could drive, though. I drove to I-75 and I drove out of Miami. I kept on driving until I stopped seeing palm trees.
Georgia was tacky billboards—porn stores and fruit stands and Asian massage parlors and cheap hotels. It was dark as I neared Atlanta, sprawling strip malls and chain stores stretching into skyscrapers. I knew Michael would be terrified, livid. I did not want him to worry for me, for someone who was nothing. I wanted to call him to explain but I had no explanation so I sent him a text message that I was fine, that I loved him and I kept driving.
In Chattanooga, I got a room at a Holiday Inn Express. I put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the doorknob and pushed a chair in front of the door and set one of the water glasses on the narrow arm so I would hear it fall if someone tried to enter the room. I saw that in a movie once.
There were ten voice mail messages on my phone and twice as many text messages. I texted Michael I had stopped for the night and was safe and said I couldn’t come home and I loved him and was sorry so very sorry. He texted back, “UNACCEPTABLE. I AM FREAKING OUT.” I typed, “I am too,” and turned my phone off. I pulled the curtains shut and sat on the bed, emptying my purse to take inventory of what I had with me—painkillers and Valium, a tampon, a pen with the name of my law firm engraved on the side, an iPod and headphones, three different shades of lipstick, a half-wrapped stick of gum, a Leatherman tool, an envelope with family photos we had taken at the mall as a joke, in the before, a hairbrush, my wallet. I had enough to start over. I took out one of the pictures of Michael, the baby, and I sitting in front of cheesy sunset backdrop, my husband and I grinning like idiots and curling our fingers into gang signs. I remembered taking the picture. As the flash went off, Michael shouted, “WESTSIDE!” I removed my shoes and set them neatly next to the bed and slid beneath the cover. I fell asleep holding the picture of my family to my chest, trying to pull the best parts of us inside me.
The hotel room phone rang in the middle of the night. The sound startled me, covered me in a cold sweat. When the ringing wouldn’t stop, I answered but didn’t say anything.
“You are in Chattanooga.”
A wave of nausea made me lean forward. I heaved. The Commander had found me. I couldn’t think. I didn’t know what to say. “Who is this?” I whispered. “How did you find me?”
“Mireille? It’s Michael, your husband, who is losing his mind wondering what the hell is going on.”
“Michael?”
“Yes. Of course it’s Michael. Please tell me you understand why I am freaking out.”
“I understand.”
“I am coming to get you.”
“No . . . no,” I stuttered. “I am not fit to be around other people. I am an animal. Just forget me, Michael.” I needed him to understand I was dead. I needed him to bury me, move on.
“Of course you are fit to be around me. You are my wife, Mireille.”
“I can’t do this. Forget about me.”
“We are not having this conversation.”
“You’re right,” I said. I hung up. I quickly returned my earlier inventory to my purse and checked out. I texted Michael I was leaving Chattanooga. I went to an ATM and took out five hundred dollars. I got back on the interstate and drove.
Tennessee had mountains, the interstate curving through them with jagged walls of rock on either side. I hit a wall in Kentucky where the land flattened and there was little to see.
I was driving and suddenly I found myself swerving across the road. A truck’s horn blared. I remembered the blaring of the car horn on the day I was kidnapped, Michael’s bleeding and broken head on the steering wheel, Christophe in his car seat, his eyes wide, his lower lip trembling, and me trying to reach them, trying to hold on to them, having no choice but to be taken away while countless people stood, silently, watched, did nothing to stop any of it. I couldn’t breathe. I started sweating again, muttering the word no over and over. I pulled off at the next rest area a few miles ahead, made sure the doors were locked, and climbed into the backseat, where I curled into myself. I swallowed a handful of pills and tried to sleep, trying to sink into nothing, tried not to feel or remember my life before, or what happened when I was taken, when no one came for me. The windows quickly fogged. My breathing slowed. I was cold, couldn’t stop shivering. I clutched my phone in my hand, wanted so badly to call someone but I was not sure who would want to hear from me.
I called home. When Michael answered, I said, “I am so tired,” and he said, “I know baby, just tell me where you are baby. I’ll come get you.” Baby, baby, baby. He said that word so many tim
es. “I want to listen to you breathe,” I said. “Let me listen to you breathe.” I held the phone, hot and sticky against my ear, listening to my husband breathe. That’s how I fell asleep, pretending we were in the before, pretending I could still sleep next to him without being choked by terror.
A loud rapping on the window woke me. I sat up quickly, disoriented, cold. My phone fell off the seat. I picked it up, held it to my ear. There was no sound. I pressed a few buttons. The battery was dead. Again, the loud rapping. I wiped condensation from the window and saw a highway patrol officer staring down at me. He motioned for me to get out of the car. I was paralyzed. The rest area was deserted. I was alone. The sky was dark gray, nearly morning.
“Move it,” the officer said, his voice muffled.
I straightened my clothing and got out of the car carefully. I stared at my feet, shoved my hands in my pockets, my hair falling into my face.
The officer pointed to a nearby sign. “No overnights allowed.”
I nodded, stepped away from him, slid along the car toward the hood.
He grabbed my shoulder and I whimpered as his fingers gripped my broken skin. “Where do you think you’re going?”
I looked up and his eyes widened. “I just stopped to rest before heading on. I’ll be on my way,” I said, carefully.
“I’m going to need to see some ID.”
I had ID, a plastic card with the picture of the woman I used to be bearing her name and age, hair color, eye color, height and weight. She is an organ donor. She is supposed to wear glasses when she drives. I reached into the car for my wallet, my hands shaking as I pulled my license out. I handed it to the officer and stared at my feet, wanting to create some kind of distance between his body and mine, between how he could hurt me and how hurt I already was. I hoped he wouldn’t notice that the license belonged to another woman. He read the relevant information into a radio attached to his shoulder.
As he waited for the dispatcher to get back to him, he said, “You don’t look so good; you look like you’ve been knocked around a heck of a lot. Do you need to go to a shelter?” There was a slight twang in his voice. He had kind eyes.
I was still afraid of what he might do to me. He could throw me over the hood of my car and tear my clothes off. He could drag me behind the rest area or into one of the bathrooms. He could force me to my knees. He could make me put my mouth on him. He could take me in the backseat of his car. He could use his gun or nightstick and try to reshape my body in new and crueler ways. He could gut me or shove me in the trunk of his patrol car and take me into the deep Kentucky woods. There was nothing left for him to take from me but there were a great many things he could do. For the rest of my life, I would always calculate the worst possibilities of being alone with any man but my husband. I would always be prepared.
I held my arms across my chest. I said, “I’m fine.” I said, “Please don’t hurt me.” Those four words were my mantra; they would be for years as I came to terms with my fragility, how weak we really are.
Warbled speech filtered from the radio. The officer said something back, handed me my license. He stepped closer. I bit my lower lip, closed my eyes tightly, shrank away from him as best I could. I prepared to fight. There was a pattern of oil stains beneath my feet. I stared at the oil, how it spread away from me and toward the curb. My blood, I thought, would spread in a similar pattern, would spread thin and wide. Eventually it would fade or it would burn beneath the slow rising sun.
“Is there someone I can call?”
It was so hard to hold on to names, to remember who I was and whom I belonged to and what I tried to erase and who I had become. I wanted to tell the patrol officer there was a man, a tall country boy with pretty shoulders who moved to the big city just to follow me, that this man was good and true and sang to our child while he changed diapers and danced with me even though he had no moves and was waiting for me, worried, needing to find me. I finally looked up at the officer. I said, “No, there’s no one you can call.”
The officer tugged on the brim of his hat and returned to his car. My knees went weak. I gripped my car, then quickly got back behind the wheel, locked the door. He sat in his car staring at me for a long time. I waited for him to leave first. I did not want him to follow me. He was a man. He was dangerous. I was not safe. When I got back on the interstate I continued heading west, until I was surrounded by endless acres of corn, the stalks standing tall and green.
I stood at the base of the stairs leading up to the farmhouse. The white paint was chipped in places, flaking or hanging loose. I made a note to tell Michael so we could make a trip out to repaint. It was a hot July afternoon, the air heavy with moisture. In the distance, cows lowed softly. I could not outrun the heat no matter where I was. I sweated and waited without knowing what I was waiting for. My body was stiff and sore. I drove for so long, barely stopped save for gas and going to the bathroom, didn’t want to have to leave my car or be where people could hurt me. I just wanted to get somewhere safe.
Michael’s mother, Lorraine, appeared in the screen door, holding a dish towel in her hand. She tucked the towel into the waist of her pants and stepped outside. She did not look surprised.
“Miri, I am glad you are here. You were done wrong. You were done real wrong,” Lorraine said. “The older I get the less the world makes sense.”
“I couldn’t stay at home and I didn’t know where else to go,” I whispered. “I’m sorry I didn’t call.” My legs felt heavy but they were the only things holding me to the world. I sank slowly to the steps.
“Don’t be silly.” Lorraine pulled a pack of cigarettes from her pocket. She always kept them in a vinyl cigarette pouch with a gold clasp. She lit a cigarette and offered the open pouch to me.
I took a cigarette. “You shouldn’t be smoking,” I said, lamely.
Lorraine sat close but not too close. There were yellow bags under her eyes. She was thinner, her skin hanging looser on her bones. We had that in common. “I’m not going to deny myself with whatever time I have left,” she said.
I rolled my cigarette between my fingers. A few scraps of tobacco fell out of the end, slowly drifting to my leg. I lit my cigarette and held the burning end close to the palm of my hand. There was a comfort to the focus of the heat, a familiarity. I held the burning end of the cigarette closer. The pain calmed me as the burn traveled along the lines etched into my palm.
“Don’t do that,” Lorraine said, softly.
I shrugged, stopped, and took a long drag on the cigarette.
“I expect you’ll be staying awhile.”
I shrugged again.
“You’ve got my boy going crazy with worry. I am going to tell him you’re here. They need you, my boy and your boy. We all do. I can tell by the look of you Michael has no idea how wrong you were done but you’re going to have to find your way out of wherever you are for you and for them.”
I pressed my lips together tightly but stared ahead. Lorraine stood, dropped her cigarette to the ground, stubbing it out with her shoe. The extinguishing sound made my skin crawl. “We’ll be having dinner in a couple hours.” She turned, then paused. “You are welcome here.” Just like that, she was gone, the screen door slamming behind her.
Later, Michael’s father rumbled near the front door, asking, “How long is she going to stay out there? We should get her to a doctor. She doesn’t look good at all.”
“She’ll be out there as long as she needs,” Lorraine said, calmly.
Night fell slowly, the dark sky holding itself closer and closer to the earth, almost within reach. The air chilled. In the house, the television was on, a sitcom with a laugh track. I couldn’t move. My body still felt so heavy and yet so hollow. The night grew darker, colder. The screen door opened.
Someone neared and I shrank into myself as much as possible; I willed myself to disappear.
“It is just me, child,” Lorraine said.
I lowered my head and nodded. She draped a wool blanket aro
und my shoulders and this time sat right next to me.
“Look at me.”
I refused, just stared down at my feet.
“I spoke to Michael.”
The mere mention of his name made my heart contract. I missed his face and his voice and how, in the before, he held me like an extension of him.
“He is ready to jump on the next plane.”
I shook my head violently, struggled to breathe, my throat closing.
“Calm down. It took some doing but I got him to sit still. You have some time to find yourself out of wherever you are right now.”
Her kindness, the unexpectedness of it, was more than I could bear. Before I realized what I was doing, I leaned into her now-narrow frame. She held me and kissed the top of my head. I didn’t cry, and I didn’t speak and Lorraine didn’t speak. We just sat there. I remembered, for a small moment, what being safe felt like. I longed for my own mother but she was not safe and could not nor would not keep me safe.
I woke up screaming. My throat was still raw, torn, but I had become accustomed to that discomfort. I had become accustomed to many discomforts. Lorraine ran to my room, Michael’s room, Glen right behind her with his twenty-gauge cocked and ready. I sat up in Michael’s childhood bed, unable to remember where I was, unable to find the light switch, unable to understand anything around me. I couldn’t remember my name. That was all my life seemed to be in the after, trying to orient and reorient myself in new geographies.
Once Glen and Lorraine realized there was no intruder, no danger they could see or understand, Lorraine shooed her husband away. There was a rocking chair in one corner. It creaked then quieted as she settled and covered herself with a quilt.
“I’m going to turn out the lights in this room but leave the door open and the hall light on. I’m guessing sleep isn’t coming easy but you should at least close your eyes.”