An Untamed State

by Roxane Gay

  I fumbled for my purse, palmed a few Valium, and swallowed them dry. I waited for the hazy cloud to fill me up and turned onto my side, facing away from my mother-in-law.

  I didn’t sleep but everything muted. It was a relief. I imagined Michael in the cold, empty space behind me, how his arms might feel around me. It made me nauseous and still, I longed for him. Lorraine fell asleep quickly. Her light breathing, the occasional softness of a sigh, comforted me.

  Sleep did not come easy. Sleep did not come.

  In the morning, I smelled coffee, heard the day rising from downstairs. Pale shafts of light flooded the room. When I opened my eyes dust hovered in midair. I sat on the edge of the bed, staring at my bare feet. The sharp, familiar ache between my thighs and up through my navel returned. I had a dull headache. I bit my lower lip, angry that everything still hurt, hurt worse, that the bruises were deeper, uglier. I wondered when the pain would disappear. “I will not cry,” I whispered. I rapped my knuckles against my skull. I heard a cough, looked up, and realized Lorraine was still in the rocking chair. I felt naked in my tank top, a pair of Michael’s boxers. The bruises and scars and cuts were lingering brightly, freshly. My body was unwilling to allow my skin to forget. Thirteen days is a long time. I heard a sharp intake of air. Lorraine took in the mess those men made of me. I didn’t bother to cover myself, not this time. I wanted a witness. I wanted someone to see even though she could not really see.

  “What did they do to you?”

  I swallowed hard and looked up. “Everything.”

  My mother-in-law stood, slowly, and stepped toward me, her hands held open like she might pull all the hurt out of me. I backed away, trembling. She stopped. “It’s okay. You can talk to me.”

  I held my hand just above my navel and shook my head.

  Lorraine nodded. “You stay here as long as you need.” Her voice cracked. “As long as you need.”

  I dressed in Michael’s old clothes—a high school gym T-shirt and sweatpants I cinched around my waist as tightly as possible. They were still too big. I tried to find his smell in between the worn threads. The clothes hung on my frame awkwardly, made me feel gaunter than I looked. I was a woman without a country or a family or a name. I was no one. I took the stairs slowly gripping the banister. My body was still stiff and each step pulled at something violently tender inside me. I paused as a strong wave of nausea caused my knees to buckle. I started sweating. I covered my mouth with my hand and quickly finished making my way down, two stairs at a time. The front door was closer than the bathroom so I made my way to the porch, leaned over the railing, and heaved as a thin stream of something clear and vile spewed from my lips. I pressed my forehead against the railing, damp and cool with morning dew. My lips were dry, cracked.

  “You need to see a doctor,” Lorraine said from behind the screen door. “Michael says you haven’t received proper medical attention. Also, you look like shit.”

  My forehead still pressed against the railing, I angled back to look at her. “Thank you, Lorraine. I’m not going to any doctor. I’m fine.”

  “I am not sure you know what those words mean. You are clearly everything but fine.” She opened the door, extending an arm toward me. There was a cordless phone in her hand. “Michael’s on the phone. If you can’t talk, you can’t talk, but you can listen.”

  I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. I reached for the phone and crouched down, my lips pressed to my knees. I held the phone against my ear.

  “Are you there?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Michael said. “I don’t want to say the wrong thing again. I want to help you. I want to be with you. Christophe wants to be with you. Your parents think I’m hiding you from them. Should I tell them where you are?”

  Even though he couldn’t see me, I shook my head.

  “I miss you so much and I am going out of my mind. Your sister has been in and out all day. We are all freaking out. At least let me see you.”

  I groaned as I stood, and went into the house. I found Lorraine in the kitchen and handed her the phone. As I walked away, I heard her say, “This girl is a fucking mess, Michael. She’s a real fucking mess. It’s going to take something mighty to get her right.”

  I hovered awkwardly in the hallway just beyond the kitchen. I didn’t know what to do with myself.

  “I know you’re out there,” Lorraine shouted.

  I shuffled back into the kitchen.

  “If you’re going to be here for a spell, you can make yourself useful.”

  I wanted to smile but when I tried my cheek muscles refused to respond. I nodded instead.

  “You ought to take a shower. We can go into town later, get you some real clothes. You’re too small for anything of mine. I washed what you were wearing. Your clothes are on Michael’s bed.”

  I nodded again and did as I was told. I stood in the shower for a long time, until Lorraine knocked on the door. “We run on well water, my dear.”

  I sighed, turned the water off, longed for a way to remove my skin and cover my body with something better, unbroken.

  Back in the kitchen Lorraine handed me an apron. “I’m canning this week. I don’t suppose you know anything about canning.” She didn’t wait for me to answer. “Just do as I tell you and hopefully it will all turn out okay. Just know that if you go wrong when you’re canning, you can get people real damn sick. Let’s try not to do that.”

  I nodded again.

  The kitchen table was covered in bushel baskets of tomatoes, green beans, cucumbers. The vegetables smelled fresh, were still covered with dirt. I ran my fingers over the small knobs on one of the cucumbers, felt dirt gathering in the whorls of my fingerprints. My stomach growled and was emptier than ever but I didn’t want to eat, didn’t want to have to swallow anything. I was afraid to let my body do what it needed. I hungered.

  We worked quietly for several hours. When Lorraine directed me to a task, I performed it as best I could. I wanted to be useful. Every strange sound made me tense and every sound was strange. It wasn’t long before I was exhausted. The screen door slammed as Glen came in for a late lunch and I dropped the Ball jar I was holding. I stood in the center of a kaleidoscope of broken glass, shaking. I leaned down and began picking up shards of glass frantically.

  “I’ll get that,” Lorraine said, calmly. “Glass breaks.”

  I ignored her, continued picking up glass. I looked at my arms, still covered in tiny cuts from being shoved face-first into a mirror by a man who wanted me to thank him for the privilege of relieving myself. I didn’t even notice when blood began oozing from the palm of my hand, between my thumb and forefinger, and along the back of my hand.

  Lorraine took hold of my wrist gently. “Drop that glass, Mireille; you’ve gone and cut yourself.”

  I looked at my hand; the flesh gaped a bit near the center of my palm, the edges of the parted skin puckering. I felt nothing. My body was once again forced open by something sharp. The Commander had a fondness for the blade of a sharp knife; he talked to me calmly as he drew his blade in neat rows, not too deep but deep enough, over and over across the small of my back. I refused to scream for him. I refused to let him know I felt anything at all. I felt everything, absolutely everything.

  The shards of glass fell to the floor. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m so sorry.” I stood and ran up to Michael’s room. After shutting the door, I hid under the bed, all the way against the wall, so I might feel safe, if even for a little while.

  The floor was cold.

  Lorraine cleared her throat. I opened my eyes and saw her sitting on the floor, peering at me. “You’ve been out for more than a day. On the floor. Under the bed. That is strange.”

  My mouth was dry, sour.

  I crawled out. She handed me a plastic tumbler of water. I took a long sip and then another and another. I reached for my purse and felt an uncomfortable relief when I wrapped my hand around the plastic bottle of Valium.
I took three, maybe four, and another sip of water.

  “You sure are taking a lot of those little pills.”

  I put the bottle back in my bag and fell into the bed. I wanted to say something, something important, but I couldn’t. Lorraine pulled the covers up around my shoulders. I drifted asleep.

  When I opened my eyes again, I saw a Post-it note stuck to the tumbler of water—“My back hurts. I’m in my room if you need me. Michael sent you some things via that Federal Express. They’re in the closet.”

  I couldn’t move. I was paralyzed. My heart was paralyzed. Stiffly, I reached for my pills, for the silence they promised. I couldn’t find the bottle. I felt a white stab of anger toward Lorraine, sat up, emptied the contents of my purse onto the bed and finally the orange bottle rolled out.

  I tried to calm down. My hands trembled as I opened the bottle, held it to my lips and swallowed some pills, I don’t know how many, I didn’t care, enough to let me sleep a little more, forget a little more, wrap myself in a perfect haze a little more.

  On the fourth morning, Lorraine stood at the end of the bed, her hands on her hips. “Don’t you run? At the very least, don’t you bathe?”

  I sat up, rubbing my eyes.

  “I don’t think you’re up for running, but you should at least get yourself clean and get out there and sit in the fresh air, get some color. You look even worse than when you showed up.”

  It was hard to think clearly. I had nothing to wear.

  “A box of your stuff is in the closet,” she reminded me.

  I squinted, slowly remembered the note, my husband, my child, my life, but what was really the husband, child, life of another woman. I had no idea what to do with myself, how to move forward from one moment to the next, how to be alive.

  Just after breakfast, Lorraine called me to the kitchen.

  “We are going to bake today. I want you to make the dough with me.”

  “My father waited so long to pay for me my milk dried up,” I blurted out. “I can’t feed my son.”

  My mother-in-law nodded. “That must be a hard thing, Mireille. I am so damn sorry to hear it.”

  “I couldn’t think of anything to keep my milk. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t think it would go so fast. The pain,” I paused, my voice cracking, “was really too much. There was this constant ache.” I tugged at my shirt.

  She took my hand. “There was nothing you could do but what you did. Do you hear me?”

  “This would not have happened if he paid the ransom sooner.”

  Lorraine held her hand against my cheek. I flinched, but she said, “You’re safe here, relax. And yes, there’s a lot that wouldn’t have happened if the ransom had been paid sooner.”

  “Do you think my son misses me? Like, is he old enough to miss me?”

  Lorraine looked at me strangely. “Of course Christophe misses you.”

  “I wish I could be with him. I wish I had anything to give him.” I looked down at the table and tried to remember the last time the woman I had been nursed her son. We were sitting in my parents’ courtyard, early morning, already hot. Christophe nursed drowsily, holding my breast in his hand, smiling every once in a while. Michael joined us with his coffee, held the mug while he gave me a sip. He wrapped his arm around me and said, “Sometimes, this really does feel like home,” and I leaned into him, brushed my lips across his and we sat together, quietly. I prayed I wouldn’t forget that morning.

  Lorraine stood in front of the counter with a large sack of flour. She took a small handful and began sprinkling it on the linoleum floor. I looked down and noticed she was barefoot, wiggling her toes.

  “You wouldn’t believe how good this feels. Take off your shoes, try.”

  I looked at my feet. “I can’t. My feet are cut up. I don’t want to get your floor dirty.”

  “Are they now?” Lorraine pointed to the empty chair behind me. “Sit.”

  Slowly, I lowered myself into the chair, gritting my teeth. Lorraine pulled a first aid kit out of the pantry that sat across from me. She patted her lap. “Let me take a look.”

  I shook my head, fidgeting in my chair. I tried not to panic.

  Lorraine touched my hand softly. “I am not going to hurt you.”

  My mother-in-law is stubborn and right then she had far more fight. I raised my legs, resting them in her lap. She held my ankles gently, carefully removing my shoes. She shook her head, hissing softly as she inspected the bottoms of my feet. “It is no wonder you’re limping around here like an old lady. You should have said something.”

  I looked away, gritting my teeth harder. Tears started streaming down my face and once the dam broke, I couldn’t stop sobbing. Lorraine didn’t bring any attention to my tears. She dabbed alcohol on a handful of cotton swabs and carefully cleaned the cuts on my feet, wrapped them in fresh gauze. She hummed as she worked, Willie Nelson. When she was done, she patted my calves. “You should let me look at the rest of you, let me take you to the doctor. I can see you’re bleeding elsewhere.”

  I shook my head.

  “Fair enough. At least now you can feel the flour with your toes.”

  Lorraine resumed her place at the counter and I stood slowly, my feet still tender. I stood behind Lorraine and wrapped my arms around her, pressed my chest to her back and we stood there for a long while. She was something safe and good I could hold on to. I held tight. I allowed myself that.

  We got back to work, and Lorraine handed me a bowl and the necessary ingredients, watching as she directed me in the correct proportions of flour, salt, yeast, and water. She sprinkled flour on the counter and told me I was going to knead the dough. I had no idea what I was doing. I began rolling the dough around, watching as the sticky mass collected flour. My feet were sore but the silky flour felt nice on my heels and toes, soft and clean.

  Lorraine put her hands on her hips. “Not like that. You’ve gotta get rough with the dough. Get angry at it.”

  I didn’t want to get angry, was afraid of what might happen if I gave in to my rage.

  “Your anger is plain to see and right now it’s all you got. No use pretending it ain’t there. Hell, I’m angry too.”

  Lorraine slammed her bony fist into the dough and it sighed as it gave way and spilled around the sharp angle of her closed fingers. She squeezed the dough back into a ball, then slammed her fist into the dough again.

  “Your turn.”

  I closed my eyes and rolled the dough back into a ball like Lorraine had. I punched the dough lightly.

  “You’ve got more spit in you than that.”

  I flexed my fingers, then balled them into a tight fist. I started beating the dough with both hands. I didn’t think or talk. I just pounded the dough over and over until I started sweating and breathing harder.

  Finally, Lorraine held a hand up. “Well, you sure taught that dough a lesson. It is good and ready now. Let’s make a couple more loaves.”

  We baked all afternoon, made enough bread to feed a small army. My arms ached from all the kneading but it was nice to stand at the counter in Lorraine’s big, airy kitchen with the window open and fresh air and the smell of bread baking while I buried my fists into something that always gave way to me.

  I had been alone with Lorraine and Glen for what seemed like an eternity even though it had been only nine days, fewer days than I was held captive. In the after, days were not the same. They were long and indistinguishable and uncomfortable. I wanted to see other faces. I was tired of the stale smell of Lorraine’s cigarettes and Glen’s heavy breathing and the rooster reminding me, each morning, how little I slept. Talking was too difficult, too exhausting. I took to writing notes when asked questions or when I had a question. Lorraine said she was glad I had worked something out because she wasn’t a mind reader. They kept me busy with chores around the farm—repairing fences, baking pies, building a new chicken coop, even planting seeds in Lorraine’s garden. They pretended I was being useful even though I could barely lift my
own head. Most nights, there was dirt beneath my fingernails. My body still hurt, constantly, but it was a relief to have something to do, to be given clear, manageable tasks, and otherwise be left alone.

  Michael and I settled into a routine where I called him several times a day and he talked to me, just talked and talked and talked, no matter what he was doing. When I heard his voice, the leash around my neck, the leash woven by the Commander’s hands, it loosened. He would say, “I miss your voice,” and I would want to say, “I do too,” but I could only listen.

  This time when Michael answered, Christophe was crying in the background. Michael sounded tired, irritable. He started talking about his day and then he stopped. He said, “You know what, I just don’t have it in me today, Miri. Your sister just left. Our son is teething. He needs me. We need you. There’s not much else that matters, is there?” I heard Christophe wail even louder. I pictured his little face, bright red, his eyes angry with tears. My breasts ached anew. I wanted to beg Michael to talk to me. I wanted to tell him his voice was holding me together but the words could not come out. He sighed heavily. “I’m sorry but I don’t know what to do and I’m sick of this.” He hung up.

  I listened to the dial tone, the persistent whine of it. It sounded so much like the wail of the car horn. I listened until the busy signal began to repeat and then I too hung up. I held the phone, wondered how I could fold the world in such a way as to erase everything terrible between us, the time, the distance, the damage. Then I got angry, so angry I stalked out of the house with only a few dollars in my pocket and my keys. I sped off the farm and onto the country highway. I didn’t slow down for the winding curves in the road. I didn’t slow down until I pulled into the parking lot of the one bar in the one-stoplight town.

  When I walked into the bar, a Brooks and Dunn song was blaring from two speakers in the corner of a small dance floor. Several men and women, mostly my age or younger, some a little older, were hunched over the bar drinking light, foamy beer in glasses covered with beer sweat. I shoved my hands into my pockets and ignored the stares and took a seat at the bar. The bartender set down the lemon he was cutting and looked at me hard. “I know who you are,” he said. “You’re married to the Jameson boy; you’re the one who got taken in that one country. I heard about it on CNN.” I set my hands on the bar, looked down. He gave me a slight nod. “I was in the army,” he said. I didn’t understand the connection but he meant well. I took a thin square of a bar napkin and wrote “gin and tonic” in big block letters with a black dry-erase marker resting near the drink specials board. I pushed the napkin toward the bartender. He smiled and poured me a tall, stiff drink. “You drink for free tonight,” he said. I forced something that was supposed to be a smile but probably ended up looking like palsy. Every once in a while, he would talk to me, mostly about his time in the military, his girlfriend Tracy, their three kids, how he wasn’t sure he was ready to settle down even though he was plenty settled.