An Untamed State (21 page)

I made myself forget for as long as I could and then, alone in my cage, as the heat of the day rose and filled the room, it suddenly all came back to me, who I was and who I loved and who I needed. The memory of my life, the weight of it, threatened to break my body more than any man could. I needed to be no one so I might survive. I needed to hear the voice of someone who loved me but could not ask for such a thing. I waited.

The sky darkened when the Commander appeared. I became two women—the one who remembered everything and the one who remembered nothing. This required a delicate balance.

As a child, my mother would take us to the park in our neighborhood on Tuesdays and Thursdays and sometimes Saturdays. We walked together through the well-manicured subdivision, all holding hands, my mother, my brother, my sister, and me. Sometimes she made comments about the lawns, the ones that were a bit unkempt. Occasionally a neighbor driving by would honk their horn and wave and my mother would smile brightly, wave her hand energetically, and then she’d look down at us and say, “Americans are so rude with their horns.” My mother loved America but did not care much at all for Americans.

At the park, she sat on a bench and read while the three of us played. There was a balance beam and for years it was nearly impossible for me to traverse. No matter how hard I tried, my body was unwilling to walk that straight line without falling to one side or the other. The ground beneath the balance beam was covered in soft wood chips, and on the walk home I often found myself brushing the clinging wood from my clothes. One day, when I was nine, we arrived at the park and I was determined to walk the line. I took off my shoes, having decided the shoes were the problem. I wiggled my toes and they brushed against the soil and wood chips. I did side stretches like Mrs. Polanski made us do in gym class and then I stepped up carefully, holding on to my sister’s head until I could steady myself. From the corner of my eye, I could see my mother had set her book down. I turned to her and smiled. She nodded and stared at me intently. She stared at me so hard, I was certain her will alone would get me to the other side.

I closed my eyes and stretched my arms out to my sides. I imagined I was flying and slowly, I began to move forward. I did not lift my feet at first, just slid forward along the smooth painted wood. I had not yet fallen. I felt emboldened. I took a real step, faltered a bit, tensed my arms. Then I took another step and another step and another until I was at the end of that balance beam. When I reached the end, I jumped up and threw my fists in the air. I landed on the beam perfectly and the thrill of it filled my chest with a feeling I hardly knew how to understand. My mother was never one for affection but she stood and came to the end of the beam where I still stood, flush with the simple, careless joy of my small accomplishment. She wrapped her arms around me and lifted me in the air. She whispered into my hair.

The Commander stood in the doorway and motioned for me to follow. He did not grab me or touch me at all. I took small, careful steps.

“You may call your family,” he said. He handed me a new cell phone and left me in his room, affording me a small amount of privacy. I dialed the eight numbers and waited as the phone rang. My father answered but I did not want to hear his voice, or a single word he had to say. I asked for my husband and waited and when Michael came on, I wanted to break down but I could not.

“I wanted to hear your voice.”

“Baby, we’re working on getting you back. I swear.”

I wrapped an arm around my waist. The whole of my body was so tender. “Don’t,” I said. “Just stop. Tell me about our son.”

“He’s right here,” Michael said. “He misses you. He’s been very quiet, knows something is wrong but he is okay. Your mother and I think he said his first word,
toast
, only it sounded like
yost
but still, he pointed to bread when he said it. I’m pretty sure he is the smartest baby ever.”

I smiled, then stopped myself. It was too easy to fall into his voice, to pretend I was anywhere but abandoned to animals. “We did good with him, Michael. He’s the best thing we will ever have done. Don’t let him forget who I was, no matter what happens.”

Michael’s voice pitched higher. “What are you talking about, Miri? What’s going on? I am doing everything I can. You have no idea.”

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.

M
ichael’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 whispered 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.