An Untamed State (26 page)

“May I have this?”

“What? Of course.”

I was so tired. My eyelids were heavy. I clutched the picture tightly, rubbing my thumb over the child’s face. I knew him, of course I knew him even though I erased as many memories of him as I could, tried to strip my heart of his face and smile and the warmth of his breath. I wanted to tear the picture into tiny pieces and eat each one so the child would always be with me.

Finally, Michael said, “We should get you out of here.” He slipped out of his shoes, knelt, and held my cut feet in his hands, wrapped a handkerchief around each foot. He helped me slide my feet into his shoes. It felt good to be afforded this small protection.

The three men ushered me into the car, hulking around me. I shook. As we pulled away from the church, I pulled myself together as much as I could and said, “Please take me home so I can shower.”

Michael said, “We should get you to the doctor.”

“I need to shower. It cannot wait.”

“I don’t think that’s wise. If you . . . saw what you looked like right now, you’d understand.”

“Now, Michael,” I said. I grabbed at my chest. I was on the verge of hysteria. “I don’t care what I look like. Right now, I need this one thing. I cannot handle anything else.”

My father drove quickly over the broken Port-au-Prince streets using his horn liberally. I stared at his hands, or the outlines of his hands, all I could see in the darkness.

When I was a little girl, I thought my father had the biggest, strongest hands in the world. When I was a little girl, I followed my father everywhere, always wearing little dresses with matching hair bows because he liked little girls who looked like little girls. As the youngest, I was the child my father knew best because by that point in his career, there was less travel, more time at home. I asked questions, so many questions, even started walking like him, mimicking his mannerisms. My father called me
ma petite ombre
, his little shadow. I always smiled when I was with my father. He was good to me when I was very young, kind and gentle. He had always worked hard. He woke every morning at five, ran four miles, then dressed and went to work. He spent his entire life having to prove over and over again that he was the best, the brightest, the kind of man who could build a tower into the heavens. Though he would never admit it, my father’s life had been exhausting. In America, he worked six days a week, arrived early, left late. Only once did he get sick, a flu so terrible he only made it to his car in the garage before he realized he could hardly stand. He called for my mother in the kitchen making breakfast for me. Mona and Michel were already at school. My father had to lean on my mother as she helped him back into the house, back into bed. For four days, he was sick and feverish, vomiting until his body had emptied itself completely. I stayed by his side the entire time. I was only four. I sat with him and brought cool compresses and drew pictures and sang him songs. I napped with my father, my head on his chest, my small hand in his. Years later, my father told me that during those days when he was so sick, he caught me staring at him with a frown, my eyes filled with worry, like a tiny adult. When my mother tried to shoo me from my father’s side, I refused. I did not rest until my father was able to get out of bed, bathe himself, stand outside for a few minutes to take in some fresh air. “It is an amazing thing,” my father once told me after Christophe was born, “how much a child loves a parent. That kind of love terrifies me.” That may be the only true thing my father has ever told me.

On that fourteenth day, in the dark empty of my salvation, I saw the hands of a weak, stubborn man. I saw the hands of a man who could not love his daughter enough to save her when there was still something of her left to save.

I still held the picture of the boy who was known to be my son. It was hard to focus but it still felt important to be awake, ready for what might happen next. I crossed my legs and leaned forward, resting my forehead against my knee. I was still in my cage. I was still beneath the sweaty bodies of men who were not my husband. I was still torn apart and cut open. Michael started rubbing my back. He was tearing what remained of my skin from my body. I didn’t recognize his touch. I said, “Don’t,” more sharply than I meant to. His hand stilled but he didn’t pull away, refused to pull away. The warm pressure made my bones ache. I tried to hold myself together until I could wash myself clean. I would never get clean. There was not enough water.

I
nstead of returning to my parents’ home, we drove to a modern-looking office building in Pétionville. I vaguely recognized it from a picture on the website of my father’s company. The man was everywhere. The office was dimly lit and empty as we walked in, me flanked by these men, still at the mercy of men. The doctor was a friend of my uncle who was also a doctor. He smiled gently. I stared at the floor of the waiting room and muttered, “How could you do this to me, Michael?”

“You’re not . . . rational right now. This is what you need.”

I shook my head and began muttering. I didn’t know what to do with my hands. The doctor tried to take me by my elbow but I hissed, practically spitting on him. He smelled like cigarettes and hand sanitizer. This was new, understanding men by their smells. I knew so many.

He stepped away and said, “Please follow me to the exam room.”

I looked around, needed some means of escape, but Michael steered me to the exam room and we stood, waiting.

I tried once more. “I need to shower, Michael. Get me out of here, please. Please.” I was ready to fall on my knees.

Michael reddened, wouldn’t meet my eyes, tried to caress my face but I slapped him away. The doctor appeared in the doorway and handed me a gown. I couldn’t bear the thought of taking off my clothes for yet another man my body did not care to know. My hand shook as I took the gown. The doctor excused himself and I set the gown on the exam table. Without turning around, I said, “You cannot be here for this.” Michael stepped toward me, started rubbing my shoulders. I said, “Don’t. Please don’t.”

His hands stilled. “I can handle it.”

“I can’t,” I said.

His silence was a measure of the distance between us.

Alone, I shrugged out of my clothes, what remained of them, and stepped into the gown and stepped into something much more like I had recently known. I was not free at all. There was a light knock and the doctor peered in. When he closed the door behind him, I swallowed a scream. A sharp pang rose from between my thighs into my stomach. I gripped the exam table.

There were so many things he could do to me and the room was so small and Michael was too far away. I feared he would not hear my cries. I looked around for something, anything I could use to make my stand. All I could see was a glass jar of tongue depressors on a small counter next to a jar of large cotton swabs. I could break the jar, I told myself, and use the shards of glass. I needed a plan.

“I’ll make this as quick and painless as possible,” the doctor said, as if the sincerity of his lie could comfort me.

I lay on the table, my legs in the stirrups. My chest grew tighter and tighter. I looked at the glass jars on the counter, wondered how long it would take me to reach them. I stretched my arm out but could not quite reach the counter. I clenched my jaw until it locked. He gently tried to force my knees apart. I held them shut.

“I can’t do this,” I whispered.

“This is for your own good,” the doctor said. “You have no choice.”

He was right. I had no choices and the truth of that was too much. The doctor wore latex gloves, the strange smell of them filling the room. I was choking on everything. He began gently tracing the fresh burns. “What caused these?”

My vision blurred. I saw the Commander standing between my legs, a thin stream of gray smoke drifting between us. I snapped my legs shut.

When the doctor tried to force my knees open again, I jumped off the table and grabbed the jar of cotton swabs, the glass slipping in my hands.

I threw the jar at him, not nearly as hard as I wanted, and he quickly stepped to the side. “Stay away from me,” I gasped, trying to breathe without a sharp pain in my chest. The jar shattered when it fell to the floor. I reached for another jar, tongue depressors, and held it high in the air. “I cannot do this.” I wanted to break everything in that room, tear it completely apart. The shape and dimensions of my anger frightened me. I closed my eyes. When I opened them, the doctor was close, too close.

The doctor held his hands out. He said, “Please.” He said, “You must. There are things I can tell just by looking at you and things I cannot.”

I ached so terribly, in so many places, but I could not show the doctor those wounds. My wounds were mine. I needed to keep them to myself. Pain could not break me. My body knew that now. My body knew there were no limits to what it could endure. I wanted to tell everyone I met,
you have no idea what I can take
. I wanted to tell the doctor,
you have no earthly idea what I can take.

I was not going to let him touch me, examine me, try to fix me. He had no right to any part of me. The doctor implored me to let him draw blood. I refused. He asked if he could at least take X-rays. I agreed, reluctantly, and in another room, lay flat beneath the machine, shaking as it burned the image of the ways I was broken beneath the skin.

Finally, the doctor left me alone again to get dressed. I stepped into my jeans, quickly, but as I was removing the gown, trying to keep myself inside my skin, the door opened behind me. I spun around, and hissed, “Get out. Get out now.” I tried to cover myself or make myself invisible but it was too late. Michael could see. He could see everything. “Oh my God,” he said. He didn’t leave. I couldn’t move. I suddenly felt like I was very small in a very large, dark room. I couldn’t hear anything. He sprang into action, finished dressing me like a child, very gently.

In another office, the doctor sat behind a desk, detailing all the injuries he could see, the ones he couldn’t see, what might be lurking. He gave me burn ointment. “For your thighs,” he said.

“Jesus. What burns?” Michael asked.

“It’s nothing,” I said, digging my fingernails into my palms again.

“It’s not nothing,” the doctor said. “The burns are quite serious. All your injuries are serious.” I had fractures on three ribs, heavy bruising, and internal injuries he couldn’t assess without a proper examination. Michael frowned, cracked his knuckles. He asked why I hadn’t been properly examined.

I stopped listening. Their words did not concern me. Michael shook me, said something about needing to be examined immediately. I drifted away again. The doctor gave me painkillers and antibiotics and a pill that would make an unwanted pregnancy disappear, told me I should go to the hospital in the States immediately, that I might need surgery. He gave me Valium. My mother often jokes that everyone in Port-au-Prince takes Valium. “How could they not?” she says.

Twenty minutes later, we pulled past the gates of my parents’ home, my father’s castle in the sky, and drove up the long steep drive. I sat up. The decadence disgusted me. The way I had once enjoyed such decadence disgusted me. Armed guards stood near the gates, holding machine guns across their bodies. Another set of guards stood watch near the front door. When we stopped, Michael got out and held his hand out to me. I leaned into the seat and sighed.

Michael ducked his head into the car. “Do you need a minute?”

“I just want to sit here.” Michael stood near the open door. “I just want to sit here,” I said to myself. “I just want to sit here.”

My father and the negotiator went into the house. I listened to the sounds of the city—cars passing on the street below, crickets, music, a woman yelling angrily. I could sit in the backseat of that car as long as I wanted. I could sit in the back of that car until my skin fused to the leather.

Michael ducked back into the car. “It’s getting cold, Miri. You’re shivering.”

“I am?”

He removed his shirt, a white button-down, and handed it to me. He was wearing a wifebeater underneath. “Put this on,” he said.

I clenched my teeth as I pulled Michael’s shirt on. My arms were so sore, the muscles stretched, shredded. The shirt was warm and smelled familiar. I lay on my side, holding the cuffs of Michael’s shirt between my fingers, trying to begin to find my way back to the woman I had once been.