An Untamed State (28 page)

There were dozens of missed calls and my voice mail was full. I saw several messages from Mona and listened to them. She called me each day I was gone, explaining why she wasn’t in Port-au-Prince waiting for me, explaining that our mother and her husband demanded she stay in the States. I listened to her voice and tried to remember the shape of her face. I refused to cry. My hands shook as I dialed her number in Miami. She answered on the first ring.

“Miri, Jesus Christ. I miss you so much.”

“Mona,” I said, stuttering. “Please come to the airport tomorrow. Please be there.”

“Of course, Miri.”

“I don’t remember anything, Mona. I mean, I do but I don’t. I listened to your messages. You didn’t forget me.”

“Forget you? Honey, you’re all we’ve thought about.”

“They abandoned me.”

“No one abandoned you. I know you don’t believe that, but it’s true.”

“I’m tired, Mona. I have to go.”

“Don’t hang up,” Mona shouted, but I ended the call.

After a final look at Michael’s sleeping form, I took my soiled clothes, the ones I wore for thirteen days, the ones covered in piss and tears and semen and blood I could not wash out even though I tried. They were still damp from the shower. I threw those filthy clothes holding those memories of my body into the fire pit behind my parents’ house and watched the clothes smolder.

Eventually, I looked up and saw Michael’s silhouette in the light of the fire. He watched over me but left me alone. When all that remained was gray ash, I threw more wood into the pit, watched the flames reach high into the night. I held my hand close to the heat. I knew what it meant to burn, how it felt, how the right amount of heat can make your skin rise and how the pain rises with your skin until it spreads through you and when the pain starts to spread, it becomes easier to endure. I closed my eyes and fell forward but Michael grabbed me by the waist. He pulled me away from the fire. He wrapped his arms around me. I tried to fight his embrace but he was stronger. He whispered into my ear. He said, “No, Mireille. No.” He held me as I fought. He gave me someone to fight who wouldn’t fight back. He let me fight until I ran out of energy. I did not cry.

We sat on a teak bench next to the pit. I lit a cigarette, offered him one. He accepted even though he doesn’t smoke. We stared into the fire. I looked at my left hand, so naked. “They took my wedding ring and my engagement ring.”

Michael tried to reach for me but I pulled my hand away before I had to suffer his skin against mine.

“They’re just things. I will get you new ones,” he said.

“They mattered to me.”

“And they mattered to me, but you matter more.”

“I fought, especially when he took my rings. I fought.”

“Who is he?” Michael came close, close enough for me to feel the warmth of his body. Sorrow pulsed from his skin. “What did they do to you? Tell me. Give me something so I can do something. God, Miri. I want to kill somebody.”

The most honest words locked themselves in my throat. I tried to push something out that might make sense but the harder I tried, the more the words twisted themselves into tiny, stubborn knots. I shook my head, covered my mouth.

“I understand,” Michael said. “When you’re ready, I am here to listen. There’s nothing you can’t tell me, baby.”

“I am never going to be ready, Michael. Not ever.” My spine stiffened.

“It must have been terrible.”

I turned to look at my husband. “What is it you want to know, Michael? Do you think I don’t know what you’re asking? If there’s something on your mind, just say it.”

His features rearranged themselves in new ways. “I want to help you.”

My mother has often told me there are some things you cannot tell a man who loves you, things he cannot handle knowing. She adheres to the philosophy that it is secrets rather than openness that strengthen a relationship between a woman and a man. She believes this even though she is an honest person. Honesty, she says, is not always about the truth.

I rubbed my forehead and looked away so I could tell him an honest lie. “It was terrible, Michael but not as terrible as you might think. They certainly did not hesitate to knock me around but other than that, they left me alone in a small, hot room with greasy walls and a narrow bed. They didn’t feed me much so I was hungry all the time and I missed you and the baby. My milk dried up. That was the worst of it.”

Michael nodded slowly. I waited for him to say something, hoped he would want to believe me enough that we would never have to discuss what happened. The mere thought of telling him the truth made my throat lock up again. There were no words that would make him understand what had happened or what I had become. The necessary vernacular did not exist.

“You have to tell the police something in the morning.”

“No, I don’t. I have nothing to say to anyone. We are getting our kid out of here.”

He threw his hands up. “I won’t argue with you. It’s probably a waste of time anyway. You know, you haven’t cried at all. You can cry if you need to.”

“I wasn’t waiting for your permission, Michael. I don’t need to cry.”

I felt him shrinking away. I reached for him and his fingers found mine. I ignored how my skin crawled. I held his hand so tight. When I pulled away he said he was going back to bed, that he was exhausted, and I said I was going to stay outside. I did not want to be surrounded by walls. I couldn’t breathe in my father’s house. As he walked by, Michael put a heavy hand on my shoulder. I winced. “You didn’t have to lie,” he said. “You could have just said you’re not ready to talk.”

I didn’t look at him as I sank into the bench. “That’s not what you wanted to hear, is it?”

He left but I did not notice. Sometime later, there was rustling in the corner near the kitchen’s entrance onto the courtyard. I wrapped my arms around myself and stared into the dark shadows. Slowly, Nadine stepped into the light of the fire. I slid over on the bench and made room for her.

When she sat, I turned to look at her. She had once been beautiful or she still was, only beauty now resided in her features differently. She was nearly as old as my mother, late fifties, her hair streaked with gray, her eyes bright and her eyelids sagging. She should not have still been doing the work of cleaning up after a family like mine.

“I’ve been a maid for nearly forty years, have worked for five families.”

“What you must think of us.”

“Some families are better than others. Your mother treats her staff generously,” Nadine said.

“That’s my mother, generous.”

“I have never seen anything like this.” Nadine reached for me, grabbed my arm. When I tried to pull away, she held firm. “Your father is not so generous. He should have paid much sooner.” She sucked on her teeth. “Much sooner.”

Again, the leash around my neck tightened. Beads of sweat broke out across my forehead. It was unnerving to hear someone say what had gone unspoken since my return.

Nadine took my hand between hers. The palms of our hands were soft together. “Kenbe fèm,” she said. Hold steady. Stay strong.

She said these words as if strength were still a possibility for me. I was grateful for her words. I knew how far beyond my reach strength was.

T
here was something calming about packing, putting things in order. Order. That’s what Michael needed, that and to put some distance between his family and this place. He had always known that something like this would happen. He watched the news. He had eyes. But first, home. They had to get home, their flight left in five hours. Packing was the first step in making that happen. He looked down at his hands, the knuckles raw, nearly bloody. No one had noticed and he was grateful for that.

As Mireille sat on the corner of the bed, staring at the wall, Michael folded their clothes carefully, making neat piles. Fabienne stood in the doorway. Her hair, normally pulled tight in a French twist, hung in loose strands. She twisted her wedding ring back and forth.

“It would be good to stay longer, Mireille. Please talk to your father. We were so worried.”

Mireille didn’t respond, just kept staring at the wall. Michael paused his folding. It was unnerving, how still his wife sat. He wanted to shake her.

“We are getting out of here,” he said brusquely.

Fabienne was undeterred. “I am speaking to my daughter. Stay out of this.” More softly, she said, “It would be best to put this incident behind you, Mireille.”

Mireille turned to look at her mother, eyes dull. “Incident?”

Michael normally stayed out of Mireille’s relationship with her parents. He didn’t understand how they worked, how often there was more said in what was not said between his wife and her parents. “Normal families,” he once told Mireille after he met her parents, “actually say what they mean and feel.” “We’re Catholic,” she replied, and they laughed. It seemed funny at the time, almost charming.

He looked up from the pile of Christophe’s clothes he was folding with strangely timed precision, forcing his hands to work steady. “That is total bullshit. And there is no
out of this
for me. She is my wife. You can’t will me away because that would be more convenient for you.”

In the before, Mireille would have said Michael’s name sharply and he would have understood that American husbands are to be seen and not heard. Mireille said nothing, resumed staring at the wall and began rocking back and forth.

Fabienne frowned, began twisting her ring harder. “Your ordeal is over, Mireille. We can move on from this.”

Her clinical vocabulary fascinated Michael—it was like his mother-in-law was talking about a mild inconvenience. This was all madness. He looked at his wife, whose hands were shaking.

“I’m sure you can move on from this,” Mireille said, “but I will never move on. I am still where they kept me; I am in that cage.”

Mireille ran into the bathroom. There was retching, silence, and more retching. Michael winced, and after the retching stopped, followed his wife. She stood in front of the mirror, holding a pill bottle. She placed one pill on the tip of her tongue and swallowed.

“Are you okay?” Michael asked.

Mireille placed another pill on her tongue, swallowed. “I don’t know what the hell I am,” she said.

“Babe, what does that mean? I’m really worried.”

Mireille finally looked up. “It’s like I can’t remember my name or my life but . . . I can. I mean, it’s all there but I can’t quite reach myself. I am so tired.”

“We’re going home, baby, and we’ll get you to the hospital and we’ll figure out how to get you better.”

She laughed hoarsely. “B-E-T-T-E-R.” She studied herself in the mirror for a moment, shook her head, and slid past Michael. “I need some air.”

Before she could leave the bedroom, Fabienne took firm hold of Mireille’s elbow and pulled her close.

“Let go of me,” Mireille snapped.

Fabienne relaxed her grip and traced her daughter’s hairline with her fingertips. “You are my youngest daughter. You are loved. I am sorry this happened.”

Mireille stared blankly again. “I’m no one’s daughter, not anymore.”

“Look at me.”

Mireille faced her mother.

“You are my child. You hear me? You are mine and you will always be mine and nothing can change that. I made you.”

The air was so thick and still. Michael blinked, and he was back on the street, surrounded by armed men. Mireille was being torn from him, Christophe was crying, the horn, the stunned silence as he ran toward the house with his son in his arms, one would help. His headache returned, a sharp and steady pain behind his eyes. He wanted out of Haiti, forever. He wanted away from Mireille’s parents, all these people who said one thing and meant another.

“You may have made me but he left me to rot and you let him and now, I am rotten. Your child is all gone,” Mireille said.

Michael blinked again and resumed packing though he was done with neat folding. It didn’t matter. “We are getting the fuck out of here,” he muttered, stuffing the rest of their things into the suitcases.

Fabienne looked past him at Mireille. “Your father loves you very much.”

“Don’t speak to me about that man and love. What they did to me.”