An Untamed State (24 page)

“What is going on here?” a loud voice behind us asked. It was the Commander. The relief I felt was so sweet and so immediate it sickened me.

TiPierre released me and I fell to my knees. I had no strength left. I could not even hold up my head.

“I thought I made myself clear.”

TiPierre tried to stutter an excuse but the Commander cut him off. “You disobeyed me.” He cuffed TiPierre across the face, right where I bit him. TiPierre straightened himself, glared at me, tried to protest. The Commander hit him again, then grabbed TiPierre by the neck, walked him to the door, shoved him out of the room. “I will deal with you later. Don’t think I won’t.”

The younger man left the room in a bitter wake. I was alone in my cage again with the Commander. He pulled me to my feet and pulled my pants up. He held my chin, turning my head from side to side. He sucked his teeth. “That boy has no finesse. I cannot blame him. The streets are all he knows.”

My legs faltered again and I had to hold on to the Commander. I mumbled something but couldn’t form the right words. He swept me into his arms and carried me to his room, placed me in his bed like he was a good man. He covered me with a blanket like he was a good man.

I said, “I am very tired. Please get it over with, whatever you’re going to do.” There was not much life or fight left in me. I stopped caring.

The Commander brushed my hair from my face. He lay next to me and told me a story about his mother, who scrubbed the floors and washed the clothes and cooked the food for a man like my father. He told me how a man like my father treated his mother like a whore because that’s the kind of thing men like my father can get away with. The Commander said his mother is old now even though she is not old, more ghost than woman.

When he finished talking, I said, “Your mother did not deserve the unwanted attentions of a man like my father.” I said, “I did not deserve the unwanted attentions of a man like you. It is often women who pay the price for what men want.”

The Commander grunted, turned on the television, started watching a poorly dubbed movie. I stared into the darkness for a very long time, terrified of how he would touch me next. I fell asleep thinking about the man who was another woman’s husband, the man I could not forget no matter how I tried to remove every trace of him from my memory. His name lingered in my mouth and in my eyes and in my hands.

I awoke to the smell of coffee, sharp and bitter. I tried to remember the taste of coffee, the taste of anything. My face throbbed and I touched my cheek gently. I tried to remember where I was. Nothing looked familiar. I reached behind me. There was a man and he had a name, a name I loved. I remembered his smell but I was alone. I had a name but I could not recall it, either. I was no one. I sat up and was so dizzy I had to lie back down. I curled on my side, pulled my knees to my chest, covered my body with the blanket next to me even though it was so hot, I was sweating everywhere, between my thighs, beneath my breasts, under my chin. I thought of Alaska, of sitting in a lawn chair on an iceberg and how it would be cold and dry even on a warm sunny day. I had never been to Alaska but I imagined the country to be cold and green and white and blue. “I will never see Alaska,” I said to the empty room.

It was the twelfth day though I could not be certain. I had lost count. Time no longer mattered. I was no one and had no reason to measure time or the days between who I had been and who I had become.

“Would you like to try to call your family today? I am quite certain, if they bother to answer, they will tell you they are still coming up with the money. You will see, once and for all, that I am not lying to you.”

I threw the covers off and slowly sat up, leaning against the headboard.

I shrugged and held my hand out. When he handed me the phone, it was yet another cell phone. I wondered if the Commander had an infinite supply of mobile devices. When I called, a man answered. I tried to remember what I should say to him. He knew it was me. He knew my name. I tried to remember how to say his name.

“We are so close, Miri. I swear we are.”

He was my husband but I couldn’t be sure, not of anything. I tried to hold on to what I hoped I knew. “You didn’t answer the phone yesterday.”

“What are you talking about? We are always by the phone.”

A rush of anger overwhelmed me. Things were clearer now. “You’re lying,” I said. “You’re going to leave me here.”

Michael made a hoarse choking sound. “That is not true. You have no idea, baby.”

The woman I was would have believed him but the woman who was no one could not. “I want you to leave the country, Michael. Take your son and leave and don’t you ever come back to this place, not ever.”

“I thought you weren’t going to be noble. You’re scaring me. I’m not going anywhere without you,” Michael said. He said something else but none of it mattered.

I hung up and pulled the sheet around me and went to the window. It was covered with black iron bars. Children, bare-chested and wearing long shorts, played soccer in the street. Every time they smiled, I saw a flash of perfect white teeth. I pressed my hand against the window. I wanted to forget all I knew of children, of how they laughed with abandon, even when playing in the filthy streets of Bel Air.

The Commander stood behind me. His smell was becoming familiar. It was the smell of a cruel man, surprisingly clean. He wrapped his arms around my waist and pressed his lips to my bare shoulder.

“As you can see, I have not lied to you. I never will.”

I did not turn around. “I would like to go home. You will never be able to rest if you keep me here. You will never know what I might do.”

He tightened his grip, held me closer. He sank his teeth into my shoulder like he was trying to gnaw the meat from my bone. When he lifted his head, a perfect ring of pain throbbed in the small indentations of his teeth.

“I am a businessman. If your family had transacted their end of our business, you would have gone home unharmed, untouched. They chose not to. I appreciate your threat but I can say the same to you. There are people you love and as long as they are in this country, they are within
my
reach.”

A small boy, adorable, no more than five, grabbed the soccer ball and held it high over his head, started running in a tight circle, giggling while the older boys chased him. For a too-brief moment I remembered playing soccer with Michael and a group of little boys on a dusty riverbed. I forced myself to forget that too.

I turned to face the Commander. “You cannot keep me here forever.” It sounded like a question and I hated myself for it.

He led me back to his bed and dumped me in the center of the mattress unceremoniously. He handcuffed my hands to the headboard, each click echoing loudly. “We shall see how long I can keep you here,” he said, smiling, almost sweetly.

W
hen the Commander finally freed me again I sat up and nearly fell over as blood rushed to my head and arms. A sharp ache spread across my skull. I exhaled loudly and I stretched my arms out in front of me. A dark red and brown band of raw skin circled the skin and bone of my wrists, naked without their shackles. I felt dangerously free. I looked at my hands, my fingernails torn and ragged, caked with blood and someone else’s skin. My hands shook. My whole body shook. The word
mercy
clung to my lower lip again, hung loosely, daring to fall. I had less than nothing left.

I only needed to ask and the Commander would grant me some small measure of mercy, not enough but enough. If this was the rest of my life, there was no need for further fight. There would be no easy life but there could be an easier life. From the bed I could see the sun was at its highest. I looked at the clock on the DVD player. It was four in the afternoon. Time meant very little.

The children were not playing in the street. The sky suddenly darkened and rain started to fall at a diagonal in heavy sheets. I wanted to stand in that rain. “I’d like to stand in the rain,” I said without realizing I had spoken aloud. The Commander grabbed me by my shoulder and told me to get dressed. I did. He pushed me out of his room and down the dark hallways to the front door. Once again, I tried to memorize everything, just in case I could find a new way out for myself. The thought of escape was a foolish hope and I held on to it dearly. Desperation and foolishness are nearly the same.

We stepped out onto the street and the Commander released his grip. “Remember your son and husband and what I could do to them,” he said, evenly. He raised his T-shirt, revealing his gun, and leaned against the door, under the narrow eaves of the house. I stood with my arms wrapped around myself. I raised my face to the sky and let the rain fall over me. There was a space between the clouds. Pale shafts of sunlight appeared. The rain continued to fall. It was the heaviest rain I had ever seen. I pulled my hair out of its loose ponytail. My clothes soaked and clung to my skin. I did not mind. An old woman with skin so loose it wrapped her bones in folds stood in the doorway of her small block of a home. When she looked at me, I saw real sadness in the lines of her face. I stared at her until she looked away. The rain was warm. I stuck out my tongue. The rain washed my mouth clean. There was not enough rain to wash the rest of me clean. I was filthy. I was hopeless.

I stood in the rain until the clouds cleared. As far as the eye could see, waves of steam rose from the pavement. “You’ll have to thank me for this,” the Commander shouted from where he stood watch. I did not turn around but I nodded. There would always be ransoms for any dignity or peace. I was not my father. I was willing to pay.

Eventually, the Commander grew bored with his generosity and came to get me from the middle of the street. As he pulled me toward the house, I said, “No,” and began grunting like an animal. I forgot how to speak. I only knew I did not want my body forced back in that cage with the other animals. I dragged my heels. I scratched at his bare arms and he flexed his muscles. The scar beneath his eye moved again like it was trying to reach the other side of his face. In the doorway, I grabbed for the doorjamb with my hands and feet. I grunted louder. The Commander bloodied my knuckles with the butt of his gun and then he hit me over the head.

Michael loves concrete, loves making concrete and testing the compressive strength. The compressive strength is the most important performance measure. The testing is important because engineers need to trust that the bridges and buildings they design and build will stand the test of time. When we first started dating, Michael endeavored to teach me everything he knew about concrete. I did not have the heart to explain to him I had already received a similar education from my father. “Concrete,” he likes to say, “is the purest expression of man’s strength.” I ask, “What is the purest expression of a woman’s strength,” and he says, “You.” Once, he brought me twelve slender concrete cylinders. He called it an unbreakable bouquet. I loved him so fiercely in that moment.

I did not pass out when the Commander slammed the butt of his gun against my skull. I was breakable but unbroken. I fought even harder, kicking at the walls as he dragged me to his room. I kicked one wall so hard I left a large indentation. I was a breaker of concrete. I found the compressive strength of the concrete in those walls—that of a woman who is no one divided by the memory of the woman she used to be, the woman torn from her husband and only child.

In his room, the Commander punished me for my tiny rebellion. I did not make a sound. I was no one. Then it was dark and I was alone. I could not close my eyes. When I closed my eyes, all I could see, smell, feel, was the Commander forcing himself on me again and again, his seed staining my thighs, his teeth in my skin, his saliva on my face, his blades and his fire. All I could hear was the unnatural calm of his voice, how he always spoke carefully, how he treated me as both lover and enemy—the only way he could, I think, understand a woman. I tried to forget the Commander for just one moment and instead I tried to remember my name or the names of everyone or anyone I had ever known, loved, needed. I remembered nothing.

“Mercy,” I whispered even though I was alone. I needed to say the word. I needed to know I could say the word. The utterance was not a prayer. It was more audacious because I yearned to be answered.

Beyond the closed door I heard the sound of paper shuffling; I heard this sound for more than two hours. I covered my ears but I still heard that sound. Every possible thing conspired against me.