An Untamed State (34 page)

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.

I drank the first drink fast, so fast my teeth ached down to the pulp and I felt a tight pressure between my eyes, making it hard to focus on anything. The bartender continued to talk and I learned about how he loved to play the clarinet and not many people knew that about him. I drank the next cocktail a bit slower but not by much. I never let the ice cubes melt. I was hungry, but I ignored the persistent gnawing in my stomach. It was still too difficult to eat regularly. I put food in my mouth when Lorraine insisted but never very much or often enough and I always threw it all up.

The bar was filling fast and a deejay played popular Top 40 hits intermixed with country music. The combination was disconcerting but the patrons seemed enthusiastic, spending most of their time on the dance floor, alternating between line dancing and movement that tried to approximate the dancing you might see in a rap video.

A tall blond man slid on to the bar stool next to me. He was not handsome. He was not quite ugly. He had a choppy haircut and his hair hung shaggily over his ears, with a blunt shape along his forehead. His jeans were dirty and he wore a T-shirt with a hole in the left armpit. He offered to buy me a drink and I let him.

“You don’t talk much,” he said.

I shook my head.

“Fine by me. There’s nothing more annoying than a woman who talks a lot but ain’t got nothing to say.”

His comment was so common it wasn’t worth rolling my eyes. He said his name was Shannon; he hated having a woman’s name, insisted he was all man, offered to show me just how. I wondered what it was about me that compelled men to be so confessional. I took a tiny red sword from his drink and stabbed the palm of his hand. “I like them feisty,” he said.

I stabbed him once more with my tiny red sword. He smelled raw. He inched closer and closer to me and talked and talked and didn’t seem to care that I only nodded. He said he worked for a meatpacking plant in the slaughterhouse. It made sense. He said I was Prime Grade. I offered nothing in return. He didn’t care. I was meat, lean meat, but meat nonetheless. He pulled me on the dance floor. I could barely stand. The bar was terribly hot, the air thick, the walls pressing in on me. We started moving, our bodies always touching. He hooked his fingers into my belt loops, pulling me more tightly against him. My skin felt like it was rolling in waves trying to separate itself from the fat, bone, muscle beneath. I slid my hands around his waist, swiveling my hips. He said, “Damn, you’re sexy.” He was a liar. I felt heavy and loose and the leash seemed almost invisible. I threw my head back, shaking my hair out. I wanted nothing to do with this man. I wanted everything to do with this man. I thought about Michael hanging up on me, about how I was losing him so soon into our after and we both knew it. I grinded myself against Shannon even harder.

After several songs we returned to the bar. He bought me another drink. He leaned into me, resting his hand on my thigh, digging his fingers into my thigh. His breath was hot and wet and horrible against my neck. He laughed coldly, said, “We should take this outside.”

I would let this man with a woman’s name break me again so I might be properly healed. I stood carefully and began walking toward the back door, focusing on placing one foot in front of the other. I paused, turned, looked at Shannon, nodded toward the door. He threw a couple of bills on the bar and came after me. By the time we made it outside, I was leaning against him. He didn’t care. My father didn’t come after me. My husband didn’t come after me, but a redneck meatpacker named Shannon, a man with a raw dead stink, he did.

The night air was cold. When I placed my hand against the brick wall, it hummed with the bass of the song playing in the bar, music from another room. Shannon stood in front of me. He was much, much taller but fleshy. His girth repulsed me. I was meat. I did not want this but I did not leave. I waited, hoping he would break my bones, needing him to break my bones even though they were already broken. He leaned down until his lips were practically touching mine. I turned my head slightly. He could not have my mouth. I was defiant. He tapped my chin with a calloused finger. “I bet you like it real rough.”

I lowered my head, grateful. I tried to relax my entire body to make it easier for him to break me. I wondered how his fist might fit against my chin or in my gut or how his hands might span the circumference of my neck or how much pressure he would apply to my throat before none of this mattered anymore. I wanted to say, “Put me in the ground. I am already dead.”

The back door opened and three girls in silk camisole tops, high heels, and tight jeans stumbled out, laughing loudly. They paused, saw us, and giggled some more before heading to their car. Their perfume was still sharp and it lingered long after they were gone. I hoped they might come back for me. I was like them once.

I waited. I waited for Shannon to do what needed to be done. He did not take long.

He grabbed me by my shoulders, digging his fingers into me hard. I closed my eyes. I knew, by then, how to surrender, how to surrender to being broken, how that could be fighting. He pushed me against the brick wall, tried to push me into the wall. The bruises on my back brightened. He kicked my legs apart and grabbed me by my hair, yanking my head back. He shoved a hand into my pants. He stared at me. I did not look away. I felt nothing as he jammed two fingers inside me. I was dry, very tender. He said, “Yeah, baby.” He licked my cheek. I swallowed the sharp acid that rose. He slid a third finger inside me. I closed my eyes even tighter. I felt nothing but the pain was not bearable. He started moving his fingers in and out of me. I could feel him hard against my thigh. “You are so hot,” he said. He was still a liar. He was a man. I was meat.

He released his grip on my hair and started to tug my jeans lower. I hoped the cover of night would hide the marks I did not care to explain. He thrust his fingers especially hard. The pain was perfect and necessary. I wrapped myself around it. I was still dry. “You know,” he grunted. “You could help me out.” I shrugged and he stopped. His features changed, rearranged themselves into something more dangerous. He wrapped a hand around my throat, answered one of my questions, closing his hand tightly. I did not gasp. He said, “You’re going to give me what I’m due,” as if I were putting up a fight he couldn’t quite make sense of.