Authors: Roxane Gay
His disapproval was constant and quiet and exhausting. Mona and Michel largely ignored my father’s demands but as the youngest, I took him very seriously, made myself sick with the pursuit of perfection, the better he might love me for it. I had near-perfect recall of most everything I ever saw or heard or read—I was just lucky in that way. It wasn’t so difficult to become excellent. My memory drives the people in my life crazy because I remember everything, always, in exacting detail. My memory was a gift until it became a curse, until no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t forget things I desperately needed to forget so I might survive.
One day, when we were fooling around, my brother and sister and I found a secret world about a mile from where we lived—an undeveloped tract of land with a small creek and lots of trees, all beyond a steep hill. People would go there to throw away their junk so there were always new, interesting things to play with and explore. We called it Pitfall, like the Atari game, and whenever we were done with our homework, we would jump on our bikes and head to a place where we weren’t Haitians in America or Americans in Haiti, where we could make our own rules and draw our own maps. We only wanted to understand some small part of the world.
As I waited for something to happen, I began to draw a mental map of where my kidnappers were holding me, to make sense of this world I wanted no part of. That’s what my father would want—for me to take whatever control I could. Starting at the door, I pressed my hand against the wall and began counting out the number of paces it took to walk the length of each wall—seven steps, ten steps, seven steps, ten steps. I tried to memorize these measurements; I tried to understand the terrifying shape of the walls holding me.
I wasn’t tall enough to look out the window so I overturned the large bucket and stood on it. The window looked onto an alley littered with trash. Occasionally I saw the legs of a passerby. When I banged on the window, no one paid me any mind. “Help me,” I shouted, until my throat hurt. “Please help me.” Sometimes, a pair of legs stopped then quickly walked away.
This was not the Haiti my parents wanted to return to, this land of mad indifference. They remembered the country differently, almost fondly, and the beauty of their island only blossomed the further through time they moved away from it. Like most people, they, or at least my father, created a Haiti that only exists in his imagination—a country that would willingly embrace him.
When I graduated from high school, my parents returned to Port-au-Prince. He had his fill of working seventy hours a week, answering to white men who would never promote him even though he gave them more than twenty years of his life. My father started his own construction company and it soon became the largest, most successful firm in the country. He was the triumphant son, returned. He would reshape the country into the home he remembered, the unvarnished one. It was easy for my father to overlook the country’s painful truths because they did not apply to him, to us. He left the island with nothing and returned with everything—a wife, children, wealth.
There is this truth too. My mother was reluctant to return to Port-au-Prince. The oppressive heat and the promiscuity of the capital, so many people living in such close quarters—it troubled her. She hated how everyone was always preoccupied with everyone else’s lives. It would be different this time, my father assured her. They were together. They had money. My mother resigned herself to my father’s dreams as she has always done.
After she returned to Haiti, I often wanted to ask her why my father’s dreams were more important than her own, but the question would have hurt her more than her answer would have helped me. It wasn’t until I was taken away from my husband and child that I realized we were all going to pay the price for my father’s dreams.
I grew bored staring out the window, being ignored. I sat on the bucket and wondered what time it was. It felt like days had passed since we decided to go to the beach. The air was thick enough to fall into. The walls were slick with moisture. I heard a television and in the distance, a radio, cars speeding past. The music was familiar though I couldn’t quite make it out. My bladder burned. My scalp throbbed. My face felt broken, the various pieces of me loose and coming apart. I crossed my legs tightly, wondered how my captors expected me to relieve myself. I could not handle pissing in a bucket, being forced to stay in that hot room with my own stink. That was what I thought because nothing much had yet been asked of me.
I did not want to ask my kidnappers for anything but I did not want to soil myself. I wouldn’t be able to last much longer so I walked slowly to the door and pulled on it. It was locked. I exhaled slowly, knocked three times, waited. I started dancing from foot to foot. I knocked again, more loudly.
When the door finally opened, a young man, maybe twenty-five, not much younger than I, stood in the doorway. He too had a gun tucked into the waistband of his pants. He smiled, not unkindly.
“I need to use the restroom.”
The man cocked his head to the right and turned. He motioned for me to follow. I walked with small steps, tried to memorize everything I saw. We passed the kitchen, where men still sat with dark glass bottles in front of them. They sneered as I walked by. The same man who leered at me earlier licked his lips slowly. I tried to ignore the line of fear weaving itself into my spine. Already my senses were sharpening. I smelled the danger.
The bathroom was small and unclean. The air was sour. There was a window, small, but I could still fit. I could try. And then I could run and get free, find my way home. A surge of hope flared through my breastbone. As I tried to close the door behind me, my escort stopped the door with the toe of his boot.
“Door stays open.”
My face burned, heat rising up through my neck. “You cannot be serious.”
He ran his fingers along the handle of his gun. I knew I couldn’t hold out much longer. I was desperate. I bit my lower lip. My hands shook as I pushed my jeans and bikini bottoms down my thighs.
We were supposed to go to the beach, Michael, Christophe, and I. We were supposed to be at the beach, bathing beneath the sun while Michael ogled me in my new bikini. The bikini was a gift—black and chic with narrow, pleated folds along the front. He gave it to me the night before we left. I was in bed wearing a pair of his boxers and nothing else, one leg crossed over the other, bouncing my foot, watching him pack. He always packs for us, says I have no sense of how to arrange things in small spaces. Rather than get annoyed with how I pack, mostly by throwing piles of clothing into the suitcase and sorting it out upon arrival, he handles the packing.
When Michael finished with our son’s suitcase, he threw himself on the bed next to me and slowly pulled the bikini out of his pants pocket, first the top then the bottom, dangling them over my face as I grabbed at them, giggling happily. “A beautiful body deserves a beautiful bikini,” he said. We had already been married for five years, but I still blushed. He has always made me feel like the only beautiful woman in the world. I held the top against my chest, admiring the sleek design. I draped the bikini bra around his neck and pulled him toward me, hooking my leg over his, pulling him closer, pulling him into me, my heart pounding, his heart pounding, him on top of me and inside me, both of us quiet but breathing hard and something about the heavy silence of the moment made me feel everything that much more.
The man watching over me stared, the left side of his lip rising unattractively. I bit my lip harder, tasted blood, and tried to cover myself with my arms as I hovered over the toilet seat. The pressure between my thighs was unbearable. I tried to relax. I tried to breathe, to give in to the humiliation. I tried to let go but I couldn’t. All I could feel was that man’s eyes on my body, seeing parts of me I only showed my husband. “My husband is going to kill you,” I said. “He is going to tear you apart with his bare hands.” A wave of dizziness rocked me and I grabbed the sink to steady myself. My escort laughed, stepped inside the bathroom, closed the door behind him.
A fresh wave of panic rose inside me and finally I was able to relieve myself. I wiped quickly and flushed and moved to the sink to wash my hands. I stared at my reflection as I ran my hands under the lukewarm water. A bruise was spreading beneath my right eye and there was a thin cut along my forehead. I patted my damp hands over my face and wiped them on my jeans. I held on to the sink. My escort moved behind me. I looked up and studied him in the mirror. I gripped the sink more tightly. Our eyes met in the mirror. I refused to look away. He planted his hands on my shoulders, squeezing hard. He rolled my muscles beneath his fingers. It was not pleasant.
“You should thank me.”
I nodded. I tried to ignore my instincts, tried to think of every possible outcome for anything I might say. I could be smart or I could be stupid; neither alternative would end well. I chose stupid. “I’m not going to thank you for a damn thing let alone taking a piss.” I hoped the coarseness of my words might add some steel to my spine.
My escort laughed, sliding his hands down my bare arms. His hands were surprisingly soft. I looked at his fingernails, long but well manicured. He did not give the impression of a man who works hard. I had never felt anything so off-putting but then, I was only beginning to catalogue my discomfort. I had an inadequate frame of reference.
I stood straighter, forced my chin forward, continued to hold his gaze in the mirror, foolishly hoping bravado might save me from the inevitable. “Take your hands off me.”
When he grabbed my hair and pulled my head back, my body understood what would happen next. The body holds a certain wisdom the mind does not. I threw my arms in front of my face as he pushed me forward, tried to slam my head into the mirror. The glass shattered. Tiny shards burrowed into my arms, creating tiny but very sharp dots of pain. It was hard to focus. I could only think of one word,
fight
. He pulled me toward him and I saw myself in the fractures of glass that remained. I already did not recognize myself. Seeing what fear looked like in my eyes was an honesty I wasn’t prepared for. I whispered, “You will survive this.” My escort began fumbling with the waistband of my jeans, his fingers pressing against the bones of my hips as he tried to tug my pants down. I kicked back and connected with his knee. He growled, muttered angry words. The barrel of his gun dug sharply into the back of my neck. “Enough,” he said. “Fight me and you will regret it.”
I kicked again. He wouldn’t pull the trigger. He couldn’t pull the trigger. My life mattered. I had one damn thing worth something to the men holding me. “You can’t shoot me,” I said, “or you won’t get paid.” I twisted from side to side trying to get away, reaching for the door. If I could make it into a different room, I would be safe. All I had to do was open that door.
He grabbed my hair again, practically lifting me off my feet. All my life I’ve been the small girl with the big mouth and both of those things were working against me. My escort was much bigger. All the men I had seen, I counted seven, were much bigger. They had lean and long bodies and strong hands and angry mouths. Once, they had been good boys. I needed to believe that. Thin streams of blood trickled along my forearms. My skin began to swell around the shards of glass.
“You do not understand your position,” my escort said. “I will teach you.”
He pulled me against him. His chest was tightly muscled, more like stone than the meat of a man. He shoved his hand down the front of my jeans, grabbing at me, forcing a finger inside of me. The intrusion was painful and unexpected. A wet sound curled in my throat as I tried to free myself from his grip. Finally, I found air. I screamed loud enough to make the walls shake.
He shoved his gun back in his pants and used his free hand to cover my mouth. “Make one more sound and you will regret it.”
I ignored his threat, screamed into the palm of his hand as he forced his fingers deeper, feeling around for something he could not find. He burned my neck with the heat of his breath.
Suddenly, the bathroom door flew open and the Commander stood, glaring. My escort stopped, seemed to shrink into himself. I no longer felt his breath on my neck.
The Commander looked at my escort and shook his head. “This is not how we do business.”
My escort pulled his hand out of my pants and pushed me away. Another man appeared in the hallway. I straightened my clothes, smoothed my hair. I refused to bow my head. I walked steady. I would not falter. The Commander ordered the newcomer to take me back to my cage. As I was led away, I looked back. My escort rubbed his fingers beneath his nose, smiled, nasty man.
Alone again, I sat on the bed. I was calm. I was calm. I was calm. I began carefully picking glass from my arm and setting the thin shards in a small pile on the floor next to my feet. When I finished, I looked at the small pyramid of bloody glass I had built. It was almost beautiful. There was a sharp ache between my thighs. Another wet scream curled in my throat but it felt important to stay calm, calm, calm. I covered my mouth with my hand and began rocking back and forth.
I waited. I had nothing but the memory of a strange man’s fingers inside me, twisting, reaching, taking. I prayed this would be the only terrible thing I had to carry.
It had grown dark. No one came for me. I was thirsty, so very thirsty. I was hungry. I was tired. My body ached. All I could think about was the hot breath of a man I did not know on the back of my neck as he forced his fingers inside me and how he was going to come for me and no matter how hard I fought I would not be able to stop him.