The Commander called for me again. It was the seventh day. Every day more was taken from me. He forced me onto my stomach and handcuffed my wrists to the headboard. He left me there, bared to him as he talked, mostly incoherent, half-formed political ideas, angry barbs about wealth and women, the ramblings of a man without a real ideology.

“I don’t understand women like you,” he said, winding down. “You could have made things easier for yourself. Would it be so hard to play nice with me?”

“I don’t understand men like you. You could have made things easier for me.”

“You always have something clever to say, Mireille Duval. I like that about you.”

“My last name is Jameson.”

The Commander laughed. “My, how quickly things change. You people are all the same. You live in your grand homes looking down on us in the gutter. You think you control everything and can have anything.”

“There is nothing original about you, not even your ideals,” I muttered.

He waved his arm across his chest. “One day all of you will live like the rest of us. You will know what it’s like to live the way the real people of this country do.”

“As if you do, with your flat-screen televisions and Xbox systems?”

He grabbed me by my hair, yanking my head back. I hoped for my neck to break. “I can see it is difficult for you to learn your lesson. I will try again to teach you.”

There was nothing he could do, I told myself, that he had not already done. I had not yet developed a respect for his cruelty. The Commander reached beneath his pillow and pulled out a long knife, the kind so sharp the blade hummed. He would open my body in a different, more terrible way.

I closed my eyes, breathed shallow, thought of my husband and son at home in bed, cool and clean and happy—the way both Michael and Christophe smiled at me with their whole faces. I made no sound. Later, the Commander left me cuffed to his bed and walked around the room naked ranting about how a change was coming, that the people would revolt. He drank rum from a dark brown bottle, grabbed my cheeks, and dug his fingers into my face, prying my mouth open. He poured rum into my mouth and I swallowed, willingly. It was not long before everything dulled. I did not mind when he doused the cuts on my back with alcohol. My skin burned. Before I passed out, I said, “My heart is safe. My heart is safe.”

In Haiti, it is the father, not the husband, who gets the first dance at his daughter’s wedding. Even though we were marrying in the States, I thought it would be nice to uphold the tradition. Mona danced with my father at her wedding and the way he moved her across the floor, both their faces shining, I wanted that moment for myself. When I told Michael a few days before our wedding, he rubbed his chin, said, “That’s kind of twisted,” and I slapped his arm. I said, “It’s sweet.”

My father and I danced to Etta James, “At Last,” his favorite song. My mother beamed at us from her table, she and Mona sitting so close their faces were practically touching. I was nervous, so many people staring at us, so much aloneness with my father. This was something new for us, sharing a quiet moment. He smiled shyly as I held his shoulders and he held my waist and we swayed. He said, “I trust that with this man, your heart is safe,” and I nodded, because it was, because I knew Michael would take good care of the softest parts of me I dared to give him. That night, with my father so relaxed, so happy, I thought my heart was safe with him too.

Later, I was dying or losing myself or both or maybe the two states were the same thing. I awoke slowly. I was as far away from being my father’s daughter as I had ever been. My arms were stiff, stretched tautly. When I tried to move, it was difficult. My shoulder popped. I tried to sit up, realized I was on my stomach, my wrists still cuffed to the Commander’s bed. I looked around and standing next to the bed was a young woman, couldn’t have been more than twenty-two. She looked down at me with her hands on her hips, muttered something too softly for me to make out.

“Please, help me.” The words felt dangerous in my mouth. I cleared my throat. “Help me.”

She reached into a drawer in the nightstand and produced a small, silver key. She quietly unlocked each cuff and I winced as my arms fell and the blood rushed back to my shoulders, my raw, abraded wrists.

“Help me get out of here,” I whispered.

She pressed one finger to her lips, nodded. She handed me my clothes. My hands shook as I dressed, tried to fasten the button on my jeans. When I couldn’t, she moved toward me, reached. I stepped away, a rush of adrenaline shooting through me, but she shook her head, smiled softly, fastened my jeans for me. I grabbed her hand, didn’t want to let go. Her skin was soft. I needed someone soft to hold on to, someone who wouldn’t hurt me. I needed to believe a woman wouldn’t hurt me. She didn’t let go of my hand, pulled me after her.

We moved quickly but quietly. The house was still; the city was still, early morning. My heart beat so fast. I felt Michael’s arms around me. I saw his smile. I walked toward his smile, the memory of it.

There were two sleeping men curled up on different ends of a long couch. They didn’t stir. At the front door of the house, the young woman pushed me into the street. She said, “Run,” so I ran. When I looked back, she shook her head, moving her arms like she was pushing me along. I had no idea where I was going. Even though it was early and still and silent, there were people in the street. As I ran past them, they stared. I cannot imagine what I looked like, bruised and bloody and barefoot, running, wild, so very wild, trying to get free, being chased even though I was not being chased.

The slums are an endless maze of narrow streets and alleys lined with small concrete block homes. The blocks rise up into a mountain and dark, narrow, winding staircases hold everything together. The sky is often blocked by a thick and tangled web of electrical wiring. Cars are parked everywhere, sometimes half on the sidewalk, half in the street. Women rarely move through the streets alone. It is not safe, not ever. When they do walk down the street, they often carry large buckets of water or baskets carrying goods to sell at La Saline market. Old women sit on concrete stairs, their heavy skirts bunched between their thighs as they stare at the goings-on or peel vegetables or feel the beating sun on their skin. The streets are covered in trash—plastic bottles, torn paper, shallow pools of dirty water, rusted coffee cans, discarded cigarette butts. Sometimes a stray chicken or goat carefully steps its way through the streets. When a car barrels down the street, anyone in the street jumps out of the way. The music is loud. Car horns wail regularly. The air is thick with the smell of too many people in too little space. Many of the walls are painted brightly; some of the walls have advertisements for Comme Il Faut cigarettes or a local church or barbershop. I ran through these streets and thought, “This is a Haiti I have never seen or known.” It was a Haiti no one should have to know.

I came upon a small café and stepped inside. I refused hope but it was so close, so close my fingers felt electric. Michael’s smile grew brighter. I had a husband and child and if there was kindness in the world, someone in the café would get me to them. Inside, two women sat at a small, square table smoking cigarettes as they stared at a television on a high shelf in one corner of the room. A tall orange drink sat in front of each woman. I tried to stand straight, tried to hold my head high, tried to sound strong. “May I please use your telephone?” I wanted to be polite. I wanted to sound like a woman who deserved to use a telephone to call her husband to come and save her. Another woman shuffled out from behind a bar along one side of the room. She was older, her hair gone completely to gray. She wore a pink T-shirt and white Capri pants, lots of gold bracelets dangled from her wrist. She looked at me carefully, then sucked her teeth, waved her arms like she was trying to sweep me out her front door.

“I want no trouble here,” she said.

I tried to hold it together. “Please, my family can pay you money, lots of money.”

She paused, nodded toward a small table in the corner. “Sit,” she said. I did as I was told and sat carefully, tried to ignore the pain. I gripped the edges of the table. She brought me a glass of water, a napkin. I drank the water quickly, drank so fast my head began to hurt. She disappeared for a few minutes and when she returned she set a cell phone on the table in front of me. I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate, tried to remember the exact sequence of numbers between that moment and salvation. I pressed each number carefully, tried to steady my hands, tried to quiet my heart. As I pressed the last number I heard a familiar laugh. I looked up and saw the Commander standing over me, his hands on the butt of the gun tucked in the waistband of his pants. He tossed a wad of tightly rolled bills held together with a rubber band to the woman. I nodded slowly, took another sip of my water. I swallowed the rising bile. I tried to breathe.

The Commander sat across from me. He appeared calm, bemused.

“Don’t look so disappointed. You were never going to get away. Your father may think he owns the city but I own these streets.”

He snapped his fingers, ordered two drinks. When the proprietress set mine in front of me I did not bother to ask what it was. I simply drank it, fast. My limbs tingled as the alcohol took effect. The Commander leaned back, spread his legs wide, as if providing his arrogance room to stretch. He set a pack of cigarettes on the table. I reached for one without asking, and when I put the cigarette in my mouth, he proffered a lighter. I leaned into the flame, took a long drag, exhaled slowly. The cigarette made me dizzy. I inhaled again.

“Well, I enjoyed the run.”

He set his gun on the table. “That is good. There is certainly a lot to see around here. I hope you took it all in, what you people hath wrought.”

“Fancy words. You let me go on purpose.”

He smiled, and I marveled, once again, at the exceptional whiteness of his teeth, how they gleamed, wetly sharp. “You are smart. I like that too.”

I took another drag of the cigarette, ashed on the floor, crossed my legs even though it felt like something new tore inside me every time I moved. The cuts on my back wept angrily. “You are not going to let me go.”

“Is that a question?”

I smiled. “No, it is not.”

He motioned to the proprietress who brought us more drinks. It was all very civilized. We sat, talking, though not like friends.

“You wouldn’t be here if it were not for your father’s reluctance to pay what I am owed.”

“I wouldn’t be here if you hadn’t stolen me from my husband and child.” I pounded my fist against the small table. “You took me in front of my child,” I said. “My child.” It was more than I could take, sitting across from that man and his smugness, his righteousness and mine.

He waved his arm widely. “What about all the children who will never know anything but life here?”

I took a long sip of my drink, wanted to numb myself. “I did not create the problems in this country nor did my family.”

The Commander laughed, reached across the table, took my wrist in his hand, and squeezed, hard. “People like you always choose to absolve yourselves. You are complicit even if you do not actively contribute to the problem because you do nothing to solve it.”

I held his gaze. My rage engulfed my fear. The Commander was just a man, I realized, a small and petty man. “You are complicit too. Don’t think for one second you aren’t.”

A strange expression crossed his face. He released his grip, shrugged, then looked up at the television. An episode of Judge Judy was airing. We watched, silently, drank, smoked many cigarettes. I wonder what we must have looked like, me and my battered body, the Commander and his arrogance, the anger hovering between us muted by the sharp counsel of a television judge. The laughter began just beneath my breastbone and soon my shoulders were shaking and finally I gave in, threw my head back and laughed so loudly I am certain they heard me for blocks and blocks.

As we exited the café, the Commander carried me, his arms hooked under mine. I kicked and tried to grab on anything with my feet. I knocked over chairs, a table covered with empty glasses, kicked the doorjamb of the entrance. I would have done anything, absolutely anything, to save myself from returning to the cage, to the men who used my body. There was one moment when I was facing the interior of the café as the Commander struggled to hold on to me. I could feel how frenzied I looked, my hair, flying from my head in every direction, the anger in my eyes, the white heat of it rolling off my body, threatening to burn everything around me. I stared at the woman who betrayed me. I shouted, “How could you? We are both daughters of Dessalines.” She stood perfectly still. She did not blink. She did not look away with her dry eyes.

By the time we made it back to the Commander’s house, I calmed. He would take me to his room filled with the trappings of his lack of imagination. His anger at my attempt to escape would be cold, cruelly measured. I accepted this.

A Jamaican friend, Elsa, once told me of a popular lullaby from her country about a mother with thirteen children. The mother kills one child to feed twelve, and one child to feed eleven, and one child to feed ten until she is left with but one child, whom she also slaughters because she too hungers. Finally, she returns to the middle of a cornfield where she slaughtered her other children, where the bones of their thirteen bodies lay. She slits her own throat because she cannot bear the burden of having done what needed to be done. After telling me this story, Elsa said, “A West Indian woman always faces such choices.”

The Commander closed the door to his bedroom and stood against it, smiling. He is a man who smiles without any change in his eyes. His eyes are dull, uninteresting. There is not one original thing about the man except for the scar on his face. There was a different way to fight. I knew I needed to find it, to live, to make it back to those from whom I had been taken. He pulled his gun from his waistband and began running his fingers along the length of the barrel, over the trigger, the slight curve of the handle, a beautiful affair with pearl inlays. I walked over to him and got on my knees.

I would fight by giving him that which he did not yet want. I feigned surrender. I held his wrist gently, pressed my lips against the underside. I became someone different, a woman who could satisfy a man with his desires. I held his wrist and opened my mouth and swallowed the barrel of his gun, occasionally massaging his arm. The gun was hard. My teeth scraping the metal made me cringe. I did not show my disgust. I was becoming a woman who could be disgusted by nothing. The gun oil was almost sweet in my mouth. It coated my tongue and filled my nose. Even though my throat was swollen, raw, I relaxed as best I could and I took the barrel of that gun into my throat. I looked up at the Commander, who gazed back at me curiously. He leaned against the door, relaxed. I tried to breathe and treated the gun like I would a lover. I choked myself on that weapon, making soft, wet, strangled sounds. I could see how much the Commander appreciated the display, how his breathing changed, the stiff rise of his pants.

I stood and held on to him by the waist of his jeans. At the foot of the bed, I undressed. I did not shrink from the way he looked at me. Though I had little experience with men, I knew I had a nice body or I did before. I took the gun from him, and our eyes met. He was guarded as he loosened his grip. I set the gun on the bed, yearning to be able to pull the trigger. I undressed the Commander the way a woman who could want a man like him might. I began to forget everything I had ever known and anyone I had ever loved. I became no one. I became a woman who wanted to live. That was my fight.

I kissed his chest and the palms of his hands and pressed my cheeks against the palms of his hands. I think he trembled. I lay on his bed and set his gun over my mound. I spread my legs. I offered myself to him. The Commander wrapped himself around my thigh. He traced the bruises and blisters along my inner thighs with the end of his gun. He penetrated me with his gun and I raised my hips. I grabbed his shoulder, squeezing the thick stretch of muscle. I endured the pain. I was no one, so the pain did not matter. He kissed my thigh over and over, drew his fingers around the bone of my knee.

When it was the right time, when I knew he wanted me desperately, I told him he should put his gun away. I told him he had no need for it. I told him he should become his gun. He liked this. He was rough because he is not a man who knows how to be gentle, who knows how to handle precious things. He was not a difficult man to understand. He held my hair in his fist and put his mouth on my neck and put his mouth on my lips. I opened my mouth to him the way I opened my body to him, the body he had already tried to break but could not break. I was silent. I pretended I did not feel pain even though the only thing I felt was pain. My hands were not my hands. My body was not my body. He was loud, made a sound from deep in his chest like a roar and then he was completely spent; his body was heavy and immovable on top of mine. I raged beneath him, staring at the ceiling. In what was left of my mind, I screamed. I was alive.

I made my choice. There is nothing you cannot do when you are no one.