Free An Untamed State by Roxane Gay

call and only then did I give voice to my agony.
    The Commander released his grip and I fell to the floor clutching my arm. I tried to curl in on myself. The Commander rubbed his chin and stared down at me. He planted his boot on my head. “You will not enjoy the consequences of your petty defiance.”
    He sounded like a movie villain. I laughed and the Commander left me there, cackling hysterically.
    I often laugh when it is inappropriate. The first time Michael brought me to his parents’ farm, three hundred acres between Lincoln and Grand Island, he took me on a long walk around the property. We saw the corrals and outbuildings and acres and acres of pasture, an abandoned tractor, a couple of small oil derricks. As we walked, we held hands and he told me stories of hot summer days working with his father, early to bed and early to rise. He told me how once, when he was a boy, it was so cold, the cattle froze to the ground right where they stood. I laughed and laughed imagining a herd of cows trapped in shrouds of ice across the pastures. Michael’s face fell. We were silent for the rest of the walk and he began to walk faster. I had to run-walk-step to keep up with him until finally I was tugging at his shirt.
    Michael and his parents are proud of their land. His family’s roots, my husband told me on our first date, are so deep, they reach straight through the earth to the other side. My father feels the same about his land in Haiti though the roots on an island are, perhaps, not as strong because they have less to hold on to.
    The Jameson family farm is beautiful—everywhere you look, shades of green and gold and brown as far as the eye can see. Day and night, you hear the rustle of corn and soybean stalks as sweet as the ear can hear. And then there’s the stink of the pigs and their filth. Just after they’re fed, the pigs start to squeal. The sound is so high-pitched and heartbreaking, it makes my skin crawl. You can’t hide from the truth of life on the farm. We are animals and we eat animals and in order to eat animals you need to keep and kill animals. It took several visits before I was able to eat a meal at my in-laws’ table without feeling nauseous. I once joked, “This is the circle of life,” as we sat down to dinner and Glen, my father-in-law, informed me we were eating beef from a freshly slaughtered cow. Michael and his parents nodded and said, “Amen.”
    My sarcasm doesn’t really work in the country.
    The day Michael told me about the frozen cows I grabbed hold of his elbow and pulled until he stopped. “Did I say something wrong?”
    Michael shrugged out of my grip and stalked off. Over his shoulder, he shouted, “I need to be away from you right now. You can be so mean.”
    I made my way back to the house slowly, trying not to think about the way mean sounded coming from Michael, like I had committed a sin for which there could be no forgiveness. I found his mother in the kitchen baking a pie. I stood in the doorway and asked if there was anything I could do to help. She gazed at me curiously as she kneaded a thick mound of dough, said, “We don’t get much of your kind around here.” She paused, slapped the dough hard, sending white puffs of flour everywhere.
    My face burned hotly and my chest tightened. “Do you mean law students?”
    “Your clever talk won’t do you any favors here.” Lorraine paused, wiping her hands on her apron. “I don’t think you’re going to last. My son is having a little fun. He’s always wanted to go to the islands.”
    I didn’t know what to say so I excused myself, went and sat on the porch. The longer I sat there, the angrier I became. When Michael found me, I was crying.
    That night we lay next to each other, angrily, in his childhood bed, the detritus of his youthful accomplishments watching over us, me staring into his broad back. Every time one of us shifted, the other shifted in the opposite direction.
    Finally, I sighed loudly. “Maybe