Difficult Women

by Roxane Gay

  In my lab, things make sense. As a structural engineer, I design concrete mixes, experiment with new aggregates like fly ash and other energy by-products, artificial particulates, kinds of water that might make concrete not just stronger but unbreakable, permanent, perfect. I teach a section of Design of Concrete Structures and a section of Structural Dynamics. I have no female students in either class. The boys stare at me and after class, they linger in the hallway just outside the classroom. They try to flirt. I remind them I will assess their final grades. They make inappropriate comments about extra credit.

  At night, I sit in my apartment and watch TV and search for faculty positions and other career opportunities closer to the center of the world. There’s a pizza restaurant across the street and above the restaurant, an apartment filled with loud white girls who play loud rap music into the middle of the night and have loud fights with their boyfriends, who play basketball for the university. One of the girls has had an abortion and another isn’t speaking to her father and the third roommate has athletic sex with her boyfriend even when the other two are awake; she has a child but the child lives with her father. I do not want to know any of these things.

  Several unopened boxes are sitting in my new apartment. To unpack those boxes means I will stay. To stay means I will be trapped in this desolate place for two years, alone. I rented my new home over the phone—it is a former dry cleaner converted into an apartment. There are no windows save for one in the front door. The apartment, I thought, as I walked from room to room when I moved in, was like a jail cell. I had been sentenced. My new landlady, an octogenarian Italian who ran the dry cleaner for more than thirty years, gasped when she met me. “You didn’t sound like a colored girl on the phone,” she said. “I get that a lot,” I replied.

  The produce is always rotten at the local grocery store—we’re too far north to receive timely food deliveries. I stand before a display of tomatoes, limp, covered in wrinkled skin, some dotted with soft white craters ringed by some kind of black mold. I consider the cost to my dignity if I move in with my parents until I feel a heavy hand on my shoulder. When I spin around, struggling to maintain my balance, I recognize Magnus. I grab his wrist between two fingers and step away. “Do you always touch strangers?”

  “We’re not strangers.”

  I make quick work of selecting the least decomposed tomatoes and move on to the lettuce. Magnus follows. I say, “We have different understandings of the word stranger. You don’t even know my name.”

  “I like the way you talk,” he says.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  Magnus reddens. “Exactly what I said. Unless we have different understandings of the words I, like, the, way, you, and talk.”

  I bite the inside of my cheek to keep from smiling. I have a weakness for charming men who make witty comebacks.

  “Can I buy you a drink?”

  I look at the pathetic tomatoes in my basket and maybe it’s the overwhelming brightness of the fluorescent lighting or the easy listening being piped through the store speakers but I nod. I say, “My name is Kate.” Magnus says, “Meet me at the Thirsty Fish, Kate.”

  On the drive there, I stare at my reflection in the rearview mirror and smooth my eyebrows. My groceries sit in a canvas bag on the backseat. It’s cold outside, I tell myself. They can wait and I cannot. At the bar, Magnus entertains me with the silly things girls like to take seriously. He buys me lots of drinks and I drink them. He flatters me with words about my pretty eyes. He says he can tell I’m smart. I haven’t had sex in more than two months. I haven’t had a real conversation with anyone in more than two months. I’m not at my best.

  In the parking lot, I stand next to my car, holding on to the door, trying to steady myself. Magnus says, “I can’t let you drive home like this.” I mutter something about the altitude affecting my tolerance. He says, “We’re not in the mountains.” He stands so close. The warmth from his chest fills the short distance between us. Magnus takes my keys and as I reach for them, I fall into him. He lifts my chin with one of his massive fingers and I say, “Fuck.” I kiss him, softly. Our lips barely move but we don’t pull apart. His hand is solid in the small of my back as he presses me against my car.

  When I wake up, my mouth is thick and sour. I groan and sit up, and hit my head against something unfamiliar. I wince. Everything in my head feels loose, lost.

  “Be careful. It’s a tight fit in here.”

  I rub my eyes, trying to swallow the panic bubbling at the base of my throat. I clutch at my chest.

  “Relax. I didn’t know where you lived so I brought you back to my place.”

  I take a deep breath, look around. I’m sitting on a narrow bed. I see Magnus through a narrow doorway standing near a two-burner stove. My feet are bare. A cat jumps into my lap. I scream.

  Magnus lives in a trailer, and not one of those fancy doublewides on a foundation with a well-kept garden in front, but rather, an old, rusty trailer that can be attached to a truck and driven away. It is the kind of trailer you see in sad, forgotten places that have surrendered to rust and overgrown weeds and cars on cinder blocks and sagging laundry lines. The trailer, on the outside, is in a fair amount of disrepair, but the inside is immaculate. Everything has its proper place. I appreciate that.

  “You should eat something,” he says.

  I extricate myself from the cat and walk into the galley area. Magnus invites me to sit at the table and he sets a plate of dry scrambled eggs and a mug of coffee in front of me. My stomach roils wildly. I wrap my hands around the coffee mug and inhale deeply. I try to make sense of the trajectory between rotten tomatoes and this trailer. Magnus slides into the bench across from me. He explains that he lives in this trailer because it’s free. It’s free because his trailer sits on the corner of a parcel of land his sister Mira and her husband, Jonathan, farm. The farm is twenty minutes outside town. There’s no cell phone reception. I can’t check my email, he tells me as I wave my phone in different directions, desperate for a signal. I ask him why he lives this way. He says he has a room in his sister’s house he rarely uses. He likes his privacy, he says.

  “You took my shoes off.”

  Magnus nods. “You have nice feet.”

  “Can you take me to my car?”

  Magnus sighs, quickly pours out the rest of his coffee in the small sink. He is a patient man. I like that, too.

  On the drive back to town I sit as far away from Magnus as possible. I try to re-create the events between standing in the parking lot and waking up in a trailer with a cat in my lap. I refuse to ask Magnus to fill in the blanks. At my car, he grips his steering wheel tightly. I thank him for the ride and he hands me my keys. He says, “I’d love your phone number.”

  I force myself to smile. I say, “Thank you for not letting me drive last night.” I say, “I don’t normally drink much, but I just moved here.” He says, “Yes, the altitude,” and waits until I drive away before heading back to his trailer. My father would appreciate the gesture. I remember the pressure of Magnus’s lips against mine, their texture and the smell of his bedsheets. I am in trouble.

  In my lab, things make sense. The first snow falls in late September. It will continue to fall until May. I tell my mother I may not survive. I tell her this so many times she starts to worry. I test cement fitness. I fill molds with cylinders of concrete. I experiment with salt water and bottled water and lake water and tap water. I cure and condition specimens. I take detailed notes. I write an article. I turn down three dates with three separate colleagues. The hydrologist from Chennai reaffirms the openness of his options in the United States. I reaffirm my uninterest in his options or being one of them. I administer an exam that compels my students to call me “Battle-Ax.” I attend a campus social for single faculty members. There are seven women in attendance and more than thirty men. The hydrologist is there, too. He doesn’t wear a wedding ring. I am asked thirty-four times if I am from Detroit, a new record for a single
day. I try to remember where Magnus lives and all I recall is a blurry memory of being drunk, burying my face in his arm as we drove, and him, singing along to the Counting Crows. I love the Counting Crows.

  There once was a man. There is always some man. We were together for six years. He was an engineer, too. Some people called him my dissertation advisor, which he was. When we got involved, he told me he would teach me things and mold me into a great scholar. He said I was the brightest girl he had ever known. Then he contradicted himself. He said we would marry and thought I believed him. A couple of years passed and he said we would marry when he was promoted to full professor and then it was when I finished my degree. I got pregnant and he said we would marry when the baby was born. The baby was stillborn and he said we would marry when I recovered from the loss. I told him I was as recovered as I was ever going to be. He had no more excuses and I no longer cared to marry him. While he slept soundly, I spent most of my nights awake, remembering what it felt like to rub my swollen belly and feel my baby kicking. He told me I was cold and distant. He told me I had no reason to mourn a child that never lived. He amused himself with a new lab assistant who consistently wore dressy shoes and short skirts even though we spent our days working with sand and cement and other dirty things. I found them fucking, the lab assistant bent over a stack of concrete bricks squealing like a debutante porn star, the man thrusting vigorously, literally fucking the lab assistant right out of her high heels, his fat face red and shiny. He gasped in short, repulsive bursts. The scene was so common I couldn’t even get angry. I had long stopped feeling anything where he was concerned. I returned to my office, accepted the postdoc position, and never looked back. I would have named our daughter Amelia. She would have been beautiful despite her father. She would have been four months old when I left.

  Snow has been falling incessantly. The locals are overjoyed. Every night, I hear the high-pitched whine of snowmobiles speeding past my apartment. There are things I will need to survive the winter—salt, a shovel, a new toilet seat, rope. I brave the weather and go to the hardware store. I am wearing boots laced high around my calves, a coat, gloves, hat and scarf, thermal underwear. I never remove these items unless I am home. It takes too much effort. I wonder how these people manage to reproduce. I see Magnus standing over a display of chain saws. He is more handsome than I remember. I turn to walk away but then I don’t. I stand still and hope he notices me. I realize that dressed as I am, my own family wouldn’t recognize me. I tap his shoulder. I say, “What do you plan on massacring?”

  He looks up slowly, shrugs. “Just looking,” he says.

  “For a victim?”

  “Aren’t you feeling neighborly?”

  “I thought I would say hello.”

  Magnus nods again. “You’ve said hello.”

  I swallow, hard. My irritation tastes bitter. I quickly tell him my phone number and go to find a stronger kind of rope. As I pull away, I notice Magnus watching me from inside the store. I smile.

  In my lab things make sense. I teach my students how to make perfect concrete cylinders, how to perform compression tests. They crush their perfect cylinders and roar with delight each time the concrete shatters and the air is filled with a fine dust. There’s a lot to love about breaking things.

  Everyone I meet dispenses a bit of wisdom on how to survive the “difficult” winters—embrace the outdoors, drinking, travel, drinking, sun lamps, drinking, sex, drinking. The hydrologist offers to prepare spicy curries to keep me warm, offers to give me a taste of his very special curry. I decline, tell him I have a delicate constitution. Nils, my department chair, stops by my office. He says, “How are you holding up?” I assure him all is well. He says, “The first year is always the hardest.” He says, “You might want to take a trip to Detroit to see your family.” I thank him for the support.

  * * *

  I am walking around the lab watching students work when Magnus calls. I excuse myself and take the call in the hallway, ignoring the students milling about with their aimless expressions.

  My heart beats loudly. I can hardly hear Magnus. I say, “You didn’t need to take so long to call me.”

  “Is this a lecture?”

  “Would you like it to be?”

  “Can I make you dinner?”

  I ignore my natural impulse to say no. I am more excited than I would ever admit. He invites me back to his trailer, where he prepares steak and green beans and baked potatoes. We drink beer. We talk, or rather, I talk, filling his trailer with all the words I’ve kept to myself since moving to the North Country. I complain about the weather. At some point, he holds his hand open and I slide my hand in his. He traces my knuckles with his thumb. He is plainspoken and honest. His voice is strong and clear. He has a kind smile and a kind touch. He talks about his job as a logger and his band—he plays guitar. When we finally stop talking he says, “I like you,” and then he stands and pulls me to my feet. A man has never told me he likes me. Like is more interesting than love. I stand on his boots and wrap my arms around him. He is thick and solid. When we kiss, he is gentle, too gentle. I say, “You don’t have to be soft with me,” and he grunts. He clasps my neck with one of his giant hands and kisses me harder, his lips forcing mine open. The flat softness of his tongue thrills me. He brushes his lips across my chin. He sinks his teeth into my neck and I grab his shirt between my fists. I try to remain standing. I say, “My neck is the secret password.” He bites my neck harder and I forget about everything and all the noise in my head quiets.

  I slip out of my shirt and step out of my jeans and Magnus lifts me up and sits me on the edge of his kitchen table. He places his large hands between my thighs and pulls them apart. I quickly unbuckle his belt, reach for him, and he grabs my wrist. He says, “You don’t get to be the boss of everything.” I say a silent prayer. I close my eyes and he drags his hand from my chin, down the center of my chest, over the flat of my stomach. He kisses my shoulders, my breasts, my knees. He makes me tremble and whimper. “You don’t have to be soft with me,” I repeat. Magnus kisses the insides of my ankles and then my lips, his tongue rough and heavy against mine. I try to pull him into me by wrapping my legs around his waist. He laughs, low and deep. He says, “Say you want this.” I bite my lower lip. I measure my pride against my desire. When he fucks me, he is slow, deliberate, rough in a terribly controlled way. I bury my face in his shoulder. When he asks why I’m crying, I say nothing. For a little while, he fills all the emptiness.

  In the morning, I want to leave quickly even though I can still feel Magnus in my skin. As I sit on the edge of the bed and pull my pants on he says, “I want to see you again.” I say “yes” but explain we have to keep things casual, that we can’t become a thing, though I don’t give him a reason. I don’t have one, not one that would make any kind of sense. He traces my naked spine with his fingers and I shiver. He says, “We’re already a thing.” I stand, shaking my head angrily. “That’s not even possible.” He says, “Sometimes, when I’m miles deep in the woods, looking for a new cutting site, it feels like I’m the first man who has ever been there. I look up and the trees are so thick I can hardly see the sky. I get so scared but the world somehow makes sense there. Being with you feels like that.” I shake my head again, my fingers trembling as I finish getting dressed. I feel nauseated and dizzy. I say, “I’m allergic to cats.” I say, “You shouldn’t talk like that.” I say, “I like you, too.” I recite his words over and over for the rest of the day, week, month.

  Several weeks later, I’m at Magnus’s trailer. We’ve seen each other almost every night, at his place, where he cooks and we talk and we have sex. We’re lying naked in his narrow bed. I say, “If this continues much longer, we’re going to have to sleep at my place. I have a real bed and actual rooms with doors.” He smiles and nods. He says, “Whatever you want.” After Magnus falls asleep, I stare up at the low ceiling, then out the small window at the clear winter sky. I wonder what he would think of Amelia, if he cou
ld love her. I try to swallow the emptiness. I hold my stomach as hot tears slide down my face and trickle along my neck.

  Just as I’m falling asleep, his alarm goes off. Magnus sits up, rubbing his eyes. Even in the darkness I can see his hair standing on end. He says, “I want to show you something.” We dress but he tells me I can leave my coat. Instead, he hands me a quilt. Outside, a fresh blanket of snow has fallen. The moon is still high. Everything is perfect and silent and still. The air hurts but feels clean. He cuts a trail to the barn and I follow in his footsteps. As Magnus walks, he stares up into the sky. I tell myself, I feel nothing. It is a lie. When I am with him, I feel everything. Inside the barn, I shiver and dance from foot to foot trying to stay warm. He says, “We have to milk the cows.” He nods to a small campstool next to a very large cow. I say, “There is absolutely no way.” Magnus leads me to the stool and forces me onto it. He hunches down behind me and he pats the cow on her side. He hasn’t shaved yet so the stubble from his beard tickles me. He kisses my neck softly. He places his hands over mine and I learn how to milk a cow. Nothing makes sense here.

  Hunting season starts. Magnus shows me his rifle, long, polished, powerful. He refers to his rifle as a “she” and a “her.” I tease him about his rifle and call her his mistress. He frowns, says he would never do that to me. I believe him. I tell him my father hunts and he gets excited. He says, “Maybe someday your father and I can hunt together.” I explain that my father hunts pheasant and by hunt, I mean he rides around with his friends on a four-wheeler, but doesn’t really kill much of anything and often gets injured in embarrassing accidents. I say, “You and he hunt differently.” He says, “I still want to meet your father.” “I introduce only serious boyfriends to my family,” I say. Magnus holds my chin between two fingers and looks at me hard. It makes me shiver. This is the first time I’ve seen real anger from him. I wonder how far I can push. He says, “You won’t see me for a few days but I’m going to kill a buck for you.” Five days later, Magnus shows up at my apartment still wearing his camouflage and Carhartt overalls. His beard is long and unkempt. He smells rank. He is dirty. I recognize only his eyes. Magnus steps inside and pulls me into a muscular hug that makes me feel like he is rearranging my insides. I inhale deeply. I am surprised by the sharp twinge between my thighs. When he kisses me, he is possessive, controlling, salty. He moans into my mouth and turns me around, pinning my arms over my head. He fucks me against the front door. I smile. Afterward, we both sink to the floor. He says, “The buck is in the car.” He says, “I missed you.” I want to say something, the right thing, the kind thing. I slap his thigh. I push. I say, “Please take a shower.” I don’t shower, though, not for hours.