Chris Abani - Becoming Abigail

“You can forgive a man a lot,” she said. “But not how he smells. The moment you can’t stand that, you can’t stand the man.”

So much lost.

Derek was the social worker who came for her the next morning.

Abigail found it hard to believe that this short balding man could help her in any way. But there was a kindness about him that was reassuring. He sat across from her, blinking rapidly behind his glasses as he read her file. She wondered what was written there. Girl found with penis in hand? Claims to have bitten it off? Was silent, withdrawn, malnourished, with the onset of frostbite, otherwise fine?

“What’s your name?” he asked, putting down the file as though he didn’t trust it.

She stared at him. Sullen.

“Do you speak English?”

That stung and there was the brief flare of anger in her eyes. He smiled.

“I’m sorry,” he said. He had seen it. She was impressed.

Most people she knew never really looked at her.

“Are you thirsty?”

She nodded and he got up and left the room, returning with a cold can of Coca-Cola and a KitKat.

“Where are you from?”

She popped the tab and took a deep drink of the cold soda. Then she ripped the chocolate open and ate quickly, ravenously, noisily.

“Where are you from?” he repeated. His voice was kind. Soothing. Showed no impatience. He took off his glasses and polished them as he waited for her to answer. She played with the empty can. He got up. Left the room. Came back. A second can of Coke. Another KitKat.

“What is your name?” he asked as she ripped into the drink and food.

Finishing, she sat back, belched loudly. He laughed. She smiled.

“Hungry?’

She nodded. He got up. Opened the door.

“Come,” he said.

She followed him, through labyrinth corridors, into the belly of the hospital, to a canteen. He gave her a tray and followed with one of his own. He watched her with paternal tenderness as she filled it until there was no more space for food. He paid and followed her lead to a table by a window. Sipping at his tea, his only purchase for himself, he watched her eat. Neither spoke for the half hour it took her to finish the two steak pies, three packets of crisps, a BLT, a plate of French fries, two cupcakes, and a Chelsea bun. Finishing the second of two cans of ginger ale, she sat back and looked at him for a long time. He had been reading a book of poems and he put it down on the table.

“What are you reading?” she asked.

“Dylan Thomas. You want to hear?” Not waiting for a reply, he read a line, his favorite. “And death shall have nodominion.”

She nodded. Not Chinese poetry, but not bad, she thought, but said nothing.

“I’m Derek,” he said, offering her his hand to shake. She took hold of it, noting its softness, the faint smell of soap. She brought it to her cheek. She smiled. Then she put her head down on the canteen table and fell asleep, still holding his hand. He was still there when she woke up four hours later. His hand was numb, but he said nothing. She got up, stretched, yawning loudly. The canteen had closed. Apart from a cleaner pushing a mop reluctantly around the room, they were alone.

“I’m going to my room,” she said, leaning over the table and kissing him lightly on the forehead.

He sat in the gathering darkness, rubbing the spot where she had kissed him.

Even for the dead.

Second chances are a fact of life for the Igbo. A person who lived poor and was buried poor can, when a relative makes enough money, receive a second burial. Full of the pomp and grandeur reserved for the rich. So even in death, in Hades, the dead one can get a chance to taste the wealth that eluded him in his previous incarnation, perhaps sweetening the deal for his next one.

Why did these people know nothing of this? Of the complexities of life and how you can never recapture the way a particular shaft of light, falling through a tree, patterned the floor in a shower of shadows. You just opened your heart because you knew tomorrow there would be another shaft of light, another tree, and another rain of shadows. Each particular. Not the same as yesterday’s. Not as beautiful as yesterday’s. Only as beautiful as today’s.

Even the dead knew this.

The police search of hospitals had so far failed to turn up anyone with a missing penis.

Weeks passed and Derek visited her every day in the hospital where she was being held, although it felt more like a correctional facility. She knew it was his job, but with time she liked to pretend that he was her friend and that he came to see her because he wanted to.

They did become friends and gradually she opened up to him, told him a little about her life. He tried to put the puzzle together. Mother died during childbirth. Child probably abused by successive male relatives, ran away from home one night clutching that terrible legacy. Not uncommon. But no matter how hard he pressed, the memory of Mary’s eyes at the door on the first night of her rape kept Abigail from telling him or the police where to find Peter.

Derek’s colleagues recommended psychiatric treatment in a confined facility, but he fought them. He didn’t believe she was crazy. Meanwhile, the search for her parents turned up nothing. Even the name she gave, Abigail Tansi, drew a blank. It was like she didn’t exist. And she didn’t, because Peter had used a fake passport and a forged visa to bring her into the country and she was registered everywhere under that fake name, a name she had forgotten.

She was a ghost.

The comfort of simple things.

Coffee percolating. Cinnamon buns warming oven and home. Anicecold Coca-Cola on a hot day. Licking out the mixing bowl. Chocolate.

Childhood.

It was perhaps the one thing Abigail had never really had, and yet truly needed. Yet somehow, to be nostalgic in this way for a thing never experienced.

Not that anyone was to blame, she thought, blowing smoke rings that dissipated before they were quite formed. These things just happen. Ije uwa, as the Igbos would say. One’s walk in this life. Interesting that the Igbo don’t believe the path to be fixed, or even problematic. Destiny isn’t a deck of cards stacked up against you. It is the particular idiosyncrasies of the player, not the deck or the dealer, that hold the key. Personality always sways the outcome of the game.

She stubbed out the cigarette on the broad concrete balustrade she was leaning on, the ash-heavy tip drawing strange lines and squiggles. Random.

The memory.

Myth, yet still truer than any lie.

An old woman her father took her to. A witch. To exorcize this devil of a longing in her, his daughter. This longing for death and the ways of the dead. A wanton melancholy that was a deep wound keeping her from life. The old woman’s song that day that wasn’t a day but a dream:

The mind is a bag, we each wear it differently. A palm cancontain a star and yet we search for nothing. Here, child. Here.This is the heart.

And then, cutting strange lines and squiggles with a knife tip in the soot-covered earth by her hearth, sang on.

The heart is a cut. If there is only one opening, it grows wideand we die. Here I cut many openings, child. More than fifty.Straight and wavy. You will bleed many joys, child. How do yousay to a bird, there is no more singing? Feed it a peppercorn.

Then plunging the knife into the flames licking the hearth’s edge, she brought it up and cut Abigail twice on the face. On the left side, a straight line. On the right, a wave. Less than an inch long. Enough to break the skin, the hot metal cauterizing. Then laughing, she asked Abigail’s father to buy Abigail some jewelry. A bracelet. Some earrings.