Chris Abani: Becoming Abigail

She turned her attention back to the Underground map, mouthing the words of the stops as if they were a mantra that would reveal all to her. She let the vowels and consonants sink to the bottom of her mouth like the pendulous seed of a mango still holding the sweetness of flesh. She then dropped it down one more level and swished the words around the back of her throat as though gargling. Walthamstow. Mornington Crescent. Angel. Highbury &Islington. Finsbury Park. Tottenham Court Road. Oxford Circus. And on. When the train pulled into the lit-up tiled station bearing the legend Seven Sisters , Peter woke on cue and gathered the luggage. He stepped off without bothering to check if she was with him. Abigail hesitated at the gap between the door and the platform. In the sliver of darkness she saw a rat moving. It was oddly comforting.

“Come on,” Peter said.

“ Seven Sisters. Mind the gap ,” the station announcement said. “ Mind the gap.”

Landscape, in the sense of the sublime, might overwhelm the self.

Of course Abigail didn’t think that. Not in those words. As she smoked and squinted into the misty age of the river, the Thames, she thought: Thank God for maps. For a way to hold it all. She wondered how old it was. Donkey’s ears. She laughed. Mr. Ekwensi, her fifth grade teacher, always said that. Donkey’s ears. Old as. Why donkey years anyway? She lit another cigarette.

So much of love is memory, she thought, her mind tracing the outline of Derek. She had loved him so completely and he her. But what are the limits of desire? The edges beyond which love must not cross? Those were questions she had heard others discuss in these last few days. Discuss as if she was a mere ghost in their presence. Called this thing between Derek and her wrong. How could it be?

There is only so much we can do to save those we love.

This was how she found her father. Hanging. The week she was to leave with Peter. Hanging. From the hook where the ceiling fan had been. And now a cruel breeze blew in and he swayed in the raveling and unraveling of the hemp rope. Round. And round. Like a lazy Christmas ornament. And down one leg, and pooling on the floor, his reluctance. Yellow. And in the heat, putrid, rank with him. His life. His loss. And she didn’t cry. Didn’t seem shocked. Knew. Always knew. It was more a matter of when. And how.

She sat on the floor beneath him. Felt his toe brush her cheek with every turn. Turn by turn. His big toe. Spiced with his urine. And the uncut toenail, rough on her face. Sharp enough to cut. Cut a small line. Line linking her to him. Him held only by that line falling. Falling from the ceiling in hemp. Hemp becoming flesh. Flesh the fluid of him, leaking. Leaking down his leg. Leg ending in the toe. Toe brushing her cheek with a cut. Cut the line. Cut the line. Line. The rope. Rope-saw-rough voices. Voices calling. Falling heavy in the dust around her. Her sitting on the floor. Floor where his crumpled body was laid on the hard of concrete. Concrete falling away into the soft of loam and he falling. Falling into Abigail. Abigail, her, sitting on the floor. Losing him. Him losing her. Her. She. She the reason for him doing this. This love. Love calling to love.

She sitting on the floor. Floor patterned by the footprints of those voices who cut him down. Down from the line. She dipped her finger in the pool of him and brought it to her lips. The salt of him. The sum of him. There is no way to leave anything behind. She soaked her hands in him. Brought them wet and shiny in the sunlight to her face. Smeared. But water is just that. Nothing left behind but the prickle of his evaporation and the faint fragrance of loss. Loss: She knew this. Knew this. Knew this.

This wasn’t grief. Grief wasn’t the measure. Joy, joy, joy. Shameless. Shameful. Abandoned. Released. She rolled in it. It coated her in liquid and dust. There was no line. Just this wet muddy smudge of him, and the spent form of her.

And she laughed.

What is light?

The blinding of the Thames River Police strobing night and water. Bubbles of light riding the face of dark as the London Eye turned slowly. The people enclosed in the glass jar flickering against the background of light. Imagined laughter, like shadows, shouted across water.

In the scene there was nothing of her reflected. Nothing of her desire. And for this she was grateful because she was no more than a lonely self in dialogue with the dead. To see herself reflected would be to see the dead. Returned. Returning. When the dead do it, it is only despair. And revenge.

When she lit the cigarette.

It was more.

For the light of the match.

She inhaled. She thought:

This is a dark place.

Peter and Mary fought that night. The night Abigail arrived. The shouting had woken her. She crept out of bed, tiptoeing across the creaking floorboards to stand at the threshold of the door leading into the living room. Down a hallway she could see bedrooms, and at the end, Peter and Mary’s. The door was open and she watched them. They stood facing each other like actors in a paused movie. Abigail was caught in a bubble of time and silence, waiting, until: there it was again, the sound that woke her. It was like dry wood cracking, but not loud. It sounded like bones in a knuckle delivering an open backhanded slap. It was the sound of derision, for the softness of flesh, of the heart. That was the weight of the sound. Abigail flinched, her own knuckles clenching tight like a promise bound up in the hardness of bone. Mary didn’t move. Just sobbed. Abigail couldn’t imagine why Mary would let Peter hit her and not fight back. She was unsure what to do, but knew she had to do something.

They seemed to be arguing about her. From what she could gather, Mary did not want her there, which she found strange as they were really close. Another crack. Peter’s second backhand across Mary’s face decided it for her. She flew at him, gouging a deep furrow under his eye. He shouted and kicked wildly. One of the kicks caught her in the stomach. Knocking her clear across the room. He snarled at her and stomped off. Mary sobbed as Abigail cradled her, her breath shallow from the hate in her stomach.

“You should not have done that,” Mary kept repeating. “Shouldn’t have.”

A few days after her arrival, Peter took Abigail shopping. The shopping center was bigger than anything she had ever seen, at least in one building. The only thing bigger was the open-air market back home. She rode the escalators with trepidation. And Peter laughed at her. Called her a bush woman. Secretly taking pleasure in her delight at the window displays, and the racks and racks of clothing, and the soft carpets, and the bright lights, and the polite assistants.

If she noticed the disapproving looks the older women gave Peter as he bought her tight, revealing clothes made for women much older, she didn’t show it. Finally, he took her to the makeup counter of a store.

“Show her how to make up,” he told the assistant.“Show her, and then tell me what to buy.”

The assistant, herself no more than twenty, looked confused.

“But sir,” she said. “She looks too young.”

“That’s the problem,” he said. “Make her look older than a fourteen-year-old.”

Shrugging, the assistant did her work. Showing Abigail how to define her cheek bones with blusher. Brush the kohl-like mascara through her eyelashes. Deepen the dark of her eyebrows. Lift her lips from her face. Abigail leaned back as far as she could without falling out of the high stool. When she was done, both the assistant and Peter stared. Abigail was beautiful. And older.