Chris Abani - Becoming Abigail

“She knows how to use it, right?” Peter asked as he paid. The assistant nodded.

Abigail stared at her mother in the mirror.

She smiled.

Later, over a milkshake at McDonald’s, lured into safety by Peter’s generosity, she asked, “What happened to all of the other kids you took back? I haven’t met any.”

He smiled, “You’ll find out soon.”

That night, Peter burst into her bedroom. Late. Abigail started up as though a nightmare was following her into the waking world. Two men stood in the doorway. The hall light fuzzed them into dark-haloed shapes. From the feral breathing and almost soundless smirk she could tell that one of the shapes was Peter. The other was a mystery to her.

“Peter?” she ventured, pushing the bedclothes aside and making to get up. But it was the other figure that approached her.

“Hello,” the voice husked.

“Who are you?” she demanded.

“You don’t need to know that,” the man said.

He was now standing in front of her. Menacing. She tried to retreat under the bedclothes. He pulled them away. She scuttled back but he grabbed her and pushed his weight onto her. She fought him. Shouting. The sound caught deep in her throat. Calling for Mary. The man was like an incubus. The weight of his lust crushing her. The more she fought the heavier he got.

“Yes,” he grunted. “Fight.”

“Mary!” she screamed, finally finding her voice.

Mary appeared at the door. Tears washed foundation from her face in brown streaks. They locked eyes: Mary’s pleading with her as she stepped back, gently closing the door behind her. Peter smiled triumphantly; turning to the man, he said:

“Fuck her. Fuck her hard.”

The weight on top of her stirred excitedly. She closed her eyes and brought her knee up and all the fight went out of him. The man squealed and fell off.

“What! What the fuck!” Peter shouted. He made to slap her, but she caught his hand and bit deep, drawing blood. He yelled and then stepped back. Abigail was standing on the bed, eyes wild, the makeup she had been too excited to take off, smudged. The man on the floor was groaning. Peter helped him up. They retreated. She could hear muffled shouts, doors slamming, and a car starting up. She gave into her trembling and crumpled into the bed, sobbing. She didn’t hear the door open. Only felt Peter grab her from behind, forcing her face into the pillow. He handcuffed her. Arms behind her back. Slipped a harness with a ball into her mouth and over her head, chipping her teeth in the process. Grabbing her by the hair, he dragged her out of the bedroom.

“You want to bite like a dog? I’ll treat you like a dog.”

Abigail struggled as he half-pushed her down the hall and out into the backyard. Mary followed. Crying. Saying his name over. Softly.

“Peter. Peter.”

“Shut up or you’ll join her!” he screamed, rounding on her. But she was too far gone into whatever trance she was in and just kept repeating, “Peter. Peter.”

The ground was cold and wet with dew and frost and Abigail’s nightgown was streaked, dirty, by the time he stopped in front of the empty doghouse. He handcuffed her to the chain lying in front of it. She pulled against it. It was firmly embedded in the ground.

“This is what we do to dogs,” he said.

He spat at her and she flinched away. He turned to go, then stopped. Pulling his penis out, he peed all over her. Laughing as she thrashed about.

“That’s my dirty dog,” he said. “Dirty dog.”

And this is how she was made.

Filth. Hunger. And drinking from the plate of rancid water. Bent forward like a dog. Arms behind her back. Kneeling. Into the mud. And the food. Tossed out leftovers. And the cold. And the numbing of limbs that was an even deeper cold.

Without hands, she rooted around her skin with her nose. Feeling for the brandings, for the limits of herself. And then the urge came, and she held it away, held it away. Until she let go, she couldn’t feel the warmth wash down the frozen limits of her skin.

Without hands, she bit at the itches from blood vessels dying in the cold. From the intimacy of dirt. Bending. Rooting. Biting. Her shame was complete.

And Peter came every day. Twice a day. At dawn. At dusk. To feed and water her. With rotting food. Rancid water. Sometimes his piss. By the tenth day she no longer cared. Couldn’t tell the difference.

And when Peter was out. At work. The angel came. Sometimes it wore the face of Mary’s dead daughter. Sometimes Mary’s. Told her stories. How Peter had beaten the girl. Just months old. Because she wasn’t a boy. Beaten Mary. Until that night. When he threw her down the stairs. She fell on the baby she was holding. How the child died. Accidental, the coroner ruled.

And she wept as Mary warmed her limbs in the electric blanket. How Abigail would follow the red line in the snow. The electric cord becoming the umbilical for a new birth. A divine birth. And Mary’s tears would melt the snow. And Abigail would nod and whisper: I know. I know. I know.

And the sound of the words was a hoarse rasp. Formless.

And Mary would echo: I know. I know. I know.

And the sound was a woman crying in the snow.

Wrapping her guilt in an electric blanket. Wrapped around a girl slowly becoming a dog.

It was all grace.

Jumping down from the sphinx’s back, Abigail picked up the contents of her handbag and stuffed them back in. She paused over the book that lay where it had fallen open and she read:

A human being alone is a thing more sad than any lostanimal and nothing destroys the soul like aloneness.

She traced the words with the tip of her finger, stopping where the rain had smudged the phrase, the soul like, spreading the ink into an angel’s wings. She shut the book and opened it again at random. This was an old game she had played with the Bible as a child. To follow the guidance of whatever passage revealed itself. Fragments opened at the flyleaf, to Derek’s inscription.

Gentle Abigail, This book will show you that even thoughyou come from a dark continent place, you can escape your fate.Derek.

Fifteen days, passing in the silence of snow.

And she no longer fought when Peter mounted her.

Wrote his shame and anger in her. Until. The slime of it threatened to obliterate the tattoos that made her.

Abigail.

One night.

Unable to stand it anymore, she screamed. Invoking the spirit of Abigail.

And with her teeth tore off Peter’s penis.

In the ensuing.

There was no panic. Just the angel unlocking her cuffs. And Peter bleeding. Reddening the snow on this dark and rebellious night. Peter dying.

“Go,” the angel said.

“Go,” Mary said.

Abigail ran out, half-naked, the severed penis clutched in her hand. Though the streets were crowded, only a few people noticed this gorgon with bloody mouth and hands, and the grisly prize she held up like a torch as she ran.

Time bled into the cracks on the pavement until a passing police car picked her up.

From across the water.

It seemed like an endless train was coming, clattering over the rails of Charing Cross Bridge. Sex. That was what trains and tunnels reminded Abigail of. And lust.

She thought of the Igbo name for train. There wasn’t one. Or maybe she had just forgotten. She had forgotten so much, lost so much. Derek once asked her what the Igbo word for horizon was.

“I can’t remember,” she said, wondering how without a name she could describe its curve and keep from falling off the edge of the world. These are the places where desire collects, she thought, lighting another cigarette. She took a handkerchief out of her pocket and blew her nose. She held it there long after she was done. It smelled good. Smelled of Derek. In that moment she felt him rush into her. Following closely after, the voice of an aunt who once told her she left her husband because of how he smelled.