Becoming Abigail

Now XIV

“Dreadful about Chechnya,” Abigail repeated over and over as she watched Bridget Jones’s Diary for the tenth time.

“Dreadful about Chechnya,” Abigail said to the sphinx, smiling at the memory. She had been trying to perfect her English accent. She realized pretty quickly, from the way she was treated at the shops and in the doctor’s office, that the English could forgive you anything except a foreign accent. The flat was silent other than the contortions of her voice.

She heard the key in the lock and paused the film as Mary came in. Abigail got up to help with the grocery bags. Chatting away in the kitchen as they put away the food, Abigail wondered absently if this was how it would have been if her mother lived. There was comfort in this simple task. The ordering of life in cupboards and refrigerator shelves.

Lingering over a cup of tea made in that special way (boiled twice in evaporated milk and ginger), she watched Mary, who watched the rain outside. The plastic climbing frame and slide set mourned in a corner of the garden next to the pink and purple Wendy house. Bought for a child who had died. Suddenly. Mysteriously.

“Do you miss her?” Abigail asked.

“All the time,” Mary said. Voice. Small. Distant.

“Me too,” Abigail said.

Returning to the present, Abigail lit another cigarette against the cold.

“Yeah, me too,” she said to the night.