Becoming Abigail

Then XXXII

It was Molly. It was Derek’s wife.

And how many kingdoms had been lost for sugar? Or taken. The English knew all about that. About the slavery of desire. And so it was that the cocoa that Derek made to help Molly sleep, not sweet enough, led her downstairs.

Before death. And certainly before hell, there is always descent. Going. Down. Then death. And hell. Hardly a breath apart.

Turning the knob, opening. The door, opening. And there was Abigail, rump on the edge of the kitchen table, skirt up around her waist, naked breasts rubbing pert lines of sweat up and down Derek’s chest, ankles locked around his back. Lost in the hot damp of Abigail: Derek. And over his shoulder, the women locked eyes. Abigail smiled.

Then Molly’s scream. The stab. The look. Death. The look and the collapse onto the linoleum floor. Soft. Slow. Just as Abigail would have imagined it. An autumn leaf. Falling. Cocoa, like old blood, spilling down the front of Molly’s pale blue dressing gown. Rusting. Derek. Turning. Seeing his wife falling, even as his hips still jerked their urgent need. Then his mouth opened to call her name, screamed “Abigail!” instead, as he exploded into her.

Before he could pull up his trousers, Molly was gone.

Running down the street. Night. Late. Dressing gown stained with the bleeding of her pain. And then the police later. Derek looked cowed. Molly shamed, perhaps a little regretful. Abigail fought the blanket and the policewoman wrapping it around her. Fought the annihilation she could feel coming. The cold steel around Derek’s wrists wrapping themselves around her heart.

“Hush, my love,” he said. “Hush.”

Then night and rain. And the policewoman soothing her: There, there.

In her room. Back at the hospital. Still raining. In the distance, Nina Simone on some cleaner’s radio. I put a spellon you. In the distance.

Had her mother known this particular pain?

It didn’t seem possible. More likely that she was becoming herself, this Abigail. In this particular moment, in this particular way. As particular as the dots burning across her body, mapping a constellation.