Becoming Abigail

Then V

She stared at the thin undecided film of foam coating the surface of the beer glass on the table. It reminded her of the lake she used to swim in as a child. Not so much a lake, more of a swimming hole; a deep circular cup of rock that sat in the middle of the savanna as though a giant had put down his mug too hard, embedding it in the loose loam. Trees formed a protective circle and birds screamed rudely from the thick foliage.

The beer in the glass sloshed from side to side as she picked it up to clear the dishes from a late reheated dinner served to her father when he got back from the pub, hungry and tired. He had been impatient, making her give him the food near cold. Catching the light, the beer reflected it. The way the swimming hole would: in a bright smile. It reminded her of happier times. That is, until the grief over her mother’s death.

It was strange enough just to think about this as grieving. Her mother had died in childbirth — her birth. But this tradition recognized complex ways to be human, and she was allowed to mourn. It was considered harmless. Healing even. The only one who seemed bothered just a little by it was her father. He however deferred to the wisdom of the group and observed silently. Abigail often caught him looking at her and she wondered how it was for him. To watch his child, who looked so much like his dead wife, grieve. As though she was a young version of his wife, grieving her own death in advance.

He was good. Not interfering when she decapitated all her dolls and recreated a funeral for each one. He grew uncomfortable yet still remained silent when she shot six birds from the sky with her rubber catapult and stones collected almost as a meditation from the loose gravel bordering Abigail’s grave. He was silent even when she dressed them in lace torn from the trim of her mother’s wedding dress. Collecting sticks into bundles that she arranged in geometric patterns, she placed the lace-wrapped birds on these funereal pyres, deliberately holding each one over a candle that stood like a sentinel, until they filled everything with the scent of roasting meat and the revulsion of burning feathers. She took seven photographs of her mother from the family album, tore the faces out and turned them upside down with seven candles on them while she muttered an incantation over the torn faces. Collecting with the deliberateness reserved for communion wafers, she then took the candles off the photo fragments, picked up the fragments, and held the severed photos of her mother’s face up to the light before cramming them into her mouth. As he watched her, her father decided that she had crossed the line. She had watched him then with a calm that terrified him, strong even as he unraveled like an untrimmed wick.

The psychiatrist he took her to was overworked and underpaid and only interested in the truly mad. And there were no end of those in their town, wandering the streets naked and sometimes violent, occasionally attacking family members with machetes before settling down to eat the cleaved-off flesh as directed by some unseen deity or demon. The doctor had no time for a mildly confused and lost little girl who he felt just missed her mother, so he prescribed sweet-tasting children’s aspirin for her and sent them home.

So her father took her to the local witch. He didn’t entirely believe that she was a witch, or that there were real witches. As far as he could tell, she was just an old woman who profited on people’s fear. The old witch smiled as she first consulted a spread of cards and then bones and then coins, before telling him to go and buy a heavy silver bracelet and earrings to match, as she needed to use them to anchor the girl in this reality. Reluctantly he did as he was told. As the old woman slipped the jewelry on Abigail, her father asked her if it was necessary.

“Of course it is. You are a man. You know nothing about raising a daughter and buying her nice jewelry.”

That memory made her smile and she looked at her sleeping father almost tenderly. Putting the beer glass and empty dishes in the sink, she returned to wake him to go up to bed. But he looked so peaceful that she left him there on the couch, draping a lappa over him for warmth. As she turned out the lights, she was startled by how clear the moon was. And how beautiful the lone star next to it.