Becoming Abigail

Then IX

She was in a bus on her way home from school. Early. Her cousin Peter was home from London and her father had sent for her. She already knew why. Something lying in the middle island of the freeway caught her eye, diverting her attention. It looked to her like the body of a baby, perhaps tossed from the window of a speeding car by a teenage mother unable to cope. It wasn’t an unusual thought in this country where the dead littered the streets of big towns and cities like so much garbage. But as they drew closer it was simply an untidy pile of rubber from a blown tire. Even though she knew it wasn’t the corpse of a baby, somehow the thought of death stayed with her. It should have been an omen, especially on this day, when she knew Peter and her father were talking about her going back to London with him.

Thinking of London and her cousin Peter reminded her of her father’s funny stories about his time there. He seldom told them because it invariably meant talking about Abigail. They had gone together. In 1950. Once or twice, though, he would share a story. Like the time he had gone round to look at a bedsit to rent. Not much more than a room with an oil stove for cooking and warmth.

White landlords, reluctant to rent to blacks, put up signs that read: No Blacks. No Irish. No Dogs. So he had been careful on the telephone when he called up, speaking in the most modulated accent he could summon, somehow managing to pass. He was counting on it being harder for the landlady to turn him down if he and Abigail were standing on the front step.

They arrived promptly at four p.m. as asked and stood clammy hand in clammy hand while they waited for the landlady to answer the bell. It was winter and the street lamps were already on to light the darkness that had fallen suddenly and densely at three. Her father cleared his throat and smiled reassuringly at Abigail as they heard footsteps approach the door. It swung open to reveal a white woman of indeterminate age — she could have been anywhere between fifty and seventy. She took in the grinning black faces on her stoop and with a short scream fell into a faint.

Terrified that she had died of a heart attack and that they would be held responsible, they took off at a fast trot down the street and didn’t stop for a good mile. Of course, he was laughing as he told her the story, and Abigail laughed along, imagining her mother and father running down a winter-dark London street. But she could still see the sadness haunting the corners of his eyes, and she was unsure if it was for Abigail, the humiliation of that day, or both.

When she arrived home after the bus ride, he was sitting on the front veranda supervising Anwara, the local carpenter, who was building a small house. That had been four years before, when she was just ten.

“What is it, Dad?” she asked as she fetched him a cup of cold water.

He accepted it gratefully and drank it in one long gulp. Snapping the dregs to the floor with one fluid arm movement, he asked her to fetch another one for Anwara before he answered. She did, and as Anwara drank, she walked back to her father.

“So what is he building? A dollhouse?”

“A dollhouse, humm?” he replied. “No, darling, it is a doghouse.”

“A doghouse?” she asked, surprised. She had never heard of a doghouse and had really hoped it was a dollhouse for her. What did Pedro, their three-legged dog, need a house for anyway? He had slept on the veranda under her father’s chair very happily for as long as she could remember. Mistaking her resentment for confusion, he explained how all the dogs in London had doghouses and since Pedro was getting old he thought it might be a good idea to build him some shelter from the elements. She didn’t respond and he went on to tell her how women in London sent their husbands to the doghouse if they misbehaved and assured her that as the woman of the house, she could do the same to him. She knew he was joking, but somehow it reassured her. That had been about a month ago. Pedro, however, never took to his new residence, preferring his spot under the chair on the veranda, and so a noisy hen and her brood occupied the doghouse.