“Abel?” she calls out, and then rises, composes herself, and goes into the living room to check. She finds the house empty. She feels another sharp cramp in her stomach that forces her to her knees. She looks at the floor and sees a spot of blood drip from her thighs, then another. She’s left a thin trail from the bedroom.
“Jesus,” she cries, as she feels a different kind of pain coming over her. A ripping, a tearing, as if her skin is peeling itself from her body, and then total stillness, as if her own heart has stopped. She knows that the child is gone, and she stays on the floor, letting the relief and guilt wash over her.
ABEL
After leaving the angry mother and stunned child, Abel once again has to weave through the masses—the enraged rush-hour drivers and the sojourning Rastafarians—to make it back to the station and finally clock out for the day. At the station he finds all the men gathered in a circle, cheering and laughing. The lockup is filled with Rastafarians. They have been flooded with complaints by “concerned” residents, but the police can do little about the influx of religious fervor throughout the city, except have a little fun. He thinks that they are watching a domino game, but when Abel joins the circle, he sees that they have one of the Rasta men strapped to a chair. Two rookies are at work cutting off his dreadlocks one by one with scissors. His sergeant, Singleton, has a straight razor and is working away at the man’s thick beard.
“You need shave pussy?” he asks when he notices Abel. Singleton was close to Bully and doesn’t hide the fact that he blames Abel for his death. Where were you, Abel? Where were you? How can Abel blame the man for not hiding his contempt? Abel was there and he did nothing.
“Abel, you get the bwai down yet?” Singleton asks, exchanging sly grins with the other constables in the room. The rest of the men, who all seem to share Singleton’s belief that Abel is a pathetic coward, pounce.
“Me hear them will send Abe fi stake out permanently in front of the bwai primary school.”
They laugh.
“You need backup, Abe? Me son will follow you ’pon him tricycle.”
They laugh.
“My wife a look one work. Why we nuh jus’ give her Abel job?”
He shouldn’t just take this. He knows that Bully would tell him not to. Abe, why you nuh just grab the man by him shirt neck and tump him right inna him face? Wha’ wrong with you?
If Abel were to break a nose, they would respect him. A little. He wouldn’t get in trouble. Instead, they would say, We never know you have fight in you, Abe.
Abel tries to recall how he felt just before he beat up Chester Brown, his former employer and the man Vera had been with before they got together. Even though only a little more than a year has passed, he feels like he was someone else back then. He never thought too far into the future, so he was never afraid. He hadn’t yet seen evil in the world up close. He worked for Chester to save to build his mother a bigger house in Harold Town. By then, she was the only family he had left. Yet the house wasn’t something they fretted over as he did now with Vera. Money or no money, he knew they would always find a way. He had thought Vera was far too young and too pretty for Chester. The man was greedy. He had everything and yet he wanted more. When Abel had heard Vera scream, it awakened a rage in him toward his employer that he had long stifled just to keep his job. It felt good to beat him. Now he looks back on the fool he was. He could have easily ended up in jail, but luckily Chester was too afraid of his wife finding out to go to the police. Abel didn’t understand then that there are forces greater than him, too big to fight, waiting to snuff him out as suddenly as they did Bully.
Besides, he doesn’t want this job, sees no reason to fight for it, but looking around the room he wonders if they will leave him with no choice. Abel knows now that they only want to push him until he quits on his own.
“Why in the hell you box the bwai in him face?” Singleton demands. The tone of his voice quiets all the laughter. “We try fi make sure we send you something on fi yuh level, and you show me you lower than even I did believe.”
Abel is caught off guard. He hadn’t suspected that word would travel faster than he did.
“Bully woulda hit the boy,” he says without thinking.
“Ah, is so it go now? You think you will be the new big man in here? Who ask you fi replace him? The man did trust you fi watch him back and you sit ’pon yuh backside inna yuh car and let him get chop up.”
The word chop pushes him back in time. He is there sitting behind the wheel of his police car, watching the man bring the blade down on Bully’s back as the other two men hold him. He tries to see their faces this time. He had told Singleton that they were Rastas, but now as he recounts the scene in his mind, he realizes he barely looked at them at all. In his dreams, they are faceless. All he saw were the blades, the blood, and his partner. In all likelihood they’ll never be caught, and he knows it’s his fault. In the face of a kind of violence he’d never known was even possible, Abel froze.
But what would these men do if they were faced with the same kind of bloodshed? If Abel were to take out his gun and open fire on all of them, would someone play hero? He is frightened by his own dark thoughts. The price to save face is too big, he decides. Instead, he imagines himself sliding his badge and gun across Singleton’s desk. For a brief second all of the fear and pain exits his body, and he knows what he must do. He plans to tell Vera tonight. Make her understand that there’s no way forward for him in this job. Some sacrifices are too much.
“Bwai, why you still in front of me?” Singleton shouts. “Matter of fact …” Singleton walks up to Abel and hands him a broom. “Sweep up,” he says, as the rest of the men retreat to the locker room.
Abel takes the broom, hesitates before letting it drop. Singleton has already turned to walk away by the time it clatters to the floor. They have left the man strapped to the chair, crying soundlessly, and the noise from the broom causes him to look up. He’s a man much younger than Abel first took him for, his youth hidden beneath all that hair. He looks at Abel and then at the hair at his feet with wet, bleary eyes filled with disbelief.
“It was nuh me who do it,” Abel says, looking in the man’s hazel eyes, but he gives Abel a look of such loathing that for a minute he truly feels as guilty as if he had actually snipped off the long dreads scattered on the floor.
Before going home, Abel sneaks into the evidence locker to pinch a little ganja. He had heard Vera vomiting in the bathroom before he left in the morning, and he hopes that it will help with whatever stomach virus she has caught.
When Abel arrives home, he finds his neighbor from down the street, Roman, pounding on the door to the metal grillwork, calling out his wife’s name.
Abel enters the gate, stands behind him, and observes quietly.
Vera doesn’t come to the door, and Abel watches Roman turn away, clearly frustrated. He jumps nervously when he sees Abel.
“Jeezam! Me never see you behind me. Why you sneak up ’pon people?”
“Why you a look fi Vera?” Abel asks, not bothering to feign concern.
“She say she will help me pick up a few things fi send to me wife over foreign,” he says. He walks past Abel and leans over their fence, looking out into the street, suddenly disinterested. Too disinterested. Of late Roman has been too friendly with Vera. This is not the first time Abel’s found him in his house when he wasn’t home. A week ago, when he came home for his lunch, he found Roman sitting in his living room. He should have said something then.