by Greta Boris
The woman.
She ran to the squint to check on her.
Labored pants filled her ears. Abby gripped her hair and squeezed her eyes shut. Think. Think. What could she do? She had no phone. It was the middle of the night, if she called out for help, no one would hear.
She threw herself against the iron bars of the squint in frustration. It was a useless gesture. Even if she could remove them, she’d never fit through the opening. “Please, I can’t come out. I’m trying, but I can’t.” She heard the tears in her own voice.
Anguished moans were the only reply. The woman didn’t understand Abby’s words any more than Abby understood hers. She slid down the wall and sat on the cold dirt. She hugged herself with both arms and rocked as if she could comfort the stranger on the grass by proxy and began to pray.
As minutes became hours, her prayers for human help, became prayers for the ease of pain. As the moans became less frequent and more hushed, she prayed for the woman’s acceptance into God’s loving arms.
Abby wanted to watch, to keep a vigil. It was the least she could do. The only thing she could do. But emotion had exhausted her, and she dozed.
When she woke, black night had turned to gray morning. She stood, her body stiff and aching. She knew she should look out, check on the woman, but she was afraid of what she’d see.
She dragged herself to the squint and peered through the bars. The form on the grass was young, a girl, not a woman. She was younger than Abby’s twenty-eight years, but her face had been aged by illness, or neglect, or both. Her eyes were red hollows. Despite the bloodless pallor of her skin, Abby could tell her complexion had once been olive.
She was slight, thin to the point of emaciation. Knots of elbows and bony forearms protruded from the tattered sleeves of a threadbare blouse. The only thing of beauty Abby saw was what she’d assumed to be a dog’s tail the night before. A ponytail of shining, black hair spread out behind the young woman, hinting at what she’d looked like in health.
There was no breath. No movement. And something in the way the body lay, told Abby it was empty. As if to prove the point, a squirrel scurried over and sniffed an outstretched hand. Moments later a scrub-jay landed only feet away and searched the grass for its morning meal, unruffled by any human presence. The girl was gone. Abby sank to the floor of her cell and let grief wash over her.
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