Sunset

Gabrielle held Abbey's hands sternly, but gently. Abbey's dark skin felt leathery and worn against Gabrielle's softer flesh, and strands of coarse hairs from Abbey's wrists tickled Gabrielle's fingers. The room was quiet around them. It was not a quiet of two friends who were comfortable in one another's company and had nothing of great value to say; it was a sweaty, angry, heavy silence that ate at Gabrielle's stomach. She stared at Abbey, unwavering, even though the ape would not look her in the eye.
"I wish I could make you understand." Gabrielle did not sign her words as she was accustomed to doing in Abbey's presence; the words would have no meaning, anyway. Abbey had, Gabrielle believed, a sign language vocabulary of about 2000 words. But the phrase itself was too vague, to abstract. I wish I could make you understand.
White walls pressed in around them. They had always been white walls. Gabrielle had wanted to paint them; after all, bright, primary colors were good for learning children, couldn't the same be true for apes? But Dr. Reese would have none of it. The scientific community, he coldly explained, did not use grant money to paint the rooms of the subjects.
Gabrielle had taken the hint but did put up Monet poster prints. Two, to be precise, one above the tattered floral couch, and the other near the doorway. "House of Parliament, Sunset" and "Woman Seated on a Bench": Gabrielle knew the formal titles but rarely registered them as any more of an understatement of meaning. The dark London sunset and the stark white of the lone woman's dress contrasted against the spattered greenery of the painting gave little brilliance to the room. The white walls reflected the sun that shone through the screen on the exit door, drowning out the paintings in a war of white and color.
At times over the year, during rare moments of comfortable silence, reading papers or preparing lessons, Gabrielle's eyes would rise to find Abbey staring at one of the paintings. Her dark, round eyes would be wide, fluctuating, flickering, as if she were creating a story in her head of what the prints meant. These were moments that Gabrielle recorded in her personal journal but never in her papers. What would it prove?
Gabrielle let her eyes shift to the hard wood door that led to the inside of the complex. It was set directly across from the metal screen door that pointed outside, to Abbey's small play area. Abbey's tense fingers pulled away from her grasp. There wasn't much left to do, at that point, than wait. Abbey knew the feeling of waiting, Gabrielle imagined, all to well. Every day she waited. Waited to be allowed to play outside. Waited to have her meals. Waited to no longer be alone in the small, white room. Now, Gabrielle learned what it was like to wait like that.
Abbey broke away and clambered to the couch. She pulled herself on it with her long arms and scooped a small brown bear with matted hair and only one eye into her lap. She stared ahead, maybe at the poster print, maybe at nothing at all; Gabrielle couldn't be sure. She regretted not having her journal, and then had to remind herself it no longer mattered anyway. Gabrielle stood and came before Abbey.
"What is wrong?" she said and signed.
Abbey signed and Gabrielle muttered the translation. Why Gabrielle mad?
Gabrielle shook her head. "Gabrielle is not mad. Gabrielle is never mad at Abbey."
Abbey cradled her bear in her tremendous arms. The small tattered creature shrank under her giant touch.
Gabrielle sat again on the concrete floor. Beneath her the stone was cold and biting; it seeped through her slacks like ice against bare fingers. A strong wind rattled the metal door loudly; Abbey's gaze snapped to the door, and she dropped the tattered teddy. Gabrielle rose to her knees.
"Abbey, paint?" she signed, desperate to distract Abbey from her apparent concerns.
Door forgotten, Abbey jumped from the couch and scrambled across the room to the activity cabinet against the wall. It stood about waist high to Gabrielle and stored Abbey's paints, crayons, books, and papers. Gabrielle fished out a few paints and a piece of stark white printer paper, and she lay them before Abbey on the floor. Abbey grabbed at the brushes and acrylic paint, and began to furiously scribble at the paper. Gabrielle watched her in silence. After a long year of watching Abbey scribble and color in this very room, Gabrielle knew better than to interrupt the artist when she was at work.
When she finished, she held up the paper. From corner to corner, top to bottom, Abbey had painted the paper completely black. Gabrielle took the damp paper from Abbey's hands.
"What does this mean?" Gabrielle signed.
This is how Abbey feels when Gabrielle is gone.
Gabrielle had no response. She set the black painted paper down against the grey floor. The paint had begun to dry in parts, dull black splotches surrounded by the glistening night of wet paint. She looked to the wooden door. The wind again had picked up and rattled the metal screen across the room; but it was not that door that concerned her. She knew that once she left the quiet wooden door, she would never come back. The Monets would be peeled away, discarded. Abbey would sit on her couch, teddy bear in hand, staring with her wide, dark eyes at the stark white walls, fate uncertain. Gabrielle would have to leave soon, quite soon. But not now.
She took the tube of black paint and dropped it back in the art cupboard. She fished out the other colors: hues of green, purple, yellow, red. She dropped them on the floor in front of Abbey, and turned to sign to her. Abbey's round eyes stared at Gabrielle as if the woman had lost her mind.
"Abbey and Gabrielle paint the walls."
Gabrielle picked up a brush, dipped it in the purple paint, and ran it over the wall in a clear, thick line. Abbey needed no other encouragement. She grabbed her own paintbrush, her large fist wrapped around the small, narrow shaft of the brush. They painted.
The metal door squawked and squeaked, and the wooden door stared on with what Gabrielle imagined as professional disdain. But she did not move from Abbey's side, their brushes in synchronized motion, as they bathed the white wash walls of the rooms in the colors of sunset.