The Twins

The Struggle

Everyone had told her it was a common development, and the family already felt ostracized due to being one of the only black and one of the only immigrant families in the entire town.

At school, the Roth children experienced racism. All of the Roth children, not just Abby and Abigail, were regularly bullied at their Welsh schools. It was so bad that they were allowed to leave school a few minutes earlier than all the other students just so they wouldn't have to deal with harassment while walking back home.

The bullying they experienced at school made them even more isolated. They soon refused to speak to anyone except each other, even the other members of the Roth family. Gloria and Aubrey were still holding out hope that everything that they were going through was a phase, and that the twins would grow out of it.

Instead, their behavior grew stranger. Soon, it was more than just speaking their own language to each other. The two girls synchronized their movements to be in tune with each other and were able to walk in perfect time. When people stared at them, they would both freeze until the passersby stopped looking at them.

Meanwhile, the bullies at school were becoming worse. It was like a loop: the stranger that Abigail and Abby acted, the worse the bullies' taunts and actions were towards them. And the worse the bullies were to the twins, the stranger that they would act. The impact of the effects of racism, especially at a young age, cannot be overstated.

Then their parents began to move around.
The Roth family kept relocating, first to Devon in 1971 and to Pembrokeshire in 1974. This was due to Aubrey's career in the Royal Air Force, but unfortunately, it only made Abby and Abigail continue to rely and only take confidence in each other, unable to make new friends or adapt to their surroundings.

They became more isolated. Even the rest of the family was beginning to take notice, and they had no idea why the twin girls were like this. There's only so long you can think of it as "normal twin behavior" when something drastically different is going on, and the Roth family felt like they were losing control.