The Gender Game

by Forrest, Bella

  Her fingers flicked to the chair at her side. "It wasn't locked," she muttered, scowling.

  "Obstruction of entry to dormitories is forbidden," Ms. Maddox countered. "I do not want to have to remind you of that again."

  The girl rolled her eyes exaggeratedly and retreated into the room. Ms. Maddox led me inside. The windowless room was square-shaped and held very little, save for a bunk bed which Josefine had just climbed onto, the chair, a rickety table, and a chest of drawers.

  "Well, this is Josefine Rankin," Ms. Maddox explained.

  Josefine scrutinized me through the jungle of her low-cut bangs as she perched on the top bunk.

  "Hello," I said, offering her a small smile that she didn't return.

  "The bathrooms are situated to your right when you walk out the door, at the end of the hallway," Ms. Maddox explained. "Meals are served at eight, two, and seven-thirty. Work finishes at seven p.m. each day. Lights out at nine-thirty p.m., no exceptions. You should be asleep by ten p.m. Wake-up call is four a.m. You have thirty minutes to get up, get washed, and be downstairs in the work room."

  I grimaced. Wake-up call here was one hour earlier than even the sewage plant.

  "I trust that Josefine will answer any questions you may have," Ms. Maddox ploughed on. "At four-thirty a.m. tomorrow, you'll be given a briefing of your tasks. It's ten to eight now, so you'll have to wait until tomorrow morning for food."

  My stomach was rumbling after the long journey to get here, but I was used to skipping meals.

  "You'll find that most of the same rules apply here as they did at Divedun Sewage as well as at the textiles factory," Ms. Maddox continued. "Wardens roaming the building night and day, routine searches when entering and leaving the dining room, etcetera, etcetera."

  "Right," I muttered. I'd been searched before embarking on the journey to Merrymount, too. Nothing sharp was allowed in my suitcase, not even nail clippers. That was why there were never mirrors in the dormitories of these facilities, only in the bathrooms, which were monitored by wardens.

  "I'll see you tomorrow morning," Ms. Maddox concluded. She backed out of the room and clicked the door shut behind her.

  I turned slowly to the bunk, resuming my focus on Josefine. I cleared my throat. "You, uh, sleep up there, I assume."

  Josefine nodded.

  "Okay…" I heaved a sigh before dumping my suitcase on the lower bunk. I sat down, spreading my palms over the mattress and gauging its softness. A little softer than my previous bed. Not that this was saying much.

  I removed my boots and rolled off my socks, stretching out my legs and toes. I sat there for a few minutes in silence, staring at the blank wall opposite me. Then I glanced at Josefine, who was still sitting in the same position, knees drawn up against her chest, arms around her shins.

  "Going to the restroom," I murmured, before leaving the room and taking a right turn down the corridor.

  The bathrooms were clearly marked at the end and I moved inside to find a showering area and a row of sinks and cubicles. I stopped in front of one of the sinks to splash my face and caught my gray eyes in the mirror. I hadn't slept much last night and it showed. I looked like crap. My skin, lightly tanned by the sun, appeared dry and lackluster, and my black shoulder-length hair, normally dead straight, was crimped and escaping in all directions from my pony tail. I shook it out, running my fingers through it, before heading to a stall to relieve myself.

  When I returned to the sinks, another girl had entered—a girl I recognized instantly. Her features were ratty, with thin lips, a protruding upper jaw and lanky brown hair that clung to her scalp like a helmet.

  Vera Sykes. A girl who had almost caused me to gain a third infraction over the past five years due to a run-in I'd had with her back in the textiles factory. I had not seen her since.

  She looked just as surprised to see me, her eyes widening a fraction as she stared. But then she turned away abruptly, deciding to ignore me. She washed and dried her hands before sweeping toward the door. Though, as she brushed past me, she moved a little too close—managing to nudge me in the back. Then she sped up, hastening through the exit.

  Idiot.

  I couldn't stand girls like Vera. Girls with neither brain nor backbone. Her way of surviving the facilities was by becoming the full-time ass-licker of whoever she deemed the toughest person in the block… or the toughest person who could stand to be around her. She'd been friendly with me for a couple of days before I'd started avoiding her. After that, she'd gone behind my back and revealed her second face.

  Though in fairness, I wasn't good at getting along with people my age in general. I struggled to connect and was often labeled a loner. Not that I minded. Making friends in facilities like this wasn't encouraged. It wasn't supposed to be a social club and that was one of the reasons girls were uprooted and made to rotate the facilities.

  I returned to my room to find Josefine lying on her back, staring up at the ceiling. She didn't look at me as I entered, though she addressed me for the first time. "What's your name?"

  "Violet."

  "And… how did you wind up here?"

  I sat down before turning my mind heavily back to that fateful day at school. It had been a sticky Monday afternoon. I'd been fourteen years old when a girl two years my senior, whom I'd had a history of discord with, had picked a fight with me in the dining hall because I'd objected—in no timid words—to her jumping the line. We'd started with bare hands, and would have continued that way if she hadn't scooped up a fork. I’d reciprocated to ward her off, not to plunge the fork into her throat. But she had launched at me at exactly the wrong moment, and at exactly the wrong angle. She’d died in the hospital a few hours later.

  After that, my life became one of slavery to my country. Waking up at the same time every day, being carted from one chore to the other. And trying to stay out of trouble. I'd gotten into a few fights—only two of them recorded—but I had been careful to avoid the use of actual weapons. Weapon usage by anyone other than an authorized warden was strictly prohibited throughout Matrus; it was one of the most basic commandments of our monarch, Queen Rina.

  I didn't feel like spilling all this history to Josefine now. So I just replied, "I got into a fight with a bully… What about you? And how old are you, by the way?"

  I took a seat in the chair so that I could see her as we talked. She'd positioned her head closer to the edge of the bunk and was looking at me now.

  "I'm eight and a half… I'm only supposed to be here for another two weeks," she replied. "Mom was taken to the Drewsbury Center while I got stuck here. We got caught."

  I frowned. "Caught?"

  "Caught without permission, trying to return from Patrus. We wanted badly to move back here—it's our home. I was born here and so was Mom. But the Court was telling us we'd have to wait two weeks for approval. We couldn't wait that long. Mom was going mad, and she was going to get into a lot of trouble if we didn't leave Patrus right away. So she traveled back with me in my uncle's rowboat… We left Dad."

  It was disturbing that Josefine should be put in a facility like this one, which was filled with girls convicted of far worse crimes than premature migration. Her crime had not even been hers, but her mother's. But this was common of the Court's decisions. They were known to make statements, however harsh, to discourage the public from even considering infractions. Matrus' government frowned upon residents who decided to move to the patriarchy in the first place, so making it difficult for them to return ensured that they thought long and hard about their choice.

  "How come you went to Patrus to begin with?" I asked, although I hardly needed to. There weren't a lot of reasons that women who were born and bred in Matrus would migrate to Patrus.

  "Because of my dad," Josefine responded grimly. "He was born there. He moved to Matrus because my mom asked him to. They married here and he took her name. But he couldn't survive here. He begged Mom to let him take us back with him."

  "… And your mom co
uldn't bear it in Patrus," I finished. Just as marriages only usually lasted in Matrus if Matrus was all the man had ever known, the same was true of marriages in Patrus; women born there were conditioned to the ways of life in the patriarchy. They didn't suffer from culture shock as Matrus-born women did.

  A woman in Patrus had about as many rights as a pet animal. She couldn't legally reside there without being owned by a man, and even with a husband she was limited. She couldn't go out by herself, she couldn't work, drive, or own money or property. I'd even heard that their physical appearance and clothes were dictated by the man, if he so chose, and arguing was completely taboo. Women were dependent to a humiliating degree.

  I'd spent the last five years of my life as a Matrian prisoner, but even so, I was sure that I still held more dignity than I would in the patriarchy. I had never crossed the river to Patrus, as I suspected no self-respecting Patrian man would want to cross to Matrus, either (unless it was on business).

  Things weren't a lot easier for men here. Any Patrian male wishing to migrate to Matrus had to first undergo a full background check to shed light on any potential disruptive tendencies. Only if the man was deemed to be a low to moderate risk (it was rare for any Patrian male to be considered a "low" risk) would he be allowed to be coupled with a Matrian woman and adopt her last name. Retaining his ego was out of the question. No matter what qualifications he might have arrived with, he would be relegated to an occupation of repetitive manual labor—only sons of the Court were allowed to pursue the sciences or other intellectual professions. They weren't allowed to own property or assets, although they were allowed to drive and roam by themselves. This extra leniency shown toward them was made up for by the harshness of Matrus' legal system — there was little male-committed crime in Matrus for a reason.

  Such differing upbringings between Patrian-Matrian couples were all but impossible to reconcile in the long term. Veil River was known colloquially as Suicide Stretch, and there had been more than a few incidents of couple suicides over the years.

  Hook-ups between the nations usually only happened if one of them had an occupation that required them to spend time on the other side of the river, like trade officials, or negotiations ambassadors. The majority of women in Matrus either chose a Matrian partner, or opted to be without a partner completely and conceive in an insemination center. My mother had chosen the latter to have my brother and me. And if I ever decided I wanted a child, I would do the same.

  I didn't need a man in my life—not even a Matrian male—and from all that I'd been told by my mother before she died, I was better off without one anyway. Better to remain always self-reliant. Self-reliance means you're in control. Don't ever think you need a man for happiness.

  Besides, even Matrian husbands were a headache with all the accompanying paperwork and responsibility they came with. These days I had a hard enough time being responsible for myself.

  Josefine shuddered, horror swimming in her irises. "You don't know how bad it is in Patrus for us girls, Violet…"

  From the few papers I'd managed to get a glimpse of in the communal areas of my last facility, the situation wasn't about to get any better. The newly ascended King Maxen was proving himself to be a more ruthless monarch than his recently deceased father. He was rumored to be pouring a staggering amount of resources into the development of a new pharmaceutical drug that anesthetized emotions while sharpening logic and intellect—hardly the makings of an empathetic people. Reporters feared this would make Matrus' dealings with the nation only more strained in the years to come. Patrus' emphasis on drug development worried them especially, as Matrus' thus-far unrivaled expertise in the fields of biology and medicine was the one thing Matrus truly had to offer Patrus in exchange for water and fresh crops from the verdant mountainous region. Matrus could survive without Patrus’ trade, but it would make life more austere for all of us.

  Things hadn't always been this way.

  According to our history books, centuries ago, Matrus and Patrus didn’t even exist. They were one group of people, one band of survivors of the Last War that toxified vast swathes of the great land once known as America. The troop discovered a small haven amidst the wasteland of Appalachia—a haven that was the stretch of mountainous land now occupied by Patrus. All the survivors used to live on that side of the river, men and women. It was only after they began the work of building a new civilization that political divide struck. It started with a party of women protesting against the colony’s quickly forming male-dominated leadership. The party believed that if men were allowed to prevail again, they were simply creating a replica of the former testosterone-driven regime that had led everything to ruin. They argued that if they were to learn anything from the past and stand a chance of building a better future, women must finally take the reins.

  But the men in power refused. No satisfactory headway was made after countless meetings and protests. Thus, the female party had a choice: stay and essentially bite their tongues, or leave and put their beliefs into practice elsewhere. They opted for the latter after discovering that the land on the other side of the river, while not as conducive for living as their current side, was still habitable compared to everywhere else they had searched. And so began the split. It wasn't only women who chose to follow the female party in founding Matrus— a percentage of men agreed with their manifesto and followed them too. Similarly, a portion of women chose to remain under male rule. The most outspoken of the female party was put forward to lead Matrus as queen—Queen Daphne the First—and soon after, the first king was appointed in Patrus (whose name slipped my mind).

  To say that both nations had come a long way since their founding must be an understatement. We had so many structures and amenities and rules and restrictions in place now (not to mention the increase in population) that I found it hard to imagine what it must have been like in those pioneering days, hundreds of years ago. Certainly there hadn't been as many rules so early on—though, if I remembered my history correctly, the screening of “violent” boys was instituted by Matrus’ politicians pretty quickly, as well as the building of aircraft that were used to discover the mines in the Deep North…

  Josefine was quiet. Her expression had turned somber, distant.

  I left the chair and sank into bed where I began rifling in my suitcase for my nightclothes.

  "Do you have any brothers or sisters?" she asked. An innocent change of subject.

  My throat tightened. "No." I lied.

  "Me neither," Josefine murmured.

  I was glad that she didn't say anything more after that.

  After changing into my pajamas, I rummaged in the side pocket of my suitcase until my fingers ran over a thin smooth square and my mini-flashlight. I dimmed the ceiling light before crawling beneath my blanket.

  I switched on the flashlight, illuminating the most precious item I possessed: a faded photograph of a boy with eyes and hair like mine. My brother, at five years old, three years before he'd failed the screening. It was a picture of him on a swing, a broad grin splitting his chubby, mud-smeared face. A snapshot from a time when our life was happier.

  The photo had a bit of tape still attached to the back from where I had fixed it against my bedpost in my previous room. I stuck it against the wall now, level with my pillow, and stared at it long into the night. Far past ten o'clock. I replayed the months, weeks and days before his capture over in my mind and wondered if there was anything I could have done differently.

  I didn’t think so. My brother was what he was. A fault in Matrus’ system.

  Surrounded by Josefine's snores, I switched off the flashlight.

  2

  I felt like death when a blaring alarm sounded the next morning at exactly four a.m. I'd have to face the consequences of falling asleep so late for the rest of the day.

  Josefine leapt out of bed and I clambered groggily after her. Gathering up our clothing, we moved to the showers which, thankfully, were separated into stalls.
/>   After washing and dressing, Josefine and I followed the crowd milling down the hallway, heading for the staircase. I spotted Vera up front, standing next to the largest girl among us. The girl’s hair was so short and her build so wide, one could have easily mistaken her for a man from behind.

  I kept my eyes down, avoiding people's gazes, as we piled down the long staircase. On reaching the ground floor, we entered the work room and lined up in front of the machinery. At four-thirty a.m. on the dot, Ms. Maddox entered the room, holding her black registry book. One by one, she called out and ticked off our names.

  Facility registers were usually in chronological order, rather than alphabetical, which meant that the girl who had been called out before me—the troll of a girl I'd spotted earlier, Dina Bradbury—must've arrived just shortly before me.

  "All right," Ms. Maddox said, snapping her book shut. "Work begins."

  Everyone began moving to the machinery, while Ms. Maddox approached me and explained my responsibilities. I understood and quickly got the hang of the grinding machine she was asking me to monitor. It wasn't a difficult task.

  The hours blurred into one another, as I was used to them doing, and I stopped looking up at the clock.

  Finally, it was time for breakfast; we exited the mill and trudged along a pebble path toward a bleak brick building a quarter of a mile away which served as the dining hall. A buffet was already laid out. I'd lost sight of Josefine in the crowd, so I lined up with the rest of them and piled my plate with hot food. We were only allowed one plate per meal, so everyone filled it to spilling point.

  I was still looking for Josefine as I turned to search for somewhere quiet to sit. Then I caught a glimpse of her fiery red hair on the opposite side of the room. She stood with her back against the wall, while Dina loomed in front of her.