The Sisterhood

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I imagine different versions: where he goes gently; where he fights and wins; where someone (Mother?) walks in and finds me engaged in an undisputable sin.A log in the hearth pops like a child’s cork gun and I’m startled from my reverie.In this damask-draped room, apart from the gap in the curtains, the fire is the only light. Now sound is smothered: quiet only broken by the sounds of his breathing, my heartbeat, the faint tick of his mantel clock, the sounds of licking flames on logs – but together the room hushes, waiting to see what I will do. I’m waiting to see what I’ll do.I feel dangerous.Even in the gloom, his bedroom is familiar to me – too familiar my mother would say if she knew. But she doesn’t know. Just as it used to be, it’s now just me and him. I am not just here now – this room, his suite, is a palimpsest of memories, each laid over each other, different images, different emotions, different times. They are all within me.The clock ticks on.I have not got long – they are coming. I did not come here to do this, I feel like telling him, but despite my protestations, I have not put down the pillow.In the gloom I study my father’s face; jowls hang, his charcoal and ash-coloured hair swept back from his forehead, smoothed out of place perhaps, by my mother’s anxious hand. She could come back – or the men – and find me here. I need to decide now, while I still have time. Is my rage enough?Ceaseless, cold and candid – my rage is enough. I move the pillow closer to his face. Part of me watches with horror, challenging me: you won’t really do this, will you? Yes, I tell myself. I will. Because I want the chance to start again, to become someone else. I want rebirth.I will become Julia. PART ONE‘Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke… She will need sisterhood.’Gloria Steinem Chapter 1‘Julia,’ Cecily murmurs, her voice light, her touch on my arm lighter. Even in this thick, jostling, stinking crowd, she is grace personified. Her wavy, blonde hair is caught under a strip of blue material she’s reused from our uniform of blue overalls. With her hair pulled back, it is easier to appreciate her square, smooth face. Although I always feel calmer for Cecily’s presence (is it the carefully modulated cadence of her voice? Her reluctance to rush anything?), I don’t acknowledge my friend – not here where Big Brother watches us. Too much togetherness could look suspiciously like friendship. In Oceania, our relationships can only be like the uniform we wear: plain, basic and functional. Friendship is dangerous – why would we deflect any love owed to Big Brother into each other? It would be theft – and theft from Big Brother is punishable by death.Instead, we part as we wait in the crowds for the others to arrive.It’s not the law for proles to attend the weekly public screenings of the lottery – because there are no laws in Oceania – but every eighth day on each Fraterday, the effect is the same because it feels like every prole in London packs into every square, waiting for the numbers to be drawn.Around us is the press of unwashed bodies in the unexpected first spring heat of late March sunshine; their sour smell is pungent as they push and shove against me. ‘Why are you even here?’ snarls a dead-skinned woman.She can say that to me because as a prole she’s free to come into the squares, but as an Outer Party member, if I were to be caught in the prole parts of town, the patrols might take me in for questioning. She growls and shuffles as she readjusts her focus back to the stage. Just as well – she won’t get an answer to her question. The truth is, I’ve come to meet my Sisterhood. And today’s Sisterhood meeting promises to be special: Ruby has news for us.Every face is tipped up towards the mammoth screen that sits on top of a stage. It’s showing clips of brass bands, intercut with interviews of proles who’ve allegedly won the lottery. Now it’s mid-interview of a prole who claims he’s worked out the perfect system for forecasting the winning numbers. He admits he hasn’t won the big cash prize. What he doesn’t know, unlike party members, is that the big wins are a propaganda lie. Actors celebrate fake wins.I pretend to be interested in the interview – maskface – but I’m looking for the others. I spot Prisha in the crowd; she’s rowing with a man younger than her thirty-odd years. Jaw set, brown eyes burning with disdain, it looks brutal, but I know she’s just looking to blend in; blending in isn’t skulking in the shadows, it’s