My Name

What is your name?  Aunt Ethel says. By her side her hand tenses, anticipating my response. In the Red Center the Aunts can't hurt us too much. But forceful correction is encouraged.

This is education, we're told, when we first come in. Fresh, raw, open – we are walking wounds. The Red Center and the Aunts work to keep the scabs from closing over. They keep us open to the new way of things, pouring salt into us until we willingly take the soothing water they offer, and close our eyes to the chains that come with it.

At night we share our whispers of how things used to be. We marched. We protested. We stayed home and we twitted and we liked and we shared. And still somehow we were taken by surprise. It turns out that simply believing it would never happen isn't enough.

As the weeks go by we talk less of what was, and more of what will be. The first night that one of us says that it won't be that bad we hiss her to silence. How dare you, how dare you, how dare you. We cover her in our own shame. Why don't you fight back? she cries, and we fall silent. You know why – the colonies, someone whispers. Was it me who said that?

The Aunts tell us we are free now, free from worrying about our safety, free from the unwanted glances of men, free from the endless battle to have it all.

I don't feel free.

There are small rebellions. The Aunts are eager with their slaps, their prods, their swift kicks. They wear us down with physical threats. They wear us down with verbal threats. Who among us would choose to be an Unwoman? To work ourselves to death on the vast agricultural lands, to die cleaning the radioactive wastes? We, still open, absorb the Aunts' words and let them grow inside.

We stop resisting.

The Aunts tell us that we will carry the protection of our Commanders' names. Tell us your names, they say, and the others reply Ofcarl, Ofthomas, Ofsamuel. I can't make the words happen. Aunt Ethel slaps, and prods, and puts me in the solitary cell, and then asks again the next day. And again I can't, and again the slap and kick and cell. Three days, and each day the same. Today Aunt Ethel tells me this is my last chance. I will be an Unwoman if I won't do this one simple thing.

What is your name?

Last night, in the cell, I could see a tiny sliver of the night sky through a barred window. I saw a falling star. What was it to be? A quick death in the colonies, or a slow death of everything that is me, losing pieces of myself every day? Why keep fighting a fight that is already lost? Wouldn't it be easier to accept?

I look at Aunt Ethel.

And I say my name.