The Gender Game

complications during my brother's birth.
"So you do have a brother?" Josefine asked.
"Not anymore."
"What happened to him?"
I hesitated before replying, "He failed the test."
"Oh, I'm sorry," Josefine said, subdued.
She understood that there was only one kind of test that a boy could fail in Matrus, and it had nothing to do with education. Other than the basic ability to read and add up numbers, boys weren't given an education like girls were, just an apprenticeship in manual labor.
The same was true of the girls in Patrus who weren't allowed to attend school like the boys. The only semblance of training they received was domestic.
I was grateful when Josefine redirected the conversation. Talking about Tim was painful. She asked what my favorite subject at school was and I immediately thought of my defense training. My lessons with Ms. Dale had been the highlights of my week. Ever since I could remember, my dream had been to become a warden when I grew up. There was something about their toughness, their strength, that I had always admired. I had never pictured myself pursuing any other occupation.
That had lasted up until the age of eleven when Tim had been captured.
A lot of things had changed in me after that. I’d found myself getting into fights easily and had visited the doctor for medication to ease my bouts of anger. Once Tim had gone, all of the attraction becoming a warden had previously held for me evaporated. After my brief spell of imprisonment for trying to smuggle a marked boy to Patrus, I’d still continued my defense training because, well… it was the only thing I really knew how to do well. And Ms. Dale had encouraged me to continue. She'd told me I had a natural instinct for fighting and that it would be a shame to let it go to waste. Maybe when I got older, I'd change my mind. I didn't think so, but I followed her advice.
Although it had been a long time now since I'd had any formal training, my instinct had never really left me. And over the years of incessant manual labor, my body had kept fit and strong. Plus, I'd grown in height.
"I wish I could be brave and tough like you," Josefine sighed wistfully as she dipped her hands into a trough of flour.
"You can be," I told her. "It's about your mindset. Refuse to be browbeaten. Like this morning. You didn't have to hand over your bread rolls. You could have refused, pushed past her, and gone outside to look for a warden."
Josefine nodded. "I suppose I could've," she mumbled.
I took my turn in asking her questions—her own favorite subjects, her dreams and aspirations. She told me she wanted to be an environmentalist like her mother. She wanted to help improve the soil in Matrus so that we could produce more natural foods and import less from Patrus. A noble career. I wished I had such a strong vision for my future once I got out of here. I still had two years ahead of me, but Josefine’s focus made me feel I ought to start thinking more seriously about what I was going to do with the rest of my life.
By the time it was time to stop work, I had developed a thorough liking for the young redhead. Perhaps it was just her age, but she reminded me of my brother—not the timid and shy side of her, but the fiery, feisty side that bubbled to the surface on occasion. I hoped she wouldn't lose that as she got older. If she received the right training and diet, she'd make a good fighter. Unlike my brother, she wouldn't be penalized for her boldness. Unless she started doing stupid things like brandishing dinner forks in a fight.
We hung up our aprons in the reception room and headed back to our room, where I picked up my nightclothes before heading out again to take a shower. My hair badly needed a wash and I was feeling dusty in the most unexpected of places from having spent the day in the mill.
I stood for a while in the shower, relishing the warm water gushing down my back. Showers, like rain, always had a way of calming me. The pitter-patter beat, the incessant contact. Nothing made me feel sleepy faster. But my shower turned lukewarm too soon—an unpleasant quirk of detention facility bathrooms. Wardens didn't want girls dawdling— they never wanted girls dawdling. I hurried to finish washing my hair before it could go ice cold. Then I dried, dressed, and left the bathrooms.
My eyes were beginning to droop as I returned to our door and I wanted nothing more now than to climb into bed and lose myself in sleep, even if it did mean skipping dinner. But my pleasant daze was disturbed as I arrived to find our door ajar. That was unlike Josefine, and I was sure that I'd left it closed.
When I pushed the door open, I saw Josefine trembling on the floor, her right eye bruised and puffy. Surrounding her were the contents of my suitcase, scattered all over the room. My gaze shot to my most prized possession. Tim's photograph had disappeared from my wall. And on my pillow… lay a pile of shreds. The only relic I had left of my lost brother, destroyed.
"Dina?" was all I managed to breathe.
Josefine whimpered a "Yes."
That photograph had survived with me through a lot of shifts and upheavals. The thought that it should be ripped from me like this, by that… that animal…
I wanted to both scream and cry at once. But instead, I surrendered to an emotion I had gotten to know all too well, and felt all too often, over the past eight years.
Anger. My fury consumed me and every fiber of my being felt like it was burning up.
I couldn't even bring myself to care if what I was about to do would prolong my sentence by months. Feeling my