Two

Breathe Easy informed me after my initial entry that I should go into more depth about myself. While I’m hesitant, they know what readers will want. Here, from my own perspective, is my story. 

It’s a tough story, I have to admit. For all my enthusiasm about the Breathe Easy excursion, I have less enthusiasm about the society I’m part of. No wonder I ended up in court.

Years ago, I worked as a personal assistant to an Arany self-help expert. His name doesn’t matter anymore – you can look it up if you really want to, but I don’t want to continue to drag his name through the mud. Anyway, there were several of us who were his personal assistants, and one of my fellow Gadhavi who worked there was named Alan. He took an interest in me when I started working there, just out of school, but I admit that I didn’t take much interest in him for a long time.

You see, although I had a secure job that provided the usual apartment, food, transportation, and stipend, I wasn’t happy. I’ve never been happy as a Gadhavi, really. I’ve always been curious about agriculture, knitting and sewing, and circuit-building. When I was a kid, with the excuse of being a history buff, I convinced my parents to procure books on all of these subjects. I guess in a way I am a history buff, because I certainly look to the past, rather than the present or the future, for hope.

Once, when I was 11, I tried to make my own dye out of oak leaves from the nearby park, but the resulting mess forced me to work two summers in a row to pay off the bill my parents’ company sent us. I destroyed the porcelain in the bathroom, I wasted water. It was awful.

But I couldn’t stop. Instead of trashing my old, torn clothes like most kids did, I made thin strips and taught myself basic weaving. Instead of sending my computer to the recyclers’, I lied to my parents and tore it apart to study the boards and crystals inside. I began sneaking seeds out of apples and planting them in the park near our apartment. They never grew into anything, but it was worth a try.

When I was in my last two years of college, focusing on writing skills, I finally got my own place through the school’s administrators, and started a window garden. I tried to grow everything from seed that I could get my hands on, even if I knew it might get too big for the box. I saw some sprouts on occasion, but I knew that I wasn’t growing proper window box plants. Those are things like herbs and flowers – I was using fruit seeds, since that’s most of what I could grab.

I was hired immediately to work with the self-help guru, which was a great job. Not only was I given an apartment in a nice part of town, and a decent stipend, I was guaranteed a certain amount of free time every week, with exceptions for busy seasons. I immediately filled my free time with trying to grow food from seed. I discovered, slowly, that there’s an underground network of meetings for people like myself who want to make their own products, regardless of the health and safety dangers. I joined a sewing group, and learned to stitch fabrics together. I joined a group of circuit benders, and learned to solder, although I never had a knack for technology. I joined a group of agricultural enthusiasts, who kept a plot at the other end of town from my apartment. When they offered me garden space, tools, and some heirloom vegetable seeds, I almost cried.

I had my weekend time filled, so when Alan asked me to go to dinner with him, or coffee, I refused him several times. He kept asking, though. I could see other women in the office eyeing him, especially after the first couple of years that I worked there. He was handsome, it’s true. I just had more interesting opportunities filling up my time off.

Eventually, though, my sewing group got busted. It was a week I didn’t go because I was sick, and spent most of my evening sniffling and redoing my personal budget so my time away from the office wouldn’t mean I’d get a bill from my boss. I heard they’d been raided a few days later, when one of the gender-neutral members, Zuzan, left a note under my door. Hand-written, of course, something I was in the midst of teaching myself to do.

So I had an opening in my week that I didn’t know what to do with. I mourned the loss of the group, in secret. But a few weeks later, when Alan asked me if I wanted to go to lunch with him sometime, I realized I could say yes.

I wouldn’t have a lot of opportunities to impress. I’m not a very attractive woman, especially compared to other personal assistants in the caste. I’m not unattractive, but I was so focused on gardening and mechanics when I was growing up that I never mastered the art of flattery, makeup, or keeping my seams straight. Fashion was beyond me, but not beyond most of the women in my office, who kept their hair perfectly coiffed, and managed to match their earrings to their nail polish, and their jacket buttons to their lipstick. It was intimidating. I realized, early on in my job, that I would have to take the first offer that came along for marriage within my caste. I didn’t want to disappoint my family, but I didn’t know how to go about landing a mate.

So Alan, a handsome, traditional Gadhavi, asked me to lunch, and I finally had no more excuses, so I said yes. We went out on our lunch break, and in traditional courtship fashion, he asked me to dinner that evening, which I said yes to. He took me to a lovely restaurant, where I drank a bit too much wine, which made me laugh a bit too hard at his dumb jokes. I wasn’t laughing for the reasons he thought I was laughing, which still makes my stomach churn with guilt.

A few weeks later, our garden patch was busted. I’d stopped going, in deference to dating Alan, because he was nice enough that I might consider his forthcoming marriage offer, but I mourned the loss of my cucumbers and tomatoes. I don’t think they found my DNA on any of the tools, or I would have been busted a long time ago. But the raid gave me more official time to spend with Alan. Soon, I dropped all of my Maker groups and settled into a routine of television and dinner and drinks with my partner.

About three months after we started seeing each other, he asked me to marry him. It was the earliest appropriate time that he could have proposed. I said yes, because I thought maybe, just maybe, this man made me happy. We were both history buffs, so we had something to talk about. Maybe comfortable and happy were the same thing. So we got married.

Alan actually found a church for us to get married in, allowing his history buff side out, researching what buildings in our area and credit range used to be. In an effort to create as little waste as possible, the vaulted-ceilinged building had been turned into a nondescript government office, perfect for an early and inexpensive marriage. We got a certificate, and signed it in front of two witnesses in the lobby. Some of the Gadhavi secretaries thought it was sweet.

So we began living together, as a married couple, with Gadhavi plans for children and an application for a larger apartment and a joint bank account and a joint stipend. We talked a lot about the future. I started taking medication for a consistently upset stomach, and Alan fussed over me whenever I felt ill, as a Gadhavi husband should. I rarely called off work because of the growing ulcers, which is what a good Gadhavi wife does. I managed our finances carefully. I made sure I got to work first, so I could leave first, to have dinner on the table for Alan when he came home, his smile wrinkling the dark circles underneath his eyes.

We gradually ran out of things to talk about.

At some point after our first anniversary, I began thinking about sewing again. My fingers were itchy with the impulse, but when we’d moved to the married couples’ apartment complex, I had thrown away all of my planting and sewing projects. But I wanted to feel callouses on my fingers again, from needles and gardening tools and pens with ink or solder in them.

I started making excuses for my absences in the evening. Working late was a classic, but sometimes I used the excuse of seeing my parents. I lied about their health. But really, I was going back to Maker groups. I found the group that had taken over the gardening bed and helped them replant, with aggression. I found a knitting group and more than once slept on the floor of the apartment that hosted the gathering. I soldered until I couldn’t breathe, and had to go to an oxygen bar to clear out my lungs.

I stopped offering excuses after a while, because it became customary for me to not return home more than twice a week.

Alan gave me nearly another year before he confronted me about it. He’s a gentle soul, but he does not like defying tradition, and it is not tradition for a Gadhavi wife to be gone so often for so long. He meant no harm, but I was scared.

I told him the truth, however. And he was disgusted. He immediately filed for divorce, and severed me from access to our money. That meant I had stipends piling up that I had no access to. I didn’t take him to court, because I had no money to do so. My employer didn’t care, and most of the personal assistants didn’t care, either. I started staying home more, which wasn’t a good solution to my money problem. I began selling vegetables from my garden on the side, just to get enough money to ride public transit. I barely had enough to eat.

Two weeks after I signed our divorce papers, security showed up at my new apartment. With hardly a word of explanation, they raided the place. They found notes on my lenses about meetings, and investigated the groups. They found fruit and vegetables that I had grown myself – they looked like nothing in the company stores.

I was allowed to stay in the apartment, but I was dragged to trial by the company. A company-assigned defender pleaded my case, and he kept arguing insanity. Pressure from my job, clearly, this had influenced my marriage and my dedication. How else could I act so outside of my caste?

I was headed home from the courtroom when I first saw an ad for Breathe Easy’s grand expedition to Europa. I gathered as much information as I could, losing sleep while making expensive long-distance calls to chipper customer service representatives. I never gave them my name, but when I finally had a long enough document, full of information about Rabbah, I presented it to my attorney. I would never be able to pay his fees, and I would never be able to pay my debts to my employer, unless I took this on. If I can mine enough water and oxygen from the seas of a distant moon, then maybe I can be free.

The most appealing part, of course, was getting as far away from Earth as possible. I am glad that I am able to repay my debts, but just leaving – this is enough. I am out of the way of society and living on my own terms. I know very few of you out there understand that, because things work for you and you’re happy enough. But I never was.

Now I can be what I want, without destroying everyone else’s lives. Also, I am so sorry for Alan’s sacrifice.