Time to Live

By R.J. Tennyson

“Listen to me, Steina. Listen very carefully. You must never leave this house. Never! It is not safe,” Mumma pleaded. “Do you not care about the rest of us?  Me? Your grandmother? Your baby sister?”

“Yes Mumma,” Steina answered, staring at the bare cold concrete floor of their 2nd-floor apartment. A cockroach poked its antennae-clad head out from under the fridge, before scurrying across the kitchen to the safety of the stove.

“We don’t need trouble. Especially the type the soldiers will bring. When your papa was alive it wasn’t so bad. He knew some of them from the factory. From before they were soldiers. He could pay them a little money to not cause trouble for us. But Papa is dead, Steina. Everything is different now. We barely make enough to pay tax and rent. What little food we have is supplied by The State, and that is barely enough to feed us all.”

Steina raised her eyes to meet her mother’s, defiance on her young face. “Then what is the point Mumma?” she asked. “This is not living. We are prisoners in our own home, and why? Because we were born women? It is not…”

Mumma struck Steina across the face with the back of her hand. A red welt began to form on her cheek. “Enough, Steina! Go to your room now, and pray. Pray for us all. For our protection. I don’t want to see you until supper.”

Steina retreated quietly to her bedroom, tears of frustration welled in her clear blue eyes. She picked up the goatskin bible that had been in her father’s family since long before the citizens rebelled, and The State was formed. It was from the time when women were treated as the equal of men. She sat on the end of her bed and began to read.

I Timothy 2:11-14 – “Let the women learn in silence with all subjection. But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. For Adam was first formed, then Eve. And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression.”

This is not living, she thought. This is not living!

With a gentle nudge, Steina pushed the bedroom window open. Forgive me Mumma, but it is time to live. Sliding down the water pipe, Steina dropped the final six feet to the alley below. A startled ginger tom dropped a half chewed rat from his mouth, and darted behind a line of highly-polished chrome rubbish bins.

With her back to the dirty brown brick wall, Steina slid like a shadow to the corner of the apartment building. She crouched and peered into the street. At the end of the street stood a patrol. Four soldiers, in black highly pressed uniforms, the insignia of The State, a rising sun set behind a golden crucifix, adorning their shoulders. Each wore a white helmet, its mirrored visor covering their face and reflecting the rays of the morning sun.

An armoured food delivery vehicle turned into the street, and the soldiers turned to face it – their backs now to Steina. She darted like the ginger cat, across the street and into the adjacent alley.

There in front of her stood an oak tree. Its bold green leaves danced in the gentle spring breeze. With care, and without a sound, Steina climbed up and until she reached a thick lumpy branch 15 feet from the blue flagstones of the alley.

From the cover of the spirally arranged foliage, she could see through an open window, and into a sterile white classroom. Inside, in military precise rows, sat 20 boys, ready for their morning lesson. At the front of the room stood a tall bespectacled man wearing the same uniform as the soldiers. “Boys, today we will be studying basic algebra.”

Steina placed her hand into the hand-sewn pocket of her smock, removing a notepad made from torn squares of meat wrapping, and a pencil, crudely fashioned from an inch of charcoal from the hearth.

It is time to live.