English - Fiction Coursework

Liberator

- Stimulus Text: The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

Stories are important. A moment to become someone else. A hero, perhaps. They keep memories alive, entire lives turned into inky words on a page. While what I have to say isn't all bad, the beautiful moments are stained – made unclean by circumstance. For that I am sorry. My story is real, but I’m not a hero. I’m just a man who got away.

 

I was born at winter’s end. Frosts were beginning to thaw, from beneath them new flowers made the most of the first sunlight of spring. I think of my birth often. Not because it was how I entered the world, but because it was how my mother left it. Atwood told me her every breath was jagged, unnatural, as if giving birth to another life was the most unorthodox situation a woman could find herself in. He was present for my birth. Not because he was my father – though he raised me as if he were – but because he was my mother’s greatest friend. The moment I had been expelled from my mother's body, the Aquila man assigned to my birth thrust the Bible upon her. I imagine her holding it, flipping through the pages until she felt moved by the Lord. I picture the Aquila taking the open book from her, reading the selected page, using it to decide what I would bring to the nation. The random nature of this selection was supposed to create peace, each human assigned to one of the five concepts required to maintain a functioning society. Is a captive bird ever truly at peace, even if kept in a pretty cage?

 

I could have been a Pureperium like my mother, there to bear children, or worn the heavy robes of a scholarly Noctua, the educators of society. I could’ve policed the streets, guarding the borders with the other Soleas, or perhaps been fortunate enough to become a ruler. Aquilas were the most entitled citizens, living luxurious lifestyles. Every parent wanted that for their children, few managed to bribe Aquilas with their bodies to give their baby a secure life. I was none of these. I became an Operatur. The lowest division. It became my purpose to work. I was dirty to them all. A disease passed on through eye contact.

 

The last thing that my mother did for me was give me my name. Eros. After the God of love. Atwood said this was a symbol of her undying love. She knew that she wasn't going to survive; there were no doctors or medicines in Deusled. If a person was meant to live then God would find a way. My mother had done her job, she was expendable.

 

When I came of age I moved into my new accommodation – a dimly lit apartment. Homes were styled to the occupant's division; I was a stray animal. I yearned for the airy kitchen of my childhood home; filtered sunlight trickling in like water from a tap – constant and cleansing. Atwood's home was my haven, designed for raising children. Mine was designed for cooking and sleeping. What more could an Operatur need? After a time, however, I participated in my own small acts of rebellion. I dug up a lily, white, streaked with yellow, and kept it on my bedroom windowsill. It became my secret power, the sole thing I had total control over. I could kill it, should I choose to. I never did.

 

I woke on the morning of my thirty-fifth year. The years of digging and building and heavy lifting had taken their toll on me. My hair was greying, my skin streaked with scars, but she didn't care. That day I was assigned to clean at a school. It clings to my memory like a drowning man to his raft. A blue-cloaked Noctua tried to help me mop up spilt paint that stained the floor red. Nobody helped Operaturs. She insisted that she at least made a cup of tea. I cried. I remember it vividly; the first time I’d been treated as an equal. We drank our tea, I regained composure. We talked. I was lonely, she was compassionate. That's what we told ourselves. It became our excuse.

 

Time passed. I worked for Lysandra often. Each time we talked a little, then a lot. We raised our white flags, surrendered to our desires. If what we had felt was simply lust my story would be easier to tell, but like leaves falling to the ground at the first touch of autumn's cold fingers, I fell for her. How beautiful that mind was, that body laying next to mine. Bare skin, illuminated silver in slivers of moonlight, rising and falling like the tide. Utterances of love dripping from lips like molten gold. Our love became our forbidden fruit, lodged in our throats, choking us gently, a desirable death. Pandora's Box had been opened. Acceptance that each meeting drew us closer to the cliff edge; the wind growing stronger. She said she’d rather die a rebel than live one more day a puppet. The wind became a storm when she told me the product of our love was blossoming within her womb. She said we needed to escape. To cross the border into a country she called Canada. If they discovered a Noctua was to have a child with an Operatur then we would die. Us three.

 

We ran. Empty handed, save for each other. We made it under the fence as the alarms sounded, sirens and lights, blinding reds and blues and the catch in my throat as she stumbled, crying out to me to keep going, to not look back or they'd catch us both. Branches clawed at my face, tree roots threatening to ground me with every footfall. The echo of the gunshot bellowed, sending crows scattering skyward. I didn't stop. But her heart did. Our child wilted. Turning back would be in vain, there was nothing left to save, they'd only catch me too; she’d have died for nothing. I was just a man who got away.

 

Stories are important. My story is important, filled with blood and pain and loss. It's a tragedy, but it isn't sad. It isn't sad because I loved, and my love set me free. My freedom may not have ended wars, but laying on the floor somewhere is a shattered pot, spilt soil, a lily sat amidst the destruction. Someone will find that lily, that quiet rebellion, and perhaps replant it. Perhaps steal another, create a garden, find beauty in the forbidden, become a hero. Release the birds from their pretty cage. I am not a hero. I didn't save the millions. I saved myself. For that, I’m sorry.