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I have begun to notice pictures in my corridor and then even in my cell.
They are in my line of sight. Everywhere.
At first I never seemed to have time to look properly but now, perhaps because I am better at doing what they want me to do, I have time.
They all show a girl, like me, in the company of others. She is always happy. The people with her always seem pleased with her.
Here she is serving them tea.
Here she is cleaning a room. The sun is shining through the windows and everything is lit up with a golden glow.
Here she is in the garden picking flowers. It’s a summer day. She is wearing a loose dress and is barefoot. She always smiles.
Then, gradually the pictures change. Little by little. Do they change them when I am not looking? Or were they always like this and I have only begun to see them clearly?
The backgrounds are less general, more specific: things I have seen here. Places and rooms I have been to, here.
Finally, I recognise the girl in the picture: it is me.
Here I am serving tea to a man and a woman. I do not recognize them but in the picture, they smile at me.
Here I am helping the Domestics to cook
Here I am cleaning a room, Neena’s room
Here I am running outside with Neena: she has the encumberance of clothes. I am absolutely naked. Gloriously naked. I am not even wearing my chastity belt.
Here I am in the gym. You can see the definition on my muscles. It looks so sexy!
Here we are swimming in the lake and everyone is happy.
Here I am on my knees looking up. Someone stands behind me, their hand rests on my shoulder. I smile: fulfilled, happy, safe, at peace.
They are taking something from me again. The sense of anger I used to have because I had been stolen. The determination I used to keep inside me, the determination that one day I would see someone again – but I can hardly remember his name anymore. It was a man. Was it my father, or someone else? The sense that I was … was … who was I? I have almost forgotten now. Now I am the girl who is loved, because she is obedient. Fulfilled, because she serves. Safe, because she is confined. Happy, because she exists only for others. Her superiors. Her owners. Everywhere I look now, the image is repeated. Gently, persistently, beautifully, happily repeated: you are rabinya.
I will not be able to hold on to … to …. Jennifer Karin McEwan for much longer. She is like the sand in an hour glass. Each day more and more of her flows away and very soon now there will be nothing left. The pictures are helping to do it and they are everywhere I look. On the walls, in my cell, in my head after I close my eyes to sleep.
Everywhere the pictures whisper to me, “rabinya!”
Has the time come at last? To let the final grains of sand slip out of the hour-glass, taking the final vestiges of the person I once was away with them forever?
I think it really has. I am collared and chained and in prison here. I am to serve a life sentence. There will be no parole for me. I have been trained to serve with all my body, mind, heart and even my soul and to enjoy it, be fulfilled by it, to be at peace with it, even sexually excited by it. Could I ever really ‘go back’ if I was ever given the chance? I do not think so; not any more.
Perhaps I should ask Gaspazha Neena if there could be some sort of ceremony, to formally lay to rest the shreds of memory I still have of a life I once had, in another place, when I was someone else. A funeral for Jennifer McEwan, nee Palmer. An ‘interment of ashes’. To pronounce a final ‘farewell’ and leave these ghosts of my past, to rest in peace?
© Phil Lane & Freddie Clegg : 2011
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