Choices, choices, Chapter 2: Consequences

I sat at a woman’s dressing table, wearing only a silk wrap around robe. I could still feel the throbbing where the tubes supplying blood to my testes had been crushed. The DNA therapy, supplemented by a little surgery to pretty me up if necessary, wouldn’t take place until later, but the pain was a constant reminder that I’d made my choice. Granted, the alternative had been death, nevertheless I could never pretend that I’d been forced to do this. I’d had a chance to go down fighting. Instead I’d submitted to being made into a woman. Now all I could do was make the best of that choice.

Sitting on the table in front of me were a letter, a small lacquered box and a manual. The first two were from the parents who had bought me as a chattel bride for their son. I decided to open the letter first.

Dear Ruth it began. Well now I knew my new name at least. It could have been worse. It could have been Polly. Ruth. I was Ruth. Oh God.

This is a family name and with it we welcome you to our family. It is also a Bible name. We don’t know your beliefs, but if you know the tale of Ruth you will know that she too left her land and family, to work amidst “the alien corn” and though it was hard for her she found a fine husband, just as we know our son will be to you and her grandchild became a King. We hope your children and grandchildren will make you just as proud.

Every word of this so far was simultaneously kindly meant and made me shudder.

You don’t know us yet, but please believe we love you as our new daughter in Christ and we have done everything in our little power to equip you and our son Ephraim Ephraim? Really? for your new lives. From everything we know you will live on your new land much as our colonial ancestors did. Those were the fathers and mothers of a mighty nation and a God fearing folk. We know you will be worthy of them. We know you did something foolish to be where you are but we know you never meant any harm. I had to stop there for a moment. The fact is, guilt for what I had done had gnawed me for all the months from that day to this. I hadn’t been driving, but my drinking can’t have been a good example and I’d freely got in the car even though I knew my brother was too drunk to drive. Forgiveness, even from strangers, touched me a little. I don’t know why. The victim’s parents had sent a letter explaining that, as Christians they had to forgive me and it had only made me feel worse.

Once you have become a Christian wife you will have the firm and loving guidance and authority of Christ acting through your husband to keep you on the straight and narrow so that your weaknesses cannot lead you into danger any more. Remember the words of the book of Timothy.

Actually, no I don’t, but something told me there would be a Bible available in my new marital home if I wanted to refresh my memory.

The little something in the box is a family heirloom. We have no daughters and so we would like it to come to you, our new daughter in law. Welcome once more to our family dear Ruth and our prayers go with you to your new home, With love and good wishes, Gideon and Esther Holmann

They seemed like good people. Utterly different from most I knew, but good people. I might want to laugh at their decades out of date religious views, but compared to Trump they were probably liberals, and if my parents had shared their views they might not have died drunk driving when I was twelve. Yes, the irony is not lost on me. I guess the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. There was a reason I’d clung to my brother against all sense. That doesn’t mean I wasn’t still paralysed with fear at what lay ahead of me.

I opened the box. Inside lay a silver chain with a locket. I opened the locket to see two cameo style pictures. One was a man in his early twenties with a lantern jaw, vaguely reminiscent of the late John Brown. The other was a woman with wavy red hair, a straight nose, a sprinkling of freckles and a sad smile. She looked familiar. With a queasy feeling I realised that I’d seen her before. Way back at the start of this ordeal some official had shown me a computer generated image of how I was expected to turn out if I opted for life as a woman. I was looking at my future self! Which meant the young man was…my future husband. Oh God, I was going to be sick. I put the locket down hurriedly and reached for the manual.

Biblical marriage on the frontier: a woman’s guide.
Welcome and congratulations. If you are reading this book then you are about to become (or have already become) a bride for a bold settler of our new frontiers. You have been given the chance to help make a better world and a better future for yourself and for God –fearing Americans. Had my new in-laws helped to write this book, I wondered

However, it is important to understand your role as a wife. You may have been born a woman but educated in the Godless days Before Trump. You may be a New Woman, as we like to call our fresh sisters in Christ who had the misfortune to be trapped in the wrong bodies before their follies revealed to the world they were unfit to be in charge of their own actions and a benevolent justice system gave them a new way and a better chance.

“And the Lord God said ‘It is not good that Man should be alone; I will make unto him an helpmeet for him’”

You are now exactly that – a helpmeet. Your husband is going out to make a new Eden for you and your children; he needs your support. He does NOT need a competitor, a critic or a rival. This is why you swear in your wedding vows not only to love and honour, but to obey.

“Wives, submit yourselves unto your own husbands as unto the Lord”

Moreover, you must understand that your highest priority can no longer be yourself but must be your husband and children. This is not degrading, but on the contrary, a life of highest service and pleasing to God. To quote the book of Timothy - Him Again! - “I will therefore that the younger women marry, bear children, guide the house..” In short, your place really is in the home and this is a good thing.

God and your Nation and above all your husband, to whom you belong in the eyes of God need you to bear children. How many is not your concern. Your husband’s job is to provide for them, yours is to raise them as happy, healthy God fearing American children. (You will, most likely, need to nurse them yourself for a longer period of time than you might have expected. Formula is rarely available on the frontier. For those of you who were men, you finally have a use for those nipples)

This does NOT mean your only role is motherhood or even offering material supports such as cooking and mending to your husband. You and he are each others source of greatest pleasure. As your family grows do not forget your body is there to please your husband, and that when you said ‘I do’ you entered into a lifelong contract in the eyes of God and man that you consent to do so whenever he should seek you.

The rest of the chapters in this book will help you gain the immense number of practical skills you will need from cooking meals to canning vegetables to weaving cloth. There will be many times when you will feel overwhelmed, but in all you do remember the words of the Bible about a virtuous woman “Her price is far above rubies.” What you are beginning now is a good and glorious enterprise and you are blessed by God.

Blessed to be a massively overworked baby machine who spreads her legs whenever she’s told! Oh my God, what was I going to do?? I looked out of the window. I couldn’t see a guard anywhere and I was on the ground floor. On the other hand, nothing could restore my balls. I couldn’t be a man anymore; at best I could be a eunuch. God dammit, why hadn’t I stayed sober and gone out as a pioneer myself? I could do with a nymphomaniac sloe-eyed helpmeet waiting on me hand and foot.
Because you were a lazy useless slob who was no good to anyone my inner thoughts replied and if you run you will be defrauding your nice, albeit nutty future in laws who probably spent their last penny on this. This isn’t what you wanted. That girl who died as a result of your night’s binge drinking didn’t want to be killed. Aren’t you EVER going to face the consequences of your actions.

Yes, but..

If not now, when? If not this way, how?

I..I..

I wasn’t decided yet. I might still run later. But however much I hated the idea of being a woman I couldn’t be a man again. I had to at least stay until my transition was complete. And whether I would try to run before I was made into Mrs Ephraim Holmann? I could decide that another day.
I slowly picked up the chain of the locket, that unmistakable piece of female jewellery, and carefully fastened it around my throat.