Page 17 of Sinister

The literature section.

Our congregation prides itself on being modern, on keeping with the times, but they still frown upon frivolous pursuits, especially for women.

In an age where women have already graduated with medical degrees, I am to resign myself to a lonely fate as a future wife and mother. Even the knowledge that women can receive degrees should not be attainable, but I read it in a newspaper once.

For all my education in philology and fluency in Latin and Greek, I am forced to only use those skills when reading religious texts. The church does not even call it education; that would be impossible for someone of my sex. Instead, it is seen as initiation in the religious texts, mandatory for girls and boys alike from the age of four until fourteen.

Why allow me to step into the world of learning, only to cut my wings just as I’m about to soar?

I can read Greek and Latin better than any classics student, yet my father will never allow me to enroll in a college even though I am already twenty years of age.

“They are deeply disturbed places. Women should not be freely walking around men,” he’d say. “It would invite temptation.”

As if the mere presence of a woman next to a man is enough to turn him into a primal beast.

Alas, the congregation certainly seems to think so. Even the sermons are performed in segregation. A panel separates the men and the women, lest they glance upon one another and fall into sin.

Our side of town is equally as divided. Women must wear a veil in public and cannot be seen consorting with unknown men.

Though I’ve only traveled a few times outside of Radcliffe, once to Boston and once to New York when I was around fourteen, even I know this is not normal. I’ve heard whispers of the suffragette movement, of women demanding more of society. They’re even aiming to gain a vote in the elections.

Preposterous, I know! If anyone from my congregation heard me mention this, they would brand me a heretic, not that I would mind it overly much. In fact, I would not mind it if I were excommunicated from the church, even if that meant being ostracized by my congregation and my family.

The issue is that I am barely twenty, with nothing to recommend me except my Bible-reading skills in dead languages and drawing, the latter of which I’ve kept a tight secret my entire life. Yet both of those things are useless in the real world, aren’t they?

If only those suffragettes won! If only they started a revolution to allow women to live freely as they like!

As it stands, I am bound by my ties to my community, my religion, and my sex.

That doesn’t mean I will conform forever. Only until I have a better alternative. If there is something I know from the depths of my soul, it’s that I do not want to become like my mother.

Alone in her world, never acknowledged, always isolated. She speaks, but no one listens. She exists, but no one minds her. And no matter how much I try to interact with her, decades of the same routine have been imprinted on her: I am female, too, therefore when I speak, even she does not listen.

My brother, I love to pieces. But at twenty he is becoming every day more and more like our father: cold, authoritarian, and self-important.

A fortnight ago, he had taken it upon himself to rebuke me for how I wear my veil. Too loose, he’d said. Too revealing. Boys his age talked about me because of that, and it was in unflattering terms.

The voices in the front of the shop become louder as one of the girls gets into a theological argument with Mrs. Jenkins. I recognize it as a purposeful tactic, no doubt trying to divert her attention while the other girls sneaked a peek at the forbidden books, too.

Farther in the back, I’m no longer visible to anyone. It’s just me and the books, and I quickly take advantage of the time I have to browse the titles. There are so many! I wish I could have a library of this size and diversity.

As my eyes scan the spines, I come across an intriguing title: The Portrait of a Lady. Curious, I reach forward to grab it at the same time as someone pulls on it from the other side.

Momentarily shocked, I let the book slip from my grasp. It slides out on the other side, leaving a small hole in between the other tomes.

Stark blue eyes stare at me with equal surprise. He looks to be slightly older than my brother. Dark hair curls around his ears, giving him a boyish look. But the strong angle of his jaw and the corded muscles of his neck leave no doubt that this is a man.

A beautiful man. The artist in me rouses to the surface, and my fingers start moving around in the air, tracing his features to commit them to memory.

I’ve never seen him before in our part of town, which means he must be an outsider. We don’t mingle with those of his “ilk” as my father would call them. It is a marvel that our community has survived for as long as it has in both seclusion and cohabitation with the rest of the world.

We live in the same town, but we are worlds apart.

His lips part on a wordless, “Oh,” and immediately my fingers stop.

The pregnant silence from before builds to an unbearable crescendo as I know what he’s going to say—what all outsiders say.

“You’re one of those. The weird ones who sequester their women.” Though my reply would be a dry, “I am standing here, therefore I am not sequestered.”