The Year of the Fruit Cake Read online

  I’m free.

  The documents tell me I’m free. Signed and finished and…free. And alone. We were separated and now we’re each on our own. I changed my life for his, but he couldn’t change his life for me. I was willing to try and he wasn’t. So it became a game to determine who was able to lose with most grace. Or maybe least grace. Neither of us handled loss well.

  I need to go back to university and get some qualifications for a job. This should lead to a career. This is what the counsellor says. I delayed my career to get married and it didn’t work. This isn’t a problem, she says. Living is a problem, I said.

  I never wanted to be single.

  The counsellor had so many things to tell me about this. She was like a textbook. My year is like a textbook. A textbook about divorce and grieving and wondering about the waste of human potential and why we couldn’t agree on the equal split of our possessions.

  Freedom is surprisingly bleak. That, too, is like a textbook.

  Notes towards an

  Understanding of the Problem

  “Do adults have BFFs?” Trina posed the question as if the fate of the world hung on it.

  “Don’t we hang around in posses and look cool?” asked Antoin­ette. “Isn’t that what grown-ups do?”

  “You look cool,” said Diana. “I merely look curious. Right now I’m curious about the source of this question.”

  “I was watching R.O.D the TV,” explained Trina.

  Most of the time, humans throw vague references as if they were casual toys for catching, and everyone’s expected to hang a whole conversation on them. Everyone, sad to say, includes me. And I am not human. I have smaller limits than them. Humans can hold three conversations at once, no-one’s following any of those three conversations properly, and I want to strangle everyone involved. Except that they’re already dead. I still want to strangle them.

  Sometimes I forget that these conversations happened sixty-one years ago. And I’m becoming so very human. I say all this stuff about how humans speak, and I compose it in the minute space between one word and the next as I watch the recording over and over, and then I’m proven to have gone entirely off-topic again.

  My habits of thought and speech demonstrate quite effectively that phenomenon that has been remarked upon time and time again: our race is in many ways sympathetic to humans. Not just our race. That sentence was ironic. To a certain degree, that Judgement was our neighbours judging us and also themselves.

  We all develop the same traits after we’ve spent too long in the actual or virtual vicinity of humans. This is one reason why techies stay apart. We who study closely become contaminated, whereas they remain pure.

  That day, Trina merely paused a moment before explaining, which I should have known. I’m learning more about my own learning and mimicking capacities than I am about humans, sometimes.

  Trina looked round, and smiled sweetly at the lack of comp­rehension in the assembled group. “Such blank faces,” she commented, equally sweetly. “R.O.D the T.V.—it’s a Japanese anime series, sequel to another. The only relevant bit is that one of the characters fixates on Anne of Green Gables, and she and another character swore eternal devotion as BFFs. I wondered who among my friends has BFFs. For the record, I had sequential BFFs when I was a kid and I swore each and every one of them lifetime devotion. These days I don’t. Don’t have BFFs, I mean. Although I don’t remember much swearing of lifetime devotion, either.” She said this last bit with a lift of defiance.

  “Doesn’t the woman of your heart count as a BFF? It would be logical if she did.” Leanne was just asking the obvious.

  “It would be logical, but alas we’re not. I think that’s half the trouble.”

  “My husband is,” volunteered Diana. “My first wasn’t, but this one’s a keeper.”

  “So some of us do and some of us don’t?” suggested Trina.

  “That sounds about right,” said Janet, “For I’m not going to volunteer my status. BFFdom is off limits.”

  “Fair enough.” Trina was equable. “How about aliens?”

  “What on earth do you mean?” asked Antoinette. “Why aliens?”

  “It’s an important question. Do aliens have BFFs?”

  “You could ask them,” suggested Diana.

  “First find me an alien, then I’d be happy to ask.” Trina looked around to demonstrate her cleverness. When the others laughed but no-one spoke up, she continued. “OK, so that’s a no-go. No-one’s willing to speculate on the BFFdom of aliens.”

  Antoinette laughed again. “Define the alien and I’ll speculate all you want. It will be unreliable, but I’m willing to speculate. I just can’t be bothered defining an alien.”

  “I have old friends,” suggested Leanne. “And I’m very alien in my own way. But I’m not offering myself up as your alien. They’re not always easy to deal with and they don’t always find me easy to deal with, but they’re amazing people who I have known forever and they’re very good to see. Old friends, not aliens. Though sometimes I wonder if they aren’t one and the same. How does that fit in?”

  “I have no idea. It’s a bit tangled,” admitted Trina. “I was wondering if I had a BFF, if she would know a way to deal with hot flushes, for I’m tired of them. I was wondering if there was a way of turning hot flushes into another conversation entirely, for they’re dominating my every moment right now. I spent last night lying on top of the bed with the window wide open, hoping it would go below zero so that I could get some sleep.”

  “I’m not sure that’s safe,” said Janet.

  “I’m not sure it is, either, but I’m running out of options. I handle the vicissitudes of old friends much better than I handle hot flushes. And all my old friends are vicissitudinous.”

  “Let’s celebrate BFFs, old friends, handling problems and the eventual loss of hot flushes,” suggested Antoinette.

  “Being alive and handling it magnificently?” asked Leanne.

  “Yes, that’s it,” said Diana. “My treat.”

  “Chocolate!” Trina smiled radiantly.

  It didn’t matter what places their conversations visited, they always returned to menopause and to chocolate. I believe one of my colleagues did a study of this. It’s not in English, however, so I will make a note to find it when I come to my conclusions here and am finished with the cultural embedding. It might be helpful as a transition, given how hard it is to emerge from embedding.

  The Observer’s Notes

  Someone who barely knows me gave me advice that she herself wouldn’t follow if someone gave it to her. She sees herself as unique and special. She sees me as a receptacle for advice.

  —noted at a meeting. I was probably the one who thought this, but am not certain.

  I think they’ve given me the wrong body. I’m pretty sure they have. It’s not my body, I’m certain. And it’s a bit too faulty. I’m too familiar with the medical system. I mean, I’m too familiar because I’ve been too much subject to it.

  It feels like a lifetime ago that I was worried about my DNA being different. It’s taken me months to discover this. Maybe years. How long have I been on this planet, anyway?

  I hate this body. That makes me a perfectly normal female, my friends say. Normal females hate their bodies. My one friend who doesn’t explains that it’s because she hated the male body she was trapped in. That I understand. It’s like gendershifting too early. If you gendershift too early, nothing works. It’s a foul feeling of non-alignment when that happens, as if the whole universe is dancing to a different rhythm. It can take almost the whole of the gender cycle to be aligned and for the body to work properly in its correct gender, and so you miss out on the joys of motherhood, or fatherhood, or courting, or…any of the genders.

  I hated my body just before I came here, too. I mis-shifted for the worst cycle. I did this at the very mo
ment I was compulsorily drafted into the Alien Corps.

  They needed someone notable. I don’t have enough memory still and have no idea what I was notable for, just that I was eminent enough to be drafted. I wasn’t myself, and they knew it. They waited until I was sorted and had moved on physically to a more stable state before they sent me to Earth, true. They had, however, obtained my agreement (using pressure—I remember my bitter fight) when I was in no fit state to win over the impossibilities that are arguing with drafting. Our government can be callous.

  Even though gendershift is not something this body knows, I hate it along with this body. Even though it isn’t even close to my body, I hate it.

  The only virtue in hating my body is that I can say so. It’s considered normal (although frowned upon) for women to hate their bodies. Humans are strange. Their bodies are strange. I hate this body, still.

  No matter how many good explanations there are for what I’m experiencing, I hate this body. And there are no good explanations, only bad ones.

  I rebel at this. Somewhere within me, I remember not hating my body. I also remember not bleeding, not crying, not bloating, not…not…not being this gender.

  Deep within me. In my core of cores. I am not a woman. I never was a woman. I tolerate being a woman because I must, because I can’t change my body on whim. But there is no gendershift. I cannot move on without help. There are ways of doing it, for humans are not so backwards, but we all need to change to our proper gender and I’m not sure my real gender exists in this species. I don’t think any of my real genders exist on this planet. I invent labels glibly, as if they do. But they don’t. And it hurts.

  When I first became self-aware, before I knew enough, I reported it. “I have the wrong body,” I said. “I dislike this body intensely.”

  They said, “Humans are gendered differently to us. Most don’t change in a lifetime. We chose yours because it best fulfils your function and your work. There is no wrong.” The one they gave me, though, isn’t true. It doesn’t stay fixed for a lifetime. Not quite. It wobbles around its gender axis. Also, I’m not true. I am still alien, inside. The alien erupting from inside me probably sent me to hospital last week.

  Whatever this body is or does, I’m always consistently me.

  I asked again, the next time I went in. “Oh, it’s just random,” the technician said. The technician doesn’t have a body on Earth. It works from a distance through all the machines. Everyone does, except us. Only the anthropologists have to make the big sacrifice.

  I won’t complain to the techs again. Even humans have a better chance of being in the right body than I have (despite the careful choice that was made for my function and my work), for they are able (under great duress) to say “Look, wrong body. We must modify critical aspects.” It’s not a simple change (Why isn’t it simple? Is it made difficult on purpose? I could ask, but the everyday feels difficult in this body and gender is one of the areas that humans do not like to talk about—they become oppositional and grieving and angry), but they can do it.

  I wonder if any humans are not male and not female and are also stuck? More humans in the wrong body, but with no recourse. Until recently, changes were—

  I have an answer! I shall pretend I am historical. A human from the time before self-realisation was acceptable. It’s the only way of continuing to live in this damn world of theirs when my own people with their twenty-five genders and their complex sexuality gave me the wrong damn body. A body that I hate. Blaming this body and blaming humans isn’t going to help at all.

  Where did that memory come from? I know the twenty-five and I know it’s the reason none of us are male. The technicians were just being cheeky when they talked about assigned gender being random. It’s not random at all. We’ve all been slotted into female bodies. Since the very first Earth exploration.

  Initially we are assigned to a place within a small range of ages that cover perimenopause. None of us will ever quite reach menopause. This is what is considered closest to our natural state back home. I guess it is, at that. None of us are males because males transform even less than females, and none of us can live without our transformations. Even if those transformations are more like wobbles. They are part of that core of me, even if I’m stuck in the wrong body. I can’t live without my transformation. I love it. I hate it. I miss it.

  I remember the emotions without remembering the shift. Damn mindwipe. Damn body. And damn the study of interesting species.

  The woman’s slow voice...

  was counting again

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, twenty, twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six, twenty-seven, twenty-eight, twenty-nine, thirty, thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three, thirty-four, thirty-five, thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight.

  Marriage #2. Not at all like my first marriage. No fairy tale. Just a simple signing of the Register and a dinner party with family. Maybe it’s still a fairy tale. Just a fairy tale for more mature people, who don’t love quite as abundantly, who are happy to work hard at spending their lives together but don’t have the emotions to spend on frippery.

  We had the emotions. I’m certain we did. One doesn’t marry if one doesn’t love, after all. I just don’t remember them as being overwhelming. I was swept away the first time. The second time I felt…domestic.

  Marriage was a part of my life this time. It wasn’t the whole thing.

  This doesn’t mean I don’t love. It means that I have perhaps another gap in my memory.

  I don’t know precisely what emotion I felt. I can’t chronicle it. I can’t recall it. It’s as if I were part of a story and not living the experience, and the person who made me part of the story forgot to give me suitable emotions for that day. If I were a reasonable person, I’d invent emotions. I’d make myself feel them. God knows, it would be worth it—this is a good marriage. We are very well suited. The friends who introduced us must feel very smug.

  Why don’t I remember much about my second wedding day, then? Maybe it’s all about being married this time, and the wedding was simply the icing on the cake? There has to be a reason, and it has to be a good one. I’m damned if I can think of it, though.

  My memory is full of the strangest holes. Some of them are explicable, but this one always escapes me.

  Every time I think of my second wedding, I stop and think: “Why can’t I remember how I felt?”

  The Observer’s Notes

  What signifies knowing the Names, if you know not the Natures of things.

  —Ben Franklin, read online (quotation not verified)

  Women’s lives are complex. I didn’t realise just how complex they were until I went past the studies of humankind (which are, I need to remind myself frequently, somewhat male oriented) and into the private lives of a few women. I didn’t know that hormones and their effects had such a large influence on everyday life. I certainly didn’t know the role life experiences played in pushing individuals towards or away from profound belief. Nor personal narratives. Nor public narratives.

  This whole story thing humans do is astonishingly central to their existence.

  I thought that inheritance was all, and that either cultural or genetic inheritance was responsible for most decisions. After all, they are a primitive species. Primitive, but it seems primitivism doesn’t make them less complex.

  For far too long I completely missed that women are treated differently to men within the convoluted cultural matrices. This means there are fewer opportunities for success, more ways barred (often subtly) and more chance that a given woman will suffer everything from small hurts on a daily basis to rape and being expelled from social groups. Less chance for establishing themselves in their own right. More likelihood that they will be judged on t
he work or life of their husband.

  I want to study what this means to my women. I ought to study what this means to my women. The limitations they face and the choices they have may be critical to the fate of Earth. This is a much more likely path to fruitcake than the chocolate was.

  It’s not so easy.

  I started to look into Leanne’s life after she admitted to being religious, and into Antoinette’s life after I discovered that she had not always presented as female, and into Trina’s life when I discovered that her female significant other was unreliable. These are big emotional aspects of the three women’s lives, after all. I could do a simple background chronology to explain where they came from until they reached that moment.

  I came into direct confrontation with the English language and with Australian culture. Biographies are set up for expected male life patterns. My women sometimes fell into those, and sometimes did not.

  Pressing their lives into this mould destroyed their individuality and it hid those things that made them the women who probably changed us all. Knowing when Antoinette began school wasn’t nearly as important as how she internalised and dealt with the messages she received about her gender, both at school and at home. Knowing that Leanne had suffered a series of very nasty incidents including personal violation was, also, far less important than how she turned this into a profound explanation of the universe. Knowing that Trina was good at school and treated badly in the workplace, was far less important than her everyday reality, which was as a strong woman with an inconsiderate life partner who she was unable to marry.

  This is why her partner was missing.

  They were not separated. Sometimes Trina grandstanded about separation, but they still lived together…when her partner was at home. That’s as one set of papers read. The others read differently. They read as if they had a working partnership, that Trina was committed to a full relationship and that her partner was not.