Page 33 - October 2020

Painting by
Parvathy J P

I was cast out. Box leaders wanted a younger woman to take my place, someone
they could train to submit to rules, someone with lower expectations.
Even if I stayed, in-box chatter suggested that wage reductions were expected for
women because the men were demanding what they called “overdue increases.”
Why suffer that indignity? There would be no going further for women under the
current system. Boldness was the only cure.
After I was let go, a man from the office reached out to me. He said that he’d fought
for me to stay, citing my experience and value to the company. The box CEOs
rewarded him with a pink slip of his own. They’d become wary of anyone that
advocated for women.
My husband, older, long retired, and content with his stipend, suggested I let it all
go, but I couldn’t. Lily had come home sounding like a corporate cog. She was
excited to meet the expectations of her male employers and insisted submission

would help her rise further than I had. It was all the same claptrap I’d told my
mother when I started at the company. Nothing had changed.
I decided to blow the lid off the place once and for all. I gathered the most radical
women I could find, women who’d protested with me for years. Women I trusted.
After years of disappointment, most had a hint of madness in their eyes. When
they’d whisper “dynamite” or “murder,” it was as if they were saying, “I love you.”
It’s funny, most of my life I was wary of radicals, now I was one.
~
The day the bomb went off it rocked the box from its bottom to its top. It blew a hole
in the ceiling that allowed scores of women and a few men to escape. I was
blindsided when Lily refused to come with us. She was too young to see clearly, I
had to leave her behind.
~
Outside there were boxes in all directions. We headed for the wilderness ready to

build a new world. I’d never felt more alive.
Now women outnumbered men. We bid our men to build a business cube,
something more matriarchal and modern than the male run boxes of the past. Men
prepared our food, cleaned our homes, and disposed of our waste. They had
burdened us, now it was their turn to toil. Besides, menial labor is men’s work.
Women set the rules, and only women can vote. We let our heels dig into their
backs because everyone knows you have to control one’s lessers to create a just
world.