What Remains of Rebecca Palmer Chapter Five

 

Chapter Five: Adjustments

 

I heard the bolt slide back before I heard the hinges creak.

 

I was sitting on the floor with my back against the wall, the blanket pulled around my shoulders, when the door opened and a man stepped inside carrying a pair of scissors. They were large, industrial-looking things, the metal dull and nicked, like they had been used for purposes other than hair. He did not look at me at first. He closed the door carefully behind him, then set a small stool in the centre of the cell. “Stand up,” he said.

 

My stomach dropped. I stayed where I was. “What is this?” I asked. My voice sounded thin, even to me. “Please. What are you doing?”

 

He glanced at me then, briefly, without interest. “Grooming adjustment,” he said. “Routine.”

 

“No.” The word came out before I could stop it. I pressed my hands to my head instinctively, fingers threading into my hair. “Please don’t. You don’t need to do this. I’ll cooperate. I have been cooperating. You know I’ve been cooperating! Please, let me talk to Michael!”

 

He sighed, as if I were being tedious. “Stand up,” he repeated.

 

When I didn’t move quickly enough, he crossed the room and took hold of me by my hair. His grip was rough and absolute as he pulled me to my feet and guided me to the stool as though positioning a piece of furniture. My knees trembled as I sat.

 

“Please,” I said again. “My hair - please. It’s all I have left.”

 

That was when he finally looked at me properly. “That,” he said, gesturing with the scissors, “is exactly the problem.” He gathered my hair in one fist at the nape of my neck. I felt the sudden, humiliating exposure of my throat as he pulled it tight. The first cut was loud in the small room — a brutal, metallic snip that echoed off the concrete walls. Something warm slid down my back as the weight disappeared. I gasped and twisted, reaching for it, but he pressed a firm hand against my shoulder and held me still. “Don’t move. This is the only warning I’ll give you.”

 

More cuts followed. Fast. Careless. He did not section or smooth or measure. He simply hacked, letting chunks fall wherever they landed — onto my lap, onto the floor, against the legs of the stool. Dark strands slid over my knees like something dead. “No – please – stop…” I was crying openly now, my hands clenched in the blanket, my chest tight with something close to panic. Each snip felt like a small erasure. Another piece of myself gone. He worked quickly, efficiently, as if this were an inconvenience to be finished with. When he was done with the back, he moved to the sides, cutting bluntly at jaw level, leaving one side slightly shorter than the other. He didn’t try to correct it. He didn’t care. When he reached the front, he grabbed a fistful and cut it straight across, too short, too heavy. The ends stuck out at odd angles, refusing to lie flat.

 

“There,” he said. He stepped back. I sat frozen, breathing hard, afraid to touch my head, afraid of what I would feel. When I finally raised my hands, my fingers met rough, uneven ends where my hair had once fallen smoothly over my shoulders. It barely brushed my jaw now, crooked and shapeless, the cut harsh and unfinished. Nothing framed my face. Nothing softened it. I felt exposed in a way I hadn’t before. Stripped. Made smaller. The man opened the door. “Adjustment complete,” he said, and left. The door closed. The bolt slid home.

 

I sat there for a long time, staring at the clumps of hair scattered across the cement floor. They looked like evidence. Like something that had been taken by force.

 

I did not pick them up.

 

I did not cry again. I was beyond that. 

 

I just sat very still, learning what it felt like to recognize myself a little less.

 

When I was alone again, the silence felt louder than the scissors had. I stayed on the stool at first, afraid that if I stood up I might see myself reflected somewhere — in the metal of the door, in the dark eye of the camera, in anything that might confirm what had been done. My hands hovered uselessly in my lap. Eventually, without quite deciding to, I lifted one hand to my head. My fingers met resistance almost immediately. Not the familiar fall of hair slipping through them, but a blunt, uneven edge. I pinched a section between my fingertips and pulled it forward, watching the short ends spring back as soon as I released them, refusing to behave. It felt dry. Wrong. Like it belonged to someone else. I gathered what I could at the nape of my neck, out of habit, and felt nothing there to gather. The absence hit harder than the cut itself.

 

I pressed my palm flat against the side of my head and swallowed. My scalp felt exposed, vulnerable in a way I hadn’t known it could. Air moved against skin that had never felt it before. Every breath seemed to touch me there. I told myself it was only hair and It would grow back. People cut their hair all the time. I had cut my own before, shorter for sport, tied back tightly for hockey matches, where I played in the First Team, trimmed and shaped and always conditioned with care. I had chosen those changes. I had stood in warm bathrooms with mirrors and soft light and made decisions about myself. This was different, I insisted. But I struggled to explain why, in words that didn’t sound childish even inside my own head.

 

I ran my fingers through it again, slower this time. One side stopped sooner than the other. The front caught awkwardly on my cheekbone. Nothing aligned. Nothing had been finished. They hadn’t even tried.

 

That, I realised, was what hurt most. If this had been practical — for hygiene, for regulation, for uniformity — there would have been rules. A standard length. A clean line. Something neutral. Something impersonal. Instead, it was careless. Dismissive. Ugly. It felt deliberate in its lack of care.

 

I hugged the blanket tighter around myself and forced my thoughts into order. There had to be a reason. There was always a reason here. Protocol. Assessment. Adjustment. Everything had a label, even if they didn’t bother to share it with me. Perhaps it was about humility, I thought. About stripping vanity. About reminding me not to cling to the wrong things. Ravenscourt had taught us that too, hadn’t it? That appearance was a tool, not a shield. That identity was forged in action, not adornment.

 

I almost laughed at the memory, a sound that never quite made it out of my throat. If this was meant to teach me something, it was doing its work efficiently. I felt smaller now. Less certain. Less inclined to argue, even with myself. Each time my fingers brushed the uneven ends, a quiet, corrective thought followed: don’t get attached. Don’t expect consistency. Don’t expect kindness.

 

I wondered if Michael would notice.

 

The thought surprised me with its sharpness. I imagined his expression — that mild concern, that sympathetic tilt of the head — and felt something sour twist in my stomach. If he noticed, he would call it unfortunate but necessary. He would tell me it was temporary. He would tell me it didn’t change who I was.

 

I wasn’t sure that was true anymore.

 

I slid off the stool and sat on the floor, carefully pushing the fallen hair aside with my foot, as if it were dirt. I didn’t want it touching me. I didn’t want to be reminded that it had ever been part of me. When my hand drifted back to my head again, it was gentler this time. Exploratory. Resigned. This, I told myself, was a small thing. If accepting it made everything else easier — the mattress, the shoes, the food, the warmth — then perhaps it was even sensible. A trade. A correction.

 

That was how this place worked, after all.

 

I lay down on the concrete and stared at the ceiling lights, feeling the short, uneven strands lay faintly against my jawline. I tried to imagine myself not caring. I tried to imagine a future version of me who would look back on this moment and think: that was nothing.

 

The thought didn’t comfort me.

 

But it stayed.

 

And in the quiet that followed, as my fingers stilled and my breathing evened out, I understood that something had shifted — not violently, not dramatically, but with a subtle, settling certainty.

 

They hadn’t taken my hair because it mattered.

 

They had taken it to teach me that it didn’t.

 

I don’t know how long I lay there before sleep came. For a few hours I escaped this place, despite the cold, hard concrete floor. I dreamed I was at that beach resort with Julia on the South of France last year – our reward for completing our final year at Ravenscourt -  where we sipped cool drinks in street side cafes and joked about the ever present two men who followed and watched over us as our personal security. Our fathers had both insisted that the men should lurk in the background like obtrusive shadows. 

 

“We have enemies,” my father had said, and at the time that had seemed ludicrous. Who would want to hurt me, or Julia? But the men were there – two ‘minders’ in non-descript casual wear and sun glasses, close enough to swiftly intervene if a situation developed, but far enough away that we were apparently alone. Occasionally, just for fun, we had played girlish tricks to make things difficult for our minders – darting swiftly down side streets, skipping along the narrow paths, laughing, ducking into shop doorways, prompting the men to have to break out into a short run so as not to lose us. It must have been very annoying for them, but we found it funny.

 

“It’s like we’re on the end of a leash,” said Julia, one day. Let’s see how far our leash extends?”

 

We went dancing that night in a series of respectable bars, and we drank vodka cocktails with pink paper umbrellas, and we laughed each time young French men came on to us. Our minders were always there, always in the background, always watchful.

 

We were Inner Party daughters of the Steel Worlds, after all. I had believed that meant something. 

 

The world would one day be ours. 

 

That’s what we had been taught at Ravenscourt.

 

The world will one day kneel before you all. It is you who will hold the switch in your right hand, not feel it across your naked back. 

 

Julia chose not to wear her white Purity Ribbon in her hair. It was a daring, somewhat audacious act of youthful rebellion, but it was tempered by the fact that New Feminism only had a niche foothold in the areas of the Mediterranean coastline.

 

“Hardly anyone wears a Purity Ribbon in Southern France,” said Julia, and I supposed she was right. “We’ll look like Mormon girls, or worse. I’ll tie the ribbon in my hair when we video call our fathers.”

 

It was a small act of rebellion on Julia’s part, but she was careful not to stretch her act of defiance to her choice of clothing. We maintained the respectable and demure dress code expected of us, with skirts that fell just below the knee at all times. 

 

“Do you think we’ll be Princesses?” Julia had asked me that night. “I mean, not the title, exactly, but, you know, like Princesses.”

 

“I don’t know,” I had said as I sipped my drink. “Father reckons we need another ten years before our authority is more or less absolute. Twenty at the outside.”

 

“Twenty years? I’ll be thirty-eight by then,” said Julia. “I’ll have stretch marks from breeding children for my Companion. I want to be a Princess now.”

 

“Well, father says it takes time. Little baby steps, he says.”

 

We had nicknames for our two minders: Brutus and Doyle. Officially we weren’t supposed to speak to them in public, or even acknowledge we knew who they were, but Julia in particular would delight in brushing past them, seemingly by accident, apologising profusely, as if they were strangers, and then giving them that coy, innocent look she did so well. She loved the sense of frustration she sensed the men surely felt. 

 

Doyle was the man who focussed on protecting me, and I would often have a lecture from him at some point in the day. “Don’t do this, don’t go there. Remember who you are. Remember who your father is,” and so on. I found it very intrusive. 

 

“They look strong,” Julia had said, that night. 

 

“Well, they would be,” I replied. 

 

“Imagine what it would feel like if one of them kissed you. Just imagine!”

 

We both laughed. The possibility was plainly ridiculous. Both men were trained to behave. 

 

That night a young French lad danced with me. I was coy, demure, but I had drunk three vodka cocktails and before I knew what was happening, the lad had moved tantalisingly close to me on the dance floor and would place his hand rather possessively on my bottom as we moved to the music. Doyle was suddenly there, and before I could even say anything, Doyle had dragged the boy away by the scruff of his neck. I watched, shocked, as the boy was marched out of the bar and into a side alley. Minutes later, Doyle returned, alone, and took his place at the bar again, watching me, as if nothing had happened. 

 

I was the daughter of an Inner Party member. I was inviolate. 

 

Doyle would always be there to save me, even when I didn’t know I needed saving.

 

------------------------------------

 

On the fourth day I was given food. It was a mushy gruel in a steel pan and I devoured it like it was the best sirloin steak I had ever eaten. Gruel smeared my lips as I scooped the mash up with my fingers and ate quickly like an animal that was afraid the feeding pan might be taken away at any moment.

 

“Filthy little thing,” said Hesther Cain as she watched me feed. “And to think you came from one of the great Families.” She walked around me, holding a long switch in her right hand. I flinched each time she moved. “You eat like a pig, Palmer. Like a snuffling sow. Is that what you are? A snuffling sow?”

 

I didn’t answer. I knew there wasn’t any point. She wasn’t looking for an answer. 

 

From then on I was allowed out of my room once a day, to join a queue of other women to receive food. I was told this was ‘progress’. 

 

I noticed her on the sixth day because she wasn’t wearing shoes. Bare feet on concrete made a particular sound - soft, careful, apologetic. I had learned it quickly. It was the sound of trying not to be noticed. Of already knowing what happened if you were. I followed the sound down the line and then my breath caught.

 

“Vicky?” Saying her name felt dangerous. Too familiar. Too alive.

 

Victoria Cabot turned slowly, like the movement itself had to be permitted. For a moment there was nothing behind her eyes - just that emptied, flattened look I had started seeing everywhere in the facility.

 

Then recognition hit.

 

“Oh,” she whispered. Her voice broke immediately. “Rebecca.”

 

We moved toward each other without thinking and stopped just short of touching, both of us glancing at the guards along the walls. No one said anything. They didn’t have to. The rules were already inside us.

 

Up close, Victoria looked wrong. Her hair - once long and glossy, the kind she used to complain took too long to dry - had been cut brutally short. Not styled. Corrected. Uneven strands clung around her jawline in jagged clumps, hacked without care or symmetry. It was the same length as mine. The same ugliness. Like a uniform no one had bothered to issue properly. Her clothes were worse than mine had been when I arrived: torn, filthy, hanging off her as if they belonged to someone else. Her feet were bare and dirty, toes nicked and red, heels cracked. Fading bruises ringed her ankles and wrists.

 

A cold realisation settled in my stomach. This is what I look like.

 

I had been denied reflective surfaces since intake. I hadn’t needed them, I’d been told. Now I didn’t need them at all.

 

“They took my family first,” Victoria whispered, leaning close without touching me. “They said it was temporary. Processing. I haven’t seen them since.”

I nodded. My throat had closed. “They kept asking me questions,” she went on. “What I wanted. What made me dissatisfied. Who taught me to expect more. I told them no one did. That I was happy. I thought that would help.” Her mouth twisted into something like a smile. “They said that was the most worrying answer.”

 

“They asked me the same things,” I said quietly. “They kept saying I sounded confused. That happiness shouldn’t need defending.”

 

A guard shifted nearby. The scrape of boots tightened time around us.

 

“Do you remember,” she said quickly, “when we went shopping for coats and dresses? You bought that bright summer dress and tried to convince me that awful blue coat made me look powerful.”

 

The memory hit like a bruise. “You said you didn’t want to look intimidating.”

 

“And you said, ‘Why not?’” Her lips trembled. “We got coffee after. You spilled sugar everywhere.”

 

“You told me it meant I needed more sweetness in my life.”

 

For one fragile second, the room loosened its grip. There were shops again. Mirrors. Warmth. Choice. Shoes on our feet.

 

Then Victoria’s face folded inward. “They say this is helping us,” she murmured. “They say once we stop clinging to the wrong ideas, we’ll feel peaceful. Do you think that’s true?”

 

I looked at her - at the matching haircuts, the bare feet, the stripped sameness - and understood what she was really asking.

 

“I think,” I said, “they mean we won’t notice what’s gone.”

 

She nodded, like something inside her had settled.

 

“Move.”

 

Hands grabbed us. Victoria’s fingers caught in my sleeve for half a second - desperate, grounding, human.

 

“If you see my mother,” she said quickly, “tell her I…”

 

She was pulled away before she could finish. I was dragged in the opposite direction, the grip bruising and impersonal.

 

As they marched me down the corridor, I looked back once. Victoria was already being turned away, her face smoothing into something blank and compliant. The moment of recognition had vanished, swallowed as if it had never existed.

 

What remained was a woman who looked exactly like me.

 

---------------------------------------

 

Day Nine. I think it was Day Nine.

 

They told us to close our eyes.

 

I did, because it was easier than keeping them open. Easier than looking at the walls, the slogans, the neat rows of women wearing the same careful expression of attention.

 

“Breathe,” the instructor said gently. “Think of a time when you felt unsettled. Dissatisfied.”

 

I tried to reach for something abstract. A feeling. A restlessness. That was what they wanted. Instead, Victoria appeared. Not as she was now, but as she had been before—standing in a shop in front of a mirror, long dark hair spilling down her back as she turned slightly, assessing herself.

 

Do I look severe? she had asked, smiling, as she modelled the blue coat.

 

My chest tightened.

 

“Let the image come,” the instructor said. “Don’t judge it. Just observe.”

 

The memory shifted. Concrete floors. Bare feet. Jagged hair hanging unevenly at Victoria’s jaw. The way we had stopped inches apart, afraid even to touch. The way her fingers had caught my sleeve as she was pulled away.

 

If you see my mother…

 

I inhaled too sharply.

 

“Sometimes,” the instructor said calmly, “our discomfort comes from misunderstanding the past. From interpreting care as harm.”

 

I opened my eyes. The wall-length screen in front of us flickered to life - women smiling in kitchens, women holding children, women seated in circles, leaning toward one another in shared understanding.

 

“Happiness,” the instructor continued, “comes from alignment. From knowing your place and trusting it.”

 

Inside me, something resisted quietly. Victoria hadn’t been misaligned. She hadn’t been angry or wild or broken. She had liked good coffee and practical shoes. She had worried about looking too intimidating. She had laughed easily.

 

We had been ordinary.

 

“What happens,” I asked carefully, “to people who were content before?”

 

The instructor smiled with practiced warmth, but there was a moment when she probably thought I was being deliberately provocative.  “Often, they only thought they were content, Palmer. Contentment without structure is fragile. It cracks under pressure.”

 

I nodded. That was what nodding was for now. Nodding meant something bad wouldn’t happen to me. 

 

Inside, the memory of Victoria shifted. Not erased - translated. I could feel it happening.

 

She wasn’t taken. She was helped.

 

She wasn’t afraid. She was confused.

 

She didn’t lose herself. She was guided.

 

The ease of it terrified me more than resistance ever had.

 

“Repeat after me,” the instructor said.

 

“True freedom is choosing your place,” the room said together.

 

My mouth formed the words.

 

As I spoke them, Victoria’s face blurred - not gone, just harder to focus on. Like a reflection disturbed by ripples.

 

I felt grief then. Not sharp. Not loud. Just the sense of something slipping away because I was no longer holding it tightly enough.

 

I wondered if Victoria still remembered me.

 

And whether, when I stopped remembering her as she truly was, it would feel like relief.

 

They told me to breathe again.

 

This time, I did it without hesitation.

 

The instructor didn’t look at me at first. She simply paced slowly in front of the room, hands folded, flat shoes silent against the polished floor. The lesson had shifted from principles to application. Hypotheticals. Gentle traps. “Understanding,” she said, “is demonstrated through alignment.”

 

Her gaze lifted.

 

It landed on me.

 

“Palmer.”

 

My spine straightened before I told it to.

 

“Yes,” I said. Too quickly.

 

She smiled - not unkindly, but precisely, as if my reaction had been noted and filed. “Let’s see how well you’re integrating,” she said. “Just a few questions.”

 

The room felt suddenly smaller. I was aware of every other woman’s stillness, the way attention subtly withdrew from me, like I had stepped into a spotlight no one else wanted.

 

“First,” the instructor said, “tell us: what is the primary source of women’s happiness?”

 

I knew this one. “Role fulfilment,” I said. “Harmony between our nature and our responsibilities.”

 

“Good,” she said. “And what happens when women prioritize autonomy over harmony?”

 

I hesitated. The old answer flickered - they decide for themselves. I felt it rise, reflexive, like a muscle memory. I crushed it. “They experience anxiety,” I said instead. “Disconnection. A sense of meaninglessness. Ultimately, they are unhappy without understanding why.”

 

The instructor nodded approvingly. “Excellent. Now” - she tilted her head - “why do you think the old so-called Feminism appealed to so many women, despite the harm it caused?”

 

This one was trickier. It required sympathy without endorsement. I chose my words carefully. “Because it promised control,” I said. “At a time when women felt constrained. But it confused control with freedom.”

 

A pause.

 

“And what do we now understand freedom to be?”

 

I felt my mouth form the words before I finished thinking them. “Choosing one’s place,” I said.

 

The slogan sat between us, solid and undeniable.

 

The instructor smiled wider. “Very good. Now let’s consider a personal scenario.”

 

My stomach tightened.

 

“Imagine,” she said, “a woman feels dissatisfaction in her domestic role. She believes she might be happier pursuing independence again. How should she interpret those feelings?”

 

The room was silent. I thought of Victoria. Of myself in the mirror. Of the word restless - how it used to feel like a warning instead of a flaw. I knew the correct framing. “She should recognize the feeling as internal resistance,” I said slowly. “A symptom of conditioning from the old narratives. Not a truth.”

 

“And what would help her resolve that resistance?”

 

I swallowed.

 

“Reflection,” I said. “Guidance. Recommitment to service.”

 

The instructor’s eyes stayed on mine. “And if the feeling persists?”

 

There it was. The edge. I heard myself think, If it persists, something is wrong. I corrected it mid-thought. “If it persists,” I said, “then she hasn’t fully let go of the need to define herself separately.”

 

A beat.

 

Then the instructor inclined her head. “Precisely.”

 

Relief washed through me so fast it almost felt like gratitude.

 

“One final question,” she said. “Why is submission not weakness?”

 

I didn’t pause this time. “Because it’s chosen,” I said. “And choice gives it moral weight.”

 

She clasped her hands. “Thank you, Palmer. That will be all.”

 

I sat down carefully, aware of my breath, my hands, the way my heart was still racing even though I had passed.

 

Around me, pens resumed scratching. The lesson moved on. I stared at my notebook. At some point during the questioning, I had stopped translating their language into mine. I had answered fluently.

 

Worse - I had meant it.

 

One day passed to become another, and then another.

 

The room was designed to make you forget it was a room.

 

No corners. Soft curves where the walls met the ceiling, pale and seamless. The light came from nowhere specific, a gentle, flattering brightness that erased shadows. Even the chairs were shaped to encourage stillness—upright but forgiving, as if they cared about your spine.

 

I sat when they told me to.

 

There were twelve of us this time. All at different stages, the instructor had said earlier, which was meant to reassure us. Proof of progress. Proof that the system worked.

 

A woman across from me caught my eye briefly. She smiled - small, encouraging. I smiled back automatically and felt a flicker of shame at how quick it came. The instructor entered without ceremony. No uniform. Just clean lines, hair tied back in a bun, neutral colours, plain features, calm authority.

 

“Today,” she said, “we’re going to talk about choice.”

 

The word landed softly.

 

I felt myself relax. Choice was still allowed. We were reminded of that often.

 

“Many women arrive here believing choice means endless options,” the instructor continued. “But research shows that abundance creates anxiety. True freedom comes from clarity.”

 

She let that settle.

 

I thought of the shop with Victoria. Racks and racks of coats. The way we had laughed, overwhelmed and delighted. I waited for the memory to sharpen into something painful.

 

It didn’t.

 

“Palmer,” the instructor said gently.

 

I straightened. “Yes.”

 

“You were quiet yesterday,” she observed. “What does choice mean to you now?”

 

Now.

 

I searched myself carefully. Not for honesty - honesty was too blunt - but for something that would fit without scraping. “I think,” I said slowly, “it means choosing what’s best for the whole, not just what feels good in the moment.”

 

The instructor nodded, pleased. “That’s a very mature understanding,” she said. “How does that make you feel?”

 

Feel. Another allowed word.

 

“Relieved,” I said. And then, to my surprise, realized it was true.

 

The woman across from me smiled wider.

 

The instructor gestured toward the screen behind her. It lit up with images: a woman arranging a table, her movements careful and unhurried; a mother brushing a child’s hair; hands folded together in quiet prayer.

 

“Pleasure,” the instructor said, “has been misunderstood for a long time. We were taught to chase it, to prioritize it. But pleasure without purpose exhausts us.”

 

I nodded along with the others.

 

“Service,” she continued, “creates a deeper satisfaction. Have any of you experienced that?”

 

Several women raised their hands. Slowly. Confidently.

 

I hesitated, then lifted mine halfway.

 

The instructor noticed. Of course she did.

 

“Yes, Palmer?”

 

“I felt… calmer,” I said, choosing the word deliberately, “when I stopped asking myself what I wanted all the time.”

 

A ripple of approval moved through the room.

 

“That’s very common,” the instructor said warmly. “Constant self-examination is a burden. Letting go of it is an act of self-care.”

 

Self-care.

 

The phrase slid into place so neatly it almost made me dizzy.

 

She asked us to close our eyes. “Imagine a version of yourself,” she said, “who no longer feels conflicted. Who wakes up knowing exactly what is expected of her - and feels joy in meeting that expectation.”

 

The image came easily.

 

Too easily.

 

I saw myself moving through a clean, orderly space. My body felt lighter. Quieter. No sharp edges of thought. No questions trailing behind me like loose threads.

In the image, I smiled.

 

A faint alarm stirred somewhere in me, distant and weak. I tried to grasp it, but it slipped away, replaced by the instructor’s voice.

 

“When you’re ready,” she said, “open your eyes.”

 

I did.

 

“How did that feel?” she asked.

 

“Peaceful,” someone said.

 

“Grounded,” said another.

 

My turn came.

 

“Aligned,” I said. The word surprised me, even as it pleased her.

 

“Excellent,” the instructor said. “That’s exactly it.”

 

The session ended shortly after. We were dismissed in orderly pairs.

 

As I stood, I realized my hands had been resting calmly in my lap the entire time. Unclenched. Still.

 

As I walked out of the room, I tried – briefly - to remember what I used to want.

 

The thought drifted away before it could fully form.

 

I told myself that was a sign of progress.

 

And for a few terrifying seconds, I believed it.

 

Days passed. Was it Tuesday? Wednesday? Thursday? Friday?

 

The booklet was waiting on my desk when I arrived.

 

Cream-coloured cover. Thick paper. Embossed seal at the top.

 

FOUNDATIONS OF NEW FEMINISM: A Return to Wholeness

 

I ran my thumb along the edge before opening it, buying myself a second.

 

The room was larger than the others, arranged like a lecture hall but softened - curved rows, padded chairs, light filtered through frosted glass so nothing outside could distract us. At the front stood three banners, identical except for the slogans printed neatly beneath the emblem.

 

HAPPINESS BEGINS AT HOME

TRUE FREEDOM IS CHOOSING YOUR PLACE

SERVICE IS STRENGTH

 

The instructor waited until we were all seated.

 

“Today,” she said, “we’ll talk about what New Feminism actually is. Not what you’ve heard. Not what you fear. What it offers.”

 

I opened the booklet. The first page showed a timeline - clean, simplified. Waves of old ‘feminism’ rendered as disruptions rather than movements. Dates blurred. Causes collapsed into outcomes.

 

“The old Feminism,” the instructor said, “was born from necessity. It served its purpose. But it went too far.” She smiled, apologetic. “It told women they had to do everything,” she continued. “Be providers. Be leaders. Be sexually autonomous. Be endlessly self-directed. And it called that freedom.”

 

A murmur of agreement moved through the room.

 

I felt my pen moving before I consciously decided to write.

 

Freedom = pressure.

 

“New Feminism begins with a different question,” she said. “Not what can women do? But what makes women happy?” She let that hang. “Happiness,” she said, “comes from role fulfilment. From harmony between nature and expectation.”

 

The screen behind her lit up.

 

Images appeared: women holding infants, preparing meals, listening attentively to men speaking, resting their heads against shoulders. The women looked peaceful. Completed.

 

I felt an odd tightening in my chest.

 

“Autonomy,” the instructor continued, “was framed as empowerment. In reality, it isolated women. Forced them into competition. Denied them the relief of being needed.”

 

Relief.

 

I underlined the word.

 

“New Feminism restores balance,” she said. “Men lead. Women support. Not because women are lesser - but because they are essential.”

 

Essential sounded important. Safer than equal.

 

I wrote that down too.

 

She turned a page in her own booklet. We followed.

 

Principle One: Choice Is Meaningful Only Within Structure

 

“Choice without boundaries creates anxiety,” she said. “When everything is possible, nothing feels right. Structure removes the burden of constant self-evaluation.”

 

I thought of standing in shops with Victoria, laughing, overwhelmed. I remembered how tired I used to feel afterward.

 

The memory didn’t hurt the way it once had.

 

Principle Two: Pleasure Is Not the Same as Fulfilment

 

The instructor’s voice softened. “Pleasure, when pursued for its own sake, fragments us. It teaches women to prioritize momentary sensation over lasting bonds.”

A diagram appeared—desire leading outward, splintering into dissatisfaction. “Sexuality,” she said, “is not about personal gratification. It is about comfort. Loyalty. Reassurance. Continuity.”

 

I swallowed.

 

“Reframing intimacy as service allows women to experience peace instead of conflict.”

 

Peace again.

 

Principle Three: The Past Teaches Us the Cost of Independence

 

The next pages were filled with rewritten history. Statistics without sources. Faces of women labelled Unfulfilled. Isolated. Regretful.

 

“The old narratives celebrated independence,” the instructor said. “But the outcomes were clear: declining families, rising loneliness, moral confusion.”

She looked at us kindly. “We do not erase history,” she said. “We correct it.”

 

Correct.

 

I paused with my pen mid-word.

 

Principle Four: Voluntary Alignment Is the Highest Good

 

“No one is forced,” the instructor said. “New Feminism only asks that you choose wisely.”

 

I felt my shoulders relax.

 

“Women who resist often do so out of fear,” she continued. “Fear of losing identity. But identity rooted in struggle is exhausting. Letting go is not weakness.” She gestured to the room. “Look around you. These women are not prisoners. They are participants.”

 

I looked.

 

Faces calm. Attentive. Nodding. My own reflection stared back at me from the darkened screen - hair short, jaw-length, corrected. Clean. Orderly.

 

Principle Five: Service Is Strength

 

The instructor closed her booklet. “When women stop asking, What do I want? and start asking, What is needed of me? something remarkable happens.” She smiled. “They become happy.”

 

We were asked to repeat the principles aloud. Together.

 

My voice blended easily with the others.

 

When it was over, I looked down at my notes. They were neat. Logical. Reasonable. I searched the page for anger. For resistance. What I found instead was a sentence I didn’t remember deciding to write:

 

This makes sense.

 

I stared at it for a long moment before closing the booklet.

 

I told myself understanding wasn’t the same as agreement.

 

But the difference between the two felt thinner than it used to.