Hopeless Romance

Chapter Eight

Eve began her story, “I was 16 when Rache won the war.  They said to come in for tests.  They said if we were healthy, strong, we would be chosen as Birth Mothers when we turned 25.  Until then we would be well cared for.  Protecting their investment I guess.  We were to have a nice apartment, healthy food, medical care, and even time with real female friends in the Birth Ward. 

I went to be tested.  It’s not like I could say no anyway, but I was actually hoping I’d be chosen.  It sounded much better than what my big sister was chosen for, a Comp girl.  She was beautiful, flowing like, tall.  She was tested but she had some minor problem.  Um…”she paused, searching for the term, “Well, it was something about her uterus, it had two sections.  They told her it would be possible for her to carry a baby, but she wasn’t ideal.  She had always wanted to have a child.  She was the one who played with dolls all the time.  But, she was chosen to be a Comp girl.  Dr. Cha raped her after she failed the tests.  He didn’t use protection.   He said she’d be more believable as a Comp girl if she had experience.  A couple weeks of this and then he did a hysterectomy, he removed her uterus.  They didn’t want her to ever have her own child, and she didn’t qualify to have theirs.  My sister didn’t know if she was pregnant when he did it.  I’m guessing he did a test to rule it out but who knows with him.  Plastic surgeons were called in to perfect her looks while she was under for the surgery.  They didn’t ask her what she wanted done.  They decided on their own.  She was eighteen.  She wasn’t supposed to tell me all this, but she did the night I left for the Birth Ward.  She told me I was lucky.  I didn’t recognize her by then- bigger lips, smaller breasts, no fat anywhere on her body.  I didn’t know she could look slimmer than before.  It surprised me these men chose this look for her, I thought men liked curves.”  She paused and glanced at me, then back at the dancing dragonflies.

I had once again involuntarily jerked when she had said Comp girl.  Eve didn’t notice this time.  She sat quietly, lost in the past, tears streaming down her cheeks.  I didn’t rush her.  I felt sick as it sunk in that many Comp girls probably went through this.  I wanted to throw up, to run away.  I knew this wasn’t the time to tell her that I did like her curves. 

“I passed the tests.  I don’t know what they make males do to pass.  I don’t know if all Birth Mother’s go through all the stuff Dr. Cha did to me.  They took so much blood I recall wondering how much you could live without.”

She began sobbing. I didn’t know what to do.  I wanted to reach out and touch her.  Would it be okay to touch her?  I just waited and slowly she gathered herself together and continued.

“I was proud of my body. I was always healthy and strong, athletic. I was on the cross country team in High School right before the war.   I got a perfect score on all the tests.  I was made to have babies Dr. Cha said.  He told me I couldn’t keep my old name, May, even though it was three letters.  He changed it officially to Eve.  Dr. Cha came to my house to tell my mother.  My mom worked at the Garbage Transportation Center as a fork lift operator.  My dad was dead.  He died about a year earlier right after the Rachesie won the war.  He crashed his dump truck on his way home at 3:00 am after a forty eight hour transporting shift.  Before the war we lived out here on this farm, in the co-op.  This is where I grew up!  Can you believe it?  But, they were doctors and when the war broke out they took us back to the city so they could help in the hospitals trying to heal wounded soldiers.  Why didn’t they leave us on the farm?   My parents were used to long shifts.  How did he crash?”

Again she stopped.  And she just watched the water.  All I could think to say was, “I’m sorry.”  I wondered if her parents had tried to save mine. 

“My mom hadn’t seemed to care about anything after my dad died.  She went to work, came home and watched television until she fell to sleep for a few hours, then woke and watched some more until it was time to go to work.  When Dr. Cha told her I was selected as Birth Mother, she cared though.”