I bleed!
They stare at me sternly. They do not like it when I bleed. It makes them angry that I bleed when they cannot. It makes them angry that in a week, when the last stain of my blood has been cleaned, their husbands will want me once again.
My blood is ugly to them. If they had their way they would prefer that I were to bleed from a cut throat or my wrists. If they could, with their perfectly sharp nails they would gladly draw blood from any part of my body, except there. There it flows naturally out of me despite their threats.
If only...If only...they wish.
Yet they know that my blood is good. A gift from their God. With my blood there is hope. Hope that maybe not today, but soon I will give them what they want. It will all be worth it then. The sacrifices they made, the humiliation they've endured.
Soon, they tell themselves. Soon she will bleed as we want her to. Soon I will be a mother and she will be no more. A child conceived of God's will. Of God's blood. She is just a tool. Her blood is good. It is good that she bleeds down there.
They leave me then. They are content. For a week. One week we are not at war. That's 7 days, 168 hours where it is just me. Solitude, in my world is a precious gift. I hug myself tightly as I draw my knees to my chest. Rocking back and forth, barely audible I hum a song.
It's a lullaby. My mother used to sing to me. My real mother, before she went mad. Before they peeled her lifeless body away from mine.
For four years she would sneak into my dorm. Out of 100 other girls she recognized her own. She used to whisper my name, so that I do not forget it. Her smell, her touch and her voice I remember it well. My name I do not.
They used to beat her, it is allowed once a handmaiden can no longer perform her duty. It was my fault really, I came out too eagerly. Unknowingly, I wanted this life.
I hug myself tighter and I sing a little bit louder.
A handmaiden is in servitude to the God. The wives are in servitude to their husbands. The husbands they know God's will when we do not. They are his voice. A handmaiden is a tool God gave to the wives and the husbands to make the world whole and beautiful. We are of one purpose. Our ritual of joining together in the eyes of God is good. Tonight, God willing, our efforts will be rewarded and we shall conceive. Tonight, I do not bleed.
"Elizabeth, Lizzy for short...", the man and woman looked at the girl in confusion. "I remember."
Tomorrow, we shall try again.