Beyond the Fence

The tent is sometimes there and sometimes it is not. Its presence is a sure sign that a boy of 18 is about to have his Revelation. Always, it appears in the same spot. I used to frequent it as a boy, sitting on a nearby hill and watching as a boy disappeared inside. I’d wait there for hours to see him come out. Every time I was left waiting, and when the sun set I returned home wondering. It’s been years since then, but today I retrace my faded footsteps.

When I left my village, the sun was beginning to rise, with birds chirping their pleasantries, but now it beats down from the highest point in the sky. The tent is in its usual spot, somewhere between small and large, coloured yellow like fading teeth. The front is pinned down with nails on either side, and the back is right up against the fence. As I reach, sweat dampening my shirt, I see the flaps of the tent are unzipped, fluttering in the slight breeze. My nerves rise, as is normal on such a big day, the day I become a man.

"Come," a whispery voice calls from within.

I hesitate, and then enter, pulling the flaps aside. The interior is not what I expected, although I anticipated all possibilities. In my village, we grow up with stories of this moment, when you enter the tent for the last time as a boy. No adult openly shares details, but rumours circulate among the youth. Some say that an old man feeds you a pill that brings with it visions of your life to come. Others suggest a supernatural, soul-searching experience that defies the laws of nature. Other still, skeptics, say it is a hoax; that you enter, have tea with the elders of the village, and depart none the wiser. The only common theme is that when each boy disappears inside the tent, they re-emerge only two years later, but not alone as they had entered. My uncle once told me while inebriated that when my father emerged from the tent, two years to the date of his Revelation, he carried me in his arms. That’s how I first learned I wasn’t born inside the fence.

My father refuses to share with me details, indicating I must experience it for myself. I pestered him for answers throughout my childhood, and felt betrayed by his silence, but in this moment I understand. This is something that is mine to discover.

"Sit," the same voice says. A hooded figure sits cross-legged near the centre of the tent. He has a slender frame, visible through his cloak that covers him head to toe. His bare toes wriggle and his toenails are coloured blue. I follow his instructions a second time, sitting opposite. I look around for the pill, or a potion, or tea, but the tent is empty except besides this hooded figure and me.

If I need to I can overpower him, I think to myself, alert. I am expecting a challenge. We sit there in silence, waiting for the other to speak first. I try to identify his face, but his hood covers it in shadow. I can only make out eyes, dark and solemn like mine, looking back at me. Eventually, I concede.

"Who are you?" I ask.

"Take a guess, Mikhail," he responds at once.

"Someone who knows my name obviously," I say, and shift uncomfortably, "How about this: I’ll guess once you take off your hood and show me your face."

"In time I will.” His voice is high-pitched and soft, a mismatch to his mystique, “But first tell me: what do you know about life beyond the fence?"

"Life beyond the fence?" I ask. There is silence once again as he eyes me up and down.

"Come on dear, I’m sure you’re a smart boy. Surely, you've wondered what it’s like out there, outside of these boundaries.” He pauses for effect, and then continues, “The fence surrounding the five villages; why do you think it’s there?”

My eyes narrow, feeling a dent in my ego. I think for a while, and remember walking along the entire fence, fantasizing about climbing it and escaping my empty life within. The fence is more than ten feet tall, with chain so tightly bound that anything beyond is but a blur. At the weakest point in the fence, where the tent is always pitched, I could squint to make out trees, growing closely together, and beyond them a river, littered with animals I couldn’t identify. I used to want so badly to be amongst those animals, playing carefree. This was before my father clipped my wings, telling me all the dangers waiting beyond the fence, describing in detail the graphic deaths of boys my age who climbed over on a dare. After being terrorized as an eight-year-old, not only did I cease my dreaming, but also stopped venturing close to the fence at all. It is only today, almost ten years later, that I have ventured close again.

I see the hooded figure’s eyes waiting, expectant, but patient.

“It’s there to keep us safe. To keep those things that wish us harm outside of our villages,” I say.

“Maybe… But is that it?” He begins to tap his fingers on his thighs, a restless habit my father abhors. I wonder the reason.

“Well, what else could it be? To keep us in?” I look down at his fingers, tapping away without rhythm and wait for his response.

Silence. I remember what my uncle suggested indirectly that my true home is beyond the fence. Was I really trapped in here for no good reason at all? No, I refuse to believe it; this would mean I grew up lied to by everyone: my father, the elders. I clench my fists, anger crescendoing. When I still don’t get a response, I push up onto my feet and back away from the hooded figure, towards the front flaps of the tent.

“Well? Is that it?” My voice rises, angered more still by his inaction, “Is that what this pathetic ritual is for? So you can tell me my whole life is meaningless and that I’m a prisoner?”

I start to piece two and two together.

“And then you’re going to keep me from leaving so I won’t tell anyone? Well, let me tell you something. I’m going to tell everyone! Torture me for years if you must, but it won’t change a thing.”

“Mikail, please calm down,” he whispers, “Sit down and let me explain dear; it will all make sense, I promise.”

“Shut up. I’m not interested. I don’t believe a word that you say.” I turn my back on him, still sitting, not caring enough to stop me.

“But you do.”

It was true. Deep down, I suspected something like this, but refused indulge it. There were too many lies to my questions, too much fear that lay hidden between the links in the fence. Why else would we be contained within a few square kilometres other than by force? The stories they told us of what waited for us beyond seemed drawn straight from a pamphlet, a badly written one at that. In my brief schooling before I joined my father as a shepherd, we learned about a world that’s expansive with different terrain, water, people of different colours. A world of beauty, diversity, and life. So much more than this enclosed farmland where we relive each day until death. The elders soon realized it was a mistake to teach us—the generation that questions everything–about the world beyond the fence, and soon they got rid of the curriculum. Now from age eight, children start vocational training. I used to be able to read stories, but now the books are mere propaganda to fuel lives of inadequacy. Why Life Within the Fence is The Right Life for You, reads one book title. Learning to Live Within for Dummies, reads another.

I make a note of each person who has betrayed me with their lies and plan my vendetta against them.

“I’m leaving,” I huff, still tempted by a proper response. I abhor when I ask people questions and they expect me to answer them.

“No, you mustn’t. Not yet.” He stands up, and I realize he only reaches as high as my shoulder. “Please, just allow me to explain. Not everything will make sense all at once, but you will understand slowly. Don’t leave, please. I haven’t seen you in so long and this may be the only time we’ll get,” he trails off, surprising me with his affection. Then he removes his hood.

His face is unlike any I’ve ever seen, one that only exists deep inside my subconscious, or in drawings on the doors of bathroom stalls, which disappear the same day they are drawn. Yet at the same time it is familiar, welcome, and I somehow feel calm. It is free from all blemish, with features that are soft: small lips, a pointy nose, and my eyes. His eyebrows are thin, hiked in concentration, with concern. Around his eyes are slight wrinkles, the only indication of his age.

“Who… are… you?” I ask again.

“My name is Demetria. You don’t remember me, but I remember you. We are connected Mikhail,” they say, walking towards me slowly, closing the gap, putting a hand on my shoulder.

“You lie, I don’t know you,” I recoil at their touch, “I’ve never seen anyone like you.”

My mind is racing. Have I already been drugged? Only that could explain what was going on in this tent. In a minute, my father, my uncle, the elders will hop out and tell me this is all a joke, and we’ll go back to our village.

“My dear, that’s because I’m the first woman you’ve ever met,” she explains, “At least that you can remember”.

I repeat her words over again in my mind. The word ‘woman’ sounds familiar, like a memory that’s been erased. It is just like the word ‘man’, but somehow gentler. This seems an accurate way to sum up her differences, which are subtle but noticeable.

“What does that mean?” I inquire, curiosity winning over shock.

She backs up a few steps, looking at me. Her expression is anxious, almost shy. Then, after a brief pause, she takes off her robe, revealing her naked body. As the robe falls to the floor, my masculine eyes scan her body, working up from her painted toes. Though they’re feelings I don’t fully understand, I can tell that though aged, she once was attractive, desirable.

Her shape is unusual, but it’s a body all the same. I immediately notice the smoothness of her tanned skin, the veins on her legs. It is only as I reach her thighs, that things begin to differ. The thighs separate into wide hips and between, where her penis should be, are two pieces of skin, joined together like sideways lips. Her slim waist gives way into a chest unlike any man’s. Although she is thin, her breasts protrude like sand dunes, a feature only common in the most overweight of men. I cock my head curiously, unable avert my gaze. She folds her arms over her chest and I look away, embarrassed.

“I don’t understand.” I look back into her eyes, my eyes.

She sits me down and explains, the purposes we serve biologically. The birds and the bees, she calls them with a small laugh. There is a whole other sex I was never aware of. They hide them from us, or hide us from them. At first she doesn’t tell me why, only what happens when we’re together. We need each other to survive, to reproduce. When I pester her for more information that would explain the circumstances of the fence, she reveals that time taught us that men and women cannot live together.

A long time ago, men committed violence against women, viewed them as bounty, and used their physical superiority to take advantage of them. But men also fought each other. They waged war over land and control, and as this continued over centuries, men began to wipe each other out. We viewed women as less capable, but at the same time more valuable, so kept them off the front lines. But each boy born was cannon fodder, a future victim to the cause. When there were such few men left that they lacked influence, women seized power. The war came to an end within the year as female-led nations united across the globe.

The few men left rebelled to restore the patriarchy, but they were squashed easily by the technological superiority and sheer number of those in charge. It became a legitimate concern that men would die out completely due to their refusal to live in a society run by women. After a decade of trying to live peacefully in the new society, the founding mothers decided—around when my father was a young child—men would live in colonies, separate from the women. Each colony appears to be self-sufficient but is monitored by the nearest female-run city. There was the possibility to keep things this way and rely on artificial insemination for reproduction, a concept I’m still grappling with. But following several rounds of voting and a narrow margin of victory, the founding mothers concluded they did not want men to suffer their entire lives unbeknownst. In fact, they wanted to emphasize how much better off they were without them; that if not for the biological need that ties the two sexes together, they could be rid of men.

Men would live in these colonies until they came of age, and they’d be permitted to leave after their Revelation. They’d spend a year exploring the world beyond, learning about the elite society created without them there to poison it, and then they’d find someone with whom to have a child. If the child is a girl, she remains with the mother, enjoying a life of freedom. If the child is a boy, he returns to the village with the father, awaiting his turn for temporary freedom. If needed, the father may leave again for reproduction purposes, but the rest of his life is devoted to raising his son and taking care of his village.

I sit there for a long time after she finishes speaking, once again wearing her robe. I piece together what she shared, but so much is unexplained. How can they punish every man for the actions of those in charge? How is the separation better if men exist as mere reproduction material? What about equality? I choose to hold all this back for now, and to answer my own questions.

“I guess I understand much more than I ever did before, but a lot still makes no sense. There’s still one thing: who are you?” As I ask her, I already know, but I still wait for her answer.

She looks at me with solemn eyes, and then smiles, revealing dimples she gave me.

“I thought it would be obvious by now: I’m your mother.”

I bite my lip to prevent tears. My relationship with my father has always been two-toned. I love him and respect him like everyone else in our village, and I tried my best to be like him. But on the other hand, it made no sense to me why there are parts of myself I can’t explain, parts that aren’t like him. Now I see: my curiosity, my empathy, it’s from the woman standing in front of me. I’m a product of not one, but two.

“Why does it have to be like this?” I think of every birthday I spent alone, every time I needed a hug my evasive father could never give me.

“Oh Mikhail, my baby. It just doesn’t work any other way.”

“But how can we know for sure?”

“You have to go and find out.”

She stands up and moves to the side of the tent against the fence. She removes the back flap, and I see the trees, the river, in the distance. The weak point in the fence has been removed and there is a gap large enough for me to walk through. As I walk towards freedom, albeit temporary, I am intercepted by my mother. She embraces me tightly, channelling years of absent love, and I realize she is sobbing quietly. After a few seconds I return the hug. When we’ve exchanged all our warmth, and expressed all left unsaid, we part. She wipes her tears on her sleeve and with a wry smile, tells me she loves me.

Without a word, I disappear into the forest looking only straight ahead at my life beyond the fence, determined never to return, but knowing my fate is already sealed.