To: Curator, Glass Uprising Exhibit
From: Museum of Late American Artifacts
Re: Girl in Drain
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I[1] did not see rain for the first sixteen[2] years of my life, but at the hospital, I saw old dolls like me discarded down the drainage system where the blood[3] goes smoothly because there is no dissent.
Long ago, skipping[4] through the trauma ward, I learned how to fake a ruptured hymen and an orgasm with an unwashed finger in the wound.
Once the blood comes, a girl’s useful life as a plaything[5] is over, but she is allowed to see rain.
Old dolls like me are never played with and are only used to make other dolls with their bodies with doctors, lawyers, CEOs, priests, princes, and learned men who wear jade masks[6] in the sugar room.
When I was no longer fit to be a maker, I became a rain walker.
Paid sixty-five dollars[7] a month, I never got a raise or a pension, no matter how many times I conceived. But when thunder rolled, I could traipse through the dampened cemetery[8] with other makers and rain walkers who chose to buy a plot with their monthly wages so diggers[9] could make a hole to house the old body.
We were just hoping to escape the drain, didn’t want to be processed into sludge with the ones who gave up, the ones who couldn’t earn enough[10] to buy a room of their own on this little plot of land, an underground room, six feet under.
Every other old doll, she just wanted a room like me, knowing she was too old to be a plaything and would have to find a place for herself without being displayed in another’s room.
No longer fit to display in the glass case, once I became damaged, I refused to be deranged,[11] realizing I could ruin naturally by taking walks in the rain.
I just wanted to sleep peacefully in my coffin[12], where no one could bother me or watch me as I closed my eyes. That was my reward, that my body would finally be hidden. All I wanted was to pay for my grave until I was sixteen and tasted the rain. Then, I wanted the soft cool drops falling on my tongue and face forever.[13][14]
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[1] Subject was permitted to keep a diary, which has been translated from Girlspeak by both human and computer Girlspeak authorities. This translation is the definitive edition.
[2] Subject’s time-based age unknown.
[3] Not to be spoken of.
[4] In late American culture, prior to The Glass Uprising, skipping was considered a sign of heightened emotion.
[5] There is no precise word for “plaything.” In the original document, the word is a pun involving both blood oranges and bocce.
[6] Here the subject reveals her blatant hostility toward men, especially men in masks made of ornamental materials.
[7] Dollars were translated into pennies and pennies translated into sexual favors; see “coin of the realm.”
[8] Cemeteries figured prominently in late American death mythology.
[9] Debate continues between human and computer translators regarding the word “diggers.” The computer translators believe that the word refers to “liking” something – “I dig blood sports,” for example. The human translators believe that the word refers to gravediggers – “I have to dig three graves before lunch.”
[10] Here, the subject seems to set herself above or against the others, which is a common theme in diary texts from this time, and merits further study as we continue to pinpoint the authentic beginnings of the uprising, and the figures central to its outcome.
[11] This poetic repetition of sounds is computer generated, and not present in the original text.
[13] Note the subject’s nostalgia for the natural world, and the fantasy of taste.
[14] In late American mythology, the number thirteen was considered unlucky. Hotels often deleted the thirteenth floor from the record, implying that twelve was twelve, but fourteen was thirteen, and fifteen was fourteen, and so on. However, new research reveals a vast conspiracy among hotel owners involving the thirteenth floor. Every thirteenth floor remained intact, but inaccessible by the usual methods (elevator, stairs). The floor was windowless, accessible only by retinal identification. Dollhouses were built in these liminal, unlucky spaces, and girls were kept stacked in glass boxes, for use as their functions dictated.