The corrosion is slow, like the start of a rust bubble on the tip of a good knife.

It is clear that Father is in charge. He is an agent of peace. He is a pillar of patience. Mother is not. Mother is not in charge. She does not know how to stop the rust from spoiling the knife, because she is both the blade and the oxidation.

She begins to mix up the order of things, like the drying of her hair before it is washed. Then, she begins to forget her responsibilities, like, waking me up for school and sending Father to work with a proper breakfast. He is not happy about the changes in her, but he is not a confrontational man, he is a man trying to hold his peace.

Father and I make it custom not to lift our heads until she shrinks, until her ranting falls away to agitated silence. He advises, that it is good training, to ignore her. He says it is the fastest way to shut her up. But, I am ashamed of my secret … that I sometimes listen to her words … that I sometimes make mental notes of what she says, so that later, I could consider her claims — claims that she is not who we think she is — that she is instead, a woman once born as is, left to nature, without interference … and without protective measures.

If it were true that females were once all made idly, then how did those females secure legal and appropriate marriages? The design was clear to the letter of the law; Females must be the favorable composite required for a long match. Without a good Husband, who would feed them? Who would shelter them? If females were spun-out born with brown eyes — who would see them? If it were true, then it meant that we were once doomed because of it. Because Science is fact.

It was proven that 99% of good men want to match with females of blue eyes and blonde hair. The measures in place aren’t perfect, mistakes happen — errors — or by dissent of an error — a female is born incorrectly. I have never seen one myself, but I am told that if a man in the unidentified 1% were to take her in, his atypical status would put him at risk. He could lose his job. He could lose the support of other men, but more importantly, he could lose his peace. Men who lost their peace lost wars, and the planet could not afford to lose another war.

To keep his peace, Father makes allowances for Mother. If she forgets to lay out his clothes, he chooses them for himself. If she forgets to order his lunch, he decides what to eat on his own. If she forgets to talk to him in the evenings, he watches the Monitor News and goes to bed without complaint. He is happy to pretend that she is not chipping away at his peace. But I am not so accommodating. When Mother is yelling and pulling her hair out, I want Father to strike her. Too many times my own hands itch to do it, but I don’t, because Father is in charge. Her incessant ramblings, her noise, the crying , and her vile mouth, suffocates me. I vow that when I find my perfect match I will be nothing like her.

It became harder to ignore her. Her words began to slip into my ears like the amoeboid parasites overtaking the Earth’s lakes. They burrow in the tender areas of my brain and plant bombastic thoughts. I begin to believe that I am free, that I am not who Father says I am. Mother notices. She doubles down. She starts to claim that I should have darker skin — black hair — brown eyes. Father keeps his head down. He ignores her into the ground every night. But her words become a mantra in my head. I spend hours in front of the looking glass trying to see the other girl inside me. I want to slip my fingers into the corners of my eyes and pull my flesh apart so that I could step out in an ordinary dress of blood and veins, just to prove Mother wrong.

Tonight, Father comes into my room to ask if I am feeling healthy. He watches my mouth and throat while I lie. He walks me to the dinner table where we wait for Mother to come. After an hour when she doesn’t come, he sulks in his chair, mumbling to himself about having to start over.

When finally she appears with her ashen locks colored a bright red, I am thrilled that this time, she has gone too far. Father clenches his fists over the table to keep from hitting her.

She laughs in our faces. Father tells her to stop. Her disobedience continues.

Mother serves me first, piling my plate high with the mashed potatoes and meat meant for him. She fills my cup with wine and gives herself the same helpings of both. She then delivers him the steamed vegetables and water meant for us.

He stares at the food on his plate. He frowns. He eats it.

“So good,” she says.

She shuts her eyes when she drinks the wine. She moans when it spills down the slope of her neck into her shirt.

“Nancy, please,” Father whispers.

Nancy laughs.

She shoves all of the potatoes into her mouth. When she sees that I am not eating, she eats from my plate too.

​“Stop!” I shout.

I slam my fists into the table.

Nancy sobers.

“Daughter,” she says.

I run to my room. I slam the door shut. I want to eat the potatoes and meat. I want the same red hair.

I cry loudly and fall asleep to the sound of my heavy breathing.

I go over it all again in the morning, including her reappearance. Her hair corrected and her attitude adjusted to a zombie-like state. I am happy to have it all go back to normal. But I still give her a warning before leaving for school.

“When Father comes home, dinner better be ready for him. I don’t want you to be weird,” I say.

Then I went down the driveway, proud of myself for standing up to Mother. I turn back to scowl at her one more time and she is in the doorway, her arms swinging at her sides, grinning, but not from happiness. The grin is tight — forced — like someone stuck an icepick into the corner of a stoic stone face and cracked it open ear to ear. She drops her shoulders and sinks into her clothes. She twists her face into a sorrowful frown. Then it strikes me, like a fist to the stomach, she is imitating me. Fear spins cold inside my wet stomach and I throw up on my pink school shoes.

On my way to school I think of ways to get rid of Nancy.

In the schoolyard, I go over the possibilities. I could poison her. I could pay someone to hack her car and send her off a cliff.

None of my ideas are clean enough.

​When I get home, Nancy is gone. I find Father at the kitchen window pressing the wrong buttons into the dinner drop. He turns to me. At first he just stares, like he forgot I lived there too.

“Don’t know where Mother is and I’m starving,” he says.

​I punch in the numbers for our lot. Dinner arrives and I do minimal work to prepare it. For the next ten nights I do the same things Mother did, including the washing, the medication applications to both he and I, and I stop going to school.

One night, during the expected evening talk, I step into her place and sit at the foot of his chair.

“Where’d she go?” I ask.

He keeps his eyes on the Monitor News.

“On the run,” he says.

“From?” I ask.

He blinks as he works out an answer.

“Re-a-li-ty,” he says, pronouncing each syllable.

“Why?” I ask.

He grows angry, but sniffs the emotion away.

“I told her how hard it would be on you if she ran off. I tried to make her understand what would happen to you if she left, how maybe you couldn’t be a Daughter anymore.”

He looks at me then.

“She wasn’t concerned,” he says.

​“I don’t need her. I’m glad she’s gone,” I shoot.

“Good, then let’s move on … go ahead and ask me about my day,” he says, and I do.

On the 12th day without Nancy, I hear him talking to someone about next steps and waitlists.

On the 13th, I ask to go back to school.

On the 14th, he leaves me alone all day and night to go see about reimbursement and fulfillment.

On the 15th he is watching me clear the morning dishes.

Where I bend, his eyes follow. If I stray from view, he steps in closer. He clears his throat to speak but says nothing. We dance around each other like this until I start to cry. He takes a dish from my hand and sets it down. The kitchen is hot. The floor is soft. The sound of my cries are not loud enough to dispatch help.

I cannot breathe.

And then his voice fills the room like thunder.

“Tonight, you will sleep in my room,” he says.

I falter, but he catches me by the elbow.

“Now, now,” he says, “don’t get upset.”

I turn out of his grip and use the counter to hold myself up as I inch toward the door. He is faster. In two strides, he is there, blocking the way out.

“You were going to leave me soon. Don’t you think this is better than a stranger? It won’t be so bad,” he says, wiping sweat from his mouth with the back of his hand.

“I can’t, I have to be matched to a perfect match,” I whisper.

“I checked,” he says, “and I am allowed.”

​He presses his pale lips together.

​“You will be a good Mother,” he says.

He shifts his gaze to the floor.

“You won’t be going back to school,” he says, “the school agrees that I need my peace or I may do something bad, and at the moment, there are no other Nancy’s available for a man of my age,” he says, combing his oily hair back with shaky fingers.

“I can’t,” I say again, but my voice is so small.

“You will,” he replies, “and you will be better than she was. We will get you a Daughter and she will go to school for you.”

He turns into the doorway.

“I’m not too much of a bother, am I?” he asks.

“I can’t!” I cry out, running against the closing door.

We stand on opposite sides; he in his freedom and me in the purpose of my design.

“Father?” I ask, “Did Mother know this would happen to me?”

I press my ear to the door in an effort to hear his reply over the sound of my pounding heart.

“Nancy,” he says, his voice completely changed, “you should call me Husband now.”

Nancy’s Husband was a finalist in the L. Ron Hubbard Writers of the Future Contest 2019.

The short story was originally published at The Junction. This version has been edited.

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