Power & Control: The Common Good

“Amelia, love, as much as I endorse your firm, albeit, strange choice to attend university, I simply will not pay that sort of money for you to study journalism.”

My father’s reaction shouldn’t have been unexpected. After all, he’d always been a misogynistic asshole—that was normal in his tax bracket nowadays. The way he berated my mother for working, even though fashion fell under his completely fictionalized idea of “woman’s work,” should have been proof enough that I was expected to study something less profound. While my father hadn’t technically said it aloud, I knew that he’d been spending the past year waiting for this silly “university” phase to blow over. But here we were, just days before I was to start my first semester at the University College London, and he was trying to back out on me.

“Dad!” I exclaimed, jaw hanging wide open long after I’d finished speaking. My eyes trailed between my mother and father. My four brothers were seated on a nearby couch watching the rugby game, which I knew my father would much rather be doing right now. Part of me reveled in keeping him from entertainment, so even if I lost this battle, I’d measure my victory in the minutes I kept him away from his precious match. “This is so unfair!”

“No,” my father retorted, scratching his full, red beard. “What’s unfair is that you won’t learn your place, and you insist on bothering me with this ridiculous issue.”

“It’s not a ridiculous issue, it’s my future, Dad,” I scoffed.

“It’s a waste of my money,” he said. He casually sipped his coffee while my face contorted into a convoluted mixture of shock and insult.

“Oh, journalism is a waste of your money?” I laughed. “You bought Danny all those fancy cartography lessons, and he still thinks the land is the blue part of the map!”

“Hey!” Danny shouted from the couch. He poked his head up and smoothed out his auburn hair. “I had just finished that course, and I was under pressure!”

I spun around in my chair and yelled, “What kind of pressure even exists in this house, Danny? Nobody in this place works for anything! We were on a yacht, and you weren’t even navigating us, for Sol’s sake!”

“Amelia, do not take Sol’s name in vain,” my father interjected.

“Well, shit, sorry,” I snapped. “But I just don’t see how you can possibly tell me that getting my degree is a waste of my time! You buy them everything!” I flung an arm out toward my brothers. “I mean, hell, Dad, you bought the twins lessons in the business methods of agriculture!”

“Business can be put to use, Amelia,” he argued.

“Oh, and I suppose that their vast knowledge of farm life is going to do a whole lot of good on a city that floats.”

“I’m done discussing this with you,” my father concluded. Without leaving me any space for response, he got up from the table.

“Seriously?” I called after him. He walked in and sat on the couch beside Danny, paying no attention to me. “Fine! Piss off, then!”

Just as the heavy breathing set in, a hand rested on my shoulder.

I closed my eyes tight and sighed, “Not now, mum.”

“Let me talk to him, dear,” my mum said softly. My mother was the only person in the whole house I could rely on. She was my estrogen lifesaver in a sea of testosterone and bullshit. “I’ll try to figure this out.”

“Okay,” I mumbled.

“You know how he gets sometimes.”

“You mean, how he is all the time.”

Mum chuckled under her breath for a moment before disguising her amusement by clearing her throat. “Amelia, you shouldn’t say that about your father. He’s still your father, after all.”

“Yes, Mum. Understood, Mum,” I droned.

“Run upstairs and get ready for bed.” She squeezed my shoulder. “We’re going to get up early tomorrow.”

I couldn’t keep the groan in. “Ugh, Mum, why?”

“We’re going to get you new school clothes.” The weight in my chest immediately lifted, and I perked up. Mum had a hearty chuckle at that one. “Now stop your bloody whining and go on, missy.”

“And you’ll talk to Dad?” I ask, twisting my head around to look up at her.

“Yes,” Mum laughed. “Now, go. Get on with it.” She lightly smacked her hand against my shoulder, and I shot up out of the chair and rushed up the stairs, falling into bed with fingers crossed that Mum could make something work.

A good job was my ticket out of this house, and unlike my older brothers, who seemed content to sit at home all their lives, I wanted out, and I wanted it quick. I was going to leave my miserable family behind if it was the last thing I ever did.

To say I didn’t love my family would be a gross exaggeration. Like any normal adolescent, I often grappled between loving them and wanting to strangle them with my bare hands. My mum was sweet. I rarely had problems with her, since she understood me about 90% of the time. My brothers were typical twenty-something-year-old boys. Not much else to say about that. It was my father that I had the most problems with.

My father was a very powerful man—not the most powerful, but he had some pull in the government. However, having influence in League ideas meant subscribing to them as well, and any League-loyal, male citizen knew that women didn’t belong in careers of intellectual pursuits. They belonged in film, in magazine spreads, or in the kitchen. But I was a terrible actress, often didn’t photograph very well, and I burnt every piece of food I touched.

Until I could wriggle out of his grasp, I’d have to play nice… but until then, he was just a throbbing tooth I couldn’t wait to yank out.