I am a common-wife; it is what I was fated to be. The lilacs were in full bloom on the night that I was born; the scent wafted into the birthing room and filled my mother's lungs with their strong fragrance. She was a brood-wife, made for the task of bearing young, a task that I will never face. I was her sixteenth child; the thirteenth girl and the first born under a full moon. Girls born under a full-moon are made into common-wives to serve the needs of the males when the breeders were not available. Ours was a life of pleasuring without the burden of bearing offspring. Only the breeders were cared for more by the Greys, the maid-servants of the town. There were too many females to use them all, so rules were made to decide which ones were made and which ones were left untouched. The Greys were left unmade. They did the work in the town, tended the fields, raised the children, cleaned the houses, did the laundry, cooked and served the meals. The common-wives did other things.
I was kept in the nursery until I was able to fed myself and change my clothes without assistance. The girls of our village had no time for play; they would spend their early years learning obedience and patience. I was five when I was sent to live among the Greys. These flat-chested women would train me to care for a house and those who lived within it. I wore a simple black frock that resembled those of the Greys, but clung more to my rail thin frame. The Greys taught me to sit quietly, back straight and legs tightly clenched together beneath my black frock. Unlike the mother at whose ample chest I suckled until I was old enough to wean, the Greys were flat-chested and quite thin.
On my fifth birthday, I was sent to be trained as a handmaiden in the house of Grey women in the center of the village. There I wore the pale gray frock of a handmaiden, with a shorter skirt and less modest bodice than what I wore in the nursery. The young girls' frocks allowed for greater movement, necessary for doing chores. We slept together in a large room where we made our beds and took our meals and spent our days practicing our patience sitting in chairs waiting to be called upon.
At the age of ten, I was assigned to the washroom where I would assist the elder Greys by scrubbing their backs and fetching soap or towels for them. I lived where I worked and slept next to the large stone basins. I ate from the trays of fruit and bread that would be brought to the washroom every morning and every evening. My next two years were spent in the laundry, scrubbing the linens, rinsing them or them hanging them to dry. It was endless work and I would miss meals because of it. I did not think that I would survive.
I was moved to kitchen duty at the age of fourteen. There I prepared the food and scrubbed the pots. Again the work seemed endless, but meals were never missed. I slept on the floor of a small loft in the kitchen with the other young Greys who shared my duties. At fifteen I was moved to the pantry where the china was washed and stored. I would serve the meals and clean up after. I learned to balance heavy trays of food and china while moving quickly between the kitchen in the back of the house and the dining room. I carried large pitchers of water and ale, and learned to quickly dispense wine from a corked bottle. It was harder work than the laundry had been but my stamina and strength grew as I bustled to meet the demands of the women in the dining hall.
At sixteen I moved to the upper floors where I worked as a chambermaid; I slept on a mattress in the attic and ate my meals in a back room above the kitchen. Our frocks were light gray then, the color of a fully trained servant although technically we were still in training as a maid. My duties included sweeping the floors, changing the beds, cleaning the lavatories and occasionally tending to the ladies. I would sit sometimes for hours brushing their hair or rubbing their feet while listening to them prattle on about their day.
