The Handmaid's Tale (The Handmaid's Tale 1)

"A picture," she says, as if offering me some juvenile treat, an ice cream, a trip to the zoo. I look up at her again, puzzled.

"Of her," she says. "Your little girl. But only maybe."

She knows where they've put her then, where they're keeping her. She's known all along. Something chokes in my throat. The bitch, not to tell me, bring me news, any news at all. Not even to let on. She's made of wood, or iron, she can't imagine. But I can't say this, I can't lose sight, even of so small a thing. I can't let go of this hope. I can't speak.

She's actually smiling, coquettishly even; there's a hint of her former small-screen mannequin's allure, flickering over her face like momentary static. "It's too damn hot for this, don't you think?" she says. She lifts the wool from my two hands, where I have been holding it all this time. Then she takes the cigarette she's been fiddling with and, a little awkwardly, presses it into my hand, closing my fingers around it. "Find yourself a match," she says. "They're in the kitchen, you can ask Rita for one. You can tell her I said so. Only the one though," she adds roguishly. "We don't want to ruin your health!"

CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

Rita's sitting at the kitchen table. There's a glass bowl with ice cubes floating in it on the table in front of her. Radishes made into flowers, roses or tulips, bob in it. On the chopping board in front of her she's cutting more, with a paring knife, her large hands deft, indifferent. The rest of her body does not move, nor does her face. It's as if she's doing it in her sleep, this knife trick. On the white enamel surface is a pile of radishes, washed but uncut. Little Aztec hearts.

She hardly bothers to look up as I enter. "You got it all, huh," is what she says, as I take the parcels out for her inspection.

"Could I have a match?" I ask her. Surprising how much like a small, begging child she makes me feel, simply by her scowl, her stolidity; how importunate and whiny.

"Matches?" she says. "What do you want matches for?"

"She said I could have one," I say, not wanting to admit to the cigarette.

"Who said?" She continues with the radishes, her rhythm unbroken. "No call for you to have matches. Burn the house down."

"You can go and ask her if you like," I say. "She's out on the lawn."

Rita rolls her eyes to the ceiling, as if consulting silently some deity there. Then she sighs, rises heavily, and wipes her hands with ostentation on her apron, to show me how much trouble I am. She goes to the cupboard over the sink, taking her time, locates her key-bunch in her pocket, unlocks the cupboard door. "Keep 'em in here, summer," she says as if to herself. "No call for a fire in this weather." I remember from April that it's Cora who lights the fires, in the sitting room and the dining room, in cooler weather.

The matches are wooden ones, in a cardboard sliding-top box, the kind I used to covet in order to make dolls' drawers out of them. She opens the box, peers into it, as if deciding which one she'll let me have. "Her own business," she mutters. "No way you ca

n tell her a thing." She plunges her big hand down, selects a match, hands it over to me. "Now don't you go setting fire to nothing," she says. "Not them curtains in your room. Too hot the way it is."

"I won't," I say. "That's not what it's for."

She does not deign to ask me what it is for. "Don't care if you eat it, or what," she says. "She said you could have one, so I give you one, is all."

She turns away from me and sits again at the table. Then she picks an ice cube out of the bowl and pops it into her mouth. This is an unusual thing for her to do. I've never seen her nibble while working. "You can have one of them too," she says. "A shame, making you wear all them pillowcases on your head, in this weather."

I am surprised: she doesn't usually offer me anything. Maybe she feels that if I've risen in status enough to be given a match, she can afford her own small gesture. Have I become, suddenly, one of those who must be appeased?

"Thank you," I say. I transfer the match carefully to my zippered sleeve where the cigarette is, so it won't get wet, and take an ice cube. "Those radishes are pretty," I say, in return for the gift she's made me, of her own free will.

"I like to do things right, is all," she says, grumpy again. "No sense otherwise."

I go along the passage, up the stairs, hurrying. In the curved hallway mirror I flit past, a red shape at the edge of my own field of vision, a wraith of red smoke. I have smoke on my mind all right, already I can feel it in my mouth, drawn down into the lungs, filling me in a long rich dirty cinnamon sigh, and then the rush as the nicotine hits the bloodstream.

After all this time it could make me sick. I wouldn't be surprised. But even that thought is welcome.

Along the corridor I go, where should I do it? In the bathroom, running the water to clear the air, in the bedroom, wheezy puffs out the open window? Who's to catch me at it? Who knows?

Even as I luxuriate in the future this way, rolling anticipation around in my mouth, I think of something else.

I don't need to smoke this cigarette.

I could shred it up and flush it down the toilet. Or I could eat it and get the high that way, that can work too, a little at a time, save up the rest.

That way I could keep the match. I could make a small hole, in the mattress, slide it carefully in. Such a thin thing would never be noticed. There it would be, at night, under me while I'm in bed. Sleeping on it.

I could burn the house down. Such a fine thought, it makes me shiver.

An escape, quick and narrow.