“I don’t see why being a slut is performing a service,” Shunammite whispered.
“It’s because of the babies,” I whispered back. “The Handmaids can make babies.”
“So can some other women too,” said Shunammite, “and they aren’t sluts.” It was true, some of the Wives could, and some of the Econowives: we’d seen them with their bulging stomachs. But a lot of women couldn’t. Every woman wanted a baby, said Aunt Estée. Every woman who wasn’t an Aunt or a Martha. Because if you weren’t an Aunt or a Martha, said Aunt Vidala, what earthly use were you if you didn’t have a baby?
What the arrival of this Handmaid meant was that my new stepmother, Paula, wanted to have a baby because she did not count me as her child: Tabitha was my mother. But what about Commander Kyle? I didn’t seem to count as a child for him either. It was as if I had become invisible to both of them. They looked at me, and through me, and saw the wall.
* * *
—
When the Handmaid entered our household, I was almost of womanly age, as Gilead counted. I was taller, my face was longer in shape, and my nose had grown. I had darker eyebrows, not furry caterpillar ones like Shunammite’s or wispy ones like Becka’s, but curved into half-circles, and dark eyelashes. My hair had thickened and changed from a mousey brown to chestnut. All of that was pleasing to me, and I would look at my new face in the mirror, turning to take it in from all angles despite warnings against vanity.
More alarmingly, my breasts were swelling, and I had begun to sprout hair on areas of my body that we were not supposed to dwell on: legs, armpits, and the shameful part of many elusive names. Once that happened to a girl, she was no longer a precious flower but a much more dangerous creature.
We’d been prepared for such things at school—Aunt Vidala had presented a series of embarrassing illustrated lectures that were supposed to inform us about a woman’s role and duty in regard to her body—a married woman’s role—but they had not been very informative or reassuring. When Aunt Vidala asked if there were any questions, there weren’t any, because where would you begin? I wanted to ask why it had to be like this, but I already knew the answer: because it was God’s plan. That was how the Aunts got out of everything.
Soon I could expect blood to come out from between my legs: that had already happened to many of the girls at school. Why couldn’t God have arranged it otherwise? But he had a special interest in blood, which we knew about from Scripture verses that had been read out to us: blood, purification, more blood, more purification, blood shed to purify the impure, though you weren’t supposed to get it on your hands. Blood was polluting, especially when it came out of girls, but God once liked having it spilled on his altars. Though he had given that up—said Aunt Estée—in favour of fruits, vegetables, silent suffering, and good deeds.
The adult female body was one big booby trap as far as I could tell. If there was a hole, something was bound to be shoved into it and something else was bound to come out, and
that went for any kind of hole: a hole in a wall, a hole in a mountain, a hole in the ground. There were so many things that could be done to it or go wrong with it, this adult female body, that I was left feeling I would be better off without it. I considered shrinking myself by not eating, and I did try that for a day, but I got so hungry I couldn’t stick to my resolution, and went to the kitchen in the middle of the night and ate chicken scraps out of the soup pot.
* * *
—
My effervescent body was not my only worry: my status at school had become noticeably lower. I was no longer deferred to by the others, I was no longer courted. Girls would break off their conversations as I approached and would eye me strangely. Some would even turn their backs. Becka did not do that—she still contrived to sit beside me—but she looked straight ahead and did not slip her hand under the desk to hold mine.
Shunammite was still claiming to be my friend, partly I am sure because she was not popular among the others, but now she was doing me the favour of friendship instead of the other way around. I was hurt by all of this, though I didn’t yet understand why the atmosphere had changed.
The others knew, however. Word must have been going around, from mouth to ear to mouth—from my stepmother, Paula, through our Marthas, who noticed everything, and then from them to the other Marthas they would encounter when doing errands, and then from those Marthas to their Wives, and from the Wives to their daughters, my schoolmates.
What was the word? In part, that I was out of favour with my powerful father. My mother, Tabitha, had been my protectress; but now she was gone, and my stepmother did not wish me well. At home she would ignore me, or she would bark at me—Pick that up! Don’t slouch! I tried to keep out of her sight as much as possible, but even my closed door must have been an affront to her. She would have known that I was concealed behind it thinking acid thoughts.
But my fall in value went beyond the loss of my father’s favour. There was a new piece of information circulating, one that was very harmful to me.
* * *
—
Whenever there was a secret to tell—especially a shocking one—Shunammite loved to be the messenger.
“Guess what I found out?” she said one day while we were eating our lunchtime sandwiches. It was a sunny noon: we were being allowed to have a picnic outside on the school lawn. The grounds were enclosed by a high fence topped with razor wire and there were two Angels at the gate, which was locked except when the Aunts’ cars went in and out, so we were perfectly safe.
“What?” I said. The sandwiches were an artificial cheese mixture that had replaced real cheese in our school sandwiches because the real cheese was needed by our soldiers. The sunlight was warm, the grass was soft, I had made it out of the house that day without Paula seeing me, and for the moment I was feeling marginally content with my life.
“Your mother wasn’t your real mother,” said Shunammite. “They took you away from your real mother because she was a slut. But don’t worry, it’s not your fault, because you were too young to know that.”
My stomach clenched. I spat a mouthful of sandwich onto the grass. “That’s not true!” I almost shouted.
“Calm down,” said Shunammite. “Like I said, it’s not your fault.”
“I don’t believe you,” I said.
Shunammite gave me a pitying, relishing smile. “It’s the truth. My Martha heard the whole story from your Martha, and she heard it from your new stepmother. The Wives know about things like that—some of them got their own kids that way. Not me, though, I was born properly.”
I really hated her at that moment. “Then where’s my real mother?” I demanded. “If you know everything!” You are really, really mean, I wanted to say. It was dawning on me that she must have betrayed me: before telling me, she’d already told the other girls. That’s why they’d become so cool: I was tainted.