* * *
—
At last the Birth Day came. I was home from school because I’d finally got my first period and I was having bad cramps. Zilla had made a hot water bottle for me and had rubbed on some painkilling salve and had made me a cup of analgesic tea, and I was huddled in my bed feeling sorry for myself when I heard the Birthmobile siren coming along our street. I hauled myself out of bed and went to the window: yes, the red van was inside our gates now and the Handmaids were climbing down out of it, a dozen of them or more. I couldn’t see their faces, but just from the way they moved—faster than they usually did—I could tell they were excited.
Then the cars of the Wives began to arrive, and they too hurried into our house in their identical blue cloaks. Two Aunts’ cars also drove up, and the Aunts got out. They weren’t ones I recognized. Both were older, and one was carrying a black bag with the red wings and the knotted snake and the moon on it that meant it was a Medical Services First Responder bag, female division. A number of the Aunts were trained in first response and midwifery, though they could not be real doctors.
I was not supposed to witness a Birth. Girls and marriageable young women—such as I’d just become by having my period—were not allowed to see or know what went on, because such sights and sounds were not suitable for us and might be harmful to us—might disgust us or frighten us. That thick red knowledge was for married women and Handmaids, and for the Aunts, of course, so they could teach it to the midwife Aunts in training. But naturally I repressed my own cramping pain and put on my dressing gown and slippers, and crept halfway up the stairs that led to the third floor, where I would be out of sight.
The Wives were downstairs having a tea party in the living room and waiting for the important moment. I did not know what moment exactly, but I could hear them laughing and chattering. They were drinking champagne along with their tea, as I knew from the bottles and empty glasses I saw in the kitchen later.
The Handmaids and the designated Aunts were with Ofkyle. She wasn’t in her own room—that room wouldn’t have been big enough for everyone—but in the master bedroom on the second floor. I could hear a groaning sound that was like an animal, and the Handmaids chanting—Push, push, push, breathe, breathe, breathe—and at intervals an anguished voice I didn’t recognize—but it must have been Ofkyle’s—saying Oh God, Oh God, deep and dark as if it was coming out of a well. It was terrifying. Sitting on the stairs hugging myself, I began to shiver. What was happening? What torturing, what inflicting? What was being done?
These sounds went on for what seemed a long time. I heard footsteps hurrying along the hallway—the Marthas, bringing whatever had been requested, carrying things away. From snooping in the laundry later in the evening I saw that some of these things were bloody sheets and towels. Then one of the Aunts came out into the hall and started barking into her Computalk. “Right now! As fast as you can! Her pressure’s way down! She’s losing too much blood!”
There was a scream, and another. One of the Aunts called down the stairs to the Wives: “Get in here now!” The Aunts didn’t usually yell like that. A crowd of footsteps, hurrying up the stairs, and a voice saying, “Oh, Paula!”
Then there was another siren, a different kind. I checked the hallway—nobody—and scuttled to my own room to peer out the window. A black car, the red wings
and the snake, but a tall gold triangle: a real doctor. He almost leapt out of the car, slamming the door, and ran up the steps.
I heard what he was saying: Shit! Shit! Shit! Shit of a God!
This in itself was electrifying: I had never heard a man say anything like that before.
* * *
—
It was a boy, a healthy son for Paula and Commander Kyle. He was named Mark. But Ofkyle died.
I sat with the Marthas in the kitchen after the Wives and the Handmaids and everyone had gone away. The Marthas were eating the leftover party food: sandwiches with the crusts cut off, cake, real coffee. They offered me some of the treats, but I said I wasn’t hungry. They asked about my cramps; I would feel better tomorrow, they said, and after a while it wouldn’t be so bad, and anyway you got used to it. But that wasn’t why I had no appetite.
There would have to be a wet nurse, they said: it would be one of the Handmaids who’d lost a baby. That, or formula, though everyone knew formula wasn’t as good. Still, it would keep life in the little mite.
“The poor girl,” Zilla said. “To go through all of that for nothing.”
“At least the baby was saved,” said Vera.
“It was one or the other,” said Rosa. “They had to cut her open.”
“I’m going to bed now,” I said.
* * *
—
Ofkyle hadn’t yet been taken out of our house. She was in her own room, wrapped in a sheet, as I discovered when I went softly up the back stairs.
I uncovered her face. It was flat white: she must have had no blood left in her. Her eyebrows were blond, soft and fine, upcurved as if surprised. Her eyes were open, looking at me. Maybe that was the first time she had ever seen me. I kissed her on the forehead.
“I won’t ever forget you,” I said to her. “The others will, but I promise I won’t.”
Melodramatic, I know: I was still a child really. But as you can see, I have kept my word: I never have forgotten her. Her, Ofkyle, the nameless one, buried under a little square stone that might as well have been blank. I found it in the Handmaid graveyard, some years later.
And when I had the power to do so, I searched for her in the Bloodlines Genealogical Archives, and I found her. I found her original name. Meaningless, I know, except for those who must have loved her and then been torn apart from her. But for me it was like finding a handprint in a cave: it was a sign, it was a message. I was here. I existed. I was real.
What was her name? Of course you will want to know.