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

I breathe in the soap smell, the disinfectant smell, and stand in the white bathroom, listening to the distant sounds of water running, toilets being flushed. In a strange way I feel comforted, at home. There is something reassuring about the toilets. Bodily functions at least remain democ

ratic. Everybody shits, as Moira would say.

I sit on the edge of the bathtub, gazing at the blank towels. Once they would have excited me. They would have meant the aftermath, of love.

I saw your mother, Moira said.

Where? I said. I felt jolted, thrown off. I realized I'd been thinking of her as dead.

Not in person, it was in that film they showed us, about the Colonies. There was a close-up, it was her all right. She was wrapped up in one of those grey things but I know it was her.

Thank God, I said.

Why, thank God? said Moira.

I thought she was dead.

She might as well be, said Moira. You should wish it for her.

I can't remember the last time I saw her. It blends in with all the others; it was some trivial occasion. She must have dropped by; she did that, she breezed in and out of my house as if I were the mother and she were the child. She still had that jauntiness. Sometimes, when she was between apartments, just moving in to one or just moving out, she'd use my washer-dryer for her laundry. Maybe she'd come over to borrow something, from me: a pot, a hair-dryer. That too was a habit of hers.

I didn't know it would be the last time or else I would have remembered it better. I can't even remember what we said.

A week later, two weeks, three weeks, when things had become suddenly so much worse, I tried to call her. But there was no answer, and no answer when I tried again.

She hadn't told me she was going anywhere, but then maybe she wouldn't have; she didn't always. She had her own car and she wasn't too old to drive.

Finally I got the apartment superintendent on the phone. He said he hadn't seen her lately.

I was worried. I thought maybe she'd had a heart attack or a stroke, it wasn't out of the question, though she hadn't been sick that I knew of. She was always so healthy. She still worked out at Nautilus and went swimming every two weeks. I used to tell my friends she was healthier than I was and maybe it was true.

Luke and I drove across into the city and Luke bullied the superintendent into opening up the apartment. She could be dead, on the floor, Luke said. The longer you leave it the worse it'll be. You thought of the smell? The superintendent said something about needing a permit, but Luke could be persuasive. He made it clear we weren't going to wait or go away. I started to cry. Maybe that was what finally did it.

When the man got the door open what we found was chaos. There was furniture overturned, the mattress was ripped open, bureau drawers upside-down on the floor, their contents strewn and mounded. But my mother wasn't there.

I'm going to call the police, I said. I'd stopped crying; I felt cold from head to foot, my teeth were chattering.

Don't, said Luke.

Why not? I said. I was glaring at him, I was angry now. He stood there in the wreck of the living room, just looking at me. He put his hands into his pockets, one of those aimless gestures people make when they don't know what else to do.

Just don't, is what he said.

Your mother's neat, Moira would say, when we were at college.

Later: she's got pizzazz. Later still: she's cute.

She's not cute, I would say. She's my mother.

Jeez, said Moira, you ought to see mine.

I think of my mother, sweeping up deadly toxins; the way they used to use up old women, in Russia, sweeping dirt. Only this dirt will kill her. I can't quite believe it. Surely her cockiness, her optimism and energy, her pizzazz, will get her out of this. She will think of something.

But I know this isn't true. It is just passing the buck, as children do, to mothers.

I've mourned for her already. But I will do it again, and again.

I bring myself back, to the here, to the hotel. This is where I need to be. Now, in this ample mirror under the white light, I take a look at myself.