“A sage decision,” I said. “You must remain above suspicion.”
“I depend on your discretion. I am in your hands, dear Aunt Lydia,” he said, rising from his desk. How true, I thought. And how easily a hand becomes a fist.
* * *
—
My reader, I am now poised on the razor’s edge. I have two choices: I can proceed with my risky and even reckless plan, attempt to transfer my packet of explosives by means of young Nicole, and, if successful, give both Judd and Gilead the first shove over the cliff. If I am unsuccessful, I will naturally be branded a traitor and will live in infamy; or rather die in it.
Or I could choose the safer course. I could hand Baby Nicole over to Commander Judd, where she would shine brilliantly for a moment before being snuffed out like a candle due to insubordination, as the chances of her meekly accepting her position here would be zero. I would then reap my reward in Gilead, which would potentially be great. Aunt Vidala would be nullified; I might even have her assigned to a mental institution. My control over Ardua Hall would be complete and my honoured old age secure.
I would have to give up the idea of retributive vengeance against Judd, as we would then be joined at the hip forever. Judd’s Wife, Shunammite, would be a collateral casualty. I have placed Jade in the same dormitory space as Aunt Immortelle and Aunt Victoria, so once she was eliminated, their own fates would hang in the balance: guilt by association applies in Gilead, as it does elsewhere.
Am I capable of such duplicity? Could I betray so completely? Having tunnelled this far under the foundations of Gilead with my stash of cordite, might I falter? As I am human, it is entirely possible.
In that case, I would destroy these pages I have written so laboriously; and I would destroy you along with them, my future reader. One flare of a match and you’ll be gone—wiped away as if you had never been, as if you will never be. I would deny you existence. What a godlike feeling! Though it is a god of annihilation.
I waver, I waver.
But tomorrow is another day.
XX
BLOODLINES
Transcript of Witness Testimony 369B
53
I’d made it into Gilead. I’d thought I knew a lot about it, but living a thing is different, and with Gilead it was very different. Gilead was slippery, like walking on ice: I felt off balance all the time. I couldn’t read people’s faces, and I often didn’t know what they were saying. I could hear the words, I could understand the words themselves, but I couldn’t translate them into meaning.
At that first meeting in the chapel, after we’d done the kneeling and the singing, when Aunt Beatrice took me to a pew to sit down, I looked back over the room full of women. Everyone was staring at me and smiling in a way that was part friendly and part hungry, like those scenes in horror movies where you know the villagers will turn out to be vampires.
Then there was an all-night vigil for the new Pearls: we were supposed to be doing silent meditation while kneeling. Nobody had told me about this: What were the rules? Did you put up your hand to go to the bathroom? In case you’re wondering, the answer was yes. After hours of this—my legs were really cramping—one of the new Pearls, from Mexico I think, began crying hysterically and then yelling. Two Aunts picked her up and marched her out. I heard later that they’d turned her into a Handmaid, so it was a good thing I’d kept my mouth shut.
The following day we were given those ugly brown outfits, and the next thing I knew we were being herded off to a sports stadium where we were seated in rows. No one had mentioned sports in Gilead—I’d thought they didn’t have any—but it wasn’t sports. It was a Particicution. They’d told us about those back in school, but they hadn’t gone into too much detail, I guess, because they didn’t want to traumatize us. Now I could understand that.
It was a double execution: two men literally torn apart by a mob of frenzied women. There was screaming, there was kicking, there was biting, there was blood everywhere, on the Handmaids especially: they were covered in it. Some of them held up parts—clumps of hair, what looked like a finger—and then the others yelled and cheered.
It was gruesome; it was terrifying. It added a whole new dimension to my picture of Handmaids. Maybe my mother had been like that, I thought: feral.
Transcript of Witness Testimony 369A
54
Becka and I did our best to instruct the new Pearl, Jade, as Aunt Lydia had requested, but it was like talking to the air. She did not know how to sit patiently, with her back straight and her hands folded in her lap; she twisted, squirmed, fidgeted with her feet. “This is how women sit,” Becka would tell her, demonstrating.
“Yes, Aunt Immortelle,” she would say, and she would make a show of trying. But these attempts did not last long, and soon she was slouching again and crossing her ankles over her knees.
At Jade’s first evening meal at Ardua Hall, we sat her between us for her own protection, because she was so heedless. Nonetheless, she behaved most unwisely. It was bread and an indeterminate soup—on Mondays they often mixed up the leftovers and added some onions—and a salad of pea vines and white turnip. “The soup,” she said. “It’s like mouldy dishwater. I’m not eating it.”
“Shhh….Be thankful for what you are given,” I whispered back to her. “I’m sure it’s nutritious.”
The dessert was tapioca, again. “I can’t handle this.” She dropped her spoon with a clatter. “Fish eyes in glue.”
“It’s disrespectful not to finish,” said Becka. “Unless you’re fasting.”
“You can have mine,” said Jade.