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“Though we no longer have any real way of knowing what they want.” I thought about this. “You used to have a way?” “Our source in Gilead,” said Ada. “Someone in Gilead was helping you?” I asked. “We don’t know who. They’d warn us of raids, tell us when a route was blocked, send us maps. The information’s always been accurate.” “But they didn’t warn Melanie and Neil,” I said.
Sloppier was his word, not mine, and I found it insulting until he said that Canada was sloppy in a good way.
If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans,
“But Aunt Lydia…it’s hard to describe. You get the feeling she wants you to be better than you are.” “That sounds inspirational,” I said. Inspirational was a favourite word of Aunt Lise’s: she used it for flower arrangements.
“She looks at you as if she really sees you.” So many people had looked past me. “I think I’d like that,” I said. “No,” said Becka. “That’s why she’s so scary.”
At that moment, however, Aunt Lydia came into the café. “May I have a word with you?”
When Paula stood up, however, she looked sick.
It was many years before I was to learn what Aunt Lydia had said to Paula to force her to relinquish me.
All things come to she who waits. Time wounds all heels. Patience is a virtue. Vengeance is mine.
She wouldn’t believe me. Even if she did, she’d say I led him on. They’d all say that. AGNES: But you were four!
I would need to wear the dress in order to get out of Canada because the Canadian authorities were clamping down on the export of underage converts. They were viewing it as human trafficking, which was quite wrong of them, she added.
My larger fear: that all my efforts will prove futile, and Gilead will last for a thousand years.
Reign of terror, they used to say, but terror does not exactly reign. Instead it paralyzes. Hence the unnatural quiet.
Innocent men denying their guilt sound exactly like guilty men, as I am sure you have noticed, my reader. Listeners are inclined to believe neither.
Grove could hardly admit that he would never have laid a lecherous finger on Aunt Elizabeth since he was only aroused by underage girls.
“Was he really guilty?” he asked with mild interest. “Yes,” I said, “but not of that. He would not have been capable of raping Aunt Elizabeth. He was a pedophile.”
“Poor man,” he said. “It is a severe affliction. We must pray for his soul.”
apartments; ours was marked with the letter C and the Ardua Hall motto: Per Ardua Cum Estrus. “It means, Through childbirth labour with the female reproductive cycle,” Becka said.
“But drowning yourself!” I said. “It’s supposed to be calm,” said Becka. “You hear bells and singing. Like angels. That’s what Aunt Helena told us, to make us feel better.”
“Aren’t you afraid she’ll attack you with the secateurs? Is she still insane?” “She was never insane,” I said, “just unhappy. It’s been wonderful to see you, Shunammite, but I must return to my duties.” “You don’t like me anymore,” she said half seriously. “I’m training to be an Aunt,” I said. “I’m not really supposed to like anyone.”
Becka helped me find the passage that I’d thought of so often at the time Tabitha died: For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night. Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep; in the morning they are like grass which groweth up. In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.
Being able to read and write did not provide the answers to all questions. It led to other questions, and then to others.
“I wish I had a sister,” she said to me one day. “And if I did, that person would be you.”
Secretly I feared that I would be unable to believe in either. Still, I wanted to believe; indeed I longed to; and, in the end, how much of belief comes from longing?
she’d maintained her innocence of the murder—indeed, her ignorance of the murder—until the pain had become too much, and she’d made a false confession. She was clearly innocent. But she was hanged anyway.
Was it Aunt Lydia’s threat to reveal Paula’s crime that had caused my stepmother to abandon her efforts to marry me to Commander Judd?
Those containing the crimes of Wives were blue, of Commanders black, of professionals—such as doctors—grey, of Econopeople striped, of Marthas dull green. There were none containing the crimes of Handmaids, and none for those of Aunts.
Wives had been hanged for adulteries that had never occurred because a Commander wanted a different, younger Wife.
Apart from Paula’s, the file that most immediately concerned me was that of Commander Judd. It was a thick file. Among other misdemeanours, it contained evidence pertaining to the fates of his previous Wives, those he had been married to before my short-lived engagement to him.
He has several highly valuable editions that I envy: Doré’s Inferno, Dalí’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Picasso’s Lysistrata.
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.
Aunt Vidala would be nullified; I might even have her assigned to a mental institution.
“It’s from ‘kick the bucket,’ ” said Jade. “It’s just a saying.” Then, seeing our puzzled looks, she continued. “I think it’s from when they used to hang people from trees. They’d make them stand on a bucket and then hang them, and their feet would kick, and naturally they would kick the bucket. Just my guess.” “That’s not how we hang people here,” said Becka.
The Aunts didn’t have folders; their Bloodlines weren’t recorded because they wouldn’t be having any children. That was a secret sadness for me: I liked children, I’d always wanted children, I just hadn’t wanted what came with them.
“Remember, too, your vows. You pledged yourselves to help women and girls. I trust you meant that.”
My office might as well have been Grand Central—before that venerable edifice was reduced to rubble during the War of Manhattan—so
“It would be even more efficacious if I could announce her betrothal to myself, and have the subsequent wedding ceremony broadcast. You and I would be untouchable then.”
“I’ll think of you as birds, flying away,” she said. “A bird of the air will carry the voice.” “I will pray for you,” I said. It did not seem adequate. “And I for you.” She smiled slightly. “I’ve never loved anyone but you.”
I dreamed of Becka. She was there beside me in the front of the truck. I couldn’t see her, though I knew she was there. I said to her in the dream, “So you came with us after all. I’m so happy.” But she didn’t answer.
The ability to concoct plausible lies is a talent not to be underestimated.
has discovered poor Aunt Immortelle in the cistern, blocking the outlet. The frugal child had removed her outer clothing so as to save it for someone else’s future use; it was found, neatly folded, on the top rung of the ladder. She’d retained her undergarments for purposes of modesty. It’s how I would have expected her to behave. Don’t think I am not saddened by her loss; but I remind myself that it was a willing sacrifice.
“Such a shame about Vidala’s allergies,” I said. “I hope she won’t suffer an asthmatic attack while sleeping. Now I must rush off, as I have a meeting. I will leave Vidala in your nurturing hands. I notice that her pillow needs rearranging.”
“Becka’s not here,” Agnes said gently. “She didn’t come with us. Remember?” “She
your nail polish chipped—for nail polish will have returned, it always does.
Cardinal Newman’s Apologia Pro Vita Sua.
IN LOVING MEMORY OF BECKA, AUNT IMMORTELLE THIS MEMORIAL WAS ERECTED BY HER SISTERS AGNES AND NICOLE AND THEIR MOTHER, THEIR TWO FATHERS, THEIR CHILDREN AND THEIR GRANDCHILDREN. AND IN RECOGNITION OF THE INVALUABLE SERVICES PROVIDED BY A.L. A BIRD OF THE AIR SHALL CARRY THE VOICE, AND THAT WHICH HATH WINGS SHALL TELL THE MATTER. LOVE IS AS STRONG AS DEATH.
The television series has respected one of the axioms of the novel: no event is allowed into it that does not have a precedent in human history.
And as always to Graeme Gibson, my partner in many strange and wonderful adventures for almost fifty years.
