The Handmaid's Tale

by Margaret Atwood

You were a wanted child, all right, and did I get shit from some quarters! My oldest buddy Tricia accused me of being pronatalist, the bitch. Jealousy, I put that down to. Some of the others were okay though. But when I was six months’ pregnant, a lot of them started sending me these articles about how the birth-defect rate went zooming up after thirty-five. Just what I needed. And stuff about how hard it was to be a single parent. Fuck that shit, I told them, I’ve started this and I’m going to finish it. At the hospital they wrote down “Aged Primipara” on the chart, I caught them in the act. That’s what they call you when it’s your first baby over thirty, over thirty for god-sake. Garbage, I told them, biologically I’m twenty-two, I could run rings around you any day. I could have triplets and walk out of here while you were still trying to get up off the bed.