The Testaments (27 page)

My reading abilities progressed slowly and with many stumbles. Becka helped me a lot. We used Bible verses to practise, from the approved selection that was available to Supplicants. With my very own eyes I was able to read portions of Scripture that I had until then only heard. 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.

Laboriously I spelled out the words. They seemed different when they were on the page: not flowing and sonorous, as I had recited them in my head, but flatter, drier.

Becka said that spelling was not reading: reading, she said, was when you could hear the words as if they were a song.

“Maybe I won’t ever get it right,” I said.

“You will,” said Becka. “Let’s try reading some real songs.”

She went to the library—I wasn’t allowed in there as yet—and brought back one of our Ardua Hall hymn books. In it was the childhood nighttime song that Tabitha used to sing to me in her voice like silver bells:

Now I lay me down to sleep,

I pray the Lord my soul to keep…

I sang it to Becka, and then after a while I was able to read it to her. “That’s so hopeful,” she said. “I would like to think that there are two angels always waiting to fly away with me.” Then she said, “I never had anyone sing to me at night. You were so lucky.”

Along with reading, I had to learn to write. That was harder in some ways, though less hard in others. We used drawing ink and straight pens with metal nibs, or sometimes pencils. It depended on what had been recently allocated to Ardua Hall from the storehouses reserved for imports.

Writing materials were the prerogative of the Commanders and the Aunts. Otherwise they were not generally available in Gilead; women had no use for them, and most men didn’t either, except for reports and inventories. What else would most people be writing about?

We’d learned to embroider and paint at the Vidala School, and Becka said that writing was almost the same as that—each letter was like a picture or a row of stitching, and it was also like a musical note; you just had to learn how to form the letters, and then how to attach them together, like pearls on a string.

She herself had beautiful handwriting. She showed me how, often and with patience; then, once I could write, however awkwardly, she selected a series of Biblical mottoes for me to copy.

And now abideth Faith, Hope, Charity, these three; but the greatest of these is Charity.

Love is as strong as Death.

A bird of the air shall carry the voice, and that which hath wings shall tell the matter.

I wrote them over and over. By comparing the different written versions of the same sentence, I could see how much I had improved, said Becka.

I wondered about the words I was writing. Was Charity really greater than Faith, and did I have either? Was Love as strong as Death? Whose was the voice that the bird was going to carry?

Being able to read and write did not provide the answers to all questions. It led to other questions, and then to others.

In addition to learning to read, I managed to successfully perform the other tasks assigned to me during those first months. Some of these tasks were not onerous: I enjoyed painting the skirts and sleeves and head coverings on the little girls in the Dick and Jane books, and I did not mind working in the kitchen, chopping up turnips and onions for the cooks and washing dishes. Everyone at Ardua Hall had to contribute to the general welfare, and manual labour was not to be sneered at. No Aunt was considered above it, though in practice the Supplicants did most of the heavy hauling. But why not? We were younger.

Scrubbing the toilets was not enjoyable, however, especially when you had to scrub them again even when they were perfectly clean the first time, and then again for a third time. Becka had warned me that the Aunts would demand this repetition—it wasn’t about the state of the toilets, she said. It was a test of obedience.

“But making us clean a toilet three times—that’s unreasonable,” I said. “It’s a waste of valuable national resources.”

“Toilet cleaner is not a valuable national resource,” she said. “Not like pregnant women. But unreasonable—yes, that’s why it’s a test. They want to see if you’ll obey unreasonable demands without complaining.”

To make the test harder, they would assign the most junior Aunt to supervise. To be given stupid orders by someone almost your age is a lot more irritating than having that person be old.

“I hate this!” I said after the fourth week in a row of toilet-cleaning. “I truly hate Aunt Abby! She’s so mean, and pompous, and…”

“It’s a test,” Becka reminded me. “Like Job, being tested by God.”

“Aunt Abby isn’t God. She only thinks she is,” I said.

“We must try not to be uncharitable,” said Becka. “You should pray for your hatred to go away. Just think of it as flowing out of your nose, like breath.”

Becka had a lot of these control-yourself techniques. I tried to practise them. They worked some of the time.

Once I’d passed my sixth-month examination and had been accepted as a permanent Supplicant, I was allowed into the Hildegard Library. It’s hard to describe the feeling this gave me. The first time I passed through its doors, I felt as if a golden key had been given to me—a key that would unlock one secret door after another, revealing to me the riches that lay within.

Initially I had access only to the outer room, but after a time I was given a pass to the Reading Room. In there I had my own desk. One of my assigned tasks was to make fair copies of the speeches—or perhaps I should call them sermons—that Aunt Lydia delivered on special occasions. She reused these speeches but changed them each time, and we needed to incorporate her handwritten notes into a legible typescript. By now I had learned how to type, although slowly.

While I was at my desk, Aunt Lydia would sometimes pass me going through the Reading Room on her way to her own special room, where she was said to be doing important research that would make Gilead a better place: that was Aunt Lydia’s lifetime mission, said the senior Aunts. The precious Bloodlines Genealogical Archives kept so meticulously by the senior Aunts, the Bibles, the theological discourses, the dangerous works of world literature—all were behind that locked door. We would be granted access only when our minds were sufficiently strengthened.

The months and years went by, and Becka and I became close friends, and told each other many things about ourselves and our families that we’d never told anyone else. I confessed how much I’d hated my stepmother, Paula, although I’d tried to overcome that feeling. I described the tragic death of our Handmaid, Crystal, and how upset I’d been. And she told me about Dr. Grove and what he’d done, and I’d told her my own story about him, which upset her on my behalf. We talked about our real mothers and how we wanted to know who they’d been. Perhaps we ought not to have shared so much, but it was very comforting.

“I wish I had a sister,” she said to me one day. “And if I did, that person would be you.”

I’ve described our life as peaceful, and to the outward eye it was; but there were inner storms and turmoils that I have since come to learn are not uncommon among those seeking to dedicate themselves to a higher cause. The first of my inner storms came about when, after four years of reading more elementary texts, I was finally granted reading access to the full Bible. Our Bibles were kept locked up, as elsewhere in Gilead: only those of strong mind and steadfast character could be trusted with them, and that ruled out women, except for the Aunts.

Becka had begun her own Bible reading earlier—she was ahead of me, in priority as well as in proficiency—but those already initiated into these mysteries were not allowed to talk about their sacred reading experiences, so we had not discussed what she had learned.

The day came when the locked wooden Bible box reserved for me would be brought out to the Reading Room and I would finally open this most forbidden of books. I was very excited about it, but that morning Becka said, “I need to warn you.”

“Warn me?” I said. “But it’s holy.”

“It doesn’t say what they say it says.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I don’t want you to be too disappointed.” She paused. “I’m sure Aunt Estée meant well.” Then she said, “Judges 19 to 21.”

That was all she would tell me. But when I got to the Reading Room and opened the wooden box and then the Bible, that was the first place I turned to. It was the Concubine Cut into Twelve Pieces, the same story that Aunt Vidala had told us so long ago at school—the one that had disturbed Becka so much when she was little.

I remembered it well. And I remembered, too, the explanation that Aunt Estée had given us. She’d said that the reason the concubine had got killed was that she was sorry for having been disobedient, so she sacrificed herself rather than allowing her owner to be raped by the wicked Benjaminites. Aunt Estée had said the concubine was brave and noble. She’d said the concubine had made a choice.

But now I was reading the whole story. I looked for the brave and noble part, I looked for the choice, but none of that was there. The girl was simply shoved out the door and raped to death, then cut up like a cow by a man who’d treated her like a purchased animal when she’d been alive. No wonder she’d run away in the first place.

It came as a painful shock: kind, helpful Aunt Estée had lied to us. The truth was not noble, it was horrible. This was what the Aunts meant, then, when they said women’s minds were too weak for reading. We would crumble, we would fall apart under the contradictions, we would not be able to hold firm.

Up until that time I had not seriously doubted the rightness and especially the truthfulness of Gilead’s theology. If I’d failed at perfection, I’d concluded that the fault was mine. But as I discovered what had been changed by Gilead, what had been added, and what had been omitted, I feared I might lose my faith.

If you’ve never had a faith, you will not understand what that means. You feel as if your best friend is dying; that everything that defined you is being burned away; that you’ll be left all alone. You feel exiled, as if you are lost in a dark wood. It was like the feeling I’d had when Tabitha died: the world was emptying itself of meaning. Everything was hollow. Everything was withering.

I told Becka some of what was taking place within me.

“I know,” she said. “That happened to me. Everyone at the top of Gilead has lied to us.”

“How do you mean?”

“God isn’t what they say,” she said. She said you could believe in Gilead or you could believe in God, but not both. That was how she had managed her own crisis.

I said that I wasn’t sure I would be able to choose. 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?

Three years later, an even more alarming thing happened.
As
I’ve said, one of my tasks at the Hildegard Library was to make fair copies of Aunt Lydia’s speeches. The pages for the speech I was to work on that day would be left on my desk in a silver folder. One morning I discovered, tucked in behind the silver folder, a blue one. Who had put it there? Had there been some mistake?

I opened it. The name of my stepmother, Paula, was at the top of the first page. What followed was an account of the death of her first husband, the one she’d had before she’d married my so-called father, Commander Kyle.
As
I’ve told you, her husband, Commander Saunders, had been killed in his study by their Handmaid. Or that was the story that had circulated.

Paula had said that the girl was dangerously unbalanced, and had stolen a skewer from the kitchen and killed Commander Saunders in an unprovoked attack. The Handmaid had escaped, but had been caught and hanged, and her dead body had been displayed on the Wall. But Shunammite had said that her Martha had said there had been an unlawful and sinful liaison—the Handmaid and the husband had been in the habit of fornicating in his study. That was what had given the Handmaid the opportunity to kill him, and that was also why she’d done it: the demands he’d been making of her had driven her over the edge of sanity. The rest of Shunammite’s story was the same: Paula’s discovery of the corpse, the capture of the Handmaid, the hanging. Shunammite had added a detail about Paula getting a lot of blood on herself while putting the dead Commander’s trousers back on him to save appearances.

But the story in the blue folder was quite different. It was augmented by photographs, and transcripts of many secretly recorded conversations. There had been no illicit liaison between Commander Saunders and his Handmaid—only the regular Ceremonies as decreed by law. However, Paula and Commander Kyle—my erstwhile father—had been having an affair even before Tabitha, my mother, had died.

Paula had befriended the Handmaid and offered to help her escape from Gilead since she knew how unhappy the girl was. She’d even provided her with a map and directions, and the names of several Mayday contacts along the way. After the Handmaid had set out, Paula had skewered Commander Saunders herself. That was why she’d had so much blood on her, not from putting his trousers back on. In fact, he had never taken them off, or not on that night.

She’d bribed her Martha to back up the murderous Handmaid story, combining the bribe with threats. Then she’d called the Angels and accused the Handmaid, and the rest had followed. The unfortunate girl was found wandering the streets in despair, since the map was inaccurate and the Mayday contacts turned out not to exist.

The Handmaid had been interrogated. (The transcript of the interrogation was attached, and it was not comfortable reading.) Although admitting to her escape attempt and revealing Paula’s part in it, 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.

The Aunts had known the truth. Or at least one of them had known. There was the evidence, right in the folder in front of me. Yet nothing had happened to Paula. And a Handmaid had been hanged for the crime instead.

I was bedazzled, as if struck by lightning. But not only was I astounded by this story, I was mystified as to the reason it had been placed on my desk. Why had an unknown person given me such dangerous information?

Once a story you’ve regarded as true has turned false, you begin suspecting all stories. Was an effort being made to turn me against Gilead? Was the evidence faked? 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? Had this terrible story bought me my place as an Aunt at Ardua Hall? Was this a way of telling me that my mother, Tabitha, had not died of a disease but had been murdered in some unknown way by Paula, and possibly even by Commander Kyle? I didn’t know what to believe.

There was no one I could confide in. Not even Becka: I didn’t want to endanger her by making her complicit. The truth can cause a lot of trouble for those who are not supposed to know it.

I finished my work for the day, leaving the blue folder where I’d found it. The next day there was a new speech for me to work on, and the blue folder of the day before was gone.

Over the course of the following two years, I found a number of similar folders waiting for me on my desk. They all held evidence of various crimes. 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.

Most of the files left for me were either blue or black, and described multiple crimes. Handmaids had been forced into illegal acts, then blamed for them; Sons of Jacob had plotted against one another; bribes and favours had been exchanged at the highest levels; Wives had schemed against other Wives; Marthas had eavesdropped and collected information, and then sold it; mysterious food poisonings had occurred, babies had changed hands from Wife to Wife on the basis of scandalous rumours that were, however, unfounded. Wives had been hanged for adulteries that had never occurred because a Commander wanted a different, younger Wife. Public trials—meant to purge traitors and purify the leadership—had turned on false confessions extracted by torture.

Bearing false witness was not the exception, it was common. Beneath its outer show of virtue and purity, Gilead was rotting.

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 had disposed of them all. The first had been pushed down the stairs; her neck was broken. It was said that she’d tripped and fallen.
As
I knew from my reading of other files, it was not difficult to make such things look like accidents. Two of his Wives were said to have died in childbirth, or shortly thereafter; the babies were Unbabies, but the deaths of the Wives had involved deliberately induced septicemia or shock. In one case, Commander Judd had refused permission to operate when an Unbaby with two heads had lodged in the birth canal. Nothing could be done, he’d said piously, because there had still been a fetal heartbeat.

The fourth Wife had taken up flower-painting as a hobby at the suggestion of Commander Judd, who had thoughtfully purchased the paints for her. She’d then developed symptoms attributable to cadmium poisoning. Cadmium, the file noted, was a well-known carcinogenic, and the fourth Wife had succumbed to stomach cancer shortly thereafter.

I’d narrowly avoided a death sentence, it seemed. And I’d had help avoiding it. I said a prayer of gratitude that night: despite my doubts, I continued to pray. Thank you, I said. Help thou my unbelief. I added, And help Shunammite, for she will surely need it.

When I’d first begun reading these files, I was appalled and sickened. Was someone trying to cause me distress? Or were the files part of my education? Was my mind being hardened? Was I being prepared for the tasks I would later be performing as an Aunt?

This was what the Aunts did, I was learning. They recorded. They waited. They used their information to achieve goals known only to themselves. Their weapons were powerful but contaminating secrets, as the Marthas had always said. Secrets, lies, cunning, deceit—but the secrets, the lies, the cunning, and the deceit of others as well as their own.

If I remained at Ardua Hall—if I performed my Pearl Girls missionary work and returned as a full Aunt—this is what I would become. All of the secrets I had learned, and doubtless many more, would be mine, to use as I saw fit. All of this power. All of this potential to judge the wicked in silence, and to punish them in ways they would not be able to anticipate. All of this vengeance.

As
I have said, there was a vengeful side to me that I had in the past regretted. Regretted but not expunged.

I would not be telling the truth if I said I was not tempted.