The Testaments (26 page)

Becka and I first saw Jade at the Thanks Giving held to welcome back the returning Pearl Girls and their converts. She was a tall girl, somewhat awkward, and kept gazing around her in a direct way that verged on being too bold. Already I had a feeling that she would not find Ardua Hall an easy fit, not to mention Gilead itself. But I did not think much more about her because I was caught up in the beautiful ceremony.

Soon that would be us, I thought. Becka and I were completing our training as Supplicants; we were almost ready to become full Aunts. Very soon we would receive the silver Pearl Girls dresses, so much prettier than our habitual brown. We would inherit the strings of pearls; we would set out on our mission; we would each bring back a converted Pearl.

For my first few years at Ardua Hall, I’d been entranced by the prospect. I was still a full and true believer—if not in everything about Gilead, at least in the unselfish service of the Aunts. But now I was not so sure.

We did not see Jade again until the next day. Like all the new Pearls, she’d attended an all-night vigil in the chapel, engaged in silent meditation and prayer. Then she would have exchanged her silver dress for the brown one we all wore. Not that she was destined to become an Aunt—the recently arrived Pearls were observed carefully before being assigned as potential Wives or Econowives, or Supplicants, or, in some unhappy cases, Handmaids—but while among us they dressed like us, with the addition of a large imitation-pearl brooch in the shape of a new moon.

Jade’s introduction to the ways of Gilead was somewhat harsh, as the next day she was present at a Particicution. It may have been a shock to her to witness two men being literally ripped apart by Handmaids; it can be shocking even to me, although I’ve seen it many times over the course of the years. The Handmaids are usually so subdued, and the display of so much rage on their part can be alarming.

The Founder Aunts devised these rules. Becka and I would have opted for a less extreme method.

One of those eliminated at the Particicution was Dr. Grove, Becka’s erstwhile dentist father, who’d been condemned for raping Aunt Elizabeth. Or almost raping her: considering my own experience with him, I didn’t much care which. I am sorry to say I was glad he was being punished.

Becka took it very differently. Dr. Grove had treated her shamefully when she was a child, and I could not excuse that, though she herself was willing to. She was a more charitable person than I was; I admired her in that, but I could not emulate her.

When Dr. Grove was torn apart at the Particicution, Becka fainted. Some of the Aunts put this reaction down to filial love—Dr. Grove was a wicked man, but he was still a man, and a high-status man. He was also a father, to whom respect was due by an obedient daughter. However, I knew otherwise: Becka felt responsible for his death. She believed that she should never have told me about his crimes. I assured her that I hadn’t shared her confidences with anyone, and she said she trusted me, but Aunt Lydia must have found out somehow. It was how the Aunts got their power: by finding things out. Things that should never be talked about.

Becka and I had returned from the Particicution. I’d made her a cup of tea and suggested she should lie down—she was still pale—but she’d said that she’d controlled her feelings and would be fine. We were engaged in our evening Bible readings when there was a knock at the door. We were surprised to find Aunt Lydia standing outside; with her was the new Pearl, Jade.

“Aunt Victoria, Aunt Immortelle, you have been chosen for a very special duty,” she said. “Our newest Pearl, Jade, has been assigned to you. She will sleep in the third bedroom, which I understand is vacant. Your task will be to help her in every way possible, and instruct her in the details of our life of service here in Gilead. Do you have enough sheets and towels? If not, I will arrange for some.”

“Yes, Aunt Lydia, praise be,” I said. Becka echoed me. Jade smiled at us, a smile that managed to be both tremulous and stubborn. She was not like the average new convert from abroad: these were likely to be either abject or filled with zeal.

“Welcome,” I said to Jade. “Please come in.”

“Okay,” she said. She crossed our threshold. My heart fell: already I knew that the outwardly placid life Becka and I had been leading at Ardua Hall for the past nine years was at an end—change had come—but I did not yet grasp how wrenching that change would be.

I have said our life was placid, but perhaps that is not the right word. It was at any rate orderly, albeit somewhat monotonous. Our time was filled, but in a strange way it did not seem to pass. I’d been fourteen when I’d been admitted as a Supplicant, and although I was now grown up, I did not appear to myself to have grown much older. It was the same with Becka: we seemed to be frozen in some way; preserved, as if in ice.

The Founders and the older Aunts had edges to them. They’d been moulded in an age before Gilead, they’d had struggles we had been spared, and these struggles had ground off the softness that might once have been there. But we hadn’t been forced to undergo such ordeals. We’d been protected, we hadn’t needed to deal with the harshness of the world at large. We were the beneficiaries of the sacrifices made by our forebears. We were constantly reminded of this, and ordered to be grateful. But it’s difficult to be grateful for the absence of an unknown quantity. I’m afraid we did not fully appreciate the extent to which those of Aunt Lydia’s generation had been hardened in the fire. They had a ruthlessness about them that we lacked.

Despite this feeling of time standing still, I had in fact changed. I was no longer the same person I’d been when I’d entered Ardua Hall. Now I was a woman, even if an inexperienced one; then I had been a child.

“I’m very glad the Aunts let you stay,” Becka had said on that first day. She’d turned her shy gaze full upon me.

“I’m glad too,” I said.

“I always looked up to you at school. Not just because of your three Marthas and your Commander family,” she said. “You lied less than the others. And you were nice to me.”

“I wasn’t all that nice.”

“You were nicer than the rest of them,” she said.

Aunt Lydia had given permission for me to live in the same residence unit as Becka. Ardua Hall was divided into many 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.

“It means all that?”

“It’s in Latin. It sounds better in Latin.”

I said, “What is Latin?”

Becka said it was a language of long ago that nobody spoke anymore, but people wrote mottoes in it. For instance, the motto of everything inside the Wall used to be
Veritas
, which was the Latin for “truth.” But they’d chiselled that word off and painted it over.

“How did you find that out?” I asked. “If the word is gone?”

“In the Hildegard Library,” she said. “It’s only for us Aunts.”

“What’s a library?”

“It’s where they keep the books. There are rooms and rooms full of them.”

“Are they wicked?” I asked. “Those books?” I imagined all that explosive material packed inside a room.

“Not those I’ve been reading. The more dangerous ones are kept in the Reading Room. You have to get special permission to go in there. But you can read the other books.”

“They let you?” I was amazed. “You can just go in there and read?”

“If you get permission. Except for the Reading Room. If you did that without permission, there would be a Correction, down in one of the cellars.” Each Ardua Hall apartment had a soundproofed cellar, she said, which used to be for things like piano practising. But now the R cellar was where Aunt Vidala did the Corrections. Corrections were a kind of punishment, for straying beyond the rules.

“But punishments are done in public,” I said. “For criminals. You know, the Particicutions, and hanging people and displaying them on the Wall.”

“Yes, I know,” said Becka. “I wish they wouldn’t leave them up so long. The smell gets into our bedrooms, it makes me feel sick. But the Corrections in the cellar are different, they’re for our own good. Now, let’s get you an outfit, and then you can choose your name.”

There was an approved list of names, put together by Aunt Lydia and the other senior Aunts. Becka said the names were made from the names of products women had liked once and would be reassured by, but she herself did not know what those products were. Nobody our age knew, she said.

She read the list of names out to me, since I could not yet read. “What about Maybelline?” she said. “That sounds pretty. Aunt Maybelline.”

“No,” I said. “It’s too frilly.”

“How about Aunt Ivory?”

“Too cold,” I said.

“Here’s one: Victoria. I think there was a Queen Victoria. You’d be called Aunt Victoria: even at the Supplicant level we’re allowed the title of Aunt. But once we finish our Pearl Girls missionary work in other countries outside Gilead, we’ll graduate to full Aunts.” At the Vidala School we hadn’t been told much about the Pearl Girls—only that they were courageous, and took risks and made sacrifices for Gilead, and we should respect them.

“We go outside Gilead? Isn’t it scary to be that far away? Isn’t Gilead really big?” It would be like falling out of the world, for surely Gilead had no edges.

“Gilead is smaller than you think,” said Becka. “It has other countries around it. I’ll show you on the map.”

I must have looked confused because she smiled. “A map is like a picture. We learn to read maps here.”

“Read a picture?” I said. “How can you do that? Pictures aren’t writing.”

“You’ll see. I couldn’t do it at first either.” She smiled again. “With you here, I won’t feel so alone.”

What would happen to me after six months? I worried. Would I be allowed to stay? It was unnerving to have the Aunts looking at me as if inspecting a vegetable. It was hard to direct my gaze at the floor, which was what was required: any higher and I might be staring at their torsos, which was impolite, or into their eyes, which was presumptuous. It was difficult never to speak unless one of the senior Aunts spoke to me first. Obedience, subservience, docility: these were the virtues required.

Then there was the reading, which I found frustrating. Maybe I was too old to ever learn it, I thought. Maybe it was like fine embroidery: you had to start young; otherwise you would always be clumsy. But little by little I picked it up. “You have a knack,” said Becka. “You’re way better than I was when I began!”

The books I was given to learn from were about a boy and a girl called Dick and Jane. The books were very old, and the pictures had been altered at Ardua Hall. Jane wore long skirts and sleeves, but you could tell from the places where the paint had been applied that her skirt had once been above her knees and her sleeves had ended above her elbows. Her hair had once been uncovered.

The most astonishing thing about these books was that Dick and Jane and Baby Sally lived in a house with nothing around it but a white wooden fence, so flimsy and low that anyone at all could climb over it. There were no Angels, there were no Guardians. Dick and Jane and Baby Sally played outside in full view of everyone. Baby Sally could have been abducted by terrorists at any moment and smuggled to Canada, like Baby Nicole and the other stolen innocents. Jane’s bare knees could have aroused evil urges in any man passing by, despite the fact that everything but her face had been covered over with paint. Becka said that painting the pictures in such books was a task that I’d be asked to perform, as it was assigned to the Supplicants. She herself had painted a lot of books.

It wasn’t a given that I’d be allowed to stay, she said: not everyone was suitable for the Aunts. Before I’d arrived at Ardua Hall she’d known two girls who’d been accepted, but one of them changed her mind after only three months and her family had taken her back, and the marriage arranged for her had gone ahead after all.

“What happened to the other one?” I said.

“Something bad,” said Becka. “Her name was Aunt Lily. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with her at first. Everyone said she was getting along well, but then she was given a Correction for talking back. I don’t think it was one of the worst Corrections: Aunt Vidala can have a mean streak. She says, ‘Do you like this?’ when she does the Correction, and there isn’t any right answer.”

“But Aunt Lily?”

“She wasn’t the same person after that. She wanted to leave Ardua Hall—she said she was not suited for it—and the Aunts said that if so her planned marriage would have to take place; but she didn’t want that either.”

“What did she want?” I asked. I was suddenly very interested in Aunt Lily.

“She wanted to live on her own and work on a farm. Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Vidala said this was what came of reading too early: she’d picked up wrong ideas at the Hildegard Library, before her mind had been strengthened enough to reject them, and there were a lot of questionable books that should be destroyed. They said she would have to have a more severe Correction to help her focus her thoughts.”

“What was it?” I was wondering if my own mind was strong enough, and whether I too would be given multiple Corrections.

“It was a month in the cellar, by herself, with only bread and water. When she was let out again she wouldn’t speak to anyone except to say yes and no. Aunt Vidala said she was too weak-minded to be an Aunt, and would have to be married after all.

“The day before she was supposed to leave the Hall she wasn’t there at breakfast, and then not at lunch. Nobody knew where she had gone. Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Vidala said she must have run away, and it was a breach of security, and there was a big search. But they didn’t find her. And then the shower water started smelling strange. So they had another search, and this time they opened the rooftop rainwater cistern that we use for the showers, and she was in there.”

“Oh, that’s terrible!” I said. “Was she—did someone murder her?”

“The Aunts said so at first. Aunt Helena had hysterics, and they even gave permission for some Eyes to come into Ardua Hall and inspect it for clues, but there weren’t any. Some of us Supplicants went up and looked at the cistern. She couldn’t have simply fallen in: there’s a ladder, then there’s a little door.”

“Did you see her?” I asked.

“It was a closed coffin,” said Becka. “But she must have done it on purpose. She had stones in her pockets—that was the rumour. She didn’t leave a note, or if she did Aunt Vidala tore it up. At the funeral they said that she’d died of a brain aneurysm. They wouldn’t want it to be known that a Supplicant had failed so badly. We all said prayers for her; I’m sure God has forgiven her.”

“But why did she do it?” I asked. “Did she want to die?”

“No one wants to die,” said Becka. “But some people don’t want to live in any of the ways that are allowed.”

“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.”

After I’d mastered the Dick and Jane books, I was given
Ten Tales for Young Girls
, a book of rhymes by Aunt Vidala. This is one that I remember:

Just look at Tirzah! She sits there,

With her strands of vagrant hair;

See her down the sidewalk stride,

Head held high and full of pride.

See her catch the Guardian’s glance,

Tempt him to sinful circumstance.

Never does she change her way,

Never does she kneel to pray!

Soon she into sin will fall,

And then be hanging on the Wall.

Aunt Vidala’s tales were about things girls shouldn’t do and the horrifying things that would happen to them if they did. I realize now that the tales were not very good poetry, and even at the time I didn’t like hearing about these poor girls who made mistakes and were severely punished or even killed; but nevertheless I was thrilled to be able to read anything at all.

One day I was reading the Tirzah story out loud to Becka so she could correct any mistakes I was making when she said, “That would never happen to me.”

“What wouldn’t?” I said.

“I would never lead any Guardians on like that. I would never catch their eyes. I don’t want to look at them,” said Becka. “Any men. They’re horrible. Including the Gilead kind of God.”

“Becka!” I said. “Why are you saying that? What do you mean, the Gilead kind?”

“They want God to be only one thing,” she said. “They leave things out. It says in the Bible we’re in God’s image, male and female both. You’ll see, when the Aunts let you read it.”

“Don’t say such things, Becka,” I said. “Aunt Vidala—she’d think it was heresy.”

“I can say them to you, Agnes,” she said. “I’d trust you with my life.”

“Don’t,” I said. “I’m not a good person, not like you.”

In my second month at Ardua Hall, Shunammite paid me a visit. I met her in the Schlafly Café. She was wearing the blue dress of an official Wife.

“Agnes!” she cried, holding out both hands. “I’m so happy to see you! Are you all right?”

“Of course I’m all right,” I said. “I’m Aunt Victoria now. Would you like some mint tea?”

“It’s just that Paula implied that maybe you’d gone…that there was something wrong—”

“That I’m a lunatic,” I said, smiling. I’d noted that Shunammite was referring to Paula as a familiar friend. Shunammite now outranked her, which must have irked Paula considerably—to have such a young girl promoted above her. “I know she thinks that. And by the way, I should congratulate you on your marriage.”

“You’re not mad at me?” she said, reverting to our schoolgirl tone.

“Why would I be ‘mad at’ you, as you say?”

“Well, I stole your husband.” Is that what she thought? That she’d won a competition? How could I deny this without insulting Commander Judd?

“I received a call to higher service,” I said as primly as I could.

She giggled. “Did you really? Well, I received a call to a lower one. I have four Marthas! I wish you could see my house!”

“I’m sure it’s lovely,” I said.

“But you really are all right?” Her anxiety on my behalf may have been partly genuine. “Doesn’t this place wear you down? It’s so bleak.”

“I’m fine,” I said. “I wish you every happiness.”

“Becka’s in this dungeon too, isn’t she?”

“It’s not a dungeon,” I said. “Yes. We share an apartment.”

“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.”