The Testaments: Parts V–VIII

By then a number of erstwhile notables had been hung on the Wall, since those on the topmost pinnacle took care that no ambitious challengers would displace them.

You might assume that, being a woman, I would be especially vulnerable to this kind of winnowing, but you would be wrong.

Simply by being female I was excluded from the lists of potential usurpers, since no woman could ever sit on the Council of the Commanders; so on that front, ironically, I was safe.

Each one of the top men has always felt that his secrets are safe with me; but—as I’ve made obliquely clear—only so long as I myself am safe.

Being now thoroughly instructed in Scripture, I can quote chapter and verse on the hazards of snatching loot forbidden by the Lord, but discretion is the better part of valour, so I do not.

His office is at the back of the building, in a space once consecrated to book storage and research cubicles.

“Our agents in Canada have succeeded in identifying and eliminating two of the most active Mayday operatives. Their cover was a used clothing store in a seedy area of Toronto. A preliminary search of the premises suggested that they’d been playing a key role in aiding and abetting the Underground Femaleroad.”

Officially, the Pearl Girls report only to me, as it would be unseemly for the Commander to involve himself in the details of what is essentially women’s work; though of course I must pass along to him anything I deem either necessary or unavoidable.

The genocide charges levied by international human rights organizations had become an embarrassment, the flow of refugee Homelanders from North Dakota across the Canadian border was an unstoppable flood, and Judd’s ridiculous Certificate of Whiteness scheme had collapsed in a welter of forgeries and bribery.

He had eyeglasses and a handlebar moustache, but these did not render him avuncular.

They had taken to doing something they called “humouring me,” which in practice meant ignoring any displays of mood so I would learn that I could not influence them by stubborn silences. They would even discuss this pedagogical technique in front of me while speaking about me in the third person.

A man’s concubine—which was a sort of Handmaid—ran away from her owner, back to her father’s abode.

The father, knowing the rules, said yes—he was disappointed in his daughter for being so disobedient—and the two men had a dinner to celebrate their accord.

...they were performing a service to the community by way of atonement, and we should all be grateful to them for that.

My effervescent body was not my only worry: my status at school had become noticeably lower.

I tried to keep out of her sight as much as possible, but even my closed door must have been an affront to her.

This is a place of snakes and ladders, and though I was once high up on a ladder propped against the Tree of Life, now I’ve slid down a snake. How gratifying for the others to witness my fall! No wonder Shunammite could not resist spreading such baleful and pleasing news.

What would Aunt Lydia have to say about my plight? Would she help me?

Why mince words? I don’t need to do that anymore. I didn’t just dislike her, I hated her.

It was at this time that an event took place that I should pass over because it’s better forgotten, but it had a bearing on the choice I was soon to make.

Mr. William was in the waiting room, his unobtrusive thirty-year-old face impassive.

The first girl had had the backs of her legs whipped for lying, the second had been told that nice girls did not notice the minor antics of men, they simply looked the other way.

“Did your dentist appointment go all right, dear?” she said. “Any cavities?”
“No,” I said. I tried a wan smile. “I have perfect teeth.”

Zilla had made a hot water bottle for me and had rubbed on some painkilling salve and had made me a cup of analgesic tea, and I was huddled in my bed feeling sorry for myself when I heard the Birthmobile siren coming along our street.

Little Mark would be produced and exhibited for her friends, but a short time of that went a long way with Paula and he would soon be handed over to the wet nurse, a plump, lugubrious Handmaid who had recently been Oftucker but was now, of course, Ofkyle.

As Commander Judd’s analysis of escapes has revealed, no sooner is an exit route discovered by us and blocked than another opens up.
Our buffer zones are too permeable.

The wilder patches of Maine and Vermont are a liminal space not fully controlled by us, where the natives are, if not overtly hostile, prone to heresies.

It’s been suspected for some time there are guides among them, acting either from a desire to outsmart Gilead or from simple cupidity, for Mayday has been known to pay.

The hills and swamps, the winding rivers, the long rock-strewn bays that lead to the sea with its high tides—all aid the clandestine.

In the subhistory of the region, there are rum-runners, there are cigarette profiteers, there are drug smugglers, there are illicit peddlers of all kinds.

I was a girl and, worse, a smarty-pants girl. Nothing for it but to wallop those pretensions out of me, with fists or boots or whatever else was to hand.

Although they’d concocted their plan without getting authorization from me first—an act of insubordination—I felt duty-bound to pass it along to Commander Judd; especially in view of the fact that if I did not, he would be certain to hear of it and take note of my recalcitrance.

The black drawing ink I’ve been using is running out: soon I will switch to blue. Requisitioning a bottle from the Vidala School supplies should not be difficult: they teach drawing there.

To pass the time I berated myself. Stupid, stupid, stupid: I’d believed all that claptrap about life, liberty, democracy, and the rights of the individual I’d soaked up at law school.

These were eternal verities and we would always defend them.

There’s been a coup, here in the United States, just as in times past in so many other countries. Any forced change of leadership is always followed by a move to crush the opposition.

I needed to revert to the mulish underclass child, the determined drudge, the brainy overachiever, the strategic ladder-climber who’d got me to the social perch from which I’d just been deposed.

I needed to revert to the mulish underclass child, the determined drudge, the brainy overachiever, the strategic ladder-climber who’d got me to the social perch from which I’d just been deposed.

“You’re shivering again,” said Ada. “I’ll turn down the AC.” She brought a duvet from one of the bedrooms, a new one, white.

I ate two spoonfuls, tentatively, in case my stomach was still unsettled.