Margaret Atwood - The Testaments

“Absolutely not,” said Neil.

“You’re always saying how we should defend our principles,” I said.

“This is different. It’s not safe, Daisy,” said Neil.

“Life isn’t safe, you say that yourself. Anyway lots of teachers are coming. And it’s part of school—if I don’t go, I’ll lose marks!” This last part wasn’t exactly true, but Neil and Melanie liked me to have good grades.

“Maybe she could go,” said Melanie. “If we ask Ada to go with her?”

“I’m not a baby, I don’t need a babysitter,” I said.

“Are you hallucinating?” Neil said to Melanie. “That thing will be crawling with press! It’ll be on the news!” He was tugging at his hair, what was left of it—a sign that he was worried.

“That is the point ,” I said. I’d made one of the posters we’d be carrying—big red letters and a black skull. GILEAD=DEATH OF THE MIND. “The whole idea is to be on the news!”

Melanie put her hands over her ears. “I’m getting a headache. Neil is right. No. I’m saying no. You will spend the afternoon at the store helping me out, period.”

“Fine, lock me up,” I said. I stomped off to my room and slammed the door. They couldn’t make me.

—

The school I went to was called the Wyle School. It was named after Florence Wyle, a sculptor of olden times whose picture was in the main entrance hall. The school was supposed to encourage creativity, said Melanie, and understanding democratic freedom and thinking for yourself, said Neil. They said that was why they’d sent me there, though they didn’t agree with private schools in general; but the standards of the public schools were so low, and of course we should all work to improve the system, but meanwhile they did not want me getting knifed by some junior drug pusher. I think now they chose the Wyle School for another reason. Wyle took strict attendance: it was impossible to skip school. So Melanie and Neil could always know where I was.

I didn’t love the Wyle School, but I didn’t hate it either. It was something to get through on my way to real life, the shape of which would become clear to me soon. Not long before, I’d wanted to be a small-animal vet, but that dream came to seem childish to me. After that I’d decided to be a surgeon, but then I saw a video of a surgery at school and it made me nauseous. Some of the other Wyle School students wanted to be singers or designers or other creative things, but I was too tone-deaf and clunky for that.

I had some friends at school: gossiping friends, girls; homework-trading friends, some of each. I made sure that my marks were stupider than I was—I didn’t want to stand out—so my own homework didn’t have a high trading value. Gym and sports, though—it was all right to be good at those, and I was, especially any sports favouring height and speed, such as basketball. That made me popular when it came to teams. But outside of school I led a constricted life, since Neil and Melanie were so jumpy. I wasn’t allowed to stroll around in shopping malls because they were infested by crack addicts, said Melanie, or hang out in parks, said Neil, because of the strange men lurking there. So my social life was pretty much a zero: it consisted entirely of things I would be allowed to do when I was older. Neil’s magic word in our house was No .

This time, though, I wasn’t going to back down: I was going to that protest march no matter what. The school had hired a couple of buses to take us. Melanie and Neil had tried to head me off by phoning the principal and denying permission, and the principal had asked me to stay behind, and I’d assured her that of course I understood, no problem, and I would wait for Melanie to come and pick me up in her car. But it was only the bus driver checking off the kids’ names and he didn’t know who was who, and everyone was milling around, and the parents and teachers weren’t paying attention and didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to come, so I switched identity cards with a member of my basketball team who didn’t want to go and made it onto the bus, feeling very pleased with myself.

10

The protest march was thrilling at first. It was downtown, near the Legislature Building, though it wasn’t really a march because nobody marched anywhere, they were too jammed together. People made speeches. A Canadian relative of a woman who’d died in the Gilead Colonies cleaning up deadly radiation talked about slave labour. The leader of the Survivors of Gilead National Homelands Genocide told about the forced marches to North Dakota, where people had been crowded like sheep into fenced-in ghost towns with no food and water, and how thousands had died, and how people were risking their lives walking north to the Canadian border in winter, and he held up a hand with missing fingers and said, Frostbite.

Then a speaker from SanctuCare—the refugee organization for escaped Gilead women—spoke about those whose babies had been taken away from them, and how cruel that was, and how if you tried to get your baby back they would accuse you of disrespecting God. I couldn’t hear all the speeches because sometimes the sound system cut out, but the meaning was clear enough. There were a lot of Baby Nicole posters: ALL GILEAD BABIES ARE BABY NICOLE!

Then our school group shouted things and held up our signs, and other people had different signs: DOWN WITH GILIBAD FASCISTS! SANCTUARY NOW! Right then some counter-marchers turned up with different signs: CLOSE THE BORDER! GILEAD KEEP YOUR OWN SLUTS AND BRATS, WE GOT ENOUGH HERE! STOP THE INVASION! HANDJOBS GO HOME! Among them there was a group of those Pearl Girls in their silvery dresses and pearls—with signs saying DEATH TO BABY STEALERS and GIVE BACK BABY NICOLE. People on our side were throwing eggs at them and cheering when one hit, but the Pearl Girls just kept smiling in their glassy way.

Scuffles broke out. A group of people dressed in black with their faces covered started smashing store windows. Suddenly there were a lot of police in riot gear. They seemed to come out of nowhere. They were banging their shields and moving forward, and hitting kids and other people with their batons.

Up to that time I’d been elated, but now I was scared. I wanted to get out of there, but it was so jam-packed I could hardly move. I couldn’t find the rest of my class, and the crowd was panicking. People surged this way and that, screaming and shouting. Something hit me in the stomach: an elbow, I think. I was breathing fast and I could feel tears coming out of my eyes.

“This way,” said a gravelly voice behind me. It was Ada. She grabbed me by the collar and dragged me behind her. I’m not sure how she cleared a path: I’m guessing she kicked legs. Then we were in a street behind the riot, as they called it later on TV. When I saw the footage I thought, Now I know what it feels like to be in a riot: it feels like drowning. Not that I’d ever drowned.

“Melanie said you might be here,” said Ada. “I’m taking you home.”

“No, but—” I said. I didn’t want to admit that I was scared.

“Right now. Toot sweet. No ifs and buts.”

—

I saw myself on the news that night: I was holding up a sign and shouting. I thought Neil and Melanie would be furious with me, but they weren’t. Instead they were anxious. “Why did you do that?” said Neil. “Didn’t you hear us?”

“You always said a person should stand up against injustice,” I said. “The school says that too.” I knew I’d crossed a line, but I wasn’t about to apologize.

“What’s our next move?” said Melanie, not to me but to Neil. “Daisy, could you get me a water? There’s some ice in the fridge.”

“It might not be so bad,” said Neil.

“We can’t take the chance,” I heard Melanie saying. “We need to get moving, like yesterday. I’m calling Ada, she can arrange a van.”