Margaret Atwood - The Testaments

“What’s this about?” I said. “You could have knocked! The door was open!”

The men ignored me. One of them—the leader, I suppose—said to his companion, “Got the list?”

I tried a more outraged tone. “Who is responsible for this damage?” Shock was beginning to hit me: I felt cold. Was this a robbery? A hostage-taking? “What do you want? We don’t keep any money here.”

Anita nudged me with her elbow to get me to keep quiet: she already had a better grasp of the situation than I did.

The second-in-command held up a sheet of paper. “Who’s the pregnant one?” he said. The three of us looked at one another. Katie stepped forward. “I am,” she said.

“No husband, right?”

“No, I…” Katie was holding her hands protectively in front of her stomach. She’d chosen single motherhood, as many women did in those days.

“The high school,” the leader said. The two younger men stepped forward.

“Come with us, ma’am,” said the first.

“Why?” said Katie. “You can’t just barge in here and—”

“Come with us,” said the second younger man. They grabbed her by her arms, hauled. She screamed, but out she went through the door nonetheless.

“Stop that!” I said. We could hear her voice outside in the hall, diminishing.

“I’m giving the orders,” said the leader. He had eyeglasses and a handlebar moustache, but these did not render him avuncular. I’ve had cause to notice over the course of what you might call my Gilead career that underlings given sudden power frequently become the worst abusers of it.

“Don’t worry, she won’t be hurt,” said the second-in-command. “She’s going to a place of safety.”

He read our names off the list. There was no point in denying who we were: they already knew. “Where’s the receptionist?” said the leader. “This Tessa.”

Poor Tessa emerged from behind her desk. She was shivering with terror.

“What d’you think?” said the man with the list. “Box store, high school, or stadium?”

“How old are you?” said the leader. “Never mind, it’s here. Twenty-seven.”

“Let’s give her a chance. Box store. Maybe some guy might marry her.”

“Stand over there,” said the leader to Tessa.

“Christ, she’s wet herself,” said the third older man.

“Don’t swear,” said the leader. “Good. A fearful one, maybe she’ll do as she’s told.”

“Fat chance any of them will,” said the third man. “They’re women.” I think he was making a joke.

The two young men who had disappeared with Katie now came back through the door. “She’s in the van,” said one.

“Where’s the other two so-called lady judges?” said the leader. “This Loretta? This Davida?”

“They’re on lunch,” said Anita.

“We’ll take these two. Wait here with her until they come back,” said the leader, indicating Tessa. “Then lock her in the box-store van. Then bring the two lunch ones.”

“Box store or stadium? For these two here?”

“Stadium,” said the leader. “One of them’s overage, they’ve both got law degrees, they’re lady judges. You heard the orders.”

“It’s a waste though, in some cases,” said the second one, nodding towards Anita.

“Providence will decide,” said the leader.

Anita and I were taken down the stairs, five flights. Was the elevator running? I don’t know. Then we were cuffed with our hands in front of us and inserted into a black van, with a solid panel between us and the driver and mesh inside the darkened glass windows.

The two of us had been mute all this time, because what was there to say? It was clear that cries for help would go unanswered. There was no point in shouting or flinging ourselves against the walls of the van: it would simply have been a futile expense of energy. And so we waited.

At least there was air conditioning. And seats to sit down on.

“What will they do?” Anita whispered. We couldn’t see out the windows. Nor could we see each other, except as dim shapes.

“I don’t know,” I said.

—

The van paused—at a checkpoint, I suppose—then moved, then halted. “Final stop,” said a voice. “Out!”

The back doors of the van were opened. Anita clambered out first. “Move it,” said a different voice. It was hard to get down from the van with my hands cuffed; someone took my arm and pulled, and I lurched onto the ground.

As the van pulled away, I stood unsteadily and gazed around. I was in an open space in which there were many groups of other people—other women, I should say—and a large number of men with guns.

I was in a stadium. But it was no longer that. Now it was a prison.

VI

SIX FOR DEAD

Transcript of Witness Testimony 369A

13

It has been very difficult for me to tell you about the events surrounding my mother’s death. Tabitha had loved me without question, and now she was gone, and everything around me felt wavering and uncertain. Our house, the garden, even my own room—they seemed no longer real—as if they would dissolve into a mist and vanish. I kept thinking of a Bible verse Aunt Vidala had made us learn by heart:

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.

Withereth, withereth. It was like lisping—as if God did not know how to speak clearly. A lot of us had stumbled over that word while reciting it.

—

For my mother’s funeral I was given a black dress. Some of the other Commanders and their Wives were in attendance, and our Marthas. There was a closed coffin with the earthly husk of my mother inside it, and my father made a short speech about what a fine Wife she had been, forever thinking of others ahead of herself, an example for all the women of Gilead, and then he said a prayer, thanking God for freeing her from pain, and everyone said Amen. They didn’t make a big fuss over the funerals of women in Gilead, even high-ranking ones.

The important people came back to our house from the cemetery, and there was a small reception. Zilla had made cheese puffs for it, one of her specialties, and she’d let me help her. That was some comfort: to be allowed to put on an apron, and to grate the cheese, and to squeeze the dough out of the pastry tube onto the baking sheet, and then to watch through the glass window of the oven as it puffed up. We baked these at the last minute, once the people had come.

Then I took off the apron and went in to the reception in my black dress, as my father had requested, and was silent, as he had also requested. Most of the guests ignored me, except for one of the Wives, whose name was Paula. She was a widow, and somewhat famous because her husband, Commander Saunders, had been killed in his study by their Handmaid, using a kitchen skewer—a scandal that had been much whispered about at school the year before. What was the Handmaid doing in the study? How had she got in?

Paula’s version was that the girl was insane, and had crept downstairs at night and stolen the skewer from the kitchen, and when poor Commander Saunders had opened his study door she had taken him by surprise—killed a man who had always been respectful to her and to her position. The Handmaid had run away, but they’d caught her and hanged her, and displayed her on the Wall.