Margaret Atwood - The Testaments

“Aunt Victoria!” she said. “Why are you wearing that dress? The next Thanks Giving isn’t until Sunday!” She peered at Nicole. “And who is that with you? That’s the new girl! Jade! She isn’t supposed to—” She reached out her hand and grabbed Nicole’s strand of pearls, which broke.

Nicole did something with her fist. It was so fast I hardly saw it, but she hit Aunt Vidala in the chest. Aunt Vidala crumpled to the ground. Her face was pasty white, her eyes were closed.

“Oh no—” I began to say.

“Help me,” said Nicole. She took Aunt Vidala by the feet and dragged her behind the base of the statue. “Fingers crossed,” she said. “Let’s go.” She took me by the arm.

There was an orange on the ground. Nicole picked it up and put it into her Pearl Girls dress pocket.

“Is she dead?” I whispered.

“Don’t know,” said Nicole. “Come on, we need to hurry.”

We reached the gate, we showed our passes, the Angels let us out. Nicole was holding her cloak shut so no one would see that her pearls were missing. There was a black car farther up the street to the right, as Aunt Lydia had said there would be. The driver did not turn his head as we got in.

“All set, ladies?” he said.

I said, “Yes, thank you,” but Nicole said, “We’re not ladies.” I nudged her with my elbow.

“Don’t talk to him like that,” I whispered.

“He’s not a real Guardian,” she said. “Aunt Lydia’s not a moron.” She took the orange out of her pocket and began peeling it. The crisp scent of it filled the air. “Want some?” she asked me. “You can have half.”

“No thank you,” I said. “It’s not right to eat it.” It had been a sacred offering of a kind after all. She ate the whole orange.

She’ll make a misstep, I was thinking. Someone will notice. She’ll get us arrested.

Transcript of Witness Testimony 369B

62

I was feeling sorry that I’d punched Aunt Vidala, though not very sorry: if I hadn’t hit her, she would have yelled and then we’d have been stopped. Even so, my heart was pounding. What if I’d actually killed her? But once they’d found her, dead or alive, there would be a hunt for us. We were in it up to the neck, as Ada would say.

Meanwhile, Agnes was acting offended in that silent, pinch-mouthed way the Aunts had of letting you know you’d crossed one of their lines. Most likely it was the orange. Maybe I shouldn’t have taken it. Then I had a bad thought: dogs. Oranges are really scented. I started worrying about what to do with the peels.

My left arm had begun to itch again, around the O . Why was it taking so long to heal?

When Aunt Lydia was sticking the microdot into my arm, I’d thought her plan was brilliant, but now I felt it might not have been such a good idea. If my body and the message were one, what would happen if my body didn’t make it to Canada? I could hardly cut off my arm and mail it.

—

Our car went through a couple of checkpoints—passports, Angels peering in the window to make sure we were us—but Agnes had told me to let the driver do the talking, and he did: Pearl Girls this and that, and how noble we were, and what sacrifices we were making. At one of them, the Angel said, “Good luck on your mission.” At another one—farther out of town—they joked among themselves.

“Hope they don’t bring back any ugly girls or sluts.”

“It’s one or the other.” Laughs from both checkpoint Angels.

Agnes put her hand on my arm. “Don’t talk back,” she said.

When we’d reached the countryside and were on a highway, the driver handed us a couple of sandwiches: Gilead fake cheese. “I guess this is breakfast,” I said to Agnes. “Toe jam on white.”

“We should give thanks,” said Agnes in her pious Aunt’s voice, so I guess she was still in a snit. It was weird to think of her as my sister; we were so unlike. But I hadn’t really had time to figure any of that out.

“I’m glad to have a sister,” I said, to make peace.

“I’m glad too,” said Agnes. “And I give thanks.” But she didn’t sound very thankful.

“I give thanks too,” I said. Which was the end of that conversation. I thought of asking her how long we had to keep it up, this Gilead way of talking—couldn’t we stop and act natural, now that we were escaping? But then, maybe for her it was natural. Maybe she didn’t know another way.

—

In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, the driver of our car let us out at the bus station. “Good luck, girls,” he said. “Give ’em hell.”

“See? He’s not a real Guardian,” I said, hoping to get Agnes talking again.

“Of course not,” she said. “A real Guardian would never say ‘hell.’ ”

The bus station was old and crumbling, the women’s washroom was a germ factory, and there was no place we could exchange our Gilead food tokens for anything a person would want. I was glad I’d eaten the orange. Agnes, however, was not squeamish, being used to the crap that passed for food at Ardua Hall, so she bought some kind of pretend doughnut with two of our tokens.

The minutes were ticking; I was getting jittery. We waited and waited, and finally a bus did come. Some people on board nodded at us when we got on, as they might to the military: a salute of the head. An older Econowife even said, “God bless you.”

About ten miles along there was another checkpoint, but the Angels there were super polite to us. One of them said, “You’re very brave, heading into Sodom.” If I hadn’t been so scared I might have laughed—the idea of Canada being Sodom was hilarious, considering how boring and ordinary it mostly was. It wasn’t like there was a non-stop countrywide orgy going on.

Agnes squeezed my hand to tell me she would do the talking. She had the Ardua Hall knack of keeping her face flat and calm. “We are simply doing our service for Gilead,” she said in her underspoken robot Aunt’s way, and the Angel said, “Praise be.”

The ride got bumpier. They must have been keeping their road repair money for roads more people were likely to use: since trading with Canada was practically shut down nowadays, who’d want to go to North Gilead unless you lived there?

The bus wasn’t full; everyone on it was Econoclass. We were on the scenic route, winding along the coast, but it wasn’t all that scenic. There were a lot of closed-down motels and roadside restaurants, and more than one big red smiling lobster that was falling apart.

As we went north, the friendliness decreased: there were angry looks, and I had the feeling that our Pearl Girls mission and even the whole Gilead thing was leaking popularity. No one spat at us, but they scowled as if they would like to.

I wondered how far we had come. Agnes had the map that had been marked up by Aunt Lydia, but I didn’t like to ask her to take it out: the two of us looking at a map would be suspicious. The bus was slow, and I was getting more and more anxious: How soon before someone noticed we weren’t in Ardua Hall? Would they believe my bogus note? Would they call ahead, set up a roadblock, stop the bus? We were so conspicuous.

Then we took a detour, and it was one-way traffic, and Agnes started fidgeting with her hands. I nudged her with my elbow. “We need to look serene, remember?” She gave me a wan smile and folded her hands in her lap; I could feel her taking deep breaths and letting them out slowly. They did teach you a few useful things at Ardua Hall, and self-control was one of them. She who cannot control herself cannot control the path to duty . Do not fight the waves of anger, use the anger as your fuel . Inhale. Exhale. Sidestep. Circumvent. Deflect.

I would never have made it as a real Aunt.