The Testaments

47

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.

48

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:

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.”

49

My reading abilities progressed slowly and with many stumbles. Becka helped me a lot. We used Bible verses to practise, from the approved selection that was available to Supplicants. With my very own eyes I was able to read portions of Scripture that I had until then only heard. Becka helped me find the passage that I’d thought of so often at the time Tabitha died:

Laboriously I spelled out the words. They seemed different when they were on the page: not flowing and sonorous, as I had recited them in my head, but flatter, drier.

Becka said that spelling was not reading: reading, she said, was when you could hear the words as if they were a song.

“Maybe I won’t ever get it right,” I said.

“You will,” said Becka. “Let’s try reading some real songs.”

She went to the library—I wasn’t allowed in there as yet—and brought back one of our Ardua Hall hymn books. In it was the childhood nighttime song that Tabitha used to sing to me in her voice like silver bells:

I sang it to Becka, and then after a while I was able to read it to her. “That’s so hopeful,” she said. “I would like to think that there are two angels always waiting to fly away with me.” Then she said, “I never had anyone sing to me at night. You were so lucky.”

Along with reading, I had to learn to write. That was harder in some ways, though less hard in others. We used drawing ink and straight pens with metal nibs, or sometimes pencils. It depended on what had been recently allocated to Ardua Hall from the storehouses reserved for imports.

Writing materials were the prerogative of the Commanders and the Aunts. Otherwise they were not generally available in Gilead; women had no use for them, and most men didn’t either, except for reports and inventories. What else would most people be writing about?

We’d learned to embroider and paint at the Vidala School, and Becka said that writing was almost the same as that—each letter was like a picture or a row of stitching, and it was also like a musical note; you just had to learn how to form the letters, and then how to attach them together, like pearls on a string.

She herself had beautiful handwriting. She showed me how, often and with patience; then, once I could write, however awkwardly, she selected a series of Biblical mottoes for me to copy.

I wrote them over and over. By comparing the different written versions of the same sentence, I could see how much I had improved, said Becka.

I wondered about the words I was writing. Was Charity really greater than Faith, and did I have either? Was Love as strong as Death? Whose was the voice that the bird was going to carry?

Being able to read and write did not provide the answers to all questions. It led to other questions, and then to others.

In addition to learning to read, I managed to successfully perform the other tasks assigned to me during those first months. Some of these tasks were not onerous: I enjoyed painting the skirts and sleeves and head coverings on the little girls in the Dick and Jane books, and I did not mind working in the kitchen, chopping up turnips and onions for the cooks and washing dishes. Everyone at Ardua Hall had to contribute to the general welfare, and manual labour was not to be sneered at. No Aunt was considered above it, though in practice the Supplicants did most of the heavy hauling. But why not? We were younger.

Scrubbing the toilets was not enjoyable, however, especially when you had to scrub them again even when they were perfectly clean the first time, and then again for a third time. Becka had warned me that the Aunts would demand this repetition—it wasn’t about the state of the toilets, she said. It was a test of obedience.

“But making us clean a toilet three times—that’s unreasonable,” I said. “It’s a waste of valuable national resources.”

“Toilet cleaner is not a valuable national resource,” she said. “Not like pregnant women. But unreasonable—yes, that’s why it’s a test. They want to see if you’ll obey unreasonable demands without complaining.”

To make the test harder, they would assign the most junior Aunt to supervise. To be given stupid orders by someone almost your age is a lot more irritating than having that person be old.

“I hate this!” I said after the fourth week in a row of toilet-cleaning. “I truly hate Aunt Abby! She’s so mean, and pompous, and…”

“It’s a test,” Becka reminded me. “Like Job, being tested by God.”

“Aunt Abby isn’t God. She only thinks she is,” I said.

“We must try not to be uncharitable,” said Becka. “You should pray for your hatred to go away. Just think of it as flowing out of your nose, like breath.”

Becka had a lot of these control-yourself techniques. I tried to practise them. They worked some of the time.

Once I’d passed my sixth-month examination and had been accepted as a permanent Supplicant, I was allowed into the Hildegard Library. It’s hard to describe the feeling this gave me. The first time I passed through its doors, I felt as if a golden key had been given to me—a key that would unlock one secret door after another, revealing to me the riches that lay within.

Initially I had access only to the outer room, but after a time I was given a pass to the Reading Room. In there I had my own desk. One of my assigned tasks was to make fair copies of the speeches—or perhaps I should call them sermons—that Aunt Lydia delivered on special occasions. She reused these speeches but changed them each time, and we needed to incorporate her handwritten notes into a legible typescript. By now I had learned how to type, although slowly.

While I was at my desk, Aunt Lydia would sometimes pass me going through the Reading Room on her way to her own special room, where she was said to be doing important research that would make Gilead a better place: that was Aunt Lydia’s lifetime mission, said the senior Aunts. The precious Bloodlines Genealogical Archives kept so meticulously by the senior Aunts, the Bibles, the theological discourses, the dangerous works of world literature—all were behind that locked door. We would be granted access only when our minds were sufficiently strengthened.

The months and years went by, and Becka and I became close friends, and told each other many things about ourselves and our families that we’d never told anyone else. I confessed how much I’d hated my stepmother, Paula, although I’d tried to overcome that feeling. I described the tragic death of our Handmaid, Crystal, and how upset I’d been. And she told me about Dr. Grove and what he’d done, and I’d told her my own story about him, which upset her on my behalf. We talked about our real mothers and how we wanted to know who they’d been. Perhaps we ought not to have shared so much, but it was very comforting.

“I wish I had a sister,” she said to me one day. “And if I did, that person would be you.”

50

I’ve described our life as peaceful, and to the outward eye it was; but there were inner storms and turmoils that I have since come to learn are not uncommon among those seeking to dedicate themselves to a higher cause. The first of my inner storms came about when, after four years of reading more elementary texts, I was finally granted reading access to the full Bible. Our Bibles were kept locked up, as elsewhere in Gilead: only those of strong mind and steadfast character could be trusted with them, and that ruled out women, except for the Aunts.

Becka had begun her own Bible reading earlier—she was ahead of me, in priority as well as in proficiency—but those already initiated into these mysteries were not allowed to talk about their sacred reading experiences, so we had not discussed what she had learned.

The day came when the locked wooden Bible box reserved for me would be brought out to the Reading Room and I would finally open this most forbidden of books. I was very excited about it, but that morning Becka said, “I need to warn you.”

“Warn me?” I said. “But it’s holy.”

“It doesn’t say what they say it says.”

“What do you mean?” I asked.

“I don’t want you to be too disappointed.” She paused. “I’m sure Aunt Estée meant well.” Then she said, “Judges 19 to 21.”

That was all she would tell me. But when I got to the Reading Room and opened the wooden box and then the Bible, that was the first place I turned to. It was the Concubine Cut into Twelve Pieces, the same story that Aunt Vidala had told us so long ago at school—the one that had disturbed Becka so much when she was little.

I remembered it well. And I remembered, too, the explanation that Aunt Estée had given us. She’d said that the reason the concubine had got killed was that she was sorry for having been disobedient, so she sacrificed herself rather than allowing her owner to be raped by the wicked Benjaminites. Aunt Estée had said the concubine was brave and noble. She’d said the concubine had made a choice.

But now I was reading the whole story. I looked for the brave and noble part, I looked for the choice, but none of that was there. The girl was simply shoved out the door and raped to death, then cut up like a cow by a man who’d treated her like a purchased animal when she’d been alive. No wonder she’d run away in the first place.

It came as a painful shock: kind, helpful Aunt Estée had lied to us. The truth was not noble, it was horrible. This was what the Aunts meant, then, when they said women’s minds were too weak for reading. We would crumble, we would fall apart under the contradictions, we would not be able to hold firm.

Up until that time I had not seriously doubted the rightness and especially the truthfulness of Gilead’s theology. If I’d failed at perfection, I’d concluded that the fault was mine. But as I discovered what had been changed by Gilead, what had been added, and what had been omitted, I feared I might lose my faith.

If you’ve never had a faith, you will not understand what that means. You feel as if your best friend is dying; that everything that defined you is being burned away; that you’ll be left all alone. You feel exiled, as if you are lost in a dark wood. It was like the feeling I’d had when Tabitha died: the world was emptying itself of meaning. Everything was hollow. Everything was withering.

I told Becka some of what was taking place within me.

“I know,” she said. “That happened to me. Everyone at the top of Gilead has lied to us.”

“How do you mean?”

“God isn’t what they say,” she said. She said you could believe in Gilead or you could believe in God, but not both. That was how she had managed her own crisis.

I said that I wasn’t sure I would be able to choose. Secretly I feared that I would be unable to believe in either. Still, I wanted to believe; indeed I longed to; and, in the end, how much of belief comes from longing?

51

Three years later, an even more alarming thing happened. As I’ve said, one of my tasks at the Hildegard Library was to make fair copies of Aunt Lydia’s speeches. The pages for the speech I was to work on that day would be left on my desk in a silver folder. One morning I discovered, tucked in behind the silver folder, a blue one. Who had put it there? Had there been some mistake?

I opened it. The name of my stepmother, Paula, was at the top of the first page. What followed was an account of the death of her first husband, the one she’d had before she’d married my so-called father, Commander Kyle. As I’ve told you, her husband, Commander Saunders, had been killed in his study by their Handmaid. Or that was the story that had circulated.

Paula had said that the girl was dangerously unbalanced, and had stolen a skewer from the kitchen and killed Commander Saunders in an unprovoked attack. The Handmaid had escaped, but had been caught and hanged, and her dead body had been displayed on the Wall. But Shunammite had said that her Martha had said there had been an unlawful and sinful liaison—the Handmaid and the husband had been in the habit of fornicating in his study. That was what had given the Handmaid the opportunity to kill him, and that was also why she’d done it: the demands he’d been making of her had driven her over the edge of sanity. The rest of Shunammite’s story was the same: Paula’s discovery of the corpse, the capture of the Handmaid, the hanging. Shunammite had added a detail about Paula getting a lot of blood on herself while putting the dead Commander’s trousers back on him to save appearances.

But the story in the blue folder was quite different. It was augmented by photographs, and transcripts of many secretly recorded conversations. There had been no illicit liaison between Commander Saunders and his Handmaid—only the regular Ceremonies as decreed by law. However, Paula and Commander Kyle—my erstwhile father—had been having an affair even before Tabitha, my mother, had died.

Paula had befriended the Handmaid and offered to help her escape from Gilead since she knew how unhappy the girl was. She’d even provided her with a map and directions, and the names of several Mayday contacts along the way. After the Handmaid had set out, Paula had skewered Commander Saunders herself. That was why she’d had so much blood on her, not from putting his trousers back on. In fact, he had never taken them off, or not on that night.

She’d bribed her Martha to back up the murderous Handmaid story, combining the bribe with threats. Then she’d called the Angels and accused the Handmaid, and the rest had followed. The unfortunate girl was found wandering the streets in despair, since the map was inaccurate and the Mayday contacts turned out not to exist.

The Handmaid had been interrogated. (The transcript of the interrogation was attached, and it was not comfortable reading.) Although admitting to her escape attempt and revealing Paula’s part in it, she’d maintained her innocence of the murder—indeed, her ignorance of the murder—until the pain had become too much, and she’d made a false confession.

She was clearly innocent. But she was hanged anyway.

The Aunts had known the truth. Or at least one of them had known. There was the evidence, right in the folder in front of me. Yet nothing had happened to Paula. And a Handmaid had been hanged for the crime instead.

I was bedazzled, as if struck by lightning. But not only was I astounded by this story, I was mystified as to the reason it had been placed on my desk. Why had an unknown person given me such dangerous information?

Once a story you’ve regarded as true has turned false, you begin suspecting all stories. Was an effort being made to turn me against Gilead? Was the evidence faked? Was it Aunt Lydia’s threat to reveal Paula’s crime that had caused my stepmother to abandon her efforts to marry me to Commander Judd? Had this terrible story bought me my place as an Aunt at Ardua Hall? Was this a way of telling me that my mother, Tabitha, had not died of a disease but had been murdered in some unknown way by Paula, and possibly even by Commander Kyle? I didn’t know what to believe.

There was no one I could confide in. Not even Becka: I didn’t want to endanger her by making her complicit. The truth can cause a lot of trouble for those who are not supposed to know it.

I finished my work for the day, leaving the blue folder where I’d found it. The next day there was a new speech for me to work on, and the blue folder of the day before was gone.

Over the course of the following two years, I found a number of similar folders waiting for me on my desk. They all held evidence of various crimes. Those containing the crimes of Wives were blue, of Commanders black, of professionals—such as doctors—grey, of Econopeople striped, of Marthas dull green. There were none containing the crimes of Handmaids, and none for those of Aunts.

Most of the files left for me were either blue or black, and described multiple crimes. Handmaids had been forced into illegal acts, then blamed for them; Sons of Jacob had plotted against one another; bribes and favours had been exchanged at the highest levels; Wives had schemed against other Wives; Marthas had eavesdropped and collected information, and then sold it; mysterious food poisonings had occurred, babies had changed hands from Wife to Wife on the basis of scandalous rumours that were, however, unfounded. Wives had been hanged for adulteries that had never occurred because a Commander wanted a different, younger Wife. Public trials—meant to purge traitors and purify the leadership—had turned on false confessions extracted by torture.

Bearing false witness was not the exception, it was common. Beneath its outer show of virtue and purity, Gilead was rotting.

Apart from Paula’s, the file that most immediately concerned me was that of Commander Judd. It was a thick file. Among other misdemeanours, it contained evidence pertaining to the fates of his previous Wives, those he had been married to before my short-lived engagement to him.

He had disposed of them all. The first had been pushed down the stairs; her neck was broken. It was said that she’d tripped and fallen. As I knew from my reading of other files, it was not difficult to make such things look like accidents. Two of his Wives were said to have died in childbirth, or shortly thereafter; the babies were Unbabies, but the deaths of the Wives had involved deliberately induced septicemia or shock. In one case, Commander Judd had refused permission to operate when an Unbaby with two heads had lodged in the birth canal. Nothing could be done, he’d said piously, because there had still been a fetal heartbeat.

The fourth Wife had taken up flower-painting as a hobby at the suggestion of Commander Judd, who had thoughtfully purchased the paints for her. She’d then developed symptoms attributable to cadmium poisoning. Cadmium, the file noted, was a well-known carcinogenic, and the fourth Wife had succumbed to stomach cancer shortly thereafter.

I’d narrowly avoided a death sentence, it seemed. And I’d had help avoiding it. I said a prayer of gratitude that night: despite my doubts, I continued to pray. Thank you, I said. Help thou my unbelief. I added, And help Shunammite, for she will surely need it.

When I’d first begun reading these files, I was appalled and sickened. Was someone trying to cause me distress? Or were the files part of my education? Was my mind being hardened? Was I being prepared for the tasks I would later be performing as an Aunt?

This was what the Aunts did, I was learning. They recorded. They waited. They used their information to achieve goals known only to themselves. Their weapons were powerful but contaminating secrets, as the Marthas had always said. Secrets, lies, cunning, deceit—but the secrets, the lies, the cunning, and the deceit of others as well as their own.

If I remained at Ardua Hall—if I performed my Pearl Girls missionary work and returned as a full Aunt—this is what I would become. All of the secrets I had learned, and doubtless many more, would be mine, to use as I saw fit. All of this power. All of this potential to judge the wicked in silence, and to punish them in ways they would not be able to anticipate. All of this vengeance.

As I have said, there was a vengeful side to me that I had in the past regretted. Regretted but not expunged.

I would not be telling the truth if I said I was not tempted.