The Testaments(27)

Ofkyle, our Handmaid, got bigger and bigger—or her stomach did—and the bigger she got, the more ecstatic our household became. I mean the women became ecstatic. As for Commander Kyle, it was hard to tell what he felt. He’d always had a wooden face, and anyway men were not supposed to display emotions in such ways as crying or even laughing out loud; though a certain amount of laughing did go on behind the closed dining-room doors when he’d have his groups of Commanders over for dinner, with wine and one of the party desserts involving whipped cream, when obtainable, that Zilla made so well. But I suppose even he was at least moderately thrilled about the ballooning of Ofkyle.

Sometimes I wondered what my own father might have felt about me. I had some notions about my mother—she’d run away with me, she’d been turned into a Handmaid by the Aunts—but none at all about my father. I must have had one, everyone did. You’d think I’d have filled up the blank with idealized pictures of him, but I didn’t: the blank remained blank.

Ofkyle was now quite a celebrity. Wives would send their Handmaids over with some excuse—borrowing an egg, returning a bowl—but really to ask how she was doing. They would be allowed inside the house; then she would be called down so they could put their hands on her round belly and feel the baby kicking. It was amazing to see the expression on their faces while they were performing this ritual: Wonder, as if they were witnessing a miracle. Hope, because if Ofkyle could do it, so could they. Envy, because they weren’t doing it yet. Longing, because they really wanted to do it. Despair, because it might never happen for them. I did not yet know what might become of a Handmaid who, despite having been judged viable, came up barren through all her allotted postings, but I already guessed it would not be good.

Paula threw numerous tea parties for the other Wives. They would congratulate her and admire her and envy her, and she would smile graciously and accept their congratulations modestly, and say all blessings came from above, and then she would order Ofkyle to appear in the living room so the Wives could see for themselves and exclaim over her and make a fuss. They might even call Ofkyle “Dear,” which they never did for an ordinary Handmaid, one with a flat stomach. Then they would ask Paula what she was going to name her baby.

Her baby. Not Ofkyle’s baby. I wondered what Ofkyle thought about that. But none of them were interested in what was going on in her head, they were only interested in her belly. They would be patting her stomach and sometimes even listening to it, whereas I would be standing behind the open living-room door looking at her through the crack so I could watch her face. I saw her trying to keep that face as still as marble, but she didn’t always succeed. Her face was rounder than it had been when she’d first arrived—it was almost swollen—and it seemed to me that this was because of all the tears she was not allowing herself to cry. Did she cry them in secret? Although I would lurk outside her closed door with my ear to it, I never heard her.

At these moments of lurking I would become angry. I’d had a mother once, and I’d been snatched away from that mother and given to Tabitha, just as this baby was going to be snatched away from Ofkyle and given to Paula. It was the way things were done, it was how things were, it was how they had to be for the good of the future of Gilead: the few must make sacrifices for the sake of the many. The Aunts were agreed on that; they taught it; but still I knew this part of it wasn’t right.

But I couldn’t condemn Tabitha, even though she’d accepted a stolen child. She didn’t make the world the way it was, and she had been my mother, and I had loved her and she had loved me. I still loved her, and perhaps she still loved me. Who could tell? Perhaps her silvery spirit was with me, hovering over me, keeping watch. I liked to think so.

I needed to think so.



* * *



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At last the Birth Day came. I was home from school because I’d finally got my first period and I was having bad cramps. 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. I hauled myself out of bed and went to the window: yes, the red van was inside our gates now and the Handmaids were climbing down out of it, a dozen of them or more. I couldn’t see their faces, but just from the way they moved—faster than they usually did—I could tell they were excited.

Then the cars of the Wives began to arrive, and they too hurried into our house in their identical blue cloaks. Two Aunts’ cars also drove up, and the Aunts got out. They weren’t ones I recognized. Both were older, and one was carrying a black bag with the red wings and the knotted snake and the moon on it that meant it was a Medical Services First Responder bag, female division. A number of the Aunts were trained in first response and midwifery, though they could not be real doctors.

I was not supposed to witness a Birth. Girls and marriageable young women—such as I’d just become by having my period—were not allowed to see or know what went on, because such sights and sounds were not suitable for us and might be harmful to us—might disgust us or frighten us. That thick red knowledge was for married women and Handmaids, and for the Aunts, of course, so they could teach it to the midwife Aunts in training. But naturally I repressed my own cramping pain and put on my dressing gown and slippers, and crept halfway up the stairs that led to the third floor, where I would be out of sight.