The Testaments(67)

She opened the book. “Here it is, on the first page. ‘Ardua Hall. Theory and Practice, Protocols and Procedures, Per Ardua Cum Estrus.’?” She showed me. “See this? It’s an A.”

“What’s an A?”

She sighed. “We can’t do this today because I have to go to the Hildegard Library, I’m on night duty, but I promise I’ll help you later if they let you stay. We can ask Aunt Lydia if you can live here, with me. There are two bedrooms empty.”

“Do you think she’ll allow it?”

“I’m not sure,” said Becka, lowering her voice. “But don’t ever say anything bad about her, even if you think you’re in a safe place such as here. She has ways of knowing about it.” She whispered, “She is truly the scariest one, of all the Aunts!”

“Scarier than Aunt Vidala?” I whispered back.

“Aunt Vidala wants you to make mistakes,” said Becka. “But Aunt Lydia…it’s hard to describe. You get the feeling she wants you to be better than you are.”

“That sounds inspirational,” I said. Inspirational was a favourite word of Aunt Lise’s: she used it for flower arrangements.

“She looks at you as if she really sees you.”

So many people had looked past me. “I think I’d like that,” I said.

“No,” said Becka. “That’s why she’s so scary.”





40


Paula came to Ardua Hall to try to get me to change my mind. Aunt Lydia said it was only proper that I should meet with her and assure her in person of the rightness and holiness of my decision, so I did.

Paula was waiting for me at a pink table in the Schlafly Café, where we at Ardua Hall were permitted to receive visitors. She was very angry.

“Have you no idea of the trouble your father and I went to in order to secure the connection with Commander Judd?” she said. “You have dishonoured your father.”

“Membership in the Aunts is far from dishonourable,” I said piously. “I had a call to higher service. I could not refuse it.”

“You’re lying,” said Paula. “You are not the kind of girl God would ever single out. I demand that you return home immediately.”

I stood up suddenly and smashed my teacup on the floor. “How dare you question the Divine Will?” I said. I was almost shouting. “Your sin will find you out!” I didn’t know what sin I meant, but everyone has a sin of some kind.

“Act crazy,” Becka had told me. “Then they won’t want you marrying anyone: it will be their responsibility if you do anything violent.”

Paula was taken aback. For a moment she had no answer, but then she said, “The Aunts need Commander Kyle’s agreement, and he will never give it. So pack up because you’re leaving, now.”

At that moment, however, Aunt Lydia came into the café. “May I have a word with you?” she said to Paula. The two of them moved to a table at some distance from me. I strained to hear what Aunt Lydia was saying, but I could not. When Paula stood up, however, she looked sick. She left the café without a word to me, and later that afternoon Commander Kyle signed the formal permission granting authority over me to the Aunts. It was many years before I was to learn what Aunt Lydia had said to Paula to force her to relinquish me.



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Next I had to go through the interviews with the Founding Aunts. Becka had advised me on the best way to behave with each of them: Aunt Elizabeth went in for dedication to the greater good, Aunt Helena would want to get it over quickly, but Aunt Vidala liked grovelling and self-humiliation, so I was prepared.

The first interview was with Aunt Elizabeth. She asked whether I was against marriage, or just against marriage to Commander Judd? I said I was against it in general, which seemed to please her. Had I considered how my decision might hurt Commander Judd—hurt his feelings? I almost said that Commander Judd didn’t seem to have any feelings, but Becka had warned me not to say anything disrespectful because the Aunts wouldn’t put up with it.

I said I’d prayed for the emotional well-being of Commander Judd and he deserved every happiness, which I was positive some other Wife would bring him, but Divine Guidance had told me I would not be able to provide that sort of happiness for him, or indeed for any man, and I wanted to consecrate myself in service to all the women of Gilead rather than to one man and one family.

“If you really mean that, you are well positioned, spiritually, to get on very well here at Ardua Hall,” she said. “I will vote for your conditional acceptance. After six months we will see whether this life is truly the path you have been chosen to follow.” I thanked her repeatedly, and said how grateful I was, and she appeared to be pleased.

My interview with Aunt Helena was nothing much. She was writing in her notebook and did not look up. She said that Aunt Lydia had already made up her mind, so of course she would have to agree. She implied I was boring and a waste of her time.

My interview with Aunt Vidala was the most difficult. She’d been one of my teachers, and she hadn’t liked me then. She said I was shirking my duty, and any girl who’d been gifted with a woman’s body was obligated to offer this body up in holy sacrifice to God and for the glory of Gilead and mankind, and also to fulfill the function that such bodies had inherited from the moment of Creation, and that was nature’s law.