The Testaments(79)

“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.”