The kitchen island was where we ate most of our meals. We did have a living-dining area with a table. That was supposed to be for dinner parties, but Melanie and Neil didn’t throw dinner parties; instead they threw meetings, which had to do with various causes of theirs. The night before, some people had come over: there were still several coffee cups on the table, and a plate with cracker crumbs and a few wizened grapes. I hadn’t seen who these people were because I was upstairs in my room, avoiding the fallout from whatever it was I had done. That thing was evidently bigger than simple disobedience.
I went into the kitchen and sat down at the island. Melanie’s back was to me; she was looking out the window. From that window you could see our yard—round cement planters with rosemary bushes in them, a patio with an outdoor table and chairs, and a corner of the street at the front.
“Morning,” I said. Melanie whipped around.
“Oh! Daisy!” she said. “I didn’t hear you! Happy birthday! Sweet sixteen!”
Neil didn’t turn up for breakfast before it was time for me to leave for school. He was upstairs talking on his phone. I was slightly hurt, but not very: he was very absent-minded.
Melanie drove me, as she usually did: she didn’t like me going to school by myself on the bus, even though the stop was right near our house. She said—as she always said—that she was on her way to The Clothes Hound and she might as well drop me off.
“Tonight we’ll have your birthday cake, with ice cream,” she said, her voice rising at the end as if it was a question. “I’ll pick you up after school. There are some things Neil and I want to tell you, now that you’re old enough.”
“Okay,” I said. I thought this was going to be about boys and what consent meant, which I’d heard enough about at school. It was bound to be awkward, but I would have to get through it.
I wanted to say I was sorry for having gone to the protest march, but then we were at the school and I hadn’t said it. I got out of the car silently; Melanie waited until I was at the entrance. I waved at her, and she waved back. I don’t know why I did that—I didn’t usually. I guess it was a sort of apology.
I don’t remember that school day much, because why would I? It was normal. Normal is like looking out a car window. Things pass by, this and that and this and that, without much significance. You don’t register such hours; they’re habitual, like brushing your teeth.
A few of my homework friends sang “Happy Birthday” to me in the cafeteria while we were having lunch. Some of the others clapped.
Then it was the afternoon. The air was stale, the clock slowed down. I sat in French class, where we were supposed to be reading a page from a novella by Colette—Mitsou, about a music-hall star hiding a couple of men in her wardrobe. As well as being French, it was supposed to be about how terrible life used to be for women, but Mitsou’s life didn’t seem so terrible to me. Hiding a handsome man in her closet—I wished I could do that. But even if I knew such a man, where could I stash him? Not in my own bedroom closet: Melanie would catch on right away, and if not, I’d have to feed him. I gave that some thought: What sort of food could I sneak without Melanie noticing? Cheese and crackers? Sex with him would be out of the question: it would be too risky to let him out of the closet, and there wasn’t room for me to cram myself in there with him. This was the kind of daydreaming I often did in schooclass="underline" it passed the time.
Still, it was a problem in my life. I’d never gone out with anyone because I’d never met anyone I might want to go out with. There seemed to be no way that could happen. Boys from the Wyle School were not possible: I’d gone through grade school with them, I’d seen them pick their noses, and some of them had been pants-wetters. You can’t feel romantic with those images in your mind.
By this time I was feeling glum, which is one of the effects a birthday can have: you’re expecting a magic transformation but then it doesn’t happen. To keep myself awake I pulled hairs out of my head, in behind my right ear, just two or three hairs at a time. I knew that if I pulled out that same hair too often I risked creating a bald spot, but I had only begun this habit a few weeks before.
Finally the time was up and I could go home. I walked along the polished hall towards the front door of the school and stepped outside. There was a light drizzle; I didn’t have my raincoat. I scanned the street: Melanie wasn’t waiting in her car.
All of a sudden Ada appeared beside me, in her black leather jacket. “Come on. Let’s get in the car,” she said.
“What?” I said. “Why?”
“It’s about Neil and Melanie.” I looked at her face, and I could telclass="underline" something really bad must have happened. If I’d been older I would’ve asked what it was right away, but I didn’t because I wanted to postpone the moment when I would know what it was. In stories I’d read, I’d come across the words nameless dread. They’d just been words then, but now that’s exactly what I felt.
Once we were in the car and she’d started driving, I said, “Did someone have a heart attack?” It was all I could think of.
“No,” Ada said. “Listen carefully and don’t freak out on me. You can’t go back to your house.”
The awful feeling in my stomach got worse. “What is it? Was there a fire?”
“There’s been an explosion,” she said. “It was a car bomb. Outside The Clothes Hound.”
“Shit. Is the store wrecked?” I said. First the break-in, and now this.
“It was Melanie’s car. She and Neil were both in it.”
I sat there for a minute without speaking; I couldn’t make sense of this. What kind of maniac would want to kill Neil and Melanie? They were so ordinary.
“So they’re dead?” I said finally. I was shivering. I tried to picture the explosion, but all I could see was a blank. A black square.
V
Van
12
Who are you, my reader? And when are you? Perhaps tomorrow, perhaps fifty years from now, perhaps never.
Possibly you are one of our Aunts from Ardua Hall, stumbling across this account by chance. After a moment of horror at my sinfulness, will you burn these pages to preserve my pious image intact? Or will you succumb to the universal thirst for power and scuttle off to the Eyes to snitch on me?
Or will you be a snoop from outside our borders, rooting through the archives of Ardua Hall once this regime has fallen? In which case, the stash of incriminating documents I’ve been hoarding for so many years will have featured not only at my own trial—should fate prove malicious, and should I live to feature at such a trial—but at the trials of many others. I’ve made it my business to know where the bodies are buried.
By now you may be wondering how I’ve avoided being purged by those higher up—if not in the earlier days of Gilead, at least as it settled into its dog-eat-dog maturity. By then a number of erstwhile notables had been hung on the Wall, since those on the topmost pinnacle took care that no ambitious challengers would displace them. You might assume that, being a woman, I would be especially vulnerable to this kind of winnowing, but you would be wrong. Simply by being female I was excluded from the lists of potential usurpers, since no woman could ever sit on the Council of the Commanders; so on that front, ironically, I was safe.
But there are three other reasons for my political longevity. First, the regime needs me. I control the women’s side of their enterprise with an iron fist in a leather glove in a woollen mitten, and I keep things orderly: like a harem eunuch, I am uniquely placed to do so. Second, I know too much about the leaders—too much dirt—and they are uncertain as to what I may have done with it in the way of documentation. If they string me up, will that dirt somehow be leaked? They might well suspect I’ve taken backup precautions, and they would be right.