23
When I woke up again, it was morning. I didn’t know what time it was. Had I slept in, was I late for school? Then I remembered: school was done. I would never be going back there, or to anywhere else I knew.
I was in one of the Carnarvon bedrooms, with the white duvet covering me, still wearing the T-shirt and leggings, though I didn’t have the socks or shoes on. There was a window, with a roller shade pulled down. I sat up carefully. I saw some red on the pillowcase, but it was only lipstick from yesterday’s red mouth. I was no longer nauseous and dizzy, but I was fuzzy. I scratched my head all over and gave my hair a tug. Once when I had a headache I’d been told by Melanie that pulling your hair increased the circulation to the brain. She said that’s why Neil did it.
After I stood up, I felt more awake. I studied myself in the big wall mirror. I wasn’t the same person as the day before, although I looked similar. I opened the door and went along the hall to the kitchen in my bare feet.
Ada wasn’t there. She was in the living room, sitting in one of the easy chairs with a mug of coffee. On the sofa was the man we’d passed when going in through the side door at SanctuCare.
“You woke up,” said Ada. Adults were in the habit of stating the obvious—You woke up was something Melanie might have said to me, as if it was an accomplishment—and I was disappointed to find that Ada was no exception in this way.
I looked at the man and he looked at me. He was wearing black jeans and sandals and a grey T-shirt that said TWO WORDS, ONE FINGER and a Blue Jays baseball cap. I wondered if he knew what his T-shirt actually meant.
He must have been fifty, but his hair was dark and thick, so maybe he was younger. His face was like creased leather, and he had a scar up the side of his cheek. He smiled at me, showing white teeth with a molar missing on the left. A tooth missing like that makes a person look illegal.
Ada nodded her chin over at the man: “You remember Elijah, from SanctuCare. Friend of Neil’s. He’s here to help. There’s cereal in the kitchen.”
“Then we can talk,” said Elijah.
The cereal was the kind I liked, round Os made from beans. I brought the bowl into the living area and sat down in the other easy chair, and waited for them to speak.
Neither of them said anything. They glanced at each other. I ate two spoonfuls, tentatively, in case my stomach was still unsettled. In my ears I could hear the crunching of the Os.
“Which end first?” said Elijah.
“The deep end,” said Ada.
“Okay,” he said and looked directly at me. “Yesterday was not your birthday.”
I was surprised. “Yes it was,” I said. “The first of May. I turned sixteen.”
“In reality you’re about four months younger,” said Elijah.
How do you prove your birth date? There must have been a birth certificate, but where did Melanie keep it? “It’s on my health card. My birthday,” I said.
“Try again,” said Ada to Elijah. He looked down at the carpet.
“Melanie and Neil were not your parents,” he said.
“Yes they were!” I said. “Why are you saying that?” I felt tears building in my eyes. There was another void opening in reality: Neil and Melanie were fading, changing shape. I realized I didn’t know much about them really, or about their past. They hadn’t talked about it, and I hadn’t asked. Nobody ever asks their parents much about themselves, do they?
“I know this is distressing for you,” said Elijah, “but it’s important, so I’ll say it again. Neil and Melanie were not your parents. Sorry to be so blunt, but we don’t have much time.”
“Then who were they?” I said. I was blinking. One of the tears made it out; I wiped it away.
“No relation,” he said. “You were placed with them for safekeeping when you were a baby.”
“That can’t be true,” I said. But I was less convinced.
“You should’ve been told earlier,” said Ada. “They wanted to spare you the worry. They were going to tell you on the day they…” She trailed off, clamped her lips shut. She’d been so silent about Melanie dying, as if they hadn’t been friends at all, but now I could see that she was truly upset. It made me like her more.
“Part of their job was to protect you and keep you safe,” said Elijah. “I’m sorry to be the messenger.”
On top of the new-furniture smell of the room, I could smell Elijah: a sweaty, solid, practical-laundry-soap smell. Organic laundry soap. It was the kind Melanie used. Had used. “Then who were they?” I whispered.
“Neil and Melanie were very valued and experienced members of the—”
“No,” I said. “My other parents. My real ones. Who were they? Are they dead too?”
“I’ll make more coffee,” said Ada. She got up and went into the kitchen.
“They’re still alive,” said Elijah. “Or they were yesterday.”
I stared at him. I wondered if he was lying, but why would he have done that? If he’d wanted to make things up, he could have made up better things. “I don’t believe any of this,” I said. “I don’t know why you’re even saying it.”
Ada came back into the room with a mug of coffee and said did anyone else want one, help yourself, and maybe I should have some time to myself to think things over.
Think what over? What was there to think? My parents had been murdered, but they weren’t my real parents, and a different set of parents had appeared in their place.
“What things?” I said. “I don’t know enough to think anything.”
“What would you like to know?” said Elijah in a kind but tired voice.
“How did it happen?” I said. “Where are my real…my other mother and father?”
“Do you know much about Gilead?” Elijah asked.
“Of course. I watch the news. We took it in school,” I said sullenly. “I went to that protest march.” Right then I wanted Gilead to evaporate and leave us all alone.
“That’s where you were born,” he said. “In Gilead.”
“You’re joking,” I said.
“You were smuggled out by your mother and Mayday. They’d risked their lives. Gilead made a big fuss about it; they wanted you back. They said your so-called legal parents had the right to claim you. Mayday hid you; there were a lot of people looking for you, plus a media blitz.”
“Like Baby Nicole,” I said. “I wrote an essay about her at school.”
Elijah looked down at the floor again. Then he looked straight at me. “You are Baby Nicole.”
IX
Thank Tank
24
This afternoon I had another summons from Commander Judd, brought to me in person by a junior Eye. Commander Judd could have picked up the phone himself and discussed his business that way—there is an internal hotline between his office and mine, with a red telephone—but, like me, he can’t be sure who else might be listening. In addition, I believe he enjoys our little tête-à-têtes, for reasons that are complex and perverse. He thinks of me as his handiwork: I am the embodiment of his will.
“I trust you are well, Aunt Lydia,” he said as I sat down across from him.
“Flourishing, praise be. And you?”
“I myself am in good health, but I fear my Wife is ailing. It weighs upon my soul.”
I was not surprised. The last time I saw her, Judd’s current Wife was looking shopworn. “That is sad news,” I said. “What seems to be the malady?”