My old pink and plum clothes were taken away to be cleaned and reused for younger girls. Gilead was at war; we did not like to throw things out.
27
Once I had the green wardrobe, I was enrolled in another school—Rubies Premarital Preparatory, a school for young women of good family who were studying to be married. Its motto was from the Bible: “Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies.”
This school was also run by the Aunts, but—despite the fact that they wore the same drab uniforms—these Aunts were somehow more stylish. They were supposed to teach us how to act as mistresses of high-ranking households. I say “act” in a dual sense: we were to be actresses on the stages of our future houses.
Shunammite and Becka from the Vidala School were in the same class with me: Vidala School pupils often went on to Rubies. Not much real time had passed since I’d last seen the two of them, but they seemed much older. Shunammite had coiled her dark braids around behind her head and plucked her eyebrows. You wouldn’t have called her beautiful, but she was as lively as she always had been. I note here that lively was a word the Wives used in a disapproving way: it meant brash.
Shunammite said she was looking forward to being married. In fact, she could talk of nothing else—what sorts of husbands were being vetted for her, what kind she would prefer, how she could hardly wait. She wanted a widower of about forty who hadn’t loved his first Wife all that much and had no children, and was high-ranking and handsome. She didn’t want some young jerk who’d never had sex before because that would be uncomfortable—what if he didn’t know where to put his thing? She’d always had a reckless mouth, but now it was more so. Possibly she’d picked up these new, coarser expressions from a Martha.
Becka was even thinner. Her green-brown eyes, always large in proportion to her face, were if anything even larger. She told me that she was glad to be in this class with me, but she was not glad to be in the class itself. She’d begged and begged her family not to marry her yet—she was too young, she wasn’t ready—but they’d received a very good offer: the eldest boy of a Son of Jacob and Commander who was well on his way to becoming a Commander himself. Her mother had told her not to be silly, she would never have an offer like this again, and if she didn’t take this one the offers would become worse and worse the older she became. If she reached eighteen unmarried, she’d be considered dried goods and would be out of the running for Commanders: she’d be lucky to get even a Guardian. Her father, Dr. Grove the dentist, said it was unusual for a Commander to consider a girl of her lower rank, and it would be an insult to refuse, and did she wish to ruin him?
“But I don’t want to!” she would wail to us when Aunt Lise was out of the room. “To have some man crawling all over you, like, like worms! I hate it!”
It occurred to me that she didn’t say she would hate it, she said she already hated it. What had happened to her? Something disgraceful that she couldn’t talk about? I remembered how upset she’d been by the story of the Concubine Cut into Twelve Pieces. But I didn’t want to ask her: another girl’s disgrace could rub off on you if you got too close to it.
“It won’t hurt that much,” said Shunammite, “and think of all the things you’ll have! Your own house, your own car and Guardians, and your own Marthas! And if you can’t have a baby you’ll be given Handmaids, as many as it takes!”
“I don’t care about cars and Marthas, or even Handmaids,” said Becka. “It’s the horrible feeling. The wet feeling.”
“Like what?” said Shunammite, laughing. “You mean their tongues? It’s no worse than dogs!”
“It’s much worse!” said Becka. “Dogs are friendly.”
I didn’t say anything about what I myself felt about getting married. I couldn’t share the story of my dental appointment with Dr. Grove: he was still Becka’s father, and Becka was still my friend. In any case, my reaction had been more like disgust and loathing, and now seemed to me trivial in view of Becka’s genuine horror. She really did believe that marriage would obliterate her. She would be crushed, she would be nullified, she would be melted like snow until nothing remained of her.
Away from Shunammite, I asked her why her mother wouldn’t help her. Then there were tears: her mother wasn’t her real mother, she’d found that out from their Martha. It was shameful, but her real mother had been a Handmaid—“Like yours, Agnes,” she said. Her official mother had used that fact against her: why was she so afraid of having sex with a man, since her slut of a Handmaid mother hadn’t had such fears? Quite the contrary!
I hugged her then, and said I understood.
28
Aunt Lise was supposed to teach us manners and customs: which fork to use, how to pour tea, how to be kind but firm with Marthas, and how to avoid emotional entanglements with our Handmaid, should it turn out that we needed a Handmaid. Everyone had a place in Gilead, everyone served in her own way, and all were equal in the sight of God, but some had gifts that were different from the gifts of others, said Aunt Lise. If the various gifts were confused and everyone tried to be everything, only chaos and harm could result. No one should expect a cow to be a bird!
She taught us elementary gardening, with an emphasis on roses—gardening was a suitable hobby for Wives—and how to judge the quality of the food that was cooked for us and served at our table. In these times of national scarcity it was important not to waste food or to spoil its full potential. Animals had died for us, Aunt Lise reminded us, and vegetables too, she added in a virtuous tone. We needed to be thankful for this, and for God’s bounty. It was as disrespectful—one might even say sinful—to Divine Providence to mistreat food by cooking it badly as it was to discard it uneaten.
Therefore we learned how to poach an egg properly, and at what temperature a quiche ought to be served, and the difference between a bisque and a potage. I can’t say I remember much about these lessons now, as I never was in a position to put them into practice.
She reviewed with us the proper prayers to say before meals too. Our husbands would recite the prayers when they were present, as heads of the household, but when they were absent—as they would be often, since they would have to work late hours, nor should we ever criticize their lateness—then it would be our duty to say these prayers on behalf of what Aunt Lise hoped would be our numerous children. Here she gave a tight little smile.
Through my head was running the pretend prayer that Shunammite and I used to amuse ourselves with when we were best friends at the Vidala Schooclass="underline"
The sound of our giggling receded into the distance. How badly we’d thought we were behaving then! How innocent and ineffectual these tiny rebellions seemed to me now that I was preparing for marriage.
As the summer wore on, Aunt Lise taught us the basics of interior decorating, though the final choices about the style of our homes would of course be made by our husbands. She then taught us flower arrangement, the Japanese style and the French style.
By the time we got to the French style, Becka was deeply dejected. Her wedding was planned for November. The man selected for her had paid his first visit to her family. He’d been received in their living room, and had made small talk with her father while she’d sat there silently—this was the protocol, and I would be expected to do the same—and she said he’d made her flesh crawl. He had pimples and a scraggly little moustache, and his tongue was white.