“I wish I had a sister,” she said to me one day. “And if I did, that person would be you.”
50
I’ve described our life as peaceful, and to the outward eye it was; but there were inner storms and turmoils that I have since come to learn are not uncommon among those seeking to dedicate themselves to a higher cause. The first of my inner storms came about when, after four years of reading more elementary texts, I was finally granted reading access to the full Bible. Our Bibles were kept locked up, as elsewhere in Gilead: only those of strong mind and steadfast character could be trusted with them, and that ruled out women, except for the Aunts.
Becka had begun her own Bible reading earlier—she was ahead of me, in priority as well as in proficiency—but those already initiated into these mysteries were not allowed to talk about their sacred reading experiences, so we had not discussed what she had learned.
The day came when the locked wooden Bible box reserved for me would be brought out to the Reading Room and I would finally open this most forbidden of books. I was very excited about it, but that morning Becka said, “I need to warn you.”
“Warn me?” I said. “But it’s holy.”
“It doesn’t say what they say it says.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“I don’t want you to be too disappointed.” She paused. “I’m sure Aunt Estée meant well.” Then she said, “Judges 19 to 21.”
That was all she would tell me. But when I got to the Reading Room and opened the wooden box and then the Bible, that was the first place I turned to. It was the Concubine Cut into Twelve Pieces, the same story that Aunt Vidala had told us so long ago at school—the one that had disturbed Becka so much when she was little.
I remembered it well. And I remembered, too, the explanation that Aunt Estée had given us. She’d said that the reason the concubine had got killed was that she was sorry for having been disobedient, so she sacrificed herself rather than allowing her owner to be raped by the wicked Benjaminites. Aunt Estée had said the concubine was brave and noble. She’d said the concubine had made a choice.
But now I was reading the whole story. I looked for the brave and noble part, I looked for the choice, but none of that was there. The girl was simply shoved out the door and raped to death, then cut up like a cow by a man who’d treated her like a purchased animal when she’d been alive. No wonder she’d run away in the first place.
It came as a painful shock: kind, helpful Aunt Estée had lied to us. The truth was not noble, it was horrible. This was what the Aunts meant, then, when they said women’s minds were too weak for reading. We would crumble, we would fall apart under the contradictions, we would not be able to hold firm.
Up until that time I had not seriously doubted the rightness and especially the truthfulness of Gilead’s theology. If I’d failed at perfection, I’d concluded that the fault was mine. But as I discovered what had been changed by Gilead, what had been added, and what had been omitted, I feared I might lose my faith.
If you’ve never had a faith, you will not understand what that means. You feel as if your best friend is dying; that everything that defined you is being burned away; that you’ll be left all alone. You feel exiled, as if you are lost in a dark wood. It was like the feeling I’d had when Tabitha died: the world was emptying itself of meaning. Everything was hollow. Everything was withering.
I told Becka some of what was taking place within me.
“I know,” she said. “That happened to me. Everyone at the top of Gilead has lied to us.”
“How do you mean?”
“God isn’t what they say,” she said. She said you could believe in Gilead or you could believe in God, but not both. That was how she had managed her own crisis.
I said that I wasn’t sure I would be able to choose. Secretly I feared that I would be unable to believe in either. Still, I wanted to believe; indeed I longed to; and, in the end, how much of belief comes from longing?
51
Three years later, an even more alarming thing happened. As I’ve said, one of my tasks at the Hildegard Library was to make fair copies of Aunt Lydia’s speeches. The pages for the speech I was to work on that day would be left on my desk in a silver folder. One morning I discovered, tucked in behind the silver folder, a blue one. Who had put it there? Had there been some mistake?
I opened it. The name of my stepmother, Paula, was at the top of the first page. What followed was an account of the death of her first husband, the one she’d had before she’d married my so-called father, Commander Kyle. As I’ve told you, her husband, Commander Saunders, had been killed in his study by their Handmaid. Or that was the story that had circulated.
Paula had said that the girl was dangerously unbalanced, and had stolen a skewer from the kitchen and killed Commander Saunders in an unprovoked attack. The Handmaid had escaped, but had been caught and hanged, and her dead body had been displayed on the Wall. But Shunammite had said that her Martha had said there had been an unlawful and sinful liaison—the Handmaid and the husband had been in the habit of fornicating in his study. That was what had given the Handmaid the opportunity to kill him, and that was also why she’d done it: the demands he’d been making of her had driven her over the edge of sanity. The rest of Shunammite’s story was the same: Paula’s discovery of the corpse, the capture of the Handmaid, the hanging. Shunammite had added a detail about Paula getting a lot of blood on herself while putting the dead Commander’s trousers back on him to save appearances.
But the story in the blue folder was quite different. It was augmented by photographs, and transcripts of many secretly recorded conversations. There had been no illicit liaison between Commander Saunders and his Handmaid—only the regular Ceremonies as decreed by law. However, Paula and Commander Kyle—my erstwhile father—had been having an affair even before Tabitha, my mother, had died.
Paula had befriended the Handmaid and offered to help her escape from Gilead since she knew how unhappy the girl was. She’d even provided her with a map and directions, and the names of several Mayday contacts along the way. After the Handmaid had set out, Paula had skewered Commander Saunders herself. That was why she’d had so much blood on her, not from putting his trousers back on. In fact, he had never taken them off, or not on that night.
She’d bribed her Martha to back up the murderous Handmaid story, combining the bribe with threats. Then she’d called the Angels and accused the Handmaid, and the rest had followed. The unfortunate girl was found wandering the streets in despair, since the map was inaccurate and the Mayday contacts turned out not to exist.
The Handmaid had been interrogated. (The transcript of the interrogation was attached, and it was not comfortable reading.) Although admitting to her escape attempt and revealing Paula’s part in it, she’d maintained her innocence of the murder—indeed, her ignorance of the murder—until the pain had become too much, and she’d made a false confession.
She was clearly innocent. But she was hanged anyway.
The Aunts had known the truth. Or at least one of them had known. There was the evidence, right in the folder in front of me. Yet nothing had happened to Paula. And a Handmaid had been hanged for the crime instead.
I was bedazzled, as if struck by lightning. But not only was I astounded by this story, I was mystified as to the reason it had been placed on my desk. Why had an unknown person given me such dangerous information?