The bus wasn’t full; everyone on it was Econoclass. We were on the scenic route, winding along the coast, but it wasn’t all that scenic. There were a lot of closed-down motels and roadside restaurants, and more than one big red smiling lobster that was falling apart.
As we went north, the friendliness decreased: there were angry looks, and I had the feeling that our Pearl Girls mission and even the whole Gilead thing was leaking popularity. No one spat at us, but they scowled as if they would like to.
I wondered how far we had come. Agnes had the map that had been marked up by Aunt Lydia, but I didn’t like to ask her to take it out: the two of us looking at a map would be suspicious. The bus was slow, and I was getting more and more anxious: How soon before someone noticed we weren’t in Ardua Hall? Would they believe my bogus note? Would they call ahead, set up a roadblock, stop the bus? We were so conspicuous.
Then we took a detour, and it was one-way traffic, and Agnes started fidgeting with her hands. I nudged her with my elbow. “We need to look serene, remember?” She gave me a wan smile and folded her hands in her lap; I could feel her taking deep breaths and letting them out slowly. They did teach you a few useful things at Ardua Hall, and self-control was one of them. She who cannot control herself cannot control the path to duty. Do not fight the waves of anger, use the anger as your fuel. Inhale. Exhale. Sidestep. Circumvent. Deflect.
I would never have made it as a real Aunt.
It was around five in the afternoon when Agnes said, “We get off here.”
“Is this the border?” I said, and she said no, it was where we were supposed to meet our next ride. We took our backpacks off the rack and stepped down out of the bus. The town had boarded-up storefronts and smashed windows, but there was a fuel station and a shabby convenience store.
“This is encouraging,” I said gloomily.
“Follow me and don’t say anything,” Agnes said.
Inside, the store smelled like burnt toast and feet. There was hardly anything on the shelves, only a row of preserved food items with the lettering blacked out: canned goods and crackers or cookies. Agnes went up to the coffee counter—one of those red ones with bar stools—and sat down, so I did the same. There was a dumpy middle-aged Economan working the counter. In Canada, it would’ve been a dumpy middle-aged woman.
“Yeah?” the man said. Clearly he wasn’t impressed by our Pearl Girls outfits.
“Two coffees, please,” said Agnes.
He poured the coffees into mugs and shoved them across the counter. The coffee must have been sitting around all day because it was the worst I’d ever tasted, worse even than at Carpitz. I didn’t want to annoy the guy by not drinking it, so I put in a packet of sugar. If anything, that made it worse.
“It’s warm for a May day,” said Agnes.
“It’s not May,” he said.
“Of course not,” she said. “My mistake. There’s a June moon.”
Now the guy was smiling. “You need to use the washroom,” he said. “Both of youse. It’s through that door. I’ll unlock it.”
We went through the door. It wasn’t a washroom, it was an outside shed with old fishnets, a broken axe, a stack of buckets, and a back door. “Don’t know what took you so long,” said the man. “Fucking bus, it’s always late. Here’s your new stuff. There’s flashlights. Put your dresses in those backpacks, I’ll dump them later. I’ll be outside. We need to get a move on.”
The clothes were jeans and long T-shirts and wool socks and hiking boots. Plaid jackets, fleece pull-on hats, waterproof jackets. I had a little trouble with the left T-shirt sleeve—something caught on the O. I said, “Fucking shit” and then, “Sorry.” I don’t think I’ve ever changed clothes so fast in my life, but once I got the silver dress off and those clothes on I began to feel more like myself.
63
I found the clothing provided for us disagreeable in the extreme. The underwear was very different from the plain, sturdy variety worn at Ardua Halclass="underline" to me it felt slippery and depraved. Over that there were male garments. It was disturbing to feel that rough cloth touching the skin of my legs, with no intervening petticoat. Wearing such clothing was gender treachery and against God’s law: last year a man had been hanged on the Wall for dressing in his Wife’s undergarments. She’d discovered him and turned him in, as was her duty.
“I have to take these off,” I said to Nicole. “They’re men’s garments.”
“No, they’re not,” she said. “Those are girls’ jeans. They’re cut differently, and look at the little silver Cupids. Definitely girls’.”
“They’d never believe that in Gilead,” I said. “I’d be flogged or worse.”
“Gilead,” said Nicole, “is not where we’re going. We’ve got two minutes to join our buddy outside. So suck it up.”
“Pardon?” Sometimes I could not make out what my sister was saying.
She laughed a little. “It means ‘be brave,’ ” she said.
We are going to a place where she will understand the language, I thought. And I will not.
The man had a battered pickup. The three of us squashed into the front seat. It was beginning to drizzle.
“Thank you for all you are doing for us,” I said. The man grunted.
“I get paid,” he said. “For putting my neck in the noose. I’m too old for this.”
The driver must have been drinking while we were changing our clothes: I could smell the alcohol. I remembered that smell from the dinner parties Commander Kyle would have when I was young. Rosa and Vera used to finish up what was left in the glasses sometimes. Zilla, not as much.
Now that I was about to leave Gilead forever, I was feeling homesick for Zilla and Rosa and Vera, and for my former home, and for Tabitha. In those early times I was not motherless, but now I felt that I was. Aunt Lydia had been a mother of sorts, although a harsh one, and I would not see her again. Aunt Lydia had told Nicole and me that our real mother was alive and waiting for us in Canada, but I wondered if I would die on the way there. If so, I would never meet her at all in this life. Right then she was only a torn-up picture. She was an absence, a gap inside me.
Despite the alcohol, the man drove well and quickly. The road was winding, and slick because of the drizzle. The miles went by; the moon had risen above the clouds, silvering the black outlines of the treetops. There was the occasional house, either dark or with only a few lights on. I made a conscious effort to quell my anxieties; then I fell asleep.
I dreamed of Becka. She was there beside me in the front of the truck. I couldn’t see her, though I knew she was there. I said to her in the dream, “So you came with us after all. I’m so happy.” But she didn’t answer.
64
The night slid by in silence. Agnes was asleep, and the guy driving was not what you’d call talkative. I guess he thought of us as cargo to be delivered, and who ever talked to the cargo?
After a while we turned down a narrow side road; water glinted ahead. We pulled in beside what looked like a private dock. There was a motorboat with someone sitting in it.
“Wake her up,” the driver said. “Take your stuff, there’s your boat.”
I poked Agnes in the ribs and she started awake.
“Rise and shine,” I said.