The Handmaids Tale | Page 5

her back on me and limped down the hall. Shut the door behind you.
I lifted my red bag inside, as she'd no doubt intended, then clo sed the
door. I didn't say anything to her. Aunt Lydia said it was best no t to
speak unless they asked you a direct question. Try to think of i t from
their point of view, she said, her hands clasped and wrung toge ther,
her nervous pleading smile. It isn't easy for them.
In here, said the Commander's Wife. When I went into the sitting
room she was already in her chair, her left foot on the footstool, with
its petit point cushion, roses in a basket. Her knitting was on the floor
beside the chair, the needles stuck through it.
I stood in front of her, hands folded. So, she said. She had a ciga rette,
and she put it between her lips and gripped it there while she lit it.
Her lips were thin, held that way, with the small vertical lines around
them you used to see in advertisements for lip cosmetics. The l ighter
was ivory-colored. The cigarettes must have come from the black

market, I thought, and this gave me hope. Even now that there is n
o
real money anymore, there's still a black market. There's always a
black market, there's always something that can be exchanged. She
then was a woman who might bend the rules. But what did I have, to
trade?
I looked at the cigarette with longing. For me, like liquor and coffee,
they are forbidden.
So old what's-his-face didn't work out, she said.
No, ma'am, I said.
She gave what might have been a laugh, then coughed. Tough luc k on
him, she said. This is your second, isn't it?
Third, ma'am, I said.
Not so good for you either, she said. There was another coughing
laugh. You can sit down. I don't make a practice of it, but just t his
time.
I did sit, on the edge of one of the stiff-backed chairs. I didn' t want to
stare around the room, I didn't want to appear inattentive to her; so
the marble mantelpiece to my right and the mirror over it and the
bunches of flowers were just shadows, then, at the edges of my ey es.
Later I would have more than enough time to take them in.
Now her face was on a level with mine. I thought I recognized her; or
at least there was something familiar about her. A little of her hair
was showing, from under her veil. It was still blond. I thought then
that maybe she bleached it, that hair dye was something else s he
could get through the black market, but I know now that it really i s
blond. Her eyebrows were plucked into thin arched lines, which g ave
her a permanent look of surprise, or outrage, or inquisitiveness , such
as you might see on a startled child, but below them her eyelids were
tired-looking. Not so her eyes, which were the flat hostile blu e of a
midsummer sky in bright sunlight, a blue that shuts you out. He r
nose must once have been what was called cute but now was too

small for her face. Her face was not fat but it was large. Two lin
es led
downward from the corners of her mouth; between them was her
chin, clenched like a fist.
I want to see as little of you as possible, she said. 1 expect yo u feel the
same way about me.
I didn't answer, as a yes would have been insulting, a no
contradictory.
I know you aren't stupid, she went on. She inhaled, blew out the
smoke. I've read your file. As far as I'm concerned, this is like a
business transaction. But if I get trouble, I'll give trouble ba ck. You
understand?
Yes, ma'am, I said. Don't call me ma'am, she said irritably. You're not a Martha.
I didn't ask what I was supposed to cull her, because I could see that
she hoped I would never have the- occasion to call her anvthin g at all.
I was disappointed. I wanted, then, to turn her into an older si ster, a
motherly figure, someone who would understand and protect me.
The Wife in my posting before this had spent most of her time in h er
bedroom; the Marthas said she drank. I wanted this one to
bedifferent. I wanted to think I would have liked her, in anothe r time
and place, another life. But I could see already that I wouldn' t have
liked her, nor she me.
She put her cigarette out, half smoked, in a little scrolled ash tray on
the lamp table beside her. She did this decisively, one jab and one
grind, not the series of genteel taps favored by many of the Wives .
As for my husband, she said, he's just that. My husband. I want that
to be perfectly clear. Till death do us part. It's