The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale #2) - Margaret Atwood Page 0,14

Baby Nicole had disappeared and had never been found.

Now Baby Nicole was the poster child for Gilead. On every Pearl Girls brochure there was the same picture of her. She looked like a baby, nothing special, but she was practically a saint in Gilead, said our teacher. She was an icon for us too: every time there was an anti-Gilead protest in Canada, there would be the picture, and slogans like BABY NICOLE! SYMBOL OF FREEDOM! Or BABY NICOLE! LEADING THE WAY! As if a baby could lead the way on anything, I would think to myself.

I’d basically disliked Baby Nicole since I’d had to do a paper on her. I’d got a C because I’d said she was being used as a football by both sides, and it would be the greatest happiness of the greatest number just to give her back. The teacher had said I was callous and should learn to respect other people’s rights and feelings, and I’d said people in Gilead were people, and shouldn’t their rights and feelings be respected too? She’d lost her temper and said I needed to grow up, which was maybe true: I’d been aggravating on purpose. But I was angry about the C.

Every time the Pearl Girls came, Melanie would accept the brochures and promise to keep a pile of them at point of sale. Sometimes she would even give some of the old brochures back to them: they collected the leftover ones for use in other countries.

“Why do you do that?” I asked her when I was fourteen and taking a greater interest in politics. “Neil says we’re atheists. You’re just encouraging them.” We’d had three modules in school on Gilead: it was a terrible, terrible place, where women couldn’t have jobs or drive cars, and where the Handmaids were forced to get pregnant like cows, except that cows had a better deal. What sort of people could be on the side of Gilead and not be some kind of monsters? Especially female people. “Why don’t you tell them they’re evil?”

“There’s no point arguing with them,” said Melanie. “They’re fanatics.”

“Then I’ll tell them.” I thought I knew what was wrong with people then, especially adult people. I thought I could set them straight. The Pearl Girls were older than me, it isn’t as if they were children: how could they believe all that crap?

“No,” said Melanie quite sharply. “Stay in the back. I don’t want you talking to them.”

“Why not? I can deal—”

“They try to con girls your age into going to Gilead with them. They’ll say the Pearl Girls are helping women and girls. They’ll appeal to your idealism.”

“I would never fall for that!” I said indignantly. “I’m not fucking brain-dead.” I didn’t usually swear around Melanie and Neil, but sometimes those words just slipped out.

“Watch the potty mouth,” said Melanie. “It makes a bad impression.”

“Sorry. But I’m not.”

“Of course not,” said Melanie. “But just leave them alone. If I take the brochures, they go away.”

“Are their pearls real?”

“Fake,” said Melanie. “Everything about them is fake.”

9

Despite all that she did for me, Melanie had a distant smell. She smelled like a floral guest soap in a strange house I was visiting. What I mean is, she didn’t smell to me like my mother.

One of my favourite books at the school library when I was younger was about a man who got himself into a wolf pack. This man could never take a bath because the wolf pack scent would wash off and then the wolves would reject him. With Melanie and me, it was more like we needed to add on that layer of pack-scent, the thing that would tag us as us—us-together. But that never happened. We were never very snuggly.

Also, Neil and Melanie weren’t like the parents of the kids I knew. They were too careful around me, as if I was breakable. It was like I was a prize cat they were cat-sitting: you’d take your own cat for granted, you’d be casual about it, but someone else’s cat would be another story because if you lost that cat you would feel guilty about it in a completely different way.

Another thing: the kids from school had pictures of themselves—a lot of pictures. Their parents documented every minute of their lives. Some of the kids even had photos of themselves being born, which they’d brought to Show and Tell. I used to think that was gross—blood and great big legs, with a little head