The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale #2) - Margaret Atwood Page 0,43
me.
I managed to drink some of the tea, and my teeth stopped chattering. I sat there and watched the foot traffic, the way I used to watch it in The Clothes Hound. Several women came in, one of them with a baby. They looked really wrecked, and also scared. The SanctuCare women went over and welcomed them and said, “You’re here now, it’s all right,” and the Gilead women started to cry. At the time I thought, Why cry, you should be happy, you got out. But after all that’s happened to me since that day, I understand why. You hold it in, whatever it is, until you can make it through the worst part. Then, once you’re safe, you can cry all the tears you couldn’t waste time crying before.
Words came out of the women in snatches and gasps:
If they say I have to go back…
I had to leave my boy behind, isn’t there any way to…
I lost the baby. There was no one…
The women in charge handed them tissues. They said calm things like You need to be strong. They were trying to make things better. But it can put a lot of pressure on a person to be told they need to be strong. That’s another thing I’ve learned.
* * *
—
After an hour or so, Ada came back. “You’re still alive,” she said. If it was a joke, it was a bad one. I just stared at her. “You have to dump the plaid.”
“What?” I said. It was like she was speaking some other language.
“I know this is tough for you,” she said, “but we don’t have time for that right now, we need to get moving fast. Not to be alarmist, but there’s trouble. Now let’s get some other clothes.” She took hold of my arm and lifted me up out of the chair: she was surprisingly strong.
We went past all the women, into a back room where there was a table with T-shirts and sweaters and a couple of racks with hangers. I recognized some of the items: this was where the donations from The Clothes Hound ended up.
“Pick something you’d never wear in real life,” said Ada. “You need to look like a totally different person.”
I found a black T-shirt with a white skull, and a pair of leggings, black with white skulls. I added high-tops, black and white, and some socks. Everything was used. I did think about lice and bedbugs: Melanie always asked whether the stuff people tried to sell her had been cleaned. We got bedbugs in the store once and it was a nightmare.
“I’ll turn my back,” said Ada. There was no change room. I wriggled out of my school uniform and put on my new used clothes. My movements felt very slowed down. What if she was abducting me? I thought groggily. Abducting. It was what happened to girls who were smuggled and made into sex slaves—we’d learned about that at school. But girls like me didn’t get abducted, except sometimes by men posing as real estate salesmen who kept them locked in the basement. Sometimes men like that had women helping them. Was Ada one of those? What if her story about Melanie and Neil being blown up was a trick? Right now the two of them might be frantic because I hadn’t turned up. They might be calling the school or even the police, useless though they considered them.
Ada still had her back to me, but I sensed that if I even thought about making a break for it—out the side door of the Meeting House, for instance—she would know about it in advance. And supposing I ran, where could I go? The only place I wanted to go was home, but if Ada was telling the truth I shouldn’t go there. Anyway, if Ada was telling the truth it would no longer be my home because Melanie and Neil wouldn’t be in it. What would I do all by myself in an empty house?
“I’m done,” I said.
Ada turned around. “Not bad,” she said. She took off her black jacket and stuffed it into a carry bag, then put on a green jacket that was on the rack. Then she pinned up her hair and added sunglasses. “Hair down,” she told me, so I pulled off my scrunchie and shook my hair out. She found a pair of sunglasses for me: orange mirror ones. She handed me a lipstick, and I made myself a new red