The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale #2) - Margaret Atwood Page 0,5

to pray about dying in your sleep. I did not think I would, but what if I did? And what was my soul like—that thing the angels would carry away? Tabitha said it was the spirit part and did not die when your body did, which was supposed to be a cheerful idea.

But what did it look like, my soul? I pictured it as just like me, only much smaller: as small as the little girl doll in my dollhouse. It was inside me, so maybe it was the same thing as the invaluable treasure that Aunt Vidala said we had to guard so carefully. You could lose your soul, said Aunt Vidala, blowing her nose, in which case it would topple over the verge and hurtle down and endlessly down, and catch on fire, just like the goatish men. This was a thing I very much wished to avoid.

4

At the beginning of the next period I am about to describe, I must have been eight at first, or possibly nine. I can remember these events but not my exact age. It’s hard to remember calendar dates, especially since we did not have calendars. But I will continue on in the best way I can.

My name at that time was Agnes Jemima. Agnes meant “lamb,” said my mother, Tabitha. She would say a poem:

Little lamb, who made thee?

Dost thou know who made thee?

There was more of this, but I have forgotten it.

As for Jemima, that name came from a story in the Bible. Jemima was a very special little girl because her father, Job, was sent bad luck by God as part of a test, and the worst part of it was that all Job’s children were killed. All his sons, all his daughters: killed! It sent shudders through me every time I heard about it. It must have been terrible, what Job felt when he was told that news.

But Job passed the test, and God gave him some other children—several sons, and also three daughters—so then he was happy again. And Jemima was one of those daughters. “God gave her to Job, just as God gave you to me,” said my mother.

“Did you have bad luck? Before you chose me?”

“Yes, I did,” she said, smiling.

“Did you pass the test?”

“I must have,” said my mother. “Or I wouldn’t have been able to choose a wonderful daughter like you.”

I was pleased with this story. It was only later that I pondered it: how could Job have allowed God to fob off a batch of new children on him and expect him to pretend that the dead ones no longer mattered?

* * *

—

When I wasn’t at school or with my mother—and I was with my mother less and less, because more and more she would be upstairs lying down on her bed, doing what the Marthas called “resting”—I liked to be in the kitchen, watching the Marthas make the bread and the cookies and pies and cakes and soups and stews. All the Marthas were known as Martha because that’s what they were, and they all wore the same kind of clothing, but each one of them had a first name too. Ours were Vera, Rosa, and Zilla; we had three Marthas because my father was so important. Zilla was my favourite because she spoke very softly, whereas Vera had a harsh voice and Rosa had a scowl. It wasn’t her fault though, it was just the way her face was made. She was older than the other two.

“Can I help?” I would ask our Marthas. Then they would give me scraps of bread dough to play with, and I would make a man out of dough, and they would bake it in the oven with whatever else they were baking. I always made dough men, I never made dough women, because after they were baked I would eat them, and that made me feel I had a secret power over men. It was becoming clear to me that, despite the urges Aunt Vidala said I aroused in them, I had no power over them otherwise.

“Can I make the bread from scratch?” I asked one day when Zilla was getting out the bowl to start mixing. I’d watched them do it so often that I was convinced I knew how.

“You don’t need to bother with that,” said Rosa, scowling more than usual.

“Why?” I said.

Vera laughed her harsh laugh. “You’ll have Marthas to do all of that for you,” she