The Testaments (The Handmaid's Tale #2) - Margaret Atwood Page 0,79

lethal pills. I remembered a story—circulated by Shunammite at school—about someone’s Handmaid who had swallowed drain cleaner.

“The whole bottom part of her face came off,” Shunammite had whispered with delight. “It just…dissolved! It was, like, fizzing!” I hadn’t believed her at the time, though now I did.

A bathtub filled with water? But I would gasp and splutter and come up for air, and I couldn’t attach a stone to myself in the bath, unlike in a lake or a river or the sea. But there was no way I could get to a lake or a river, or the sea.

Maybe I would have to go through with the ceremony and then murder Commander Judd on the wedding night. Stick a purloined knife into his neck, then into mine. There would be a lot of blood to get out of the sheets. But it wouldn’t be me doing the scrubbing. I pictured the dismay on Paula’s face when she walked into the slaughter chamber. Such a butcher shop. And there went her social standing.

These scenarios were fantasies, of course. Underneath this web-spinning, I knew I could never kill myself or murder anyone. I remembered Becka’s fierce expression when she’d slashed her wrist: she’d been serious about it, she’d really been prepared to die. She was strong in a way that I was not. I would never have her resolve.

* * *

—

At night when I was falling asleep, I fantasized about miraculous escapes, but all of them required help from other people, and who would help me? It would have to be someone I didn’t know: a rescuer, the warden of a hidden door, the keeper of a secret password. None of that seemed possible when I woke up in the morning. I went round and round in my head: what to do, what to do? I could barely think, I could scarcely eat.

“Wedding nerves, bless her soul,” said Zilla. I did want my soul to be blessed, but I could see no way of that happening.

* * *

—

When there were only three days left, I had an unexpected visitor. Zilla came up to my room to call me downstairs. “Aunt Lydia is here to see you,” she said in hushed tones. “Good luck. We all wish you that.”

Aunt Lydia! The main Founder, the gold-framed picture at the back of every schoolroom, the ultimate Aunt—come to see me? What had I done? I was shaking as I made my way down the stairs.

Paula was out, which was a lucky thing; though after I came to know Aunt Lydia better, I realized that luck had nothing to do with it. Aunt Lydia was sitting on the sofa in the living room. She was smaller than she’d been at the funeral of Ofkyle, but perhaps that was because I’d grown. She actually smiled at me, a wrinkly, yellow-toothed smile.

“Agnes, my dear,” she said. “I thought you might like to hear some news about your friend Becka.” I was in such awe of her that it was hard for me to talk.

“Is she dead?” I whispered, my heart sinking.

“Not at all. She is safe and happy.”

“Where is she?” I managed to stammer.

“She is at Ardua Hall, with us. She wishes to become an Aunt and is enrolled as a Supplicant.”

“Oh,” I said. A light was dawning, a door was opening.

“Not every girl is suitable for marriage,” she continued. “For some it is simply a waste of potential. There are other ways a girl or woman may contribute to God’s plan. A little bird has told me that you may agree.” Who had told her? Zilla? She’d sensed how violently unhappy I was.

“Yes,” I said. Perhaps my prayers of long ago to Aunt Lydia had finally been answered, though in a different way than I’d expected.

“Becka has received a call to higher service. If you yourself have such a calling,” she said, “you still have time to tell us.”

“But how do I…I don’t know how…”

“I myself cannot be seen to be proposing this course of action directly,” she said. “It would contravene the prime right of the father to arrange the marriage of his daughter. A calling can override the paternal right, but you must make the first approach to us. I suspect Aunt Estée would be willing to listen. If your calling proves strong enough, you will devise a way of contacting her.”

“But what about Commander Judd?” I asked timorously. He was so powerful: if I ducked the wedding, surely he would be