What was her name? Of course you will want to know.
It was Crystal. And that is how I remember her now. I remember her as Crystal.
* * *
—
They had a small funeral for Crystal. I was allowed to come to it: having had my first period, I was now officially a woman. The Handmaids who’d been present at the Birth were allowed to come too, and our entire household went as well. Even Commander Kyle was there, as a token of respect.
We sang two hymns—“Uplift the Lowly” and “Blessed Be the Fruit”—and the legendary Aunt Lydia gave a speech. I looked at her with wonder, as if she was her own picture come to life: she existed after all. She looked older than her picture, though, and not quite as scary.
She said that our sister in service, Handmaid Ofkyle, had made the ultimate sacrifice, and had died with noble womanly honour, and had redeemed herself from her previous life of sin, and she was a shining example to the other Handmaids.
Aunt Lydia’s voice trembled a little as she was saying this. Paula and Commander Kyle looked solemn and devout, nodding from time to time, and some of the Handmaids cried.
I did not cry. I’d already done my crying. The truth was that they’d cut Crystal open to get the baby out, and they’d killed her by doing that. It wasn’t something she chose. She hadn’t volunteered to die with noble womanly honour or be a shining example, but nobody mentioned that.
19
At school my position was now worse than it had ever been. I had become a taboo object: our Handmaid had died, which was believed among the girls to be a sign of bad fate. They were a superstitious group. At the Vidala School there were two religions: the official one taught by the Aunts, about God and the special sphere of women, and the unofficial one, which was passed from girl to girl by means of games and songs.
The younger girls had a number of counting rhymes, such as Knit one, purl two, Here’s a husband just for you; Knit two, purl one, He got killed, here’s another one. For the small girls, husbands were not real people. They were furniture and therefore replaceable, as in my childhood dollhouse.
The most popular singing game among the younger girls was called “Hanging.” It went like this:
Who’s that hanging on the Wall? Fee Fie Fiddle-Oh!
It’s a Handmaid, what’s she called? Fee Fie Fiddle-Oh!
She was (here we would put in the name of one of us), now she’s not. Fee Fie Fiddle-Oh!
She had a baby in the pot (here we would slap our little flat stomachs). Fee Fie Fiddle-Oh!
The girls would file under the uplifted hands of two other girls while everyone chanted: One for murder, Two for kissing, Three for a baby, Four gone missing, Five for alive and Six for dead, And Seven we caught you, Red Red Red!
And the seventh girl would be caught by the two counters, and paraded around in a circle before being given a slap on the head. Now she was “dead,” and was allowed to choose the next two executioners. I realize this sounds both sinister and frivolous, but children will make games out of whatever is available to them.
The Aunts probably thought this game contained a beneficial amount of warning and threat. Why was it “One for murder,” though? Why did murder have to come before kissing? Why not after, which would seem more natural? I have often thought about that since, but I have never found any answer.
We were allowed other games inside school hours. We played Snakes and Ladders—if you landed on a Prayer you went up a ladder on the Tree of Life, but if you landed on a Sin you went down a Satanic snake. We were given colouring books, and we coloured in the signs of the shops—ALL FLESH, LOAVES AND FISHES—as a way of learning them. We coloured the clothing of people too—blue for the Wives, stripes for the Econowives, red for the Handmaids. Becka once got in trouble with Aunt Vidala for colouring a Handmaid purple.
Among the older girls the superstitions were whispered rather than sung, and they were not games. They were taken seriously. One of them went like this: