The Wife is dead.
As many other women of her generation, she had been unwell ever since infancy, and even if she conceived a child, it was expected to be a Shredder. Her health deteriorated gradually and right at the peak of the social uprisings and the creation of The Republic of Gilead, her condition worsened melodramatically.
She was thirty-five, maybe. I couldn't tell. The disintegration of her body caused her to appear ages older than she was, or should have been. Her skin was pallid and cracked. She was a doll sitting on a shelf collecting dust as she waited to die. Her eyes were permanently hooded and drooped, so you could barely see the drowsy hopelessness in her gray eyes. Limp tresses of golden hair that had lost their luster were posed in refined and elegant curls to simulate loveliness. Her thin, straight lips, which rarely moved outside of prayer and to eat, were twisted in a frown even in death.
The Marthas whispered callously that she died from the dishonor of my-our pregnancy. As the child she longed for developed and matured inside my viable womb, she wilted and diminished in her life. She used all the energy that remained in her failing body to glower at me hatefully whenever she caught sight of me. I could do what she would never be able to. I was the first handmaid they had received who had honored God with a conception.
Blessed be the fruit.
When the Wife died, it was unceremonious and unobtrusive, just as the act of her death. She expired in her bed without saying a word; her glassy mournful eyes fixed on the ceiling or maybe the heaven she had devoted her life to earn entry to. The motionlessness of her body and the unblinking frozen stare of her eyes when spoken to were the only things that alerted the Marthas to her passing.
Her death would have been an event of no importance to me if I was not pregnant with the child intended for her and her newly widowed husband. If I weren't pregnant, I would have reverted to the Rachel and Leah Center while the widowed Commander waited for the arrangement of a new wife, and then a new handmaid.
I was not so lucky.
I am a handmaiden pregnant with a child who would have no mother. Children needed two parents. This was known. The Commander owned the child through blood and authority, and it could not be adopted by another family-nor could I.
An Aunt came to the household one dismal morning after the Wife had been buried; the same one who had assigned me to the couple. Her face is blank and stony with icy blue eyes that scowl at me disapprovingly. She sat me down in the sitting room. I had never sat in the sitting room. The Wife had ownership of the sitting room, and I am not meant for sitting. I am meant for bearing her children and staying out of sight, out of mind.
"I am certain that you are wondering what is to happen to the child once it is born." She droned flatly. It was not a question. There is a flicker of a southern accent circling her vowels. I am only fearful about what she had told me to be worried about because I am the vessel for the child and I wasn't to concern myself with anything but my duties. I am not allowed to ask about myself.
"It has been decided by decree of the Commanders of Faith, through the guidance of God after much prayer, that in the Republic of Gilead, you shall enter a marriage with the widowed father of the child, and you shall become a Wife. Until that time, you are still a handmaid, and should act as such. Is that understood?" She spoke with such conviction and aggression that I wondered if I was being ordered or threatened. Either way, I had no choice in the matter. She was the voice of God, and I was God's humble servant.
"Yes ma'am." I answered compliantly. I wasn't going to think about what she had said until she was gone. Her orders were lost to deaf ears. Handmaidens are not allowed a mind or thought or emotion, and the idea of marriage under the circumstances and to whom would cause great internal tumult in anyone. The hormones from my condition only worsened those pesky emotions.
"You will be married next Sunday during the Prayvaganza at noon, along with fourteen other Daughters. You will wear your red uniform to the ceremony, and once you are unified with your husband, you will be given a blue cloak to signify your union and your new role as Wife." I nodded. I do not speak unless spoken to. Nodding was more acceptable than verbal affirmation. "Let us pray."
Nearly dawn and I haven't gotten a second of sleep. I had been lost in my thoughts the entire day and into the night. My stomach churned and battled with the meals I had been given the previous day. It is imperative now more than ever to finish my meals. Leaving behind a few crumbs or remains on my trays were tolerated when I was eating for one, but now that I am supporting myself and a child, my meals are larger and trays have to be returned completely clean of food. No matter how violently my stomach objected to the food, I had to eat it, or else my situation would worsen.
I tossed and turned in my bed for hours before giving up on sleep and settling for pacing back and forth across the room. I had been pacing in a trance-like state for two hours now without ceasing, and was sure I had worn out the wooden panels beneath my bare feet.
Marriage. Married. Wife. Husband. Husband and Wife.
I hadn't given the concepts much thought before. Things like that aren't spoken about these days and in my situation nothing was discussed about anything at all. Weddings are a dim affair when they occur, and the ceremony had no excitement or sentiment to it. The nuptials happen during the Prayvaganzas and operated as a business deal. The Daughters were treasured by their parents for their purity and chaste nature, but soon became property to be bargained for when an eligible bachelor decided he admired something about her and wanted to possess it and claim it as his own.
I'm uncertain how much time has passed since my enlistment as a handmaid (I had only been on assignment for five months, but the time spent in the Rachel and Leah center blurred together with the events surrounding the ending of the Pre-Gilead times too easily) but when I became a handmaid, I had just turned twenty years old. I was sure that no more than a year had passed since my last glimpse outside before my time at the Center. We were confined indoors around the clock there, without access to a clock or calendar and lacking from a sense of time.
I decide that I might be twenty-one. The departure of autumn marked my entrance into the life of a handmaiden at the Center. When I left the Center to be deployed to my current station, it was the end of winter and my first experience being outside in months. My birthday was in the bleak midwinter, so it had passed under my nose during that time.
I knew of a few girls who had gotten engaged at twenty and twenty one, and only a handful who got married, typically because of pregnancy or pressure from their family. I hadn't thought of marriage or motherhood at all when I was still independent, because I was just that: independent. I had always been single and had begun some sort of relationship that was left unrequited at the start of the uprising and the terrorist attacks.
I lost my virginity to the man of the house but still had not had my first real kiss.
I am expected to marry a man I have never spoken to, only coupled with, who is almost thirty years older than me. I knew nothing about being a wife or a mother, and seeing as I would now have to be a Wife, I would have to learn to be a mother to the child, which will soon become my child once I marry the father.
Dampening the click of the door shutting behind me, I peek my head out and check the hallway for any signs of life-anyone to hear me out of bed so late and without permission. All of the lights are out, and I hear a distant snoring. I creep across the hall on the tips of my toes to the Wife's old room and cautiously poke the door with my finger. It is unlocked and opens just so under the push of my finger.
The smell of disinfectant and dust overpowers the smell of the night breeze that whistles through a window that hadn't been properly closed. The room was bare and plain, stripped and cleaned away of signs that anyone had lived in it before. A queen-sized canopy bed covered in fresh white sheets and new feather pillows centers the room. A simple nightstand with a lamp and bible accompanies it. A large wooden dresser with empty drawers stands tall against the adjacent wall under two paintings: one of heaven's pearly gates, and the other of the Garden of Eden. A tall wardrobe I don't dare touch sits between a small table with two chairs and a grand, white vanity next to the door. Between two long windows to the left of the bed is a grand white marble fireplace.
It would be my room in only a few days. I am to assume the role she had played and somehow sleep in her room, use her vanity, and read her bible.
Becoming a Wife was not my liberation and gave me no freedom. It was another role I had been cast into playing, this time without a script or direction.
I do not sleep during the last night of my time as a handmaiden.
One of the Marthas, Peggy, knocks on my door mid-morning to deliver my breakfast and vitamins. I eat the food slowly to not upset my stomach which did not solve the problem. Anxiety twists my stomach and morning sickness burns my throat. My breakfast is emptied into a toilet.
I am permitted by the Commander through Peggy to take a shower for the second time this week. Showers are only permitted in five minute intervals once a week to encourage cleanliness while discouraging prolonged amounts of time of nakedness and vanity. In this house, baths are not permitted for handmaidens. Drowning would not be an option.
My hair is dried and tucked beneath my white wings when it is time to head to the Prayvaganza. I dress myself very slowly and I am late to meet my partner who is waiting for me at the gates of my Commander's house. I notice that the black limousine he uses is still in its usual parking space parallel to the sidewalk. The Commander has not left yet. Maybe he won't come I hope.
"Blessed be the fruit." My companion murmurs in greeting to begin our walk.
"May the Lord open." I drone.
Her identity here is Ofchris. She is stationed three houses down from my station and is newer here than I am. She has been my companion for two months but has not conceived for her family yet. Her eyes are a shy hazel and always gaze miles away no matter where she stands. She searches for a child, I suppose. She bore a child at the house she was assigned to before this one; her first child as a handmaiden. Though we were forbid from saying it, she misses the child dearly.
"How is the health of your household?" She asks politely. I admire the way she speaks to me with genuine interest for my answer. Her voice is soft and kind, friendly.
"The Wife of my Commander has passed." I announce dryly. I am sure she already knows, but asks the question because she cannot ask me aloud how the woman died or if it is infectious. "The Lord has blessed the household and the Fruit of it with health to allow strength during mourning."
As we turn the corner to walk along the city street, she says, "Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord from now on." She is lucky to have died now before Gilead progresses she says.
I respond to her biblical citation with the appropriate response, "Praise be."
After a long silence, she spoke again. "The sun is high today." She observed. High shadows of the old office buildings and sky-scrapers casted down upon us as we passed the high-rises and townhomes.
"Praise Him for it."
We pass the old art museum with the lion statues. I don't remember the name of it. All of the art that was deemed sinful, immoral, or not honoring God was taken from the museum and destroyed. Priceless works of art, ancient artifacts, and the future works of young artists, all burned in fire and brimstone.
She walks closer to my side as we near more people walking towards the grand park that was built to honor the new millennia. "Unburden your woe upon me so I shall pray for you." Ofchris mutters. What troubles you?
"The passing of my lady has troubled my Commander's household." I say, hushed as we neared the other handmaidens. "God has blessed the Fruit by honoring me to join my Commander in holy matrimony as his Wife this day." No one was allowed to talk about themselves pleasantly. If they were pregnant, as I am, the Fruit was the center of praise and conversation. All good fortunes and blessings were for the Fruit and because of the Fruit.
I heard a sharp gasp followed by solemn silence. Such fusses were not allowed by us handmaidens, and if Ofchris silenced herself immediately, people might not notice her minimal outburst. "God has blessed you immensely with the joining of a father with the mother of his child. 'He who finds a wife finds what good and receives favor from the Lord.'"
"Amen."
It is harder now more than ever before to act appropriately. The religious greetings and responses lost their meanings to all of us, devout or devoid of faith alike, when becoming a handmaiden due to the normalization and misplacement of meaning as it became a centerpiece of constant vernacular. Now it felt as it did before when I said it in prayer, and I despised it. God damn it I craved to say.
"Take honor in this blessing." Ofchris sounds distressed. "The prayers of your sisters in Christ may never be answered by this miracle." She sounds like a mother, and I imagined her giving me away as my mother during the ceremony.
"I rejoice and thank God."
I eye the pairs of fellow handmaidens shuffling around us on light feet. These women are trapped forever. If they were fortunate, they would bear a child within their two-year assignment per family until they are no longer youthful enough to carry or conceive, and then become Aunts or Marthas. If they displeased their family, did not conceive, or miscarried during their two-year period, they would be tossed around or sent to the colonies if found unfit for the role of handmaiden.
"The Lord bless you and keep you; the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; the Lord turn his face toward you and give you peace." My partner's honeyed voice prays. She prayed, truly prayed, for me then, and I told her how much I love her a million times in my mind.
I realize that I might never see her again, at least not in this capacity. If I ever did see her, I was forbidden to acknowledge her, and even sending her a smile would be cause for trouble from my Commander. The Wives, if I was allowed to speak to them officially, would never receive me. All of them were cruel and arrogant in their ways, and to them, I would never be their equal. No matter how many children I bore, no matter who I married, how beautiful or kind I was, I would never be a Wife. I would be a wife. Not to mention I was the second wife of a Commander.
The Aunt who had spoken to me days ago in the Commander's house was waiting outside of the pavilion where the Women's Prayvaganza is being held today. Dozens of Guardians, and Eyes no doubt, are monitoring the entire area from the perimeter. I had never been to a concert or event here, but I had passed the pavilion many times in the Old Days. It is a large, grassy filed shaped like an oval, with a hundred rows of seats at the helm to sit comfortably before the stage.
"Come with me, Ofdaniel." She barks sternly. I give Ofchris one last loving glance before I am swept away and following the Aunt. I am led away from the train of handmaidens being corralled into the venue to be roped off, away from the legitimate people. "Stand here with me and do not move until I lead you."
"Yes ma'am." I reply.
We are lined up with the other mothers and Daughters behind the very last row of seats, who are waiting anxiously to be given away to their new husbands, arranged accordingly for them by their parents. Love is not real in our world anymore. Marriage is strictly for business, formality, and procreation.
The mothers are dressed in their absolute finest shades of blue, some embroidered subtly with accented hues of navy and cerulean. Clothing can be styled, but only worn on special occasions like these, even for Wives. Though separated, we are all the same, and there would be no characteristics about us besides our natural appearance and traits that defined us or made us unique.
The Daughters, ranging from fourteen to, I suppose, my age, are all pale and thin, delicate as birds and fragile and polished as china. They wear pure white dresses with adornments of lace and ruffles at their sleeves and collars. They decorate themselves with their mother's old jewelry and are allowed to wear thin amounts of makeup to accentuate their cherub cheeks and doe-shaped eyes. All of their heads are blonde, but some were golden and others were strawberry. Their hair is braided elaborately and ornamented with ribbons and flowers. They are show-animals, purebred, raised and trained to be obedient, and groomed to perfection so that they shine and can be applauded as they trot about and make their parents proud.
The men, Angels save for my Commander, are dressed in their finest black uniforms and shining in the sun with their newly decorated vests on the other end of the pavilion. They are separate from us females, as it should be.
A Commander steps up to the podium and begins to speak about how glorious of a day today is. He looks familiar to me. Who was he? Oh yes, he is the son of the last mayor in the city. Rumors had flown around that he arranged for his father's assassination himself. He had been working with the original Sons of Jacob and decided that he would cleanse the city that his father dirtied.
After mumbling prayers, he begins the ceremony and I feel the Aunt handcuff me at the wrist with her bony hand and drag me down the aisle. No escape. I couldn't escape now. I was trapped. I was a criminal. The only way to be saved, as the Commander declared, was to marry and bear God's children. Through my peripherals I see the hateful stares from the women I pass. The Econwives are the cruelest. I am considered less than them in rank, but I was instantly being promoted to Wife while they were still stuck in stripes.
The men come next. They aren't quite formal; they're insultingly informal from where I stand. They march down the aisle to complete their mission: marriage. They walk arrogantly with noses turned up in disgust; they think themselves too dignified to respect some young girl in white for doing nothing as they fight for God.
All the brides face the Commander as he preaches to us about how we shall act as Wives and how we are doomed for being a sex that we did not choose. I hear the stomping of the men as they line up and file in behind their betrothed, and I smell the heavy cologne of my Commander behind me. The time has come for the exchanging of the rings and vows, and the lifting of veils. I panic. I don't have a veil. I am a fool already. We are allowed to face our soon-to-be husbands now, and I look at my Commander as if for the first time.
I had only seen the Commander once, in person. The first Ceremony we had was when I conceived, and therefore no more Ceremonies were to be had. During the Ceremony, I did not look at the Commander too much; that was emotional and forbidden. I realized that I recognized him from first glance: He was a popular actor who had been saved from being killed or sent away to the Colonies by repenting for all of his sins and devoting his life to the new Republic of Gilead.
His face was not as handsome as it had been during his prime, but it was still considerably more attractive than the Angels who stood beside us. Warm chocolate colored eyes are sunken beneath a heavy brow line, and hair as smooth and rich as black coffee is styled neatly on his head and in a thin mustache and goatee ensemble around his mouth. He has a thick, square face and jaw with a large and flat forehead. He looks French, I think, and probably has blood from every part of Europe-a melting pot of ancestors that had luckily not given his skin too swarthy of a look to be perceived as a person of color. If he had been any darker or had researched his ancestry when people demanded him to prove his right to act in a controversial role he took, he might have been sent to the Colonies.
I knew about the Sons of Ham, as they were called, and the other Sons of Jacob who were sent to Israel, but I was unaware about the circumstances for anyone who wasn't Caucasian enough for Gilead's standards. What was that word that infamous dictator used? Oh, right-Aryan Perfection.
He does not look at me during the ceremony. I notice this and decide to stop looking at him. Instead of lifting my non-existent veil to reveal the innocent and tear-stricken face the other brides have, he unceremoniously removes my headdress and I catch his eyes widening as my hair tumbles down. Handmaidens never showed hair-not a wisp or a line of it.
My raging hormones only agitate the panic attack that is threatening to take effect and destroy me. The words the Commander is saying are gurgled and misplaced as I try to focus on my breathing and keeping calm. I hear my Commander mumble something roughly. He takes my trembling gloved hand and slips a small golden wedding band on my ring finger. He does not let go of my hand, and slips the ring I presume to be his into my other hand. I mutter something mechanically as I have been programmed to say it by the Commander and slip my husband's wedding band on his thick ring finger, squeezing it over his fat joints. I am still gazing absently at the ground when he pinches my chin and drags it to his, crushing his dry lips against mine. The kiss is quick and rough, not at all how my first kiss or my first kiss as a married woman should have been.
"Let us pray."
The Commander-my husband-joins his hands with mine once more and holds them tightly as we squeeze our eyes shut and pray uselessly for God to bless our union and make it fruitful. A thick blue cloak is wrapped around me to signify my new life.
I am a Wife.