I remember, you know, the time before. Like we all do I suppose. It's all we have, memory.

'Memory, Agent Starling, is what I have instead of a view.'

An old friend once said that to me. And now, new friend, memory, is what we have instead of life. I don't know who you are, I don't know your name, I don't know if indeed you really are, but I know I can make you be. I am telling you what I think, what I remember, what I feel and in the telling I will you into being. So you are willed. You have been drafted, and the name You I suppose is as good a name as any. But I do know this, and I know this as a fact over which I have no influence. I know you are like me. Or were once. And you remember, I know you do. It's all we have.

We learnt to whisper those first few nights. As I'm sure you did too. To talk just above hearing, almost without sound. The Red Center was In an old High school. We slept in the Gymnasium, our army issue cots spaced widely to avoid socialising but we managed. In the semidarkness (for the lights were turned down but never off) we could stretch out our arms when the Aunts wern't looking and touch each others hands across space. We learnt to lip-read, heads turned, flat against the pillow, feigning sleep. It was in this way we learnt each others names, from bed-to-bed, but only in a small radius. Our names, something we held dear then. Some still do even now, I imagine. They were our last link to the time before, they were all we had left then, the only thing we had of ourselves that was still ours. Our names. Maddy, Kate, Clarice, Ardelia, Janine.

A table, a lamp, a chair, a bed. And on the cieling a relief ornament circling a black spot, covered over. A window with two white curtains, I watch them flutter in the wind if it's windy, when I'm tired of remembering and the window is open partly. It only opens partly. A bed, matress medium-hard. A single with a flocked white spread. What happens in that bed is either sleep, or no sleep. Thinking is dangerous. From it a view of a flower print, blue Irises. Framed, with no glass. I wonder if we all have the same print? The same bed, the same curtains? Are they army issue?

Think of it as being in the army, said Aunt Lydia.

I know why the theres no glass in the frame, why the window only opens partly and the glass in it is shatter proof. It's not escape that they're afraid of. The covered whole in the cieling once held a chandelear, no doubt. But it's gone now. How did they figure to remove it? Experience? It's taken a while, but they're ironing out the kinks.

Theres time to spare. Such large amounts of unfilled time. If only I could draw, knit, embroider, something to do with my hands. But no. So I sit here, in the window seat. Not my window seat. This is not my room. I just sleep here, sleep and remember. I will never call it my room. I remember the time before. I had a job once, like you perhaps. I had friends. Like you. Not many, but some. I was an agent of the F.B.I. Not a liked one but one non-the-less. And that was all I cared about. To be one was all I wanted. I wanted, needed it to define me. I never cared to be liked. Though it would have helped my career some. I hunted killers, shot drug dealers, arrested peodophiles. I killed. Yes, I'll admit that. But I killed mercifully. It was quick, it was complete and it was permanant. Not at all like the way they've killed us. Round us up, the healthy ones, take our freedom and destroy our identities, warp our minds, make us nothing then mold us into whores. We were people once. We had lives. We lived. Now we only exist. We exist to be filled. The people I killed had the benefit of not existing afterwards.

I was caught trying to cross the border. Then to cross the ocean to somewhere else, I assume. They never tell you the next part in your travels,not until right before, you know, in case of capture. I was being smuggled out by 'The underground' ran by those who still believed, for whatever reasons, that woman still had rights. I was being smuggled out to be with him. The friend I mentioned earlier. When I was caught I could have been sent to the colonies, shoveling toxic waste with the other unwomen. They say you've got 1 year max there before your bloody nose falls off. But they don't send you to the colonies if your ovaries are still jumping.

I remember the first thing Aunt Lydia said to us.

'Hello, Girls. Relax. I'm Aunt Lydia. Are you all well? Come on I want you to say "we're very well Aunt Lydia". So, are you well?' (Starting our programing even then)

'We're very well Aunt Lydia.'

'Thats Great. Because you are well. You're healthy, you're free from infection and you're the only ones whos tests are positive. You're the lucky ones.'

'We're the lucky ones.' We repeated, this time without promt. We needed something to hold on to. We were free falling.

'Amen. You're going to be Handmaid's. You are going to serve god, and you're country.'

It didn't quite click what she meant. Exactly how we were going to be serving our country. By that time It was illegal for woman to work. It had all happened so quickly. When the president was shot and someone took a machine-gun to the members of congress. The army declared a state of emergency. They blamed it on Islamic fanatics at the time. I was stunned, everyone was. The entire government gone, just like that. That was when they suspended the constitution. They said it would be temporary. There wasn't even any rioting. People stayed home, watching tv. Looking for guidance.

'Look out', said Delia, one night at dinner. 'Here it comes.'

'Here what comes?' I ask.

'You wait', she said. 'They've been building up to this. It's you and me against the wall.'

Things stayed that way, in a state of suspended animation, for weeks. Although some things did change. Newspapers were scensored, the road blocks began to appear, and Identipasses. Until the day came when we were fired. The female agents. Oh, wait, I'm sorry. Not fired. 'Let go'. Like theres a damn difference. Then the next day our accounts were closed. It was hence forth illegal for woman to own property. Money included. Our savings and/or land were handed over to the husband or male next of kin. We were cut off. Delias money went to her father but I had to ask a friend to handle my compucount. Paper money having been phased out for plastic cards years ago.

They did everything they could to kill us. Then mold us anew. They must have used drugs, there is lost time there and we were tired all the time, docile, unless manipulated otherwise by the Aunts. We were maliable, easier to work with. Repetition was part of it. They recorded the apropriate parts of the bible onto tape, leaving out certain parts to suite there purposes I'm sure, and played it over and over again at meal times. The usual stories. God to Adam, God to Noah. Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth. But the Rachel and Leah story we had to memorise and said each morning before breakfast. Give me children, or else I die. Am I in God's stead, who hath withheld from thee the fruit of the womb? Behold my maid Bilhah. She shall bear upon my knees, that I may also have children by her. So on and so forth. I have it down word perfect to this day.

'The air got too full, once, of chemicals, rays, radiation. The water swarmed with toxic molecules. All that takes years to clean up', said Aunt Lydia. Standing at the front of the room, in her khaki dress, a pointer in her hand. Pulled down in front of the black board, where once there would have been a map, is a graph, showing the birth rate per thousand, for years and years: a crashing slope, down and down. 'And in the meanwhile they crept into people. The result, Sterility. The chances now are 1 in 4. And some women stopped! Believing there would be no future they refused! REFUSED to bare children! They wouldn't even try!' Her nostrils flaring in anger: such wickedness. 'They were lazy women!' She screamed, 'They were sluts!'

Testifying. It's Janine, talking about how she was gang-raped at fourteen and had an abortion. She had told the same story the week before. It might not even be true. But at Testifying it's better to make something up, that is, to have something awfull to tell that happened to you in the 'terrible', 'sinfull' time before, than to have nothing to reveal.

'But whose fault was it?' Aunt Helena said, holding up one plump finger.

'Her fault, her fault, her fault', we chanted in unison.

'Who led them on?' She coaxed, pleased with us.

'She did, she did, she did!'

'Why would god allow such a terrible thing to happen?'

'Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson. Teach her a lesson.'

That week Janine had burst into tears. Aunt Helena knelt her at the front of the classroom, hands behind her back, so we could all see her. Red faced, nose dripping. She looked disgusting: weak, squirmy, with splotches of pink. For a moment, even though we knew what was being done to her, we despised her.

'Crybaby. Crybaby. Crybaby.'

We meant it, too. I meant it. I havn't thought quite so well of myself since.

That was the week before. This particular week Janine didn't wait for us to jeer at her. 'It was my fault', she said. 'It was my own fault. I led them on. I deserved the pain.'

'Very good, Janine.' Said Aunt Lydia. 'You are an example.'

They showed us movies. Once a week, after lunch. Sometimes the movies would be old porno films, from the seventies or eighties. Women kneeling, sucking penises or guns, women tied up or chained or with dog collars around there necks, women hanging from trees, or upside down with there legs held apart, women being raped, beaten up. Once they showed us a, what looked to be legit, snuff film. We had to watch a woman being slowly cut into pieces, her fingers and breasts snipped off with garden shears, her stomach slit open and her intestines pulled out.

'Consider the alternatives', said Aunt Lydia.'You see what it used to be like? That was what they thought of women, then.' Her voice thick and wavering with indignation. To distract myself I often thought that it was entirly possible, maybe not plausible, but possible that either Delia or myself may have once aprehended one of the people behind the making of that video. I held on to this thought. I fantasised scenarios. Thinking, chasing, capture. It helped me remember. I was alive once. I had a life. I am not just a vessel to be filled.

Sometimes, though, the movie would be what Aunt Lydia would call an Unwoman documentary. First came the title and some names, blacked out on the film with crayon, so we couldn't read them. It is illegal for Handmaids to read and write, so we wern't allowed even if we wern't Handmaids yet. Then it begins, and we see a parade of women from 'before'. Unwoman. Dressed in the manner Unwomen dressed back then. They are marching, holding signs and banners. The camera pans in and focuses on a banner and we see the writing: FREEDOM TO CHOOSE. EVERY BABY A WANTED BABY. This hasn't been blacked out even though we shouldn't be reading. Theres a stirring in the room, Is this an oversite? Or are we intended to see this? Behind this sign there are others. RECAPTURE OUR BODIES. DO YOU BLIEVE A WOMAN'S PLACE IS ON THE KITCHEN TABLE? Under the last sign there's a line drawing of a woman's body, lying on a table, blood dripping out of it. 'There is more than one kind of freedom', Aunt Lydia said. 'Freedom to and Freedom from. In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given Freedom from. Don't underrate it.'

Now here I sit. At this window. In this house. My third placement. My name is Offred, here. Thats the last thing they do. Take your name. That last thing you had. That you safeguarded so closely, saying it every morning when you wake, everynight before sleep. At the ceremeony you are named simply a Handmaid. Identafiable by our atire. Shoes, flat-heeled, gloves, ankle-length skirt, full, gathered to a flat yoke that extends over the breasts, the sleaves are full. Everything we wear is red: the colour of blood, which defines us. Everything exept the white wings around our faces. The white wings too are prescribed issue, they are to keep us from seeing, but also from being seen. When assigned to a household you are Ofwhoever. I am no longer Special agent Clarice Starling. Sometimes it's hard to believe that I ever was. I am Offred. Of fred. Meaning I belong to him. We are posessed items. Something owned.

I am used to this. I've grown used to alot of things. To being silent. To not being able to read or write. To the taboo of even the slightest nudity. My nakedness is strange to me already. Did I ever wear bathing suits at the beach? I did, without thought, amongst men. All this has become familiar to me now. I sit at this window, sleep in that bed, go grocery shopping with Ofglen from down the road, my assigned shopping partner. Both equipped with our food tokens, bearing a picture for there food equivelant. I attend Birth Days, and the Women's Prayvaganzas, compulsary for all Handmaids except those that are extremely pregnant. And we perform the ceremony as usual. I lie on my back, fully clothed except for the healthy white underdrawers. Above me, towards the head of the bed, Serena Joy,the Commanders wife is arranged, outspread. Her legs apart, while I lie between them, my head on her stomach, her pubic bone under the base of my skull, her thighs on either side of me. She too is fully clothed. My arms are raised: she holds my hands, each of mine in each of hers. This is supposed to signify that we are one flesh, one being. What it really means is that she is in control, of the process and thus of the product. If any. My skirt is hitched up to my waist, though no higher, while below it the Commander is fucking. What he is fucking is the lower part of my body. I do not say making love, bacause this is not what he's doing. Copulating too would be inaccurate, because it would imply 2 people and only 1 is involved. Nor does rape cover it: nothing is going on here that I havn't signed up for. There wasn't alot of choice (the colonies or a Handmaid) but there was some, and this is what I chose. What goes on during the ceremony is not exciting. It has nothing to do with passion or love or romance. It has nothing to do with sexual desire. We are for breeding purposes. No room is to be permitted for the flowering of secret lusts. We are two-legged wombs, that's all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices. Kissing is forbidden between Handmaid and her Commander. This makes it bearable.

This is what I'm used to. I do all this as if years and years of Handmaids have done this before me. I do this as if it is the right thing for me to do. As if this is my rightfull place. Everything feels ordinary.

'Ordinary', said Aunt Lydia, 'is what you are used to. This may not seem ordinary to you now, but after a time it will. It will become ordinary.'