could just be the light
It's not what she says, or how she says is. It's how she's not saying it. It's always the silences that rattle June's cage the most. They set her on edge, that particular edge Aunt Lydia has learned to mind like a hawk, but then that only fans a bent sort of drive within June, makes her bolder in a number of really dumb ways that can—would—screw her thoroughly if not for the slim detail sitting at the front of her gowns, stretching fabric and skin with each passing day. In the Waterford household, her belly is the one giant middle finger she can rely on.
Yes, Mrs. Waterford. As you say, Mrs. Waterford. Kindly go fuck yourself, Mrs. Waterford.
June's silences convey plenty, too.
Serena holds the ultimate weapon, though. Whatever thorns weave in June's eyes, they are not a choice for her. They are her only choice. Serena has the freedom not to say anything. She exploits that, June decides. Utterly and to her best benefit.
June isn't sure when she has started resenting it more than most things in here. Day one, probably. Day one sounds about right.
"Did you know, Mrs. Waterford," she says one day, with her index doodling nothingness on the ledge, with her eyes idling about the cloudy exterior without looking for anything in particular (it's not like freedom will come tapping for her on the window pane, after all), when she is more blasé than she is rational, more six months pregnant than truly defiant. "People who have trouble expressing themselves are said to be experiencing oppression in their daily lives."
She doesn't need to turn to hear Serena's neck whip up from her needlework, eyes fixing on June's nape like a pair of laser guns. Clink. Snap. Target captured.
"How is this relevant?" Her voice is quite fucking poised, considering, but the little cracks at the roots of each syllable make the corners of June's lips twinge up. Once, and then it's over, like a tremor; shortest orgasm ever.
June shrugs, and she is quite impressed with herself until she realizes the apathy is not entirely feigned. Guns just don't shock her anymore. Any kind. "Just a study I read. Back in the day."
The crochet hooks cinch like glass breaking, like teeth grinding. Serena might wield silence like harrows, but June is a learner, and she has come to see none of her is ever really that quiet. She makes noise in other ways, slips and snippets of the woman June is sure self-righteous Serena Joy struggles to conceal bleeding through in chance gestures, sharper intakes of breath, a twitching of muscles that won't legally pass for a grimace, but sure as fuck is no Hail Mary, either. Even her jaw-clenches have a trademark sound to them; one that has been resounding around the house so much lately, June can almost tell the hour by it.
"It's hardly an appropriate matter to discuss," Serena asserts in hard-edged, bitten-off word shards. In that moment it's not the voice of a pious freak-wife, June thinks, nor that of a right-wing crackpot, but the voice of a woman with a penchant for not acknowledging the elephant in the room.
Perhaps she isn't aware of it. Perhaps she's made herself unaware of it. Perhaps she needs the outlet too much to give up on it. June closes her eyes and sees vague nightly haze crawling the garden, quiet through the thin curtains and smelling of passive resistance, not so different from her own little acts of hubris. She goes back to her most recent one, the one which left her with blood crawling slowly down her legs, as thick as the smoke that had risen up past the rooftops that night.
Why should we be made to quit?
After all, Serena hasn't kicked that particular habit either.
For all their differences, when it comes to those little trips into the realm of sin, it appears neither of them is willing to give up her set of car keys. Always have one stuck in the ignition... There must have been a song like that, once. Songs about cars are a rarity these days. Or songs in general. You don't need a Ferrari to spread your legs and make babies.
June hum-snorts, a handy little thing she's taught herself as a means of survival within the Waterford household. "Of course. We still rely on it, though. A lot of the information we gathered. Back in the day."
She gets a hum-snort thrown right back at her, though Serena's has a bit more snort than hum to it. Then again, she can afford that.
"Back in the day men were conducting studies to distract themselves from the fact that their kind was facing a biological collapse. Information is only useful when it's a lesson learned. I like to think we've achieved that, here in Gillead." June can hear the woman pull herself out of her near-frankness with a sharp little inhale. She's sure Serena thinks no one spots those. But June listens for them; and so she hears them. "I think we've had enough discussions for now. You'd best get back to your room. The baby needs rest."
I need rest. From you, June itches to say, but doesn't. She takes a small comfort in the thought that unflappable Mrs. Waterford seems to be needing the rest just as much. They tire each other out equally.
June pushes herself off the chair. Takes more effort each day. Getting up. Climbing stairs. Staying whole. All of it.
Stairs creak under her boots, one, two, and then she stops, and turns ever so slightly, suddenly attacked by a case of dumb bravery.
"Studies were done by women as well. I'm guessing you remember."
For once Serena's silence is quite straightforward.
When Serena Joy treads into her room that night, she is the worst possible kind of quiet. She doesn't even address the baby, like she does usually on her nightly stopovers. She is just hands, groping flesh in the dark under the guise of motherhood.
June lies there and takes it, like with the Commander. Worse, really, because with the Commander it's all about her cunt; the baby is left out of it. With Serena, it's all about the baby, and maybe a little bit about June, if they both think hard and deep enough. (Neither of them wants to do that.)
Clipped fingernails drag slowly through June's forearms. June cringes and screws her eyes shut. On these nights she cannot escape being Serena's little blackboard, used by the angry teacher to blow off some steam. It's kind of the blackboard's job, right? Sit and take it. In a sickening flash she is reminded of the Ceremonies, lying trapped in the middle of the Commander and his frigid wife. Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place. June almost laughs aloud at the terrible, brilliant joke that is entirely on her.
Well, almost entirely.
They both took their secret liberties with her, come to think of it. Everyone enjoys their brief licks into the forbidden. Especially pious little shits that never turn out to be quite so pious after all. The Commander used to be so fond of bruising her thighs when he thought his wife was not looking. Little did he know, two feet north his wife was bruising June's wrists just as well.
(Her touch was so different then, so formal. June wonders if the Commander gets to see his wife out of her sick blue gowns, if they even fuck or kiss or touch anymore; kissing sounds the least likely to June for some reason).
She kisses June sometimes. Mostly her belly, but sometimes, when the Commander is out of town and the doors are locked and the curtains are drawn, her lips stray. No, June thinks. Serena Joy does not like to quit her little vices.
"Won't make you more its mother," June grunts now, quietly, suicidally, when Serena Joy's ear dangles close enough to tempt her to show her teeth. A certain degree of discretion is required, though June is ready to have the laugh of her life should the Commander wander in that very instant, looking for that same thing his wife has been getting.
A sharper pull has nails catching on pubic bone, and June hisses into a blue-clothed, high shoulder. Maybe not exactly the same thing.
Apart from this small act of punishment, Serena Joy does not acknowledge her much, or much at all. She's gotten pretty damn good at that. She keeps moving in silence, sleek and cold and unyielding around June like water on the verge of freezing—oh the irony of her namesake—like a woman desperate. What for, June is not sure. She's getting all she's wanted, after all.
Still, when she brings her legs to surround June, thick blues flowing around deep reds in a blend that cannot—does not—happen, when June feels those legs and her own begin to shake, when the blues and the reds are sliding against each other and all of Serena is scattered like missing scrabble tiles across June's throat and belly, when one slender hand flies to cover June's mouth and another is clamped over Serena's own because a kiss would be as out of place in this as anything, really, June has mercy on them both and does not moan Fred.
Then again, neither does Serena.
"Thank you," Serena mutters against her cheek when it's over, and it's not an apology and it's not a silence. June sits up on the bed, sweaty and half-strangled in tencel sheets and confusion.
"Mrs. Waterford," June calls out after Serena, expecting the woman not to turn at all. She is half-right. Serena stops, but that's it. June swallows. She realizes she doesn't really know what she's been meaning to say. What is there to say? It's not your goddamn baby? I loathe all of you? I come harder for you than for your husband?
"Don't get any ideas." Serena's voice is far too hoarse for the steeliness it's used to command over. "I was only thanking God for the baby."
Bitterness pools at the pit of June's stomach, even though she shouldn't be affected by those recitals anymore. She gives a polite fuck-you smile to Serena Joy's back, and rubs her hands over her inflated belly.
"Shall I sing a lullaby on your behalf?" Serena's shoulders twitch dangerously. June knows she's pushing her luck with this one. Fuck it. Every breath in this house is pushing her luck. "I read a study that this sort of thing helps calm them."
The longest of pauses comes to pass, to the point where June's acid smile warps into a worried one. When Serena turns, she looks like a sinner on her way to make a confession. A sin one may or may not feel entirely guilty about. "I read a study like that, too."
Before the door snaps shut, June sees something ghost over Serena Joy's face that she has not seen before.
Or, it could just be the light.
Strangers by Halsey ft. Lauren Jauregui