CHARLIE'S TALE
Nearly every one in our whole family had some body-part missing, mostly arms and fingers. Me, my left-pinky was taken when I was ten. Mother, she had four removed, three on the left, one on the right.
Dad, bless his soul, had an arm removed. Even with that, dad had risen to the highest District ranking of the, then, Commanders who ran Gilead. A man had to be of the highest virtue and ethics to rise that far.
Even my mom - not 'Mother', 'Mother' with a capital 'M' was Naomi Putnam - mom had an eye taken. Yet spending her waning years in Hawai'i in her trademark bikini, even mom had lost something to that screwed-up society. (I will say this, even in her late 70s, mom still looked good in a bikini, sporting that 'Shaka'-design - hang-ten - eye-patch, for which she was known all over Kaua'i's beaches. Still.)
From this vantage point, I get tired fielding questions from Gilead history-buffs, conspiracy theorists with too much time on their hands. People who implore you to, 'do your own research' when they tell me - me! - that I don't know what I'm talking about. They don't know. They weren't there. I was. So was Mother. So was mom.
The legitimate historians, they were bad enough. They had agendas, too. Most tried to vilify The Putnams, particularly my Father. It seeped down to the schools. My daughters had come home more than once in tears, because some teacher had figured out who their grandparents were.
When my eldest herself had turned ten, I felt I owed both the girls an explanation. Of why their mother, me, had a missing pinky. (My ex-husband used to tell them that I'd been injured mowing the lawn, which was why he claimed he had mowed it as the girls were growing. The stories we tell…..)
THE PUTNAM SECRET PLACE
I knew, even then, that I shouldn't have taken it. The book, from Father and Mother's secret place. I'd had nightmares up until then that they would find out that I knew, that I had always known. It seemed so dangerous and so confusing - everyone knew that girls were not to read. If they did the 'metalic monsters' (as the other girls called them) would take you away and carve you up like dinner.
I didn't want that. I'd spend my earliest years trying to be the best young girl I could, for Gilead. For my Father. I used to play games alone at night in my room. I had an imaginary friend, called 'Charlie'. She kept me company.
Late one night - I mean late! - Charlie and I had been talking. She always helped me stash my lone magazine that I'd read over and over again, under the covers - stash it quickly if a martha looked in on me, or the rare occasions when I saw Mother. I'd tell myself that it took two to move so quickly, to stash the magazine and get back in bed. Even if Charlie had been purely imaginary, she was the one who taught me the letters, letters which eventually became words. I eventually memorized that magazine.
Ok, I got way-laid. To return to the narrative, late one night Charlie and I had been talking - about what we would do once we were Wives. Both of us heard the noises from the top floor of the house, it sounded like Mother was crying out.
I'd never gone up those stairs. There was so much in Gilead and in our house that was verboten. Father's office was one such place. Even Mother had rarely gone there.
So there we were, me and Charlie, climbing those dark, forbidden stairs. I was ten, and a little more wise - I knew that if caught, it would be better if I'd been on my own. No sense getting Charlie in trouble, too. I implored her to go back.
Mother's cries, they grew stronger. The door to the upstairs room was open enough for me to peer through the crack - and to see Father striking Mother. Me, I had heard of it, I knew that Fathers sometimes had to 'sacrificially correct their family', but it had not occurred to me that Father could do that to Mother - as if Mother had been a common martha.
Maybe it was because I saw the blood, blood on Mother's bare bum. Because of the unseemliness of seeing Mother naked, I looked away. Then I saw them.
Books. Dozens of them. There were two easy-chairs, obviously one for Father the other for Mother. Both chairs had open books on their armrests. Both of them! I was ten, and I was not dumb.
Me and Charlie raced back down to my room, making absolutely no noise which was fantastic considering the two of us.
Two nights later, Father was away seeing to Gilead business. Mother had muttered that Father had lots of business at an office building, called Jezebels.
But me and Charlie, we made sure all was quiet, only then did we go up to their secret room. Not only were books open, there were pens and pads of paper. I knew printed letters, and lots of words by then - but what was on the page was unintelligible. Later, much later, Mother had called it cursive writing. Even today, I cannot do cursive. It all seemed so mysterious at the time.
Ok, back to what I had promised my own ten-year old. I let her questions guide the narrative, so as not to overwhelm her with detail.
"Mom, why was your friend called 'Charlie', when your name is 'Charlie'?" Like an uncluttered child, she zeroed right in on what I'd not expected.
"At the time, dear," I explained, "my Father and Mother had called me 'Angela'. When the Gilead world went away, and the New United States came about, me, I decided to take Charlie's name."
My daughter then demonstrated wisdom and insight that I never had when I was ten. "Mom, were you adopted?" I was taken by surprise, not having anticipated that I was going to have to cover Gilead's treatment of mothers and children so soon! I answered by asking my own question: why she thought that?
She said, "Because you were probably 'Charlie' right from the beginning." Wow. She then asked a question which needed no answer.
"Mom," she asked delicately, "did you lose your finger because you'd been caught reading? Because you'd told your parents you wanted to be called 'Charlie'?"
I just sat there looking at my amazing daughter. She did not need me answering questions. She knew.
METALLIC MONSTERS
Eventually I told her, "No, they didn't just chop it off. Some of the econo-kids, that sort of thing happened to them. No econo-hospital would do that sort of thing. We were Commanders' kids, me I was the daughter of a High Commander. There were no metallic monsters who threw us into vans. Father and Mother, they drove me to the hospital. After, I was given pills to control the pain."
I paused, "The marthas, they told me how lucky I'd been. One even joked that I now could only count to nine. When I told that to Mother, instead of laughing she swatted the martha in question."
My daughter paused, then said with her young, delicate voice, "is that when Grandmother lost her fingers? Did the metallic monsters come for her?"
Because of the lies I had been told, I vowed to answer all. Maybe not directly, but my girl beside me was wiser than her years.
I said, "Well, not exactly. I'd never seen Father much, Mother said that that was because he was so busy with New Gilead. In the days following my trip to the hospital, I couldn't stop crying. Mother kept saying, 'I'll make it up to you, I promise'."
"Then one night after everyone was asleep, and Father had not returned home - Mother showed up at my door. I was lucky, Charlie managed to hide. I'd been crying, but I stopped in time. There she was, your Grandmother."
"She went straight over to my own secret hiding place! Walked straight there! How did she know? Maybe Charlie had told her."
My daughter protested, "But Charlie didn't exist!"
I faked displeasure with her, saying, "Hey! This is my story!" She smiled, I continued, "She took out the book I'd been reading, I'd stolen, came to the bed, told me to 'scooch over', and I cuddled in. She started reading, from the exact spot I had left off - it was Treasure Island, by Robert Louis Stevenson. That's the book I had stolen. That's why I read it to you and your sister."
"Then my bedroom door opened again. It was our martha, looking in on me because she'd heard some noise. She thought I was not asleep, which I wasn't. Seeing the scene in front of her, she screamed. She ran downstairs, then outside and confronted a Guardian."
"Soon, there were flashing lights out in our driveway. Mother told me to stay in my room, she went downstairs to her sitting room, sat waiting with Treasure Island on her lap. From my window, I could see Metallic Monsters loading her into a van."
My daughter looked up at me, "were you scared?"
I said, "Me, I wanted to scream out - I wanted to let them know that it had been all my fault! I'd been the one snooping around the house. I was the one who had stolen the book, not Mother! The one thing that was for sure was that I wasn't going to blame Charlie - she was not going to lose fingers on my account."
My daughter said, "they'd have only been imaginary fingers anyway."
I continued, "Mother came home late the next day. She'd been to the hospital, just like I'd been. She'd lost the same finger as me. Father took her upstairs to their reading area, and I could hear Mother's cries as he disciplined her some more. Charlie and I argued, Charlie wanted me to go up and confess to Father that the whole thing had been my fault."
"Then the day after, a new martha arrived at the house. To this day, I don't know what happened to the old one who'd gone screaming from my room. The new one, she was just mean."
CHARLIE ANGEL
Gilead history-buffs, conspiracy theorists with too much time on their hands, people who implore you to, 'do your own research'. They don't know. They weren't there. I was. So was Mother. So was mom.
The legitimate historians, they were bad enough. They had agendas, too. Everyone wanted to know what it was like to finally go to Hawai'i and meet my mom for the first time.
I had taken my eldest when she was a baby. We flew into Lihu'e, me tired and miserable after 6 hours from Seattle. The baby fussing, landing so late did not help.
Mom's few remaining friends from Boston warned me. Janine Lindo marched to the beat of a different drummer, had had a brief stint as one of Gilead's legendary 'Aunts' before she was rescued and spirited off to Canada - only to find her way to Kaua'i and Hawai'i's beaches.
They warned me about other things as well. My dead brother, Caleb. If he had survived Gilead, he would be in his 30s by now. June Osborn had told me she'd lied to mom about Caleb, telling her that he was still alive - which he wasn't. June cautioned me about telling mom.
All that fell by the wayside as I tried to navigate the baby and my carry-on luggage, seeing at the airplane's door that we had to also navigate stairs down to the tarmac. After seeing the chute beside the stairs was meant only for luggage, not babies, I heard her. The excited screams!
Behind the barricade, an older woman with a big floppy hat in a bikini top (with an eye-patch), jumping up and down. Waving and screaming at the top of her lungs…..
"Charlotte! Charlotte! It's me, your mom! Whoo-who, whoo-who! That's my daughter, that's her and her baby!"
For all the airport and beyond to hear, she yelled, "My Charlie Angel!"
