'CODE BROWN'
The knock on Lydia's bedroom door, was accompanied by the trainees' warning to one another. A warning to be quiet and especially demure, or even to fake being asleep in the cot.
'Code brown!'
Yet the voice outside of the door, it was Aunt Elizabeth's. As such, Lydia said, 'Come'.
Aunt Elizabeth opened the door, poked her head around it. Elizabeth showed the ring of keys she had in her hand, and said, "you weren't answering, I was about to risk your wrath by letting myself in."
"That wasn't very funny, Elizabeth," Lydia scolded. "Brown is the colour of service!" Then Lydia got her bearings from being awakened. "Lord save me," Lydia said, sitting up in her bed, "I've missed the pairings!"
"Yes, you have," Elizabeth said, coming into Lydia's room and closing the door behind her. Elizabeth went to sit at the chair in front of the spartan desk, then added, "the Hirakawa's, they called to complain. Don't worry it was not the Commander, it was Mrs Hirakawa. They're still waiting for a replacement for the poor girl who died serving the Lord, where the baby got shredded. The Lord is with us in those cruel times, but the Hirakawa's they do not have the Lord's patience….."
Lydia snapped, "we'll get to it, we'll get to it. We just need time."
Elizabeth said, "are you going to talk about it, Lydia?"
"Aunt Lydia," Lydia snapped with the lightning correction.
The two senior women sat in silence as Lydia calmed down. Elizabeth had been with her since the beginning, since Aunt Vidala had been charged with the original organization of The Red Centre, when Lydia had eventually eclipsed Vidala, because of Commander Judd's favour. By the time that The Ceremony had been set in concrete, so had the four Founder Aunts - Lydia, Vidala, Elizabeth and Helena - had been enshrined in Gilead lore, across the districts.
But it was Lydia who had been acknowledged as the 'first among equals' of those four founders. She had been the one who had forced Aunt's-literacy on to the Commanders. She had just done it. While attending one of the early, and difficult births - Lydia had just brought out a stethoscope and charted her findings. Right there. Without asking. No one, including the Guardians with guns, had raised an eyebrow.
The Commanders in Chancery, they had briefly discussed the transgression. The only thing of import that had come from that was the unofficial, Red Centre motto that one Commander coined - "you don't fuck with the Aunts."
Since, Aunt Lydia insisted on assisting the Commanders during salvagings, by bringing handmaids, both home-posted as well as trainees, to pull on the ropes. THAT practise had started when at one she had just shown up, and had elbowed her way past gun-toting Guardians. Those men had just stood back, looking bewildered at each other as Lydia took charge of the deaths, with her girls officiating.
Code brown, indeed.
Elizabeth had not (yet) been thrown out of Lydia's room. Testing the icy waters around her, she dusted off something she had not engaged in, not in a long time, not since well before her own initiation in the Thank Tank.
Small talk.
"Lydia," Elizabeth risked, "I've never asked you. What did you do before all this?" Elizabeth gave a wide scan with her head and eyes, indicating the 'this' was The Red Centre, probably all of Gilead.
"Huh!?" was all that Lydia could muster.
"This?" Elizabeth said, now pointing to outside of Lydia's bedroom door. "Gilead. C'mon, there were no Aunts in the old United States!"
"Me?" Lydia asked, checking that she was following Elizabeth's meaning.
"Yes, you, Aunt Lydia. Before? You weren't always in brown," she observed, although given Lydia's talent for 'Aunting', maybe Lydia had always been.
"I was a family court judge, in the old Commonwealth of Massachusetts," Lydia said matter of factly.
"Always?" Elizabeth asked?
"No," Lydia said with a rare chuckle. In all the years the two of them had been at The Red Centre, Elizabeth had never heard Lydia chuckle! Not once. It was quite the sight.
Lydia looked vacantly straight ahead, and said, "I was a school teacher. I was fair, my students were always disciplined. I was always fair with the children, but I was hard on the parents. Even harder on my Principals, or the education boards. They made decisions, never with the classroom in mind."
Lydia then swung her feet over the bed's edge to the floor. She said, "If you give me a second I'll be right up. I'll bring this week's dossiers. It's not just the Hirakawa's, I am so, so far behind."
Elizabeth, she was not done. "Me? I was an executive assistant to a US Senator from California, a woman. If it hadn't been for the second revolution, my girl - she was well positioned to get the party's nomination for President. Almost certainly the 2nd place on the ticket. Me, I could have been White House Chief of Staff. Would'a, could'a, should'a."
Lydia remained seated on her bed, surprised to have heard that from her colleague. They'd never, not once talked like this - just shooting the breeze.
Aunt Lydia said, "well, then, it's a good thing Gilead rose. You're now engaged in righteous work, rather than enabling demonic secularism in the old Congress, or God forbid, the White House."
Elizabeth said more softly, "I know, I know, I know. Only Gilead is being led by God to combat infertility, and this place - here at The Red Centre - we are the tip of that spear."
Elizabeth then surveyed the woman in front of her. The one who had just recently only left her room for meals, and who had been absent for the recent Handmaid pairings, which meant that the dossiers Lydia had jealously guarded were not there either.
Elizabeth had been the one who'd first noticed, that Lydia was somehow 'different', when the red-haired, one-eyed freak had been rescued from Chicago. Lydia's focus, but mostly her toughness was failing.
'What had Lydia been thinking', Elizabeth thought, 'pairing Janine Lindo with the Lawrence house, especially immediately following the marriage between the Commander and the former Mrs. Putnam?' Elizabeth remembered Lydia's violent disapproval of the former Offred's appointment as Ofjoseph… then there she was, she herself appointing Janine Lindo within striking distance of Naomi Putnam, now Lawrence.
Elizabeth said softly, "You cared for that trainee, for Janine. People were noticing."
Lydia scolded back, "don't be absurd, you make it sound like a gender-traitor thing."
Elizabeth, "no such thing, Aunt Lydia. I would never. Besides, my Senator, she had been a gender traitor. She'd been one of the first, public salvagings in D.C. I know what to look for."
Aunt Lydia said almost in tears, "they had no right. Commander Lawrence, he had no right. She's now gone."
Elizabeth contemplated the pitifulness of the sight in front of her, how Lydia had once taken on bigger men than Lawrence, and had brought them down. Immediately following the trafficking of those 86 children, Lydia had spent 19 days in prison being 'entertained' by Lieutenant Stans. The three other Founding Aunts (including her) had been sent to a 'retirement community of Aunts' near The Colonies, and were called upon to spell off Aunt-Guards of the unwomen.
And… it had been Lydia - in full tough mode - who had risen from Stans's grasp, eventually usurping the usurper, Aunt Ruth at The Red Centre, and then recalling her three partner founders, including Elizabeth herself. Things were then back to normal.
Where was that now, thought Elizabeth? Lydia collapsing, over a defective handmaid!
Lydia slumped on her bed in front of her, that woman was unrecognizable.
Elizabeth stood, slapped her thighs to get Lydia's attention.
"I'll tell you what," Elizabeth said, "I'll go get Vidala and Helena, and we'll meet you upstairs in 20 minutes. We'll work through the night if we have to, but we can catch up."
Lydia raised her head like a beaten boxer, sitting dazed on a stool in the corner of the ring.
Elizabeth opened the door, but before going to get the others, she pointed back at Lydia, full index-finger.
"You pull yourself together," Aunt Elizabeth said. "Bring the dossiers!" She added, "I was 'this far' from making my girl President of the United States. I'm not going to let you sulk in your room." Then she left and closed the door.
CODE BLACK
Okay, Blaine, you're going to sit and listen. You're going to chew on everything I say, and you're going to decide. And you'll like it!
Because the way I see it, you must choose one of two things. Don't blame me, it is you - you dimwit, you're the one who's painted yourself into a corner.
First and foremost, you hit me. A good one. I'd not been hit like that since grade 5. That one was Tommy Rodger. He later turned out to be a highschool, varsity pitcher. A mean fastball. Would have been in the Bigs, except that Gilead intervened. We intervened. Such waste.
You, you can just sit there. Just be quiet. I'm saving your life, and I shouldn't. Mackenzie, he knows. He knows about you, which means he knows about me. So just stay fucking quiet.
Choice one. Gilead. My God, Blaine, you've had one and one-half feet in Gilead anyway. You're a decorated war hero! Time to put both feet into the tent. It would be better having you inside pissing out anyway, than outside pissing in.
This choice has one, and only one requirement. That you find June Osborne, and you put a bullet in her head. Putnam phase two. Take a picture of it, and send it priority post to Kyle Mackenzie. That alone will extend both of our shelf-lives, you and me.
Choice two. Canada. Well, not Canada, I hear that the Americans in Toronto aren't doing very well. Their Consulate there, it's in financial trouble - which is far, far, far more damaging than ideological trouble. Their Embassy in Ottawa, the Americans there are cutting back. The Canadian Prime Minister, he's buckling to the crazies, his own version of the Westboro Baptist loons.
Westboro Baptist, too crazy for Gilead. And that's saying something!
Okay, I'm sorry, I'm getting carried away. But you, you stay quiet.
This choice, then, is not for Toronto, or even Canada. You're from Michigan, so the Alaskan winters won't be that tough on you. With any luck, you can have Osborne to keep you warm during 'three dog nights'.
This choice? You don't have to put a bullet in June Osborne's head. I'd have thought you'd think of that as a bonus.
There's one more reason why I hope you opt for choice one. Choose Gilead, Nick.
We're winning, Nick. The real reason why Mackenzie is not taking us out? Okay, maybe not taking me out, he's real-pissed at you, Nick.
I'm still here because we're winning. There's a very real opportunity that Gilead will now inherit everything American on the world stage. It's not yet, but you can see them crumbling - the U.N., NATO, NORAD, the IMF, The World Bank. All of them are in sight, and the D.C. morons know it. It's why they listen to me…
….. it's why, Nick, they will listen to me about you! High Commander Wharton, he'll probably not send Rose back, but for the meantime, he'll keep Mackenzie from you.
So, please Nick, please, please, please don't make a grab for Agnes. That would lock you into choice two. Don't be a dick, Nick.
Okay, was I clear? Just nod. I don't want to hear anything from your pie-hole.
Because there's a choice 3. The Wall, Nick. And they go after June Osborne anyway, something you cannot stop while swinging.
- silence -
I don't know what to tell you, Nick.
Tomorrow, you'll be let go. My tooth, the one you loosened, Dr. Grove says it is easily reparable, probably an implant. So me, I have no hard feelings. Getting a seat at the U.N., I'd lose a whole mouthful for that!
So think, Nick, think. Tomorrow, you go back to your empty home. No Rose, no pad-padding of little feet. Naomi's Angela, she's not yet back from Naomi's parents…. so I don't know the sensation, so I won't rub it in.
Tomorrow, dude. Tomorrow. You're out tomorrow. I wish I could tell you where June Osborne was, she's now in a mass of refugees, not from us but now from those nasty Canadians.
I told you - Canadians are not to be trusted! Polite and peaceful, that's the narrative. But put skates on them and have them fight over a puck? Have you ever seen a bench-clearing brawl, Nick? Makes you wonder, how'd Canadians ever got a 'peaceful' reputation?