CONCUSSED

Mrs. Putnam, she had credited me for them not losing Angela. Her intervention was what probably spared me. She'd said that I'd saved Angela from being trafficked with the other 86 children.

I'm afraid, though, that when the Eyes and Angels came knocking, they wanted to know how I knew.

I don't wish to get into it, I really don't. It was horrible. I was jailed under Lieutenant Stans' 'care'. Lieutenant Stans, he gave me an idea of the kind of work I now feared that my husband did, work for Gilead.

After all that? The only martha-name that I'd given up? The former Waterford-martha, Rita. At that Lieutenant Stans had said, "it's quite convenient for you to mention her, she's not around." I'd not known that. He then resumed the chokingly terrifying water treatment. One loses track of time. I wet myself badly, no one seemed to care. I had my lady's-time, bled badly. No one seemed to care. In their enjoyment of my hysteria, they failed to notice I was fertile or that I was bleeding to death.

Everyone broke under Lieutenant Stans. That's what they said. Me, I was lucky, the Waterford martha was nowhere to be seen. So my accusation did not come to anything. Truly, I knew nothing. But I had known that, so they went the extra mile with me, hoping to pry other stuff out, stuff I did not possess. I will never recover from those 19 days.

But what really broke me? Finding out that that was the kind of work that my love probably did. To women. I couldn't fathom that he'd do it to children. Doubting one's love is worse than 100 Lieutenant Stans.

I'd been returned to the Putnams. Mrs. Putnam liked the way I made scones, so she intervened. Me, I was more than ready for some 'normal', resuming service to the household. Yet one look at me, Mrs. Putnam had banished me to the attic bedroom until the bruises healed. She'd also said, "when she can utter coherent sentences and not look like a train wreck, bring her down."

I didn't feel that bad! Yet I'd not seen a mirror, and I was having trouble comprehending the boss-Martha's words. The boss had said I was concussed, but me, I didn't see it. I was fine.

In the attic, I was brought food and water twice a day. The martha who came up, I did not recognize her. She told me I should! She kept telling me her name, but each time it eluded me. Once, the Putnam doctor came up - shone a agonizingly bright light into each eye. Not that it mattered.

I lay there broken, because of my love. That was the worst injury. When the three of us had been together, him working at 'the cages', daughter back home playing on the floor, he would always say that the extreme stuff would only last 5 years, then Gilead would 'calm down' as he put it. It hadn't.

Was he doing stuff back then like Lieutenant Stans did in prison? Was he doing it when we had embraced at the Putnam's? Could he be trusted with our daughter - IF we ever found her?

I hope they lock me in this attic and throw away the key.

MRS. LAWRENCE

The things one misses when they are in seclusion.

I was feeling tons better, but Mrs. Putnam had said that I was not ready, 'to be seen in polite company'. That's what 'what's-her-name', the martha, had told me.

I'd then finally remembered who the martha was bringing me sustenance. A good sign, but very embarrassing. We'd worked together for more than a year. I hoped and prayed that she did not think ill of me for being so rude. Then again, more and more was coming back.

Then one morning, she did not come up, the martha I mean. Then the sound from outside, the sound of vans pulling into the Putnam's drive. Unmistakable. Men yelling. Then banging and yelling inside the house. From the outside I could hear Mrs. Putnam yelling, but it was the yell filtered through hysterics. I'd never heard her like that.

Then two (or was it three) hours of less noisy banging and men yelling, other men shouting orders. It's strange how most sounds are just noise, but I distinctly heard someone - probably many men - beating down the Commander's door to his private study. For some reason, that was the only thing I thought hearing that. If they were Guardians beating down the Commander's private door, I couldn't imagine that even Guardians could survive that! Then men scrambling to vans outside, then the peeling of tires on gravel.

Then all was quiet. The house, it had never been THAT quiet. Nothing. Not a floorboard. It was the stillness of an abandoned house.

Other than for commode visits, I had rarely ventured from bed. Mostly it was the dizziness.

This time? I got up, pulled on a wrap for modesty and shuffled over to the door. I had to hold on to objects on the way, but I made it.

Door locked. From the outside.

Fast forward - no reason to stretch out the abject boredom of the subsequent days.

The boss-martha, I woke in the attic to see her standing over me. "Get up," she commanded. Two other marthas were collecting my meagre things. I got up, immediately fell back onto the bed.

"Where am I going?" I asked.

The boss-martha said without a hesitation, "The future Mrs. Lawrence wants her martha team intact. We'd forgotten about you. Good thing she remembered."

The 'future Mrs Lawrence'?

MAYDAY CENTRAL

My first day on duty in the Lawrence house - by that I mean the first day as a martha, not as a lump lying in bed doing nothing…..

…. that first day in my martha-utilities, I wandered into the Lawrence kitchen. Just stood there, like an idiot.

From behind, I got a slap on the back of my head - a gentle one, when I think of it. Then a voice from my former boss-martha, "get over to the sink, those pots and pans are not going to do themselves."

The house was abuzz. I'd been called down and put into my utilities because of a 'family portrait'. Commander and Mrs. Lawrence in the front, the battery of marthas semi-circled by the photographer behind them…

…... and with the Lord as my witness. A Handmaid. A Bilhah handmaid. The one-eyed freak, the one with flaming red hair. The one who'd been full of accusations against former Commander Warren Putnam, the former head of my former house.

I'm writing 'former' a lot. Why? I'm still trying to find words to keep you up to date on why Warren Putnam is no more. It's not my fault, I'd been out of commission. He's just gone. There's martha-gossip in every household, but that was an art-form, one that my then-current mental difficulties could not easily sift through, not for me.

Her name, Janine. I can think it, just not speak it - she was Angela's Bilhah mother. Reunited with the former Putnam's, now a Handmaid to Commander Joseph Lawrence. Now that he and Naomi Putnam…. ah, er, Naomi Lawrence were married! I had missed an entire season!

Then I overheard it. Another of Lawrence's marthas, sidling up to Ofjoseph and whispering. I must have been out of circulation longer than I thought - there was a time that that was simply not allowed. Not the whispering between econo-women in service.

I'm not sure of the order of chaos that broke out in the Lawrence house. But I'll do the best I can.

Mrs. Lawrence had asked me to go into the basement to fetch some of the rare wine - she wanted to inspect its colour or some such thing. It was for the reception that evening.

To put all that in perspective, I took my directives from the boss-martha. The boss-martha had been clear, especially when I'd booted some very simple assignments, like not taking brown sugar in with coffee for the Commander. He'd yelled about that one.

This time with the wine, the boss-martha was nowhere to be found. She needed to know that the Missus had ordered me, that I was not going over the head-martha's head. But she was nowhere to be found, that's how busy that time was.

So, descending the stairs where fools feared, I got to the bottom and turned towards what I assumed was a cool wine-cellar. Given that I'd never been down there before, I complimented myself for healing enough to figure it out on my own.

Then, there she was. Boss-martha. Standing over two prone marthas just lying there, all three with blood on their utilities. Three other marthas, also just standing there, themselves surveying the scene.

When she saw me, the boss-martha got up and walked my way. From her utilities she pulled her favourite kitchen knife - but did not hold it as if she planned to cook with it.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded. I told her that Mrs. Lawrence, she had sent me down for one of their rare wines. She looked back at the other three non-injured, who shrugged their shoulders. She then turned back to me, said, "go get the wine, take it upstairs to Mrs. Lawrence, then forget what you saw."

Which is what I did. Later when most of the marthas were in attendance with Mrs. Lawrence, the boss-martha made a big deal about dressing me down, for getting the wine without consulting her. Mrs. Lawrence, she intervened.

With that little drama, the scene in the basement in the hours' previous, that scene was well masked.

"I'M NOT YOUR FRIEND"

Of one thing I am quite sure.

In the brief history of Gilead, I am fairly sure that no Handmaid had ever back-talked to a Wife the way the Ofjoseph did.

I'd been there in the next room, and the door was open. If I'd not heard the insolence myself, I wouldn't have believed the inevitable martha-gossip that would have followed.

Yet there it was. "I'm not your friend," spat right at Mrs. Lawrence. Soon after, the Birthmobile arrived. Ofjoseph insisted that she be referred to as 'Janine' as they loaded her in.

Me, I should have had empathy for the woman. When I'd known her at the Putnam's it was clear that she was not going to make it. Back then, though, I thought it was because she'd been a ditz, barely in touch with reality. That day, she was not going to luck out at a particicution!

My word, had she been lucky. One time at the Putnam's, the Missus (Naomi) had asked that the Handmaid, Janine, join them at the dinner table. The Commander, Putnam, he had agreed.

Yet the Handmaid had been forceably taken from the dining room and tied to the bed up in her room.

Her sin? When Commander Putnam had had wine poured for him - and the two women at the table only had water, the then-Ofwarren had let her head fall back behind her, and she let out a long sigh.

With unexaggerated melancholy, she then sighed, "oh tequila, I miss you the most."

Okay, back to the Lawrence's, when Janine had been taken. Taken back to the Red Centre for insolence, this time venomous-insolence aimed straight at a Wife of Gilead. "You're not my friend." This one, she was not going to get lucky.

THE BASEMENT

Late that night before me turning in, I descended the stairs on my own. For no other reason than that there seemed to be no one else around.

Once again, in a house with no shortage of marthas, one martha who had dared whisper to Handmaids, at least four others who tended to bloodied-marthas on the cold basement floor (I never did know how that one had worked out, where the women/bodies had gone. Nor did I ask, I mean who does one ask!?)

Fearing what I'd find, I went downstairs. Like in those old horror films where the audience yells at the screen, 'no, don't open that!'

Right there, on the same spot on the cold basement concrete floor, that had once held two wounded women, there he was.

He. In an argument with the boss-martha. Not 'giving orders' but arguing with her. They were arguing about what could be done for the Handmaid, now only recently the former-Ofjoseph.

There he was, yelling as quietly as he could at the boss-martha, she holding her ground by yelling back, again as quietly as she could. I swear, she had jammed an index finger into his chest. She was that pissed, she was that sure that she was right and he was wrong.

They then turned to see me and I froze.

Commander Lawrence said, "what the hell is she doing here?" I don't remember much after that.