There is a reception at a Commander's home for all of the newly married couples.
This Commander's house is quaint and humble, as it should be. The architecture was popular roughly a century ago but remains timeless in a place that is running out of time.
The Wife's garden is the centerpiece of the backyard that we are quickly corralled to. With honeybees virtually extinct, the Wives have replaced their presence effortlessly, swarming about the garden in a tight group. They buzz excitedly about frivolous things that they're allowed to have an opinion on and touch every single flower petal with a gentility reserved only for the miracles that they produced using their fertility.
I wonder if the Wives weep over dying plants in the garden the same way they did when they discovered they were infertile. They hover over and admire their gardens as if each patch were a child. No one has the courage nor the absolute cruelty to remind them that the pink tulips will never be the blush on a baby's cheek. The sunflower won't have notches on the doorframe marking each growth spurt. Soon, the season will change and their gardens will wither and die. They will be reminded of just how barren their lives are.
Wicker tables and chairs are scattered about the grass. An empty table below a willow is my only course of action available. I cannot find my husband. Without him, I cannot leave.
Without him, I cannot.
With him, can I?
The men lounge around their tables and discuss business and politics while laughing over something that can't be funny, since there is only God in Gilead and God is not funny. There is an unspoken natural segregation between the blue and the black. The girls in white linger near the fence and twitter quietly in pairs of two. If this were a high-school dance, they would be the scared freshmen sitting on the bleachers half-hoping for a boy to ask them for a dance but secretly dreading the idea of answering and actually dancing with a boy in front of so many people. They are completely lost and out of place here without a mother to instruct them. They gaze at the Wives, studying their behavior until the older women giggle and scoff at the young brides for being so immature and inexperienced in domestic life. The girls then steal glances at their husbands who are more engrossed in political talk than their marriage to even notice the eyes upon them.
A young girl bathed in white approaches me, meager as a mouse and just as small. "Is this seat taken?" She asks sweetly, eyeing the open chair next to me.
I shake my head. My lips move strangely; I'm still programmed to be mute and this makes me unsure of if my new title allows me to respond. I display a polite smile.
The bride is alarmingly young. Sixteen, I estimate. Small blemishes on her chin and forehead have been concealed expertly by her mother who also filed her nails cleanly to repair the damage her daughter's teeth had inflicted. Her chestnut hair is braided in a halo atop her head and ornamented with white ribbon. Her doe-shaped eyes are the color of robin's eggs; a crack is beginning to form in her shell of innocence. I can see it if I watch close enough. She's hardened her outside to protect against any damage but under that tough exterior is the vulnerable child that remains. Her body is delicate as a dove with skin and features just as soft. She is not ready for her wings to be clipped.
"Uh...my name is Jane." She states as if her mother is prompting her. "What's y-may I ask yours?" A blush creeps over her round cheeks.
"Ofdaniel." I reply monotonously.
"Oh." I can hear the disappointment in her voice. She inspects a fallen leaf on the table and whispers, "Do, uh...do you still need to go by that name? Since you're a Wife? I mean, we're Wives..." She babbles. "But...can't you go by your real name? I-I won't tell anyone if you tell me." She promises, hushed.
Suddenly I'm young again and sharing a scandalous secret. I wonder if the new generation of girls; the Gilead Girls, are allowed friends of any kind. Their parents, more specifically the mothers, control everything about their daughters and cherish them like dolls. Their mothers dress them, feed them, teach them (not academically but in their duty to God and men), and pick their husbands for them. Has Jane ever been someone's friend? Am I the first friend she has, after only moments of becoming a woman?
If she is sincere in her questions, then she will fall from grace before the braided halo can even be unwoven from her head. This girl, Jane, questions things. They are valid questions, critical questions that in any other circumstance should give her pride for such attention to detail. But we are in Gilead. The Eyes and the men can see the resistance as soon as a defective though crosses your mind. Jane has plunged into the danger zone by speaking it. The simple act of intelligent thought on her part is criminal enough. To question a Wife, a Handmaid, the name given to them by the Sons of Gilead and her Commander was another nail in the casket.
My lips hint at a smile. Is this a test? Should I reveal my true name to her? Should I create a fake one in case she tattles to her husband?
"Esther." I say.
I am liberated. I am no longer a number. I am named. To be human is to be free and I am no more a government-issued slave without a name or a soul or a mind or a heart. If I am murdered or hanged or tortured for my name then I am overjoyed, because they who punish me and remember me will have recognized that my name is Esther. My name is Esther. My name was not Esther. There is no more was. There is. I am.
The girl smiles at the secret shared. A bond. "Esther," she repeats, experimenting with how her voice expresses my name. "I like that name."
There is another long silence. I scan the crowd-I am paranoid. I fear I am some classification of fugitive bound for capture by the Eyes at any moment. I spot my husband gulping down a drink to hide his discomfort from the circle of men around him. I assume the discussion topic is something he's alien to. If I were his wife-by choice-I would rescue him from the situation but I am not a loving Wife, and Wives do not speak unless spoken to.
"Your husband..." The girl squeaks. "Does he enjoy the films he makes now? I loved-I mean, I enjoyed the films he made when he was young." She gushes.
My husband has been making films since before I was born and has touched every genre of film availible to him. Jane must have watched his older films secretly; his family films weren't made until he was past forty years old. He has no skills besides his acting, having dropped out of highschool and never picked up a book since. I don't say this to be cruel. His acting has more influence on people than any diploma would have given him. When the Republic rose, he became an actor for Gilead. Propaganda films and biblical movies are the only visual entertainment allowed or produced, and he is a star.
"He enjoys serving God and Gilead." I reply more dryly than I should sound. Wives enjoy their lives and the Republic of Gilead. I am a Wife. I should sound delighted.
The Marthas come by all of the tables and set down glasses of water, stating that the food will be served soon. A few other brides saunter over and join Jane and I. They make small talk in bursts before settling in silence. One girl who appears two or three years younger than me that has remained silent gets cocky and asks me what sex is like. The girls gasp and shift in their seats and stare at me, eagerly waiting for an answer.
I realize that these girls are my only company for these next long hours and they won't be able to forget the question that has already been asked. I have to answer. "Being a handmaid, I only know how it happens during the Ceremony." I reply.
"You've never done it before?" Another girl asks.
I'm slightly insulted by the way she says it. Her generation was Gilead-centric and knew nothing about sex. When I was young, Gilead was only an idea. Despite the governmental and moral push for abstinence-only lifestyles, having sex before marriage was the popular practice. I never had the chance to have it.
"Have you, Melanie?" Jane raises an eyebrow at the other girl, who shoots back an annoyed pout. "What do we do?" Jane asks, turning to me.
I am not prepared for this. I know as much as they do about what is going to happen tonight. "Well...in my experience...you lay down on the bed and the man does everything. Then you get up and leave." I explain.
"Does it hurt?" A red-headed girl chirps.
"The first few times." I admit. The husbands aren't concerned with the comfort or care of the vessel, making the first few times more painful than they should be.
Though I am not famished, I breathe a sigh of relief as the Marthas begin to distribute plates of food to our table. The girls immediately pause the conversation and the Martha has a suspicious expression on her face. A group of young women, new brides, being completely silent is highly unusual and gives reason to suspicion.
It's not until the sun has gone down that I am allowed to leave the reception with my husband. The sky has a strange darkness to it that I can't quite understand. It's touchable, rather than the natural uncapturable essence it should hold. It reminds me of movie sets from decades past, with complete skylines painted and constructed to give a type of pleasure or closure to the people standing against them, a backdrop to help them play their part and almost forget that they aren't real. Until they touch that backdrop and they realize that they are indeed on a set with doors that lock behind them in a never-ending maze of cardboard worlds and props and costumes, lines they must follow and directions they must wander.
I know that my husband has been drinking; it's something I know the other Commanders allow him to get away with. He's an actor, not an influential public figure. He is a puppet for the government and until the lights turn on and the makeup is strewn across his face, he can drown himself in gin and scotch and other poisons until he runs the rivers dry. He pours himself into our car, mumbling drunkenly not quite to himself but not quite to me or the driver. I can't really make out what he's saying but I don't try to decipher it; it's obviously not for my ears and he's in his own world where everything he says makes sense and he's the only one that knows the punchline.
I spend the car ride home on the other end of the leather seats from my husband, trying to take up the least amount of space that I can with the state of my pregnant body-an incredibly hard task. I do this partly out of habit, separating myself from a class and person higher than I, making myself as invisible as I can. The other part, the stronger part that allows me to break from my habits and roll my eyes at the drunken man, is preserving myself from becoming intimate with him until I have to. Sitting in the same vicinity as him made me uneasy.
I can't purge the thoughts that pester me about what happens when the car stops and the engine dies. There is no intercourse with the handmaid once she's pregnant; intercourse is for procreation exclusively. Does that still apply now that I am no longer a handmaid? The last few months tell me that Daniel isn't exactly conservative or dedicated like other Commanders, but there are only small little details that make me question how much of Gilead he believes in. It's hard to believe that the men who make the rules always follow them.
As we pull up to the greystone, I respond to my dread of what to do next by making myself a statue, cold eyes glued to the tinted window. I almost tumble out of the car when the driver opens the door for me but I say nothing and keep my eyes down, hearing it slam behind me as I make my way around the car. I wait for my husband to step out of the car without any balance or grace. He tries to say something to the driver about having a good night and going to bed, but the driver insists on bringing him into the house himself. Not listening to the aggressive refusals from the other man, the driver puts Daniel's arm around his shoulder and practically hoists him up from falling to the ground with each step. His feet limply drag up the stairs as he growls, "I have the keys. Only me. Unless you have a key, shut up." in response to the driver's encouragement to keep his head up. In an unusual wave of maternal instinct, I guard my stomach with my hands, fearful that my husband will fall backwards or flail his hands and collide with my stomach.
Unclaimed emotions are beating against my head and my chest. The imagined wedding night treasured in my mind for so many years stings my eyes. I was supposed to be in white, a virgin maybe, but not pregnant. Not wearing layers of red under a cloak of blue with a stranger's child sucking the life from me. My husband is supposed to sweep me off my feet and cradle me against him, holding me like a prize as we cross the threshold. This is not what happens. Instead, Daniel almost trips when the toe of his shoe catches the doorstep and the driver has to guide him upstairs to his bedroom.
I swear he didn't even notice me there.