My father is a simple man. He enjoys bluegrass and hockey and sneaking cans of beer out from the trunk if his antique car to drink during the summer when no one is watching. He enjoys fishing, though he always throws the fish back into the lake or pond he's dropped his line into, leaving me bewildered as to why he would want to fish in the first place. He mows the lawn on the same Saturday every month without fail, save for when the snow is thick on the ground and crunches under your feet like soft gravel. He never wears a shirt or sunscreen during the summer, leaving the leathery skin of his back looking like a slice of burnt toast and making me even more vigilant about inspecting the color, shape, and diameter of the moles on his back in case one day they turn out to be a melanoma.
The person staring back at me is an exact replica of my father, but we are in Gilead now, so he cannot be my father. You don't have a family from the Time Before unless you did not get re-assigned to another family as I did. It is safer to forget everyone you knew from the Time Before and assume that they are dead, killed in the war instead of being trapped in a life of servitude to the Republic's elite. At the Rachel and Leah Center, forgetting the past wasn't so much of a choice as it was a rule. Handmaids are trained as soldiers are, sleeping on army cots with government issue linens, eating mush with water, and made to be an army of procreation vessels for the glory of God and Gilead. Vessels do not have emotion, a personality, or a past. Even before we are assigned to our stations we are stripped of our names and all identifying characteristics that would make us stand out from one another.
"What's the problem, sir?" The Guardian asks gruffly, his hand hovering over his gun holster.
"Nothing, stand down." Daniel commands before our Guardian can act and cause a scene. Gripping my shoulders, Daniel's deep brown eyes search mine frantically for any sign of what is going on in my head. "Are you sure that this man is your father?"
My father looks nothing like me, he never had, save for the wide mouth we both shared. Genetics randomly assigned me all the German, Irish, and French traits and saved the Italian traits for my behavior and my attitude. One of the hardest habits to break when I became a Handmaid was talking with my hands.
"Yes." I answer, fighting the urge to scream at my father and run to his arms, an asteroid plummeting towards the Earth with all its might just to become one with the Earth, even if that means its decimation.
My husband turns his head to study the man standing far from us, posed perfectly still as a statue and registering who I am. He is sure of who I am now, under all the blue fabric and behind the enormous planet-shaped belly jutting out the center of my mid-section.
"Stay here, okay? Just trust me." Daniel's lips brush against my forehead in a half-hearted attempt at a kiss. He gives the Guardian behind us a stern look, warning him to stay put.
My father stays completely still as Daniel approaches him. I can see his hands come together, wringing together with worry at his torso, something he has always done when he is nervous or afraid. He holds his ground and doesn't shrink as the man who could be planning on doing any number of violent things to assert his dominance over me closes the space between them. My father finally takes his eyes away from mine, constantly switching between me and Daniel, and takes Daniel's hand when offered to shake it quickly. The Guardian assigned to us takes a few steps until he is directly behind me, his ever-worsening body odor warding off any and all possible attackers. My father doesn't smile once as Daniel speaks to him. I worry at my lip, hating that I can't hear a word of their conversation. My father moves his lips once or twice, quick words, but I cannot see what Daniel is saying to him. My husband shakes his hand again, and the interaction is over. As Daniel makes his way back to me, my father is staring at me again, studying every part of my body before Daniel leads me away, whispering "We'll talk about this when we get home."
The rest of our walk is filled with silence. My legs move without instruction, my mind somewhere else. I challenge my senses to remember the smell of my father's natural musk and the sound of his boisterous laughter. There are other things and people in these memories, still blurred out and their voices distorted with time. I'll remember them soon, I promise myself.
Returning to the graystone, Daniel leads me into his office before shutting the door and declining any water or coffee from the Marthas.
"You're Italian?" He says, rather than asks with surprise. My father must have told Daniel my maiden name.
"Yes, I am." I am impatient. We can discuss my ancestry at any other time than now at this very moment.
"Your father will be joining us for dinner tonight. I told him that I am your husband and that he may see you here instead of in front of the tower, prying eyes aplenty." He sits down beside me on the couch and crosses his legs, taking up far too much space. "Does this make you happy?"
"Yes…" I reply dispassionately. "Actually I…I don't know."
"Should I cancel? If his coming here makes you uncomfortable, I can. I just thought that you would want to see him."
"I do, I do!" I avow wildly, "I haven't seen him in so long. He's almost a ghost come back to life, to me. The Aunts beat out every memory and every affiliation you have with the Time Before when you are sent to the Red Center."
"Wait, wait-they beat you?" He interrupts, his eyes narrow and questioning.
I raise an eyebrow. "Yes, all of us. They use the 'rule of thumb' just as all men are permitted to do."
The 'rule of thumb' meant that a man, or in this case an Aunt, could beat their wife so long as what they used to beat her with was no larger than his thumb. The Aunts used riding crops and rulers-bigger than their thumbs but never larger than their hands.
"Uh," my husband bleats, bewildered at the knowledge of my testimony. "I'm not going to think of that just now." He decides quietly. Returning his focus to me, he says, "Tell me about your father."
"What do you want to know?" I ask, prepared for an interrogation.
Daniel shrugs. "Whatever you can tell me."
I begin by telling him the basic information about my father. He was born in September on the south side of the city in a neighborhood that was known as "Little Italy" and had a Catholic church on every corner. He is the oldest of six children-five brothers and a baby sister. He has been wearing the same style of glasses since he was prescribed them at age six-thick black rim on the top and a bridge with little gels attached to grip his misshapen nose. He worked as a mechanic from a young age and by his early twenties had lost forty percent of his hearing but refused to ever wear a hearing aid until he went to medical school and became an internist. It took a long time for my parents to conceive, but when they finally did, my father was nearly fifty and decided to open up his own private practice in order to be closer to his family.
When the Republic started taking over, my father lost almost every person on his staff when the Guardians came in to tell them that they could no longer work in his office, or any for that matter, anymore. My father was forced to close his practice and return to the hospital and take the place of a female internist who had been arrested when she protested her termination from the hospital. When people began to riot and protest, more and more bodies began to pile up in the hospital before the numbers started to drop and there were more dead people than injured people. That is when my father tried sending me away to live with my aunt, who couldn't even take me in because she was being forced out of her home in the lower half of the county and displaced into the city.
The last time I saw him was in the morning before he left for work. I went to class, as usual, but I was stopped from entering the building where my lecture was held by an army of Guardians. All the men were allowed through, but none of the women. Our female faculty had been pressured out of their position's months prior, but all the students just thought that they did it for their safety and not because the Republic was banning education of women. A riot broke out right then and there on campus without any organization or leaders. I am ashamed to admit that I was just a bystander. I had no courage to yell or hold up my fists until my knuckles were white and my throat was raw with my words of rage and fury clawing up from my gut.
When I heard a gunshot ring through the air, time stood still. Without thinking, I started running, trying to breathe and not drown in the sea of bodies crashing against me. My foot caught on something and I fell to the ground hard. I turned to see what I had fallen over and saw the dead body of a girl I had once sat next to-hazel eyes glazed over and staring lifelessly at the ground. I tried to scream and scramble away, grabbing fistfuls of wet grass with my hands, but before I could even crawl away, two Guardians hoisted me up by my arms and knocked me out with the butt of a gun.
"When I woke up, I wasn't in Chicago," I say, daring to utter the name of our city, having been banned from being spoken aloud by the Republic after their takeover. "I was in Gilead. The Rachel and Leah Center."
My stomach churns. I feel sick. The Esther from the Time Before has returned to this body and is screaming in horror at what she sees. The Old Esther wants to push the parasite out of her body and make it her dominion again, but she can't, nor can she tear off this dress or the tracker in her ear. My ear. Our ear.
Who am I?
Esther, Esther! I snap back to reality and stare at Daniel's hand on my leg. My breathing is heavy and labored, I can hear the hammering of my heartbeat in my ears. "Are you having a panic attack?" I nod my head and dig my fingernails into the material of the couch. "I need you to breathe with me, okay? In through your nose, out through your mouth. One-two-three-four," he says, counting while I breathe like a vocal instructor to their pupil. "And out-two-three-four." We do this a few times until I am calm. "I don't think dinner tonight is such a good idea anymore…"
"No, no, no, please," my hand is gripping his thigh, "I promise I'll be good." I am a child apologizing for throwing a temper-tantrum.
My body is drained from the emotional re-telling of the Time Before and I want to forget. I ache for comfort, for that blissful departure from reality. Melanie and my father are exiled from my brain and replaced with the desire to taste Daniel's skin. I hear him sigh when I breathe upon the tender flesh of his neck. It smells like sun and expensive cologne. I run the tip of my tongue up the narrow column of his throat and moan with delight when he burrows his fingers into my tightly drawn up hair to pull me closer to him. Lust pools between my legs-I am forgetting. Yes-I am not remembering all the bad things. My gloved hand explores the flat plane of his chest, finding the small carved pearl buttons there and unfastening them to feel his warmth beneath. Daniel catches my hand then and pulls it back.
"The Marthas will hear us." He warns dismissively, standing up and buttoning his shirt. He wanders over to his desk and takes out a silver flask, unscrewing the cap and taking a long pull.
"Where did you get that?" I already know how he got it. He got it on the black market, stocked full of items from the Time Before that have been outlawed and criminalized. I'm astounded that he is risking being found with alcohol, one of the more serious offenses, that he cannot talk himself out of.
There is a sharp knock at the door. Hiding the flask back in the depths of his desk, Daniel calls, "Enter!"
Lena opens the door and sees the both of us, glaring at me. My face is red, and my hair has obviously been tussled-she clearly suspects that I was trying to use my feminine wiles on my husband. "Mrs. Hamilton is here to see you, Mrs. Tarleton."
I clear my throat and say a quick thank you, flattening down my hair and following Lena out the door without saying another word to my husband.
"Esther!" Jane exclaims wide-eyed, rushing up from her seat on the couch and grasping my arms. "I heard about what happened last night. I was so worried. I prayed all night and all morning for you and your friend."
A smile tugs at the corner of my mouth. My friend, not "the Handmaid" or just me. "Your prayers helped." I inform her of the status of Melanie and the unfortunate miscarriage she suffered, but I say nothing about why the Wife attacked Melanie or her husband. Jane doesn't even ask.
"How are you faring with all of this?" she asks, rubbing my arm comfortingly. "I cannot imagine how heavy your heart and your spirit are after that experience."
I motion for her to sit down. She waits patiently as I struggle to give her an answer. All the hurt and rage are cycling through my veins, the shock of seeing my friend in a hospital bed, half dead after losing another child. Fear and anticipation grip my heart at the memory of seeing my father after all this time and I want him to be here to ask me what I am feeling; to hold me close and cradle me as I come to terms with the last twenty-four hours.
"I think I need some air…" I finally say, and Jane nods. We walk outside onto the patio and sit down.
"Your garden is coming along nicely." Sprouts have broken through the soil and bask in the nourishing rays of the sun.
"Yes, it is." I suppose, smoothing the linen of my dress over my stomach.
Jane tucks a stray hair behind her ear and clears her throat quietly. "I experienced something similar to what you did last night, in the Time Before." She says softly, spying around for anyone who may be in earshot of her. "I grew up on a farm about a hundred miles away from here. My father went to college and learned everything he could about agriculture and utilizing the land. My family is your typical small-town farming family: A stay-at-home mother who spent her days caring for her children, teaching them about the Lord, and sewing buttons or patches on clothes; two children-one boy and one girl-whom attended church every Sunday, never talked back to their parents, and were seen and not heard. My father farmed as much of the land as he could on his own. He's staunchly conservative and the kind of man who won't buy a thing unless it says 'made in the U.S.A.' on the bottom-he wouldn't hire illegal immigrants no matter how much they needed the money or how little they were willing to be paid. When my father really needed to, he'd get some farmhands to come up from town and help him out, but he relied heavily on my older brother. He didn't believe in my mother helping with the farming in the fields-anything she did to help my father was inside of the house. Sometimes my father would let me go out with him on the big ploughs and show me how the hay baler worked. I loved playing in the hay. My father used to play pretend with me and let me ride on his back through the hay, neighing and making hoof noises with his mouth. He was very kind…"
"When I was little, my father and I went into a barn next to the house and my brother was in there with another boy from his school. They were rolling in the hay, literally, and the other boy ran out the back door before my father could get to him, but my brother knew better than to run." She pouted, her voice lost. She is trying her best to stay composed, to not let her emotions break her steady tone or her calm. "My father beat my brother right in front of me." She says coldly, "I hid behind a stack of hay and my father must have forgotten I was there or thought that I'd run away, but I heard everything. My brother was begging my dad to stop. I heard the sound of my father's fist meeting my brother's face and his gut-I heard the snap of bone. My father left the barn and went into the house, and my brother was so silent that I thought he was dead. One eye was swollen shut, round and purple as a plum. His nose was broken, and his lips were split; he struggled to even breathe. He didn't have the strength to cry."
"My father left home for a few days. Fishing and drinking. My mother helped my brother to his room, but she didn't say anything to him." Jane looks disoriented, questioning her own memory, struggling to believe that her mother would treat her own children so cruelly. "She just told me to not say anything to anyone about what happened between my father and my brother." There is venom lacing each word now, bleeding from her memories. "They sent him away to a conversion facility when my father came home. My brother came back a few weeks later but he wasn't the same. He was so broken, but my father was so proud when he came home-like my brother was a defective product, so my father sent him back to get a replacement son."
I remember the days of conversion therapy, hearing the horrors of what happened within. Parents sending their children to "get better" through electroshock therapy, pins being jammed under their fingernails, their own identities broken violently. Some of the most painful stories were the ones of parents who truly believed that the therapies worked, or the people who willingly admitted themselves to the therapies because they had been brainwashed into believing that they were ill and in need of conversion.
"The first night back my brother took a belt and he hung himself in the barn. I found him." Jane's mouth is tight-lipped, but I see it twitch. Her face contorts, and she averts her gaze towards my garden. She refuses to cry-it has been programmed in her that crying is weakness, that to cry over her brother's suffering and his death would be condoning his homosexuality and his sin against God. "He didn't leave a note. My father lied to everyone and said that my brother had run away and got hit by a car. He told me that I should learn from this. That one sin leads to more sin and that if I ever betrayed God's laws that I would burn in hell just like Jason." The name of her brother gets caught in her throat, hanging in the air like static. She takes a deep breath and focuses her energy on re-composing herself before looking at me again.
"If you're angry, you have every right to be." She asserts firmly, "but you have to work through that anger so that it doesn't hurt other people. You must turn that anger and that pain into determination to love other people and to be kind. I make myself see the best in people despite what I went through, because hate only leads to more hate. Hate will not heal your friend or your heart. Only love and support and faith in God can help in times like these." These, she says, not this. She is talking about Gilead, too. "I keep my faith in God because the God I know is not hateful, He does not punish, He does not hurt us, no matter our sin or circumstance." She wraps her hands around mine. "Do not think that you are not loved or worthy of a happy life because of the trials you are put through."
I realize now that Jane isn't the person I thought she was. She doesn't believe in Gilead, she believes in God-and not the God that Gilead proclaims as theirs. She is devout in her beliefs to the higher power she knows, which existed within her far before Gilead could tell her otherwise. She is pious and delicate because she is afraid of Gilead's God and that false god's consequences, the same God that her father wanted her to fear. She allows the distance the Wives give her so that she does not distance herself from her own faith and identity. The wives and husbands are no different to than her own mother and father; the same parents who taught her to know that milestones of growing up, like discovering her sexuality and breaking away from her identity as a young girl and that of a young woman, were sins. She is a product of Gilead in a society of people who remember a time before Gilead, who scoff at her because she is the lamb they raised to slaughter for themselves.
"How did you forgive them?" I wonder quietly, asking for more of herself than she has already given.
"I prayed. I still pray, every day. I pray for patience and resolution; I pray for the strength to be kind and forgiving."
"Did it help?"
Jane nods and says, "I believe that it did. It brought me closer to God and my church. My father supported the Sons of Jacob and was rewarded by being promoted to a position in the administrative branch of the agriculture division here in the city. My mother works with daughters at an etiquette school here, too."
Had her father not connected with the Sons of Jacob, he and his family would have been placed with the other Econopeople in the city as farmers. While gardens are encouraged for all citizens, the Econopeople oversee all the farming and food supply for the city. The women can work, but they are not paid-their wages are given to their husbands. If they are not farmers, the men work in shops while the women are placed in old warehouses turned into sweatshops and textile mills that made our clothes. The city, as with the rest of Gilead, must be self-sustaining. We cannot depend on foreign imports to supply us with resources since every country has cut us off from trade.
Boys are still allowed to go to school to learn basic skills, but girls are placed in etiquette schools that double as bible-study. Girls wear pink until they are of age to marry, two to three years after menarche, when they can wear white. Girls in pink are educated primarily on the bible, or whatever Gilead's version of the bible is. Aunts are the only women allowed to read, so they oversee teaching the girls about Gilead and God. Around age eleven the girls start to learn more about etiquette equally as much as God. When the girls are given white clothes to wear, the focus shifts almost exclusively onto etiquette and how to be a good wife. They are taught how to walk, talk, sit, stand-these future wives on the cusp of womanhood are taught similarly to infants.
"Are you allowed to see them?" I ask, wondering if she has ever run in to her parents on the street as I had with my father.
"No. Even with my husband's permission, my parents wouldn't allow it. They aren't my family anymore." She sighs and straightens her posture.
My father isn't my father anymore.
There is no more to be said about this, so Jane changes the subject onto my pregnancy. I tell Jane that I haven't gotten any clothes for the baby yet. She says that knitting will help with my nerves. She teaches me how to knit a small blanket first-the baby's first blanket. I have to start over five times before I finally get it right. The yarn is too loose, but I can always make another. She shows me how to make a hat next and tells me to pick up knitting patterns the next time I go shopping. Jane is right. Weaving the yarn together and the clacking of the needles calms my nerves and takes my mind away from things for a while.
Lena opens the door loudly and steps out onto the patio. There is flour dusted across her forehead, arms, and apron, and she smells strongly of oils and spices. "Ma'am, Mr. Tarleton has asked that you send your guest home and get dressed for dinner."
Watching at my friend, guilt tugs at my heart. She has shared so much with me today, but I hadn't said a word about my own experience today with my father. It's not that I do not trust her-you can never truly trust someone in Gilead-I am simply not ready to revisit talk about my father until the time comes. If all goes well, I will tell her. If not, I decide that I will push my father away from my memory completely and never speak of him to anyone again. It is the only option I have in a world where my options are already limited to one ultimatum or another.
Certain dresses in my wardrobe are reserved for special events; dinner parties, Prayvaganzas, and holidays. I choose one that I have not had the chance to wear before. It is a deep shade of navy with bishop sleeves; long at full, cuffed at the wrist. The boat neck collar is tall and wide and almost exposes my shoulders. The torso is boxy, like those dresses from the fifties that made a woman's chest have angles and a shape, not allowing for the shape of breasts. It cinches tight just below the ribs and blossoms out like a bell, ending just before my ankles. The bell-shaped skirt of the dress takes focus away from my stomach, making me appear less pregnant than I am. For tonight, I am thankful for that.
My husband is wearing an English cut suit, tailored to fit his body perfectly. Not to be out-done by anyone else, he is wearing a tie that he saves for special events tied in a Winsdor-knot. His shoes are black with a strap and buckle and have been shined so expertly that I wonder if he ever plans to use them to walk outside, or to just show them off. After so many years of being styled in films and for red-carpets, I imagine that Daniel leaps at the chance to show off his fashion know-how to outshine others in the limited style options we have been provided. His hair is slicked back neatly, and he has taken the time to trim his facial hair to resemble how it was when we were married; a thin v-shaped mustache and beard that began narrowly below his lip and bowed about his chin like an anchor.
I fidget with my knitting in the front room with Daniel as he reads his newspaper, every once and a while asking for an answer to a question in his crossword. There is a heavy knock on the front door. I instantly drop my knitting in anticipation as Peggy goes to answer it. Upon opening the door, I hear the static sound of a radio and hear someone that is not my father ask for my husband.
"Mr. Tarleton, there's a man out here who says he has an appointment with you." By the sound of it, it's a Guardian. I peek through the drapes and see my father red-faced standing at the foot of the front steps. It's not every day that an Econoperson pays a call on someone of Daniel's rank. The Guardians suspect without question that this man is mad or confused at where he is.
"Yes, that's correct." Daniel answers coolly. "Thank you for your vigilance and concern, but I will invite my guest inside now." I hear the Guardian mutter something into his radio and watch my father slowly ascend the steps to our front door.
My father is dressed in the same clothes as before and is knotting his hands in front of him once more. "I'm sorry for the disruption, sir."
"That's no fault of yours," Daniel replies casually. "Welcome to my home! Please, come in." He says, extending an arm out.
Peggy is standing near the stairs, watching the interaction unfold with confusion. Daniel told the Marthas that a guest would be coming to dinner, but he neglected to mention who the guest was or what kind of person the guest would be.
My father takes a moment to quickly scan the foyer, unable to see where I sit on the couch, before remarking, "You have a lovely home, Mr. Tarleton."
"Dinner will be ready in ten minutes, sir." Peggy interjects quietly.
"Thank you. Come, sit with us." Daniel instructs warmly, directing their attention to the front room.
Finally, my father sees me, and I stand to greet him. I do my best to remain still and be patient, waiting for them to get closer. My father is unrelaxed upon seeing me, sharing a mutual discomfort with me as we both wonder how we are supposed to interact with one another.
"As promised," Daniel says hushed, "Your daughter." I cringe, remembering that I am a possession of my husband whom decides who can interact with me and how I can behave or be seen.
My father, still wringing his hands together, raises his arms but holds them closer to his chest as if to hug himself instead of me. "Esther." He sighs, finally able to believe that the person in front of him is his daughter.
"Hello Pabba." 'Pabba' or 'pabbuh' is the term of endearment I used for him. It came out of the word 'papa' being rushed, almost to the point of gibberish, to get his attention, from a young age. 'Pabba' eventually stuck and became the word that expressed the love I held for him.
"Can, can I?" He stammers, yearning to reach out and touch me. Daniel smiles and nods.
How awful it must be to yearn to touch your own flesh and blood, to ask for permission to touch the creation of your love with another person from a stranger. Will I have to do the same once the Little Monster erupts from my womb?
The moment my father wraps his arms around me, I feel free. There is no one else in this room or this world besides me and my father, my Pabba. I tremble in his arms, crying silently. He embraces me tightly, trying to bring myself into him and become one, inseparable for the rest of time so that no one else can take me from him. We hold each other for a long time until my body is too weak from holding him so tightly that I have to relax and pull back.
"I never thought I would see you again." He mumbles in my ear-the ear with my tracker pierced through the upper cartilage like a shell. "You've grown so much!" He exclaims, releasing me from his hold and beaming at my stomach. I am a child being put on display to be admired by a distant relative who only visits ever so often to remark about how much I've grown.
"The Lord blessed us with a child seven months ago." Daniel chirps proudly, inserting himself into the moment and joining me at my side, almost protectively. I knew he would do this sooner rather than later. He wraps his arm around my waist possessively, pulling himself closer to me, asserting his dominance over me and the situation.
"Praised be." My father responds in awe. Back in the Time Before, my father was the kind of man who, with only good-intentions, would place his hand on the stomach of a familiar pregnant woman without asking first. Doing that now could get his hand sliced off. "May I feel?" He asks me.
Before I can answer, Daniel quickly answers for me in the same way a man in the depths of his mid-life crisis allows another such man to touch his absurdly expensive car at a show, feeling superior for the ownership of this prized possession. "Go ahead." I resist the urge to glare at Daniel. Doing anything out of turn would ruin my chances of seeing my father ever again.
"My goodness!" My father exclaims, placing his hand flush against my bump. "How're'ya doin' in there little one?" He coos, always believing that anyone who touches a pregnant woman's belly has a direct line of contact with the fetus. "Are ya havin' fun? I bet you're so excited to come out here and meet your mama and your papa!" I wonder if he's referring to Daniel when he says 'papa', or himself. With how society works in Gilead, my father cannot say outright that he is the grandfather of my child. "You better not be givin' your mama no trouble in there, buddy! And no trouble when you come out neither, right?"
I giggle and then gasp when I feel the baby kick. My father removes his hand instinctively and exclaims, "Wowie! Did you feel that?"
"Our little fruit is a kicker." Daniel exclaims, as if he were the expert on the child I am carrying, instead of me, who is actually carrying the child and feels every single kick.
"Sir, dinner is ready." Lena announces curtly, bowing out immediately. I can hear the disapproval dripping from her tongue and clenching her teeth together.
Daniel takes his usual seat at the head of the table, I on the other end, and my father in the middle. I want to sit directly next to him, but I know that doing so would displease my husband and put my father in an uncomfortable position. Back in the Time Before when I sat with my father for a meal, we sat at a table that was perfectly square, with no head or tail to the table.
Dinner consists of grilled chicken, potatoes, and a small salad with very little sides added on. Daniel always says a very dispassionate and short version of grace. Tonight, he invites our guest to say grace.
"Lord we ask that you bless this food and that it nourishes us. Lord, we also ask that you nourish our hearts and our spirits, and the connections we have with one another. Amen."
"So, Mr. Labriola, my wife has told me so much about you. You're still a doctor, is that right?" Daniel asks, placing a napkin on his lap.
My father smiles at me lovingly, pleased that I have mentioned my father to someone or thought about him in his absence. "Yes, I am a doctor here in the city."
"If I may ask," Daniel continues, as if he wants us to believe that he would cease to ask a question if my father did not give him permission, "What brought you to the Republic's office this morning?"
"Well," my father says, taking a sip of his water and patting away salad dressing from his lips, "I have been assigned to heal our Angels out on the front."
Gilead has swallowed over a majority of the country by now, the stomachs of the Sons of Jacob swollen with power, but there were still battles waged, mostly against those in the resistance since no states or cities remained in power. Those who hunger for power are never filled. We will always live in a state of soldiers with their hands glued to their holsters and eyes searching for a bomb or weapon of mass destruction.
My fork clatters onto my plate noisily. "When do you leave?" I ask with urgency.
"Tomorrow morning." He replies dejectedly. After so much time apart, when we finally find each other again my father is torn away from me to heal the soldiers of the system that tore us apart in the first place. There is an uncomfortable silence before my father asks my husband, "Are you still an actor?"
Daniel swallows a large bite of potatoes before answering with pride, "Yes, I am." I can see in Daniel's eyes that he is happy that my father has brought up his former fame from the Time Before. "I'm in a production right now that opens in a couple of weeks, actually."
"You must be very proud, huh, honey?" Pabba remarks to me.
"Yes, I am. I am honored to be blessed with such a man for a husband." I lie.
Growing up, my father would watch re-runs of an old cop procedural show that Daniel was featured on in his early twenties. Had we not been in Gilead and had I been given the choice of this relationship my father would be over the moon and bragging to every person he saw on the street that his daughter is married to Daniel Tarleton. Even if my father could brag, no one would give a shit. Daniel Tarleton means nothing these days.
"Hopefully you'll be back in the city in time to see the show. I'll reserve a ticket for you." Daniel proclaims, trying to brag that he has the power to get my father a ticket to a show that isn't exactly brag-worthy.
Hopefully my father will come back to the city.
"So, you've taken up knitting, huh, honey?" My father asks. I can tell from the way he sits and the way he speaks to me that he is only engaging Daniel in conversation as a courtesy and a stepping stone to get to a conversation with me.
"Yes, my friend started teaching me how to knit this morning. It's something to do until my due-date." I answer. There's not much to do otherwise. If you're not taking care if a child or getting ready to take care of one, you're useless.
"Have you thought of any names yet?" He asks.
Waiting for Daniel to answer for me, I gaze at him, but he says nothing. "Well, if it's a boy, I was thinking of Jude or Beau." Daniel nods approvingly. This is something that we've never discussed.
"Those are both beautiful names, hon." My father smiles. "Any Italian ones?" He asks teasingly. Before I can answer, he turns to Daniel and asks lowly, "Are you Italian?" My father, the proud Italian, always telling me that I had to marry an Italian boy.
Daniel chuckles and knocks back the rest of his water. "Yes, I am, distantly. I'm a little bit of everything." I'm surprised that Daniel divulges this information over dinner. There are no Italians, Koreans, Brazilians, or Ukrainians in Gilead. There are only Gileadeans now.
"You did good, Esther." My dad winks. "Italian boys are the best kind."
I didn't 'do good', I want to say, I didn't choose this man or any man. I wasn't even chosen by him-I was abducted and put into a fucked-up system made up entirely by enslaved women who have one purpose-to be raped by the men of this new system and bear their offspring.
For the next hour my husband dominates the conversation. He mostly talks about himself and brags as much as he possibly can about his long-lost fame, his voice swollen with pride at having a captive audience that gave a shit about who he was in the Time Before.
I wonder if my father still smells of sour antibacterial soap and sun, if the top of his head still smells different than the crook of his neck when I hugged him or his forearm when he would jokingly wrap it around my neck and tussle my hair. The thick fabric of his shirt blocked it out when I hugged him. I wonder if he can sense how badly I want to break out of this house and run far away from here, or if he thinks that I have accepted my life as it is or worse-chosen it.
The hours slip away until it is nearly midnight and I know that my father has to leave. I steel myself and promise not to cry. This time my father leaves of his own free will and I can say good-bye to him, even if it is for the last time. I memorize every inch of his face and every little imperfection of his body; the constellations of liver spots on his hands and at his temples, the hot red branch of veins that gnarls angrily on the right side of his bulbous and misshapen nose, the way his eyes crinkle and his mouth envelops the lower half of his face when he smiles. Had the situation been different, my father would have rejected the hand Daniel extends to him at the front door and demanded a real hug as he always did when he met someone. I resist throwing myself into the arms of my father and throwing a temper tantrum, refusing to let go of him the same way a child does their parent the first day of pre-school when they realize that they are being separated from their caregiver.
In the fleeting moment before my father exits my life, I whisper, "Where is Mama?"
My father's breath hitches in his throat and I hear him sigh, releasing a memory that he'd almost forgotten in the same breath: "She's in Paradise."
Paradise. Paradise?
Oh yes, oh yes, I remember now. I remember my mother now as my father closes the door to me and my life and enters the inky darkness of the world that I can no longer explore or follow him into. I remember my mother closing doors to me and telling me that I could not explore due to the danger, that I could not follow her, but one day I would-if it was safe.
As I stand my ground in hell with hot tears boiling over my cheeks and burning down my flesh with the slow ferocity of lava from a long-dormant volcano, I remember my mother and I remember Paradise and I hope to God that she is there and that my father is sure that she is there and not merely hoping and guessing that she made it to Paradise in one piece.