The Handmaid's Tale: A Mother's Love.

Five: The Eyes inside the van.

It's hot inside. Stifling hot. There's no one but me back there. The Guardians flanking me sigh and reach inside their uniforms. Jack smells of a horrible odor of beer and sweat. I'm sure he hasn't bathed in months. Ever since this overthrow, no one can bathe once in a while.

Only unless you're a Handmaid. Or a Bride.

I don't see any misbehaving Econowives or any Aunts. Just me.

"Am I that offensive?" I ask. Rue glances at me.

"Lady," he says, belching. "If you was anymore offensive, I'd have to gouge my eyes out! They don't like it that you're that hot! Seven owners an' you can't give them babies?" he swats a hand at me.

"Thank God they're sending you back to England!"

"What about my baby?"

Jack looks at the driver.

"You sure you know where the English place is?" he shouts in his reedy voice.

"Ever since they changed all the street signs to pictures," the driver sighs. He's half Child of Ham and half child of Adam. "The whole town's confusing!"

"They don't trust women!" Jack thumbs back at me. "Especially her!"

The driver reaches around and throws his arm over his bucket seat. With his racial makeup so convoluted, I wonder if they'll cut him in two and send his Negro side to the Middle West and leave his Caucasian side here in the Eastern States of Gilead.

"Look, where's the address? They don't even trust me to have a GPS!"

Jack reaches his skinny arm into his jump suit and pulls out the crisply folded white envelope. He hands it to the driver.

"British consulate." The Driver reads, "Center City. City Hall. Right under where they sawed off Billy Penn and put up the Preacher,"

William Penn was the founder of Pennsylvania when it used to be a state. His statue looked down from City Hall's steeple, like a benevolent deity. When I first came to Gilead, I gazed up at his statue when the fog wasn't so thick. It took them the whole summer to tear down that statue and replace it with the Gileadian new leader.

"The guy holding up the Bible? With all his hair?"

"He took over after he had that vision of a purified America. He claimed he looked up in the sky and God told him to gather all the Righteous and send it into being!"

"My grandmom," Rue's stocky form ripples with laughter, "Says he was much crazier than Trump! Trump's a pussy cat!"

"Whatever happened to that guy?" Jack sits back.

"Who knows?" the driver laughs, "Let's drop this English broad off!" He twists his key and the van roars into life.

That's me. The English broad.