WHAT OTHERS HEAR
I do not like being out of control. I hate being vulnerable. I hate the voices, not being able to place them. Yet recognizing them. This must be like the last time - me, unconscious. Not knowing who controls me.
I hate being old. Even though the Mackenzies didn't celebrate it, my last birthday was a significant one, one with a '0', a zero, in it. Like June's father, a big fat, bag of nothing…. a zero.
I have now lived longer than both my parents, as well as all four grandparents. Me, I'd done the last part of that in Gilead! Forgive me for saying that I've had the harder life. Maybe all that hippy-stuff when I was younger was now paying off. My mom used to get after me during my vegan period, when I wouldn't eat anything cooked from her pots or pans. My mom, she got mad with me…
….… my own daughter? June? She was quite indifferent to it. As a kid, she would eat meals I cooked for her, then she'd go with friends to McDonalds.
Okay, I admit it. It was the one thing I liked about Luke, June's husband. I can't for the life of me believe they'd still be together…. I'd originally thought Luke was patronizing me, when he called me a 'veggie'. I'd never heard my lifestyle called that. Lo and behold, 55 minutes later, he waltzes out of the kitchen with a big smile on his face, with:
Black bean sweet potatoes with sour cream and guacamole
Root vegetable bowls with peanut sauce
Vegan French bread pizza
A tofu egg salad…
There was more, and it was way too much, and showed both his enthusiasm as well as naïvete, but I gave him full marks for trying to suck up to the old girl, meaning me. Moira had been there and she had been more blunt, "…. Luke you're such a guy! You're the butchest guy I know!"
Did I talk in my sleep? More to the point, did I talk while unconscious? Last time it had been a medical anaesthetic - this time? There was no way to tell why I was out.
So, when my mind wandered to June and my fear for her - that she had gone over to Gilead, I tried my best not to speak that fear. Since that conversation with Paula Mackenzie, I'd been having better dreams about Luke and June….
Now? Just who was this shadowy Commander Nicholas Blaine? Who was he besides being 'June's boyfriend'? June has a Gilead Commander for a paramour - not as a Handmaid (that had been Waterford, that had been Lawrence) but as a fucking BOYFRIEND? In my now unconscious state, was I speaking THAT horror out-loud for others to hear?
Nick Blaine, otherwise married - into what her-majesty back at Mackenzie's called, 'D.C. royalty'. 'A good career move', was how Paula had put it. He married their crippled daughter, and she wasn't even 12 years old at the time, Paula said that the girl was pushing 30.
And no one since has made sense of June, my June, being in war-torn Chicago, Blaine being in military control for Gilead, and June 'getting out', being smuggled north by boat.
I hate being out of control. I hate being old.
A PH.D. MEANS YOU'RE A REAL DOCTOR
I guess I was always aware that I was lying prone, being jostled in what was probably the back of a very uncomfortable, bumpy truck.
I must have said something, because over the noise of the travel, a voice responded.
"Right. 'Prone'. 'Prone' means 'lying on your stomach'. You, honey, you are lying supine. Meaning on your back. Me, I'm just a lowly Ph.D., you, you're an M.D. And you don't know that. Me, I do."
For the longest time, for the entire time I tried to gather my sense and at least open my eye-lids, the whole time I tried to fashion a smart remark that would introduce me to full consciousness. But it was difficult. Whoever this was, wherever this was, they had tried to make me comfortable.
As I was rousing, I got a sense of where I was. Me, I was lying SUPINE in the back of a roughly driven truck, obviously speeding too fast on an equally rough road… but I couldn't do anything, except ride out the bumps.
Not really thinking, not even with any ability to plan out my words, I simply blurted out, "June, is that you?"
"No, it's not June. But I know where she is," came the response. More than anything, that shocked me back to the dust of this new world, I'd obviously been thrust into.
The woman's voice continued, "look, don't try to sit up. We're having a bad enough time keeping you 'supine', Dr. Maddox."
As strongly as I could, but still incredibly weakly, I asked, "who are you?"
"Well," began her response, "me, I just joined up with these Marthas. Just to let you know, there are about a dozen crammed into this hell-vehicle."
"But me, Dr. Maddox?" she continued. "You and me, we met. We met at the Bootheel Colony for unwomen. I'm dumbfounded that you survived and that we picked you up, these Marthas did that."
My fog was clearing, but my eyes were still closed. "Dr. Malek!?"
"One and the same. I'm surprised you didn't die of radiation at the Bootheel Colony. Me, I at least got competent treatment. In Canada."
Canada? This truck filled with me, filled with Marthas, filled with unwomen Ph.D.'s - surely it wasn't in Canada? If the Sons of Jacob had taken over north of the border, surely Paula Mackenzie would have said something.
Instead, my eyes opened to the jostling bodies of crammed-in Marthas, Dr. Emily Malek above me, seated on one of the truck's interior side-ledges. (Where, then, was I lying 'supine'?)
Surrendering now to a stream of unconsciousness, I blurted out weakly, "do you know June? June Osborne?"
Her muted response, "June, she saved my life." That did not make sense. There must be a story there - depending on how much time we had in this truck….. "She saved my life, then she caved…."
Continuing blurting out the stuff that bubbled up to thought, I then said, "why is she shacking up with a Commander of Gilead, Nick Blaine?"
What followed was too much silence. The interruption was not truck-caused, Dr. Malek was simply not speaking, not responding to my question.
"That fucker," she spat. "The fucking gaslighter. June's gone mental for him. He's a Commander. He was a Guardian. He took part in particicutions, the bastard. He killed good people, people we needed in Mayday. He was a fucking Eye of God."
I said weakly, "I don't know what any of that means," which was a lie. I knew what all of it meant.
Dr. Malek asked, "why is she 'shacking up' with Nick? Well, she's not. But she wants to be. It's hard to consummate a long-distance relationship as it is. But she's in Toronto, and he splits his time between New Gilead, and D.C. Me, if I get the chance, and I will….. I am going to end him."
That's the last thing I remembered of that rough ride, being jostled to and fro, while 'supine'.
The last thing I remembered? Being weak, and oh so old. My last birthday had just confirmed it. My age, it now had a trailing zero in it.
LA GRANDE FROMAGE
Okay, I actually do know, that in Montréal, they say, 'le grand fromage,' the male version in a gendered language.
Yet the female form of that, which didn't technically exist in French, we'd used it when the head of medical at Somerville Hospital had briefly and uncharacteristically, been a woman. Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler. Due to the inherent sexism and racism of the old medical establishment, La Grande Fromage, Dr. Crumpler only lasted a year.
Yet, from the truck - which mercifully stopped and allowed us to debark…. I'd been taken inside, me propped up by Dr. Malek and one other, one on each side, both in Martha's smocks far cleaner than mine.
When they sat me down in a circle of Marthas, it was clear who in the room was La Grande Fromage.
Even though no one said, it was also clear by everyone's body language that the woman across from me, she had to be Martha Lori. Had to be. I mean, it's what I deserved wasn't it? I had asked about her!
She sat with a more determined… what? A more determined 'what' when compared to the rest of us? Us, we just stared at her in awe. She? She looked to be calculating. The image before me was aided by at least two other, much younger Marthas stationed behind her, occasionally leaning forward and whispering into her ear.
The other thing about Martha Lori - she never spoke. Not really. Occasionally she'd whisper something back to the women behind her - her 'lieutenants'? But mostly she just stared, straight ahead, never making eye-contact with any one woman in the room, not for long anyway.
With one exception.
Me.
She stared at me. Without taking her eyes off of me, she leaned back and whispered something to a lieutenant, then that woman whispered something back.
Martha Lori then leaned forward, a very simple action, but one that quieted the hubbub in the room. People seemed to know, that the otherwise introverted Martha Lori, she was about to say something.
Which she didn't. It wasn't her. One of the women behind her spoke.
She said, "You're Dr. Holly Maddox." No one said anything, I guess that meant everyone was waiting for me to say something. Fortunately for me, when it came to confronting alpha-females, not to mention the betas, this was not my first rodeo. (A blessing of age, I guess.)
Yes, I knew my name. But I knew enough not to go for snark. Not against a beta able to feed off of Martha Lori's control if this room.
So I said, "that I am. And to whom do I have the pleasure….?"
It was clear that the younger lieutenant was the one asking the questions. So she paused, then continued.
"You're June Osborne's mother, aren't you?"
No point in denying it, not that I would. I guess it was both my silence as well as the look on my own face - that I managed through decades of practise - that gave me away. That I was her mother, and I was proud of it.
"Two things," the lieutenant said with an acid gaze, causing me to forget that Martha Lori was still there - this lieutenant could have been Betty Frieden or an Angela Davis, both women I otherwise had admired. Both women who I'd met.
"One: why is your daughter, why is she fucking a Commander of Gilead?" When I didn't reply, the lieutenant added, "don't get me wrong, because I get it. Your daughter was in servitude in three New Gilead estates…. she had a daughter, presumably your granddaughter, stolen, then trafficked. That gave her 'cred' with the resistance…."
It was the second lieutenant on the other side of Martha Lori who added, "she's talking about a bona fide affair, uncoerced, with a Commander!"
There was nothing I could say about that, other than what Paula Mackenzie had said. I wasn't about to quote a Wife of Gilead, not with this lot!
"Okay, there's a second thing, Dr. Maddox," said the first woman, returning as my chief interrogator. When she paused for effect, you could hear the oxygen being drawn out of the room into women's lungs as they prepared for the next probing question, one they seemed to know was coming.
"Why is your daughter, June Osborne, working with other Commanders to kill American special forces? To shoot them down before they get started?" She paused obviously for effect, then the second lieutenant concluded for her, "Elijah Vance, the forces' commander, he had family, too, Dr. Maddox."
I said weakly, "there's no proof that June, June Osborne, that she was working with Commanders."
"Proof?" Martha Lori spat out, the only word I heard her say. After a silence, once again the first woman resumed: "Dr. Maddox, do you have an irony deficiency? She's had a baby with a Commander of the Faithful, and it's no Bilhah baby. Not at all. Dr. Malek, she has confirmed that."
Dr. Malek in her clean Martha garb asked, "after we'd taken care of Commander Waterford for for her, and with her…. why'd she refuse to help the rest of us with ours? Is that because she, like her boyfriend, is an Eye?"
After another silence, the second woman asked, "so, Dr. Maddox, what do YOU have to say?"
PLOT ARMOUR
A third martha then got up and took a place behind Martha Lori with the other two lieutenants. My head was spinning at this interrogation.
This third woman said, "the then-Guardian Blaine, a known Eye God, he spirited June Osborne away from the Waterford home - for three months. All that that accomplished was the capture and killing of Mayday people, a pilot, a Quaker, a Muslim family. Then when she had a chance to get out of Gilead with her baby, Nichole," she said pointing to Dr. Malek, "she gave it to that woman over there for her odyssey north."
I said desperately, "June, my June, she got 86 kidnapped children out! She's not Gilead doing that!"
The third woman answered, "yeah, and Martha Beth and Martha Sienna, they were executed. June just watched. Other Handmaids were killed fleeing, after your daughter had given them up…. do you deny that?"
My head, it was spinning. Me, I needed to kneel down and beg for mercy - not for me, but for June.
"For your daughter, Dr. Maddox, that's a lot of plot armour. All the while, Commander Blaine lurks in the shadows, running her like an embedded agent."
It was not true, none of it. All the while, Martha Lori, she just sat there in front of the three inquisitors, studying me. All the while even in her silence, obviously La Grande Fromage.
This was the first time I felt genuinely afraid in the company of women.