HOLLY AND JUNE IN A CAGE
What Holly was not telling her daughter, was that Martha Lori and her posse were on their way. What June was not telling her mom, was that Nick Blaine, he was on his way.
June Osborne: Mom, I've made some terrible mistakes in my life.
Holly Maddox: Yes, you have. For one thing, you didn't listen to me…..
June Osborne: C'mon, mom, is that not a little like 'victim blaming'? Moooooom, you wouldn't blame a woman who'd dressed for a hot day for her own sexual assault? Why me? Why now?
Holly Maddox: That's not what I meant, June.
June: Oh, it's not?
Holly: No. You know what I mean. Our women's health collective, back in Boston - in Somerville. We debated that sort of thing until Eve and Adam got old…..
June: …. and yet you can say, 'you didn't listen to me'.
- silence -
Holly: Whats the deal with the bitch-queen?
June: Her name is Serena Joy.
Holly: Don't forget the 'Waterford' part….. MRS Waterford. Jeez, you're not even MRS Bankole.
June: ….. oh sure, take a swipe at Luke. Look where we are, mom! You yourself never became anything remotely close to 'Mrs. Osborne', did you?
Holly: Don't throw him in my face! - pause - You wanted me to submit to patriarchy with that Zero, Mr. O?
June: No one wanted you to marry my dad, least of all me. I mean, I wanted you to, when I was five. Not now, not with what I know now. Me, I'm married - I have two daughters of my own to blame my lot on…..
Holly: Ooooooooooo, who's close now? Close to complaining that neither Hannah nor Nichole 'listen' to you.
- silence -
June: - pause - You know what really got me with Hannah? I mean, even more of a gut punch than at the Mackenzie summer house? Even more than when wee little Hannah-banana scolded me… "why didn't you try harder?"….
Holly: June, I am so sorry.
June: What got me - it was the night that Emily rescued Nichole, took her to Canada. I'd made it to the Mackenzie house….
Holly: … for a Handmaid, a Bilhah woman, you certainly enjoyed a freedom of movement….
June: What got me was Tabitha Mackenzie. I asked Tabitha how she knew about Fred arranging a meet between me and Hannah at the closed-up summer-house, in the middle of winter. You know what she said? She said, "Agnes had nightmares for weeks after that. Of course she told me about it, I'm her mother."
- silence -
June: I've survived a lot, even survived a gunshot. I hope to survive this prison. - pause - I nearly succumbed to Tabitha on Agnes viewing her, not me, as her mother.
SERENA JOY BFF - SHE UNDERSTOOD ME
Holly: So you may as well tell me about detente with MRS Waterford.
Serena Joy Waterford, fucking pathological. Tuello had wanted to know why I did what I did, why I risked everything to get 86 kids out. I told him. I did it because of the Serenas. I promised a dying handmaid - who'd just had her baby surgically cut from her, then left to die - I promised that they would hurt the way we hurt. I thought about what the 'Serenas' would deserve. They take everything from you. Bodily autonomy!? Ha! What bodily autonomy!? She's a psychopath.
But you wanted to know what changed? Me, I changed. Ha! Even Fred and I hung out in Canada, shot the breeze about Offred - what we admired about her. I mean, me I was Offred, but no more. Fred and I, we gossiped about her, as rapists and victims do.
You know what he told me? He told me, me as June, that he missed Offred. That he thought they both needed each other. Badly. To 'survive' in their own ways. He said it wasn't love, thank God, but he said it was something very strong. He said he missed her. I almost killed him right there.
So, rather than tear him apart, like Handmaids did at particicutions, I tried to be strong, strong like my mother. I said that I, too, missed Offred. I missed her strength. I'd never recovered that, not in Canada. Thinking of Offred was inspiring - ha, she was taller than me! She was inspiring, so Fred and I, me June, we lifted a glass - 'to Offred'.
To which he added, 'to our Offred'. I almost killed him right there.
THE VESSEL
Holly: I was talking about the bitch-queen, Serena. Not Fred. Fred got what he deserved. You ended up sharing diapers with MRS Waterford, for fuck's sake.
With Serena, it was different. At the time, I didn't know why she'd shot Mr. Shaw, me on my knees praying, praying that our children would find peace. Then she shot HIM! Then took off with me. With no plan, pregnant and no country to flee to. That was in No Man's Land, she had me dead to rights. We had nowhere to go. It was so unlike Serena, she had no plan.
Then Serena went into labour. Right there, in that car, in that barn. Me, I'll tell you how bad it was. It was so bad, I thought of Aunt Lydia, and my first day with the Waterfords. Aunt Lydia was intoning, 'The Gates of heaven do not open without extraordinary effort.' That we were to support our sister, Ofclarence, another handmaid who I'd never met, to 'beckon this soul forward.'
So fast forward, it was now Serena's turn, in that cold, cold barn, in No Man's Land. Fitting. I told Serena that if I'd died doing what she was now doing, no one would have noticed, it would have been like I'd never existed.
Like with Aunt Lydia, the day I first met Serena - Ofclarence was dying while giving birth. Did anyone really care about Ofclarence? Not that that mattered. 'Kill my envy, command my tongue, trample down self. Deliver me from my unclean thoughts, the sugar of sin.' Me, then Fred's Offred, I knew I wouldn't make it because when I was told to pray for the unborn baby, I prayed instead for Ofclarence, a woman I'd never met, whose real name I never knew.
That's when I listened to you, Mom. You taught me that. Women were people. They were not just convenient vessels for men's desires. That's what I learned from you.
So after Noah had been born in No Man's Land, Serena, she had the gall to give up. Manipulative, psychopathic Serena, bitch with all the tools, she was giving up. Told me to take Noah back to Canada, told me to leave her there, because her role 'as vessel' was now complete. She saw no need to treat her own infection, her own hypothermia.
She drank her own poison. I could not allow that.
So, Mom, you ask, 'why the detente with the fucking bitch-Queen'?
Why? Because she was a woman. As simple as that. She was not a vessel for someone else's desires, that's the Gilead crap that she, herself, wrote about - when women could write! I mean, it had been Serena Joy in her book, "A Woman's Fucking Place", she wrote that. Then Lydia's voice echoed, "Ofclarence had 'fulfilled her duty to His world'," but hearing Serena Joy reject Noah with that noise?
Fuck that. That's what you would have done, mom.
Serena wanted to know why I'd killed Fred, and not her. I was honest. Murder was not something to overthink. I'd underthought it, with both Fred and with her. I told her I didn't shoot her, simply because 'I didn't want to'.
Then Serena explained why she could not go back to Canada. Because of The Wheelers, the people who'd sent Mr Shaw with her to come get me. To kill me. Instead, Serena shot Mr. Shaw and then did a hard delivery of Noah in a cold, unsterile barn.
She said about the Wheelers, she was like a handmaid. She looked at me and said, 'it's like with them I was you.' I almost killed her right there.
But I told you, mom, I was going to underthink all this.
IN PRAISE OF LUKE, SERENA-STYLE
She then melted down. She could not go back to Canada, she could not go to Gilead. She said she had no future. She wanted Noah to be raised by me and Luke - yes, the 'Luke' who you detest so much. We were to teach Noah to be a decent man, not like his father, not like her. Like Luke.
She said that God had arranged for me and Luke that day, to save Noah. We were her angel, now that she as a vessel was empty. Fuck that. In memory of Ofclarence, in memory of Natalie, Ofmatthew, fuck that. Every one of them were people, not vessels - even Serena Joy.
Me? I reached down and listened to my inner-Mom, my inner-Holly, and called, 'bullshit'. She then called me an avenging angel. She was still just a vessel, birthing him, then floating him on the Nile to be picked up by royalty. Me and Luke. That that was God's will.
Gid's will? Once again, I cried bullshit.
I told her that when I was Offred, I simply did not matter. That I didn't care about her apologies. They were too late. We mattered. Always had. We were…. we are people. We had… we have lives…..
….. 'and that's why I'm going to save yours, Serena', I told her. Do unto others? Probably. But mostly because this was not Gilead, not no more. 'And I am not you, Serena.'
I thought at that time of Tabitha Mackenzie, being the only mother-Hannah-had who could sit with her after her nightmares. To Hannah, Tabitha was the only person in the world who she knew. Tabitha was the only familiar smell. The only recognizable voice. Not my voice, Tabitha's.
That's what was killing me.
So I told Serena, 'you are his mother, THAT is God's will. Do you understand me?'
LIEUTENANT STANS - CONTRACTED OUT
The lid on the box swung open from the side. It was all either Holly or June could do to avoid tumbling out. They'd had no idea how long the two of them had been confined so, all they knew was their conversation.
As mother and daughter. Long overdue.
June was weak and barely conscious. She felt the hands of Guardians pulling on her. 'Funny', she thought, 'you can always tell when it's a Guardian grabbing at you!'
She felt them lifting her, laying her onto a table, where her hands were secured above her head, and legs secured splayed open at the other end. She heard the same Guardians struggling to do the same with her mom, at a table not six feet away.
June struggled with the light. She was now facing the dimply lit ceiling, and as low as the light was, it was still a painful adjustment.
Then it went quiet, in that cold cement room. June lay there as still as she could, which (it turned out) was not a problem.
She then heard her mother's voice. "June, no matter what, remember I love you. No matter what you hear from me, don't give them a fucking thing. Keep your fucking shit together." Yup, that was June's mom, in that room only Holly could have just made June feel 10 years old again.
Then the door opened, and the sweet, swarmy voice of Lieutenant Stans filled the room. As dulcet as his tones were, he simply could not talk softly! He had four Guardians in tow.
Stans announced to the room, "Ms. June Osborne, as I live and breathe. Why I never. You look just as lovely and delicate as the last time."
June couldn't focus her eyes, she just had to trust her ears. She then heard her mom say, 'fuck you, dude and the horse you rode in on…..'
Holly's words were replaced by her violently expelling air after a punch. June knew all those sounds. She'd been with Lieutenant Stans before.
"So, please don't let me interfere with a lovely mother-daughter reunion. But I should apologize for my mood, Ms. Osborne. This is the first time I've been out this far - well, since it was no longer the United States. I used to be a Colorado Avalache fan, when they relocated from Quebec City. But I digress. I apologize in advance for my annoyance at having to travel, it sours my mood. But the New Gilead Commanders, they insisted, they're paying my expenses, so I truly have no complaints, do I?"
June felt Stans's breath above her face, resigning herself that there was no preparation for what he might do, when he wanted to do it.
THE SKINNY FROM ABOVE
"So, Ms. Osborne," Stans said in his sweet voice, as if he'd been a kindly, former highschool teacher of hers, now pleasantly-pleased at their reunion. "It was a sad mistake for you and your mom to leave Canada, and make a try for your daughter, your mom's granddaughter. Such devotion, truly inspiring. So, there's no reason for me NOT to tell you how this is going to end."
As the Guardians were placing a towel over June's face, and as they picked up a sloshing bucket of water, Stans continued: "here's the skinny. I'm equally devoted to my own daughter, you of all people should appreciate that. She's Agnes's age! For me missing my own daughter's birthday today back in Boston, me being summoned to Colorado Springs here… we're just going to do some things….."
".…. before Commander Blaine arrives and spoils it all. Don't worry, Ms. Osborne, you'll survive this. You might wish you weren't. It seems that Commander Blaine has got back into favour."
NO WAY TO PREPARE
As June heard the bucket slosh closer to her towel-covered head, Stans concluded.
"Don't worry about your mom, either. There's nothing we can do to her that the tumor growing within her won't spoil…. for me, I mean." Before the first pour onto the towel, Stans said, "oh? She didn't tell you about the tumor? Mothers should not have secrets from their daughters."