GILEAD'S GALACTIC HYPOCRISY

Too much water under the bridge. How else to describe now being here in Colorado Springs? (Although the fuckers in Gilead, they don't call it that any more. Apparently, colonisers get naming rights. They call where I'm at now, 'The Western Colonies of Gilead' quite the name for an area west of the old USA mid-west, this area not having the same concentration of Unwomen enslavement camps, where we died a slow death doing anti-contamination busy-work…. but I digress!)

What am I doing here? I am doing a better job at surviving, that's what I'm doing. Before coming here, I must have been the only unwoman in existence to actually be treated for radiation complications - a large tumour as well as another huge radiation-caused mass removed - all done in a proper hospital. They never told me where.

I know. I had no idea where the hospital was, but it was the closest thing to the CHA Somerville Hospital Campus, back in Boston, I'd seen since…. well, since the USA went all to shit.

One huge difference? All men. Doctors, nurses, administrators, care aides…. all male. Quite the culture shift, not a 'womyn's' hand in sight.

At first, I'd thought it had been Dr. Gil Yates who'd arranged that for me. He'd pissed-off Gilead enough to be transferred to the Bootheel Colony, as their chief of medicine. (By the way, that was a weak attempt at a joke, folks. A 'chief of medicine' at a enslavement camp for women? Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,…. c'mon, get with the program! Laugh at least a little bit!)

But the sole post-op visit in that modern hospital I was to get from 'Dr. Yates', he told me he'd had nothing to do with it. Sure, he'd seen all the paperwork. After my post-op recovery, he only obliquely alluded to being aware of the behind the scenes machinations to get me into Martha service here in the Western Colonies….

….. that it had to do with Commander Mackenzie. That's right, the Commander of Gilead who'd been behind the major facilities-upgrade that Bootheel briefly got…. until the international community saw through Gilead's galactic hypocrisy and was not fooled. If they ever were.

In fact, perhaps the only thing Commander Mackenzie and his fascist colleagues accomplished - accidentally - was that through the Mexicans who came out to Bootheel, I found out about my beloved June - and the less than beloved Luke - and Hannah. The first info about any of them.

Although Hannah was not 'Hannah' anymore.

Hannah was 'Agnes'. 'Agnes Mackenzie'. She not knowing that the martha of the house, me, was her grandmother.

THE MARTHA OF THE HOUSE

If my presence here was the plot of an old NetFlix police procedural, we would now have a discussion of the crime's motive. Meaning, 'why'? Why was I moved from a death sentence at Bootheel, given proper medical treatment - which saved my life - and then put into Martha service in (what's not to be called) Colorado Springs?

Why? You got me. As of this moment, I have no clue.

Yet watching Hannah grow up….. er, watching 'Agnes' grow up (I'll deal with my 'naming' missteps next paragraph) was an unimagined joy, me thinking of myself as a surrogate for my daughter, June, where I could watch over her daughter, my granddaughter, in close proximity for June. As a mom myself, a bad one at that, I knew what it would do to June to be herself enslaved and unable….

…. to move heaven and earth to get Hannah out. I know in my tired old bones that June would not have given up on that - even as she had initially gone all moral-blind about the Sons of Jacob, saying that the fundie-revolt in the USA, that it would pass.

Now? It didn't pass. Not by a long shot. Now June was enslaved out on the east coast, Luke Bankole was in Canada drinking lattes, and I am out in Colorado Springs listening to Gilead's acquired air force roar overhead.

TABITHA MACKENZIE

For a child-trafficker, Tabitha Mackenzie was not all that bad. She treated Hannah, her Agnes, quite well. For an entitled bitch who'd never once known the oppressive jackboot of Gilead on her neck, for someone who'd lived a life of unimaginable privilege….

Tabitha was actually quite decent.

I'd call her a 'Karen', but back in Boston I'd got in trouble for using a good woman's name as a slur. So, I won't call her that. Gilead itself had no term for an entitled woman. The Wives? The Wives themselves, they simply called each other bitches - when they were talking behind their backs.

Okay, she'd socked me a couple of times. Tabitha had a surprising upper cut. Especially during my first few weeks 'martha'ing' in her house, the Commander's mansion - I'd been decked more than once. My coffee, she'd said, it was 'spider's piss'. It was a good thing I was old, because any impulse I'd had to strike back, to get immediate physical retribution (as well as a one-way ticket to 'The Wall'), it was not there.

My mind had been agile, but the flesh was weak. Even my new tumourless body was weak. As my old uncle used to say before he died in his 90s, he'd say that he was 'well stricken with age'.

As was I when Tabitha Mackenzie would sock me, blacken my eye for the least of my original Martha-missteps, which were many. It was mostly my deficient cooking, but my laundry skills were not great either.

What was it that made her decent? Through all that?

She never did it in front of Agnes/Hannah. Okay, it may have been massive entitlement on her part to be selective like that, but let me tell you about the ONLY time I talked back to her.

It was the only time I'd not referred to her as 'Mrs. Mackenzie'. There I was, lying on the floor, holding my forehead, initially and immediately fashioning an excuse for how I 'must have tripped', so as to earn the bruise on my face while denying Mrs. Mackenzie's involvement.

Instead, I lay there below her and blurted out, 'Jesus, Tabitha, not in front of Agnes. She's not stupid.'

Mrs. Mackenzie then proved herself to be somewhat decent. Instead of calling for the household Guardian and having me dragged away to be tortured, she sat down at the kitchen table, where the open shaker of salt I had spilled was, leaving its contents all over.

She said. "You're right, I apologize." She paused, then added - out of the blue, "Agnes's Bilhah mother, she talked back to me like that. Frances, our then-Martha, she calmed me down. You, Holly, you are no Frances. Agnes, she loved Francis. Frances could make coffee. But that night, the night of Baby Nichole's disappearance, Offred, she had made her way to our house, the night of the fires, the night of the first kidnapping."

I told Jonathan to bring Offred in, I didn't want her shot in our yard. I didn't want Agnes to see that, because Offred, she'd been in the house - Kyle had been away. I told Jonathan that Agnes, she had slept through it all. And please, don't touch Frances. Agnes adored Frances. That did no good.

I knew Offred would be taken back to the Red Centre after this anyway. I'm not naïve, I know how they discipline their Bilhah women there.

But I told her, I told Offred, soon to become Ofjoseph, that this had to end. I told her that both the Commander and I thanked God for her, Offred, for bringing Agnes into the world. That Agnes was now everything to us.

But I then scolded her, I gave Offred a good talking to. I told her that Agnes had had nightmares for weeks after the summerhouse. Offred showed her shallowness, by being dumbfounded that Agnes had told me about Fred Waterford's little plan to reunite a Handmaid with her seed. I said to her, 'Of course Agnes told me, I'm her mother.'

I swear, up until that time, Offred had never once contemplated that I was Agnes's mother. How can handmaids be dense like that? Offred had done the original hard work of birth - we bless her for that. Now? We had grown the girl, we had loved and fed her all the subsequent years. Offred was just confusing her, Offred was just being selfish and cruel.

I told her that Agness was a happy, thriving, amazing little girl. That she liked to sew, but wasn't very good at it. But that she liked to cook. When Offred told me that Agnes's biological father liked to cook, I said to her, 'I guess I now know where she gets it from!' There we were talking about the same little girl that we loved. Like a couple of mothers do.

I told Offred that Agnes would even get the allergy shots, the ones so that she could get a dog. Kyle, he was against a dog, but Agnes had a way with the Commander. She was 'working on him'. Kyle, he would go insane if anything happened to Agnes.

Offred, she thanked me for the home I was making for Agnes. Me, I then told Offred to stop. If she loved her daughter, she had to let go.

I then told her, 'Agnes has your eyes'. That was the last I ever saw of the woman.

Although Kyle, he's still paranoid about Offred. As I was to find out, he should be.

That's how I got to know more about my granddaughter, although I never risked telling Mrs. Mackenzie. I still did not know why I had been posted to their house to begin with - posted because of my non-existent Martha skills.

And then, a blow to us all. To Hannah as well as to me, because of the bargain that The Missus and I had made that last time she had belted me and had knocked me to the floor.

Tabitha Mackenzie, she died. Agnes, my Hannah, went into herself. She had lost the only mother she had ever known. I'd seen it dozens of times back at Somerville Hospital - when I'd had to tell children that a parent had died.

Me, I did not have that kind of bedside manner, not with kids. Hannah was devastated.

A ROYAL REMARRIAGE

Then?

Paula. Commander's Wife Paula Saunders, she became Paula Mackenzie - after the mysterious death of Commander Saunders, a death other Marthas only talked about in whispers.

Paula Mackenzie, I'd seen her there in the Mackenzie house many times when Tabitha was alive. I'd seen Kyle and Tabitha argue about her.

But I had no privileged information about that other than that eventually there was a new Mrs. Mackenzie lording it over the house.

One who never once belted me. One who virtually ignored Agnes.

IN FEAR OF JUNE OSBORNE

I'll skip the bit about when Agnes had gone missing. The House Guardian had gone to pick up Hannah from her local preparatory school, and she wasn't there. I was to see first hand why Tabitha had said that it was easy for Kyle, the Commander, to go insane about his 'daughter'. I delivered coffee to his office many times when he'd be shouting into the phone.

The way he shouted - apparently at other, far off Commanders - I got the feeling that it had been June herself, that she had somehow arranged Agnes's/Hannah's 'kidnapping' from Colorado Springs to a prison somewhere in the east.

My June? Had pulled that off?

Mrs. Mackenzie, meaning this time Tabitha, she filled me in. I found out when Agnes had been returned, just as Tabitha went into her decline.

Kyle had said that he'd hoped that June Osborne, that once she was in Toronto that 'things would settle down'. They hadn't. The old Offred had arranged Fred Waterford's murder. How does an exiled Handmaid do that? Kyle then told me that with the Americans behind her, she could very easily get to our family.

I told Kyle, that we must never do anything to her Bilhah mother, anything that would turn Agnes against us. That it was one of God's mysteries how such a sweet girl had come from such a devil of a woman. Kyle reprimanded me, he said that Agnes was strong, that she would eventually understand. But that the cancer known as June Osborne, it needed to be excised.

That was it. Then Tabitha was gone, with her more personal cancer. The last person entrenched in the power-elite who would give me the time of day, she was gone.

Replaced by Paula Saunders. A tyrant of a different colour.

MRS MACKENZIE 2.0

It was stunning how quickly the new Mrs. Mackenzie established herself at the Mackenzie mansion, the one I ran as Martha. Three-quarters of Tabitha's kitchen utensils were gone within the week. Of course, Tabitha's wardrobe was trashed, not even sent off the The Colonies, to benefit some unwomen like I'd been benefited.

Equally stunning, was how quickly Agnes got shipped off to Rubies Preparatory School, for marriage training. She had just turned 13. Paula Mackenzie had sold the idea to her new husband, Commander Kyle, by saying, 'look, the little bitches Shummanite and Becka - the daughter of that pervert dentist - they're going. So Agnes is going. It'll get her out of the house. I need her closet space.'

It was, though, what Paula Mackenzie said to me that dropped the floor from beneath me.

The Commander, he was away. I was serving her highness a late dinner, it being just the two of us in this palatial, and now quiet-as-a-coffin place.

I was serving her post-dinner coffee in the main dining room, still set up immaculately, even though she was the only one dining.

As I poured she looked up at me, with that typical Wives'-scheming look. Me, I wondered if I was going to get an uppercut, like what Tabitha had done.

Instead, with a sour wince Paula took a sip of her coffee, me waiting obediently if she wanted an immediate refill or top-up.

She then said, "you know why you're here, don't you Holly? I mean, why you, a Boston-trained M.D., a survivor of The Colonies, employed as a Martha in what you'd call Colorado Springs? You, a Martha, - you, who's someone who doesn't know shit about making coffee or doing a laundry. Jesus, Holly, this coffee, it's piss. Let's see, why would Commander Mackenzie put up with years of bad coffee?"

As she held out her cup for an immediate refill, she said, "the former-Commander Saunders, he was a doofus, he deserved what he got. Kyle? He's brilliant. He knows how to survive. It's why he brought you here…"

Pausing, she then said, "as insurance."