Meanwhile, during the week before our 'date' with Lieutenant Stans…..
God Almighty, I can't believe I'm writing it. Trailing after Dr. Malek westward across Canada, and finding June and Serena Joy in Calgary…. I never thought I'd be saying it.
I mean I'd, myself, been enslaved in the Mackenzie home in what used to be Colorado Springs… but I'd never been a Handmaid, the Mackenzie house never had a handmaid, at least not while I was there.
I mean, my 'women's analysis' knew what to know about the conditions women (as Handmaids) must have endured as Handmaids…. but 'analysis' and knowing was not 'living'.
As Author Margaret Atwood had said back in Toronto, back at her lecture at the Massey Theatre, none of any of this was particularly new. In her observation about women's experience in Gilead, for all of it there was historical precedent, mostly in so-called 'Western' democracies.
So - to experience the euphoria of being reunited with June and with my other grandchild, Nichole, the sobriety of the horror after she and Luke had been separated, and Hannah had been taken…. she took my 'women's analysis' to a completely new level. Wow.
Not to mention - Emily Malek's knife attack on Serena Joy Waterford. Seeing Serena Joy breast-feeding an infant, there was nothing Emily could do with her own rage, except grab a dinner knife. That one was not hard to figure out. Right there in the large meal area of Currie Barracks in Calgary. Not only was the feeding of thousands of American refugees in Calgary difficult to do well - security was also.
Especially when the violence came from within.
As it was, Emily was refused entry to the refugees after that. Canadian refugee police never figured out how Serena had been wounded, and we Americans weren't talking. Not even Serena would tell them, and she damn well knew it was Emily.
That was when June hatched her plan to 'go get Hannah', when June had enlisted the help of other refugees - there still were enough American women awed at June's reputation - to help Serena to look after both Noah as well as Nichole for the duration….
What sealed June's obsession to head south? It was the news that my son-in-law, Luke Bankole, had been released back in Toronto, and was now headed west to, 'come get Nichole'….
Me, I'd also got word from former Marthas, now American refugees interned in Calgary, that Martha Lori was aware of all this. The Marthas railroad was working well, even out in Alberta. I just didn't tell June that if we were to cross back into Gilead, that we had 'back-up', back ups in Marthas.
What had June not told me? Plenty. One was how enmeshed with Commander Nick Blaine that she was. Unbeknownst to me, Blaine was doing all he could to clear a path for June, all the way from the Alberta border to Colorado Springs. How did that work, especially without the underground expertise of Marthas?
I had no idea.
June and I stopped by to pick up Emily, and we headed south towards the border.
June's plan? She said she needed me, her mom, because I'd lived in Colorado Springs with the Mackenzies. (That only meant that I knew the route between their mansion and Loaves and Fishes, I was hardly an expert on the old Colorado! But what can you do?)
Emily knew the Gilead Northern District version of No Mans Land, having grown up in Shelby, Montana. That's why June needed Emily - there were no Marthas is No Mans Lands.
So there you have it. June's plan. To go get Hannah.
To do what American Special Forces had been unable to do. They had, apparently been betrayed.
By June? Me, I never asked.
Would we be betrayed? At that time, who knew?
THE MEDICINE LINE
Me, my daughter June, as well as Dr. Emily Malek - we were cooling our heels in Coutts, Alberta, in the province's extreme south - still in Canada by 100 yards, after traveling to that border town down from Calgary. There we were, at the Hills of Home café, crowded in with other American refugees, most of whom were heading north….
….. after escaping Gilead. Like sane people do.
Us? We were heading south. There we were, within spitting distance of the start of the old Interstate #15, which began mere metres away in Sweetgrass….. okay, I wanted to call it Sweetgrass, 'Montana'. That's what Emily referred to it as.
Her point? That Gilead had never made it that far north, not out there in Big Sky county.
I mean, Emily - she was from Shelby, a small 'Montana' town thirty-five miles straight south on that flat-as-a-pancake prairie vista. Emily, she balked at me referring to it as paralyzingly flat…. up by Sweetgrass, she claimed, there were 'grand rolling hills'. Ha! She saw them, but me, I didn't see them…. I'm from Boston!
Me, I have to get all of this down, I am told I don't have a lot of time.
What was the hold-up in Coutts on the Canadian side? Well, it turned out that this 'No Mans Land' in the middle of North America - was just as chaotic as the one closer to my old home. Here it was the Fort Peck Reservation border guards, the Húŋkpapȟa Lakota indigenous people who referred to the 49th Parallel border, as 'The Medicine Line'.
That's right - not American, not Gilead Guardians, but the Fort Peck Indian Reservation to the east, they now managed the border - the Indigenous had taken over 'border security' at the Medicine Line, joining with the Blackfeet Reservation to the west from there.
They controlled entry (and exit!) from this No Mans Land…. into which us three women wished to cross. Strangely, both the Blackfeet as well as the Fort Peck Assiniboine, Dakota and Lakota peoples now had little quarrel with us ex-pat Americans. Not now. A common enemy will do that. Gilead now was as much their enemy as it was ours.
It was the Canadians - with no indigenous presence on the Canadian side! - it was them who wanted us properly registered as 'voluntarily repatriating ourselves' to Gilead. Which was NOT what we were doing.
What were we doing? Emily and I, we were following my daughter June, slaking her obsession with Hannah. June was wringing one last ounce from her 'Che Guevara-like' reputation among women, to go race after Hannah.
Which didn't explain why Emily had come. Now that I think of it. Emily still distrusted her, still resented June's lack of commitment to other women.
The three of us planned to do what American Special Forces couldn't. That was June's plan. We were relying on Fort Peck indigenous folk, who out there on the prairie, the Assiniboine, Lakota and Dakota were the equivalent to the Quakers out east.
The other elephant in that Coutts café? What had June been doing on that telephone call (that I'd heard with my own ears) between Commanders Mackenzie and Lawrence - the night Gilead shot American Special Forces out of the sky?
Shot them down, probably from above the very prairie we hoped to cross to rescue Hannah.
EMILY'S MOOD
Which did not really explain, not really, why Emily Malek was with us. Not after she'd attacked Serena Joy back in Calgary. As I had noted, during Emily's and my escape from Gilead out at the old Vermont/Quebec border - Emily's regard for June….. let's just say that their 'relationship' was a work in progress. As mainly a quiet introvert, Dr. Malek was hard to read.
Was she silently biding her time about June? As such I watched her like a hawk.
June, Emily had once said, was selfish.
Why had Martha Lori insisted that Emily come with me, when the Marthas had loaded me on the Underground Femaleroad back east? (All Martha Lori had said to me was, that if I got back into the hands of Gilead in any way, shape or form, that she would send a posse for me.)
My oh my. It's hard to keep this straight.
But ever since Calgary, Emily had not delivered on what I had feared. No, Emily had not killed Serena Joy Waterford on sight. She'd tried, I'll give her that.
Emily's mood? I'll get back to you on that. She had killed neither June nor Serena Joy on sight, so her mood was hidden somewhere in her maddeningly introverted manner.
WHY SHELBY?
People are complex.
June's arrangement in Calgary started with the charges against Luke being dropped back in Toronto. June's plans for me and Emily were cemented when American Mark Tuello had visited the camp in Calgary.
The Toronto Police Service FINALLY conceded that Luke beating the shit out of a driver who'd just driven his truck over June, that all of that could be seen as 'self-defense'. Luke had used 'reasonable force', especially when the guy emerged from his truck with a rifle. So Luke was able, with Tuello's help, to collect Nichole in Calgary, probably thinking that June would also rejoin him.
Except June had other plans. 'Life' is what June does to you, when you thought you had other plans.
June's arrangement? When we tracked her down at the Currie Barracks in Calgary, me and Emily, Emily was quite unprepared to be face-to-face with Serena Joy, former Wife of Gilead. If Emily had meant any harm against June, for June's betrayal of the women back in Moira Strand's self-help group - seeing Mrs Waterford put the brakes on that.
Seeing Serena Joy, Emily lost it.
When June had seen me, it was different. June threw herself at me, she lost herself! She'd thought I'd been dead - she thought I'd succumbed to the Colonies. I tried to relate to her as much as I could about how I'd survived, about how I'd become 'useful' to Commander Mackenzie….. I mean, on that alone, June had not even known that Tabitha Mackenzie had died, and that Paula Saunders/Mackenzie was now Hannah's mother.
So in scattergun, roller coaster fashion, June shifted from tears of joy about seeing me, to wails of despair hearing about Tabitha's death. "Noooooooooooo," June wailed, "Tabitha loved Hannah!"
Tabitha had been to Hannah/Agnes what June could only have nightmares about. There were many tortures Gilead afflicted upon women. Having June mourn Tabitha was one of them.
Seeing her go through hell in the first half-hour of our reunion - a reunion in the Canadian city of Calgary of all places! - I knew June enough to see a plan hatch within her.
It had been what I'd always hoped she would do when she was a teen - when she rolled her eyes at my activism in Somerville, Massachusetts.
Do something.
ROLLER COASTER NAMED EMILY
That, friends, was just the first half-hour of my reunion with my daughter. In Calgary!
Calamity June. Her plan to rescue Hannah. What she had not revealed, not at that time, was that her secret benefactor, Commander Nick Blaine - he was not going to let lasting harm descend on June.
Which when you factor in the roller coaster known as Emily Malek…. entailed the Assiniboine guide taking us as far south as Shelby, Montana… ah, er… Shelby, Northern District of Gilead….. ah, er, Shelby, smack in the middle of Big Sky's version of No Mans Land, where the Blackfeet, Assiniboine, Dakota and Lakota flexed a muscle to keep Gilead at bay, a muscle that they'd not flexed since the 1880s.
Okay, now I've taken you as far south as Shelby.
As we drove down into the Marias River Valley where the 3,000+ Shelby residents lived, one couldn't help but notice the drones hovering overhead. Our Assiniboine guide calmed us, saying that the drones were, 'the Blackfeet contribution to kicking Gilead's ass, and keeping our lands free.'
Okay.
He told us that ever since the collapse of the old State of Montana, that Gilead had never much controlled much north of Great Falls. "We Indians," he'd said, "these are our lands. We know how to protect them."
He said, "those Gilead bastards, they are worse than the blue jackets from Washington. But you know what? They have no honour. They don't respect things like 'counting coup', they would not admit defeat - that was our way to give them an honourable way of surrendering. Counting Coup. But when they started shooting our warriors who gave them that chance, they got no mercy! They are the savages. So we now just wipe them out, they've had their chance."
Once in town, Emily asked if the guide could take us to Shelby High School, up on 6th Avenue N. When we got there we saw some burned out houses near the school. Emily shouted for us to stop outside of one of the charred lots, this neighbourhood looked like it had once been a war-zone. She got out, and stood at what once had been a curb, what once had been a sedate sidewalk.
All she did was stare at the charred remains at what once had been a house.
Through her tears she said, "I don't remember if this is the remains of our house, or the Morris's who lived next door. I can't tell."