THE INDIGNITY OF HANDCUFFS

Martha Lori and her lieutenant had thought that this was it. They knew it would come eventually, why not today? Being taken by Guardians - ones she did not recognize - she always knew it could happen.

Given her reputation, she prepared herself for the 'last words' she would utter before being hanged. Or worse. What 'last words' would go with being torn apart by dogs? For a leader in Mayday like her, carefully chosen 'last words' could inspire the next generation of women opposing fascism.

Or Gilead.

Looking over at her young companion, her lieutenant, Lori wondered if the woman would similarly show bravery in the face of the fascists. She was young, had an attitude, but could very well fold and embarrass them both. 'Fascists', that was the word that the woman's sociology class had once taught her. Now the woman was stuck with all that old academic rhetoric - words which never would have flown back in Lori's old neighbourhood. Back there the issue was race, not class.

Being beaten by cops.

The reason Lori kept her around was that the woman was a useful mouthpiece - she knew what Lori was thinking, and had the gift of the gab. She allowed Lori to sit back while others argued. Sit back, listen, observe. Indeed, Lori had done that in Commander Lawrence's basement, the day she'd met with Ofjoseph (June Osborne) about Billy's cargojet shipment. Martha Lori had piggybacked on a cargoplane of Commander's contraband - all Ofjoseph had wanted was to continue the piggyback meme - wait for it to be unloaded and then load it up again, leave with Gilead's most precious.

That's what bugged Lori about Osborne. All Osborne had wanted was to hurt Gilead, not bring it down. Lori's lieutenant had called Osborne a 'useful idiot' for Gilead. All wounding Gilead did was make the Commanders crack down - mostly it was Marthas who paid the price….

….. and nothing fundamentally changed.

Lori should have ordered either Martha Beth or Martha Sienna to put poison in Osborne's soup. Indeed, look where Beth and Sienna were now. Dead. Five floors below the roof of Lieutenant Stans' hotel. Losing Beth was a huge, huge blow to Martha Lori's work.

As the prisoner truck was bumping along, that's where Lori's mind went. The operations she had overseen, the ones that had been inordinately successful, the ones where women had died. Interlopers like Osborne, whose only talent was showing others The Wall. 'Useful'? Nope. 'Idiot'? Definitely.

Lori hoped against all hope that she'd never hear Ofjoseph's, Osborne's name again.

It was the lieuenant who said, "it looks like we're coming to a stop. I wish to Jesus that they'd tell us what this was about. My bet? We'll be shot as soon as they drag us out." Lori's bet was on the dogs.

Indeed, the truck did stop. The large doors at the rear swung open.

As the two women were roughly dragged down onto the pavement, they immediately knew they were in one of the dingier areas of the city. It was the smell. Specifically, an area without the means or people of position to employ a Martha. It did not look good.

A NOT VERY USEFUL IDIOT

Lori saw him first, seeing him just made her mad. Even madder when she saw the star on his shoulder. Nick Blaine, he was now a Commander - Commander of the Faithful of Gilead.

It had been Martha Beth who had introduced the two. Back then, Blaine had been a Guardian and the Waterford's bodyman.

Since then? He'd traded information for trucks - one truck was to get a handmaid, the Waterford Bilhah slave, out of the city, north to Canada. The handmaid had been pregnant. Indeed, she had been June Osborne, the name which kept surfacing. Making Lori curse.

Seeing Blaine now flanked by his own security Guardians, the first thing Lori thought? 'Whose fucking side is he on?'

But as she got her bearings and regained balance to stand beside her lieutenant, she didn't wait for her assistant to speak. Yes, Lori was that mad. No observations now, not today, not after being roughed up like that. No 'sit back and observe others as they argued'. Not this time.

"That star on your shoulder," she barked even for Blaine's Guardians to hear, "doesn't mean you can round us up like unwomen!" Lori lifted her hands showing Blaine the handcuffs she was sporting, the chafing marks on her wrists.

Blaine, he was like her. Unlike her, though, he maintained his introverted posture, stood silently and unreactive. Waiting for the situation to settle, watching what everyone was doing before he'd commit.

Her anger having got the better, she continued for ALL to hear. If she was going down, so was Blaine. "If you want a shipment, go through the normal fucking channels. That's what they're there for," she paused while lifting her shackled wrists again, "this is not one of those channels!"

So far, her lieutenant had not said a word, but Lori could tell that her young companion was chomping at the bit.

Finally, Commander Blaine played his card - the only one, appartently, he'd brought.

"I'm looking for June Osborne," he said. Lori wondered, 'what am I now, OSBORNE'S lieutanant? Fuck me!'

Lord above, she thought, I can't get rid of that bitch! So without thinking, she spat out, "fuck June Osborne."

Watching her boss make rookie mistakes, it was now when the lieutenant spoke up, it being her job to protect the fabled Martha Lori from herself.

"Lori," the young woman said, "shut up." That stopped everyone dead. Everyone there knew that few would talk to Lori like that. It drew a look from Blaine, Lori, as well as two Guardians, all of whom knew the score.

Ignoring best advice, but enraged by the mention of Osborne, Lori lectured, "a lot of brave women died trying to protect her. Fucking plot armour. Everyone that helps her ends up on the fucking wall. Except for her."

Lori now had no idea why Blaine was not saying more. The young woman flashed a look at her emphasizing the 'shut up!' command she had no authority to give.

Eventually Blaine capitulated, "I know, I'm sorry." Now Lori was confused - but at least now she was convinced that this was not about 'a shipment'. He concluded, "I care about her." After a pause where everyone regrouped a bit he finished with, "What can you tell me?"

"That you're better off without her," Lori said, adding sarcastically, "Commander. Two handmaids were spotted heading into Chicago a week ago, maybe June was one of them. Let's hope. People die in Chicago these days."

Blaine motioned to the Guardians to get the two women back into the van and said, "take them back, nothing's to happen to them."

As the truck got back up to speed and the bumps resumed, it was the lieutenant who spoke.

"You know we can use this against Blaine."

Lori said, "I know, I know. But what is it with Osborne? While Marthas die, she walks though the raindrops. Conspiring with Lawrence, now with Blaine."

"You know what I think," the young woman said, "I think that that kid that was taken north, Baby Nichole, I think she was Blaine's. It's the only explanation."

Martha Lori speculated that Gilead was more 'fucked up', than she had ever known.

How had Osborne managed a one-woman Mayday cell, one that only wounded and never really endangered Gilead?

In the clearing stands a boxer
And a fighter by his trade
And he carries the reminders
Of every glove that laid him down
Or cut him till he cried out
In his anger and his shame
"I am leaving, I am leaving"
But the fighter still remains

GROWING UP BY THE NUMBERS

I was bookish as a kid. A Black, bookish little girl - filled with anxiety, whose goal in life was to fade into the wall beside me, lest I be noticed.

I was bullied in school, but I mostly kept away from folk. Got beaten up for my smarts. 'Smarts' I though everyone had. It was just me and my mom, she protected me as well as she could. Worked two jobs. Was one of the first killed when Gilead took over, at least that's what I put together. After that, I stopped looking.

I always took solace in my numbers. The were constant, predictable, and with hidden fascination. When I was ten, I'd memorized PI to 2,500 digits. Got beaten up for that one. The teacher said I had a real gift, that I could have been another Katherine Johnson, née Coleman. Her mathematics had gotten the original Mercury rockets of the 1960s into space. Black women were essential to the space race? Who knew. It was rumoured that no less than Mercury 7 astronaut John Glenn refused to get into his capsule unless 'that Negro computer' had rechecked the IBM's calcuations.

Me, Katherine Johnson? She'd probably been bullied in school too, a real nerd, a black girl-nerd no less. In the old days, though, NASA had named the 'Katherine G. Johnson Computational Research Facility' after her. Gilead, it changed the name. I think that's when I decided that Gilead needed to be resisted.

The astronauts themselves, they'd given Johnson the 'Silver Snoopy' award, probably the highest honour she was to receive because it was from the men and women who she'd kept alive - all through her math.

Me? No such accolades. I hope one day to have the courage to write about the white boys - the white 'math kids' at school - the ones who wouldn't allow me into their little club. The ones who had accosted me late that night. Had stripped me. Because of math.

Okay, that's enough of that. For now.

When North Carolina was dissolved and our hometown became part of The Atlantic District of Gilead, my mom was taken. I never knew what became of her, meaning I'd never found out how she died. At first the grad school I was attending expelled all the women - me included - then the school was closed all together.

GILEAD - IT'S TEMPORARY

One of my professors, Dr. Allvin Turing - a great name for a mathematician - he saved me. Sort of.

I don't care to relate what I knew about how many of the other expelled women did. I was told some went into Bilhah Service, considered the highest calling for a woman in Gilead, particularly an 'unwoman' as many of us were called. (Black girls earned the additional 'Children of Ham'.)

I never knew how or why Gilead determined that I was infertile. To my knowledge, no one had ever checked. Me, I'd never had sex, so that hypothesis had never been tested. Okay, okay, there were those white math-boys, but I said I wasn't going to write about them.

Certainly once I got into Martha's service at the Turing estate, no one touched me. Pleanty of other Marthas endured what can only be seen as abuse - I once complained to Dr. Turing about it. All he did was sit in his chair silently. I knew he had held me in regard…. but I had no truck with him when I intervened for the women working there.

I knew enough about Gilead by then to listen intently at his next words - words of a useful idiot. I'd known Dr. Turing to be as wise as he was mathematically talented - I had just not known he was such a coward.

"Lori," he said, "Gilead will not be forever. Me, I'm involved with it because they - so far - they need me. It's not just my family, it turns out that Gilead still needs to keep some eggheads on the payroll. If it were up to me, Lori, I'd have you on the payroll, you know the math they throw my way better than me. They don't know what they're missing not having you. Don't get me wrong, you're a great cook, Mrs. Turing says the place is spotless, but you have a way with the other Marthas. You keep them on task. Man oh man, we could use you as an instructor at any Guardian training facility."

"But here's the deal, Lori. You, you have to keep your head down. For the duration. Like I say, Gilead is not forever. You can't disenfranchise half the population, then devote enormous resources to deliver on the compartmentalization of women….."

He stopped seeing the anger on my face. "…. okay, I get from the looking at you, Lori, that none of this is resonating. I get it. I really do. I'm in this seat sipping expensive Scotch, and you're about to return to the kitchen to run this estate like a fine watch. Read Proverbs 31, Lori. The Bible values a woman with the kind of management skills you have. Here at the estate, we see it every day."

He then planted a sense of mission in me, one which until then I'd never contemplated.

He said, "you're destined for better things than food preparation and laundry. I just hope when that happens, that you end up being on our side."

"God has blessed you, Lori. I've always known that - even when you claimed to have solved Hilbert's problems. No one yet has followed your work on that, it'll be a while before another woman is doing mathematics at that level. Gilead has guaranteed that. But keep your head down. Learn how to dissolve into a wall. Don't be on the wall! Learn how not to be noticed."

Not be noticed? I remembered being 10 in school, beating the boys in math. Getting beat up for it. Getting stripped naked for it. Getting….. nevermind. Why do I always come back to those white math boys?

Not be noticed? I think I now run my little insurrection on that principle.