|
We slept in what had once been the gymnasium.
the music lingered, a palimpsest of unheard sound
There was old sex in the room and loneliness.
We yearned for the future.
Aunt Sara and Aunt Elizabeth patrolled; they had electric cattle prods
They were objects of fear to us
We learned to whisper without almost without sound.
Alma. Janine. Dolores. Moira. June.
A chair, a table, a lamp.
A return to traditional values. Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?
Thinking can hurt your chances, and I intend to stay.
ladies in reduced circumstances. That is what we are now.
Where I am is not a prison but a privilege.
Everything except the wings around my face is read: the colour of blood, which defines us.
grandfather clock
flowers, red and blue
fairytale figure in a red cloak
She puts the veil on to go outside, but nobody much cares who sees the face of a Martha.
the frown isn’t personal: it’s the red dress she disapproves of, and what it stands for.
How I used to despise such talk. Now I long for it.
I hunger to commit the act of touch.
The tulips are red, a darker crimson towards the stem, as if they had been cut and are beginning to heal there.
Many of the Wives have such gardens, it’s something for them to order and maintain and care for.
I am a reproach to her, and a necessity.
The cigarettes must have come from the black market, I thought, and this gave me hope.
For me, like liquor and coffee, cigarettes were forbidden.
I wanted, then, to turn her into an older sister, a motherly figure, someone who would understand and protect me.
I thought I was sounding like that, voice of a monotone, voice of a doll.
They can hit us, there’s Scriptural precedent.
She could smile and cry at the same time
The woman sitting in front of me was Serena Joy. Or had been, once. So it was worse than I thought.
Car names – Whirlwind (Jeremiah 23:19), Chariot (of fire), Behemoth (Job 40:15)
This at least hasn’t changed, the way men caress good cars.
Perhaps he is an Eye. (of Nick)
They also serve who only serve and wait, said Aunt Lydia. (fundamentalist Christian John Milton)
Think of yourself as seeds
a shape, like mine, a nondescript woman
Blessed be the fruit … May the Lord open.
The truth is that she is my spy, as I am hers.
They’ve defeated more rebels… Baptists
Guardians of the Faith
It’s an event, a small defiance of rule… I hold out for myself… possibilities, tiny peepholes.
They will suffer, later, at night, in their regimented beds.
As in those pictures, those museums, those model towns, there are no children.
Gilead is within you.
I’m remembering my feet on these sidewalks, in the time before…
There are no lawyers any more, and the university is closed.
my own money, money I had earned myself
In the days of anarchy, it was freedom to. Now you are being given freedom from.
We were a society dying, said Aunt Lydia, of too much choice.
The pregnant women’s belly is a huge fruit.
They’re tourists, from Japan it looks like… each has his or her camera, his or her smile.
They seem undressed.
To be seen … is to be... penetrated.
Given our wings… it’s… hard to get a full view… of anything.
[The church] isn’t used anymore.
She does such things to look good, I think.
Perhaps I’ve become used to them [bells at Men’s Salvaging (executions)].
I need to be very clear, in my own mind.
It will become ordinary.
… the night is my time out.
… parts of women’s bodies, turning to black ash…
She was wearing a dress I’d never seen, white and down to the ground.
It isn’t a story I’m telling.
Some day, when times improve, says Aunt Lydia, no one will have to be an Econowife
They [tulips] are, after all, empty.
Serena Joy didn’t do this herself, she made speeches instead, but she presented this failure of hers as a sacrifice…
They have been unable.
This is a treacherous smell, and I know I must shut it out.
Dishtowels are the same as they always were.
He is violating custom, what do I do know?
… at that time men and women tried each other on, casually, like suits, rejecting whatever did not fit.
Mock latin of “Don’t let the bastards grind you down”
Such songs are not sung any more in public, especially the ones that use words like free.
I’m giving an underwhore party.
We lived, as usual, by ignoring. Ignoring isn’t the same as ignorance, you have to work at it.
We were the people who were not in the papers. It gave us more freedom.
Faith. It’s the only thing they’ve given me to read.
It isn’t love.
There is no such thing as a sterile man any more, not officially.
Give me children, or else I die.
… it’s a generic term. We are all honey.
The bath is a requirement, but it is also a luxury.
My nakedness is strange to me already.
I don’t want to look at something that determines me so completely.
… a women stole her [Offred’s baby] out of a supermarket cart.
There are differences [in gender], he [Luke] said.
I’ve learned to do without a lot of things.
I am a national resource.
I wait, washed, brushed, fed, like a prize pig.
We were on some kind of pill or drug, I think.
Friendships were suspicious, we knew it.
Her fault. Who led them on? She did. Why did God allow…? Teach her a lesson.
The flashing of a badge [male genitals], look, everyone, all is in order, I belong here.
In the wood there’s a small hole… souvenir of some previous vandalism or legacy of an ancient voyeur.
I used to think of myself as an instrument of pleasure, or a means of transportation, or an implement for the accomplishment of my will… I’m a cloud, congealed around a central object, the shape of a pear…
Possibly she’ll put a hand on my shoulder, to steady herself, as if I’m a piece of furniture.
… dried flower arrangement… real daffodils… Lily of the Valley… four-petalled flowers
… smuggling precious national resources over the border into Canada.
It has nothing to do with passion or love or romance… this is not recreation…
One detaches oneself. One describes.
Which of us is it worse for, her or me?
I want to be held and told my name… to be valued
… nobody dies from lack of sex. It’s lack of love we die from.
It’s this message, which may never arrive, that keeps me alive.
‘Hope’ and ‘Charity’, where have they been stowed?
The minimalist life. Pleasure is an egg.
They [childless women] were sluts.
History will absolve me.
Crouching like that, she’s [Janine] like a doll… pillaged and discarded [after pregnancy]
Nevertheless we are jubilant, it’s a victory, for all of us.
For every rule there is always an exception: this too can be depended upon.
She was now a loose woman… Moira was our fantasy.
We are two-legged wombs, that’s all: sacred vessels, ambulatory chalices.
It’s an oasis of the forbidden [bookcases].
Now he’s compromised himself [by offering a game of scrabble]. It’s as if he’s offered me drugs.
Not like that… as if you meant it.
That’s what I was there for. The same old thing.
It wasn’t the first time he gave evidence of being truly ignorant of the real conditions under which we lived.
It was after the catastrophe… that was when they suspended the Constitution.
Pen is Envy
They force you to kill, within yourself.
… the sex was too easy
Better never means better for everyone, he [Luke] says.
No valid passport. No exit.
Freedom, like everything else, is relative.
If anyone asks you, say you’re an evening rental, he [Commander] says [to Offred].
… everyone’s human, after all. Nature demands variety, for men.
So now that we don’t have different clothes… you merely have different women.
I’d like to tell a story about how Moira escaped … I never saw her again.
Fake it [when having sex with the Commander], I scream at myself inside my head.
… the way love feels is always only approximate.
I tell him [Nick] my real name.
You ought to make an effort… to clear your mind of such… echoes [May Day from old time, said by new Ofglen]
And I step up, into the darkness within; or else the light.
|