Several months after my mother’s death, my father married the widow Paula. On her finger appeared my mother’s magic ring. I suppose my father didn’t want to waste it, and why buy another ring when such a beautiful and expensive one was already available?
The Marthas grumbled about it. “Your mother wanted that ring to go to you,” Rosa said. But of course there was nothing they could do. I was enraged, but there was nothing I could do either. I brooded and sulked, but neither my father nor Paula paid any attention to that. They had taken to doing something they called “humouring me,” which in practice meant ignoring any displays of mood so I would learn that I could not influence them by stubborn silences. They would even discuss this pedagogical technique in front of me while speaking about me in the third person. I see Agnes is in one of her moods. Yes, it is like the weather, it will soon pass. Young girls are like that.
14
Shortly after my father’s wedding to Paula, something very disturbing occurred at school. I am recounting it here not because I wish to be gruesome, but because it made a deep impression on me, and may help to explain why some of us from that time and place acted as we did.
This event took place in the Religion class, which, as I have mentioned, was taught to us by Aunt Vidala. She was in charge of our school, and indeed of the other schools like ours—the Vidala Schools, they were called—but the picture of her that hung at the back of every classroom was smaller than the picture of Aunt Lydia. There were five of these pictures: Baby Nicole at the top, because we had to pray for her safe return every day. Then Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Helena, then Aunt Lydia, then Aunt Vidala. Baby Nicole and Aunt Lydia had gold frames, whereas the other three only had silver frames.
Of course we all knew who the four women were: they were the Founders. But the founders of what we were not sure, nor did we dare to ask: we did not want to offend Aunt Vidala by calling attention to her smaller picture. Shunammite said that the eyes of the Aunt Lydia picture could follow you around the room and that it could hear what you said, but she exaggerated and made things up.
Aunt Vidala sat on top of her big desk. She liked to have a good view of us. She told us to move our desks forward and closer together. Then she said we were now old enough to hear one of the most important stories in the Bible—important because it was a message from God especially for girls and women, so we must listen carefully. This was the story of the Concubine Cut into Twelve Pieces.
Shunammite, sitting beside me, whispered, “I already know this.” Becka, on the other side, inched her hand over to mine beneath the desktop.
“Shunammite, be silent,” said Aunt Vidala. After blowing her nose, she told us the following story.
A man’s concubine—which was a sort of Handmaid—ran away from her owner, back to her father’s abode. That was very disobedient of her. The man went to collect her, and being a kind and forgiving man, all he asked was to have her back. The father, knowing the rules, said yes—he was disappointed in his daughter for being so disobedient—and the two men had a dinner to celebrate their accord. But this
meant that the man and his concubine were late setting out, and when it got dark they took refuge in a town where the man didn’t know anyone. But a generous citizen said they could stay overnight in his house.
But some other citizens, being filled with sinful urges, came to the house and demanded that the traveller be handed over to them. They wanted to do shameful things to him. Lustful and sinful things. But that would have been especially wicked between men, so the generous man and the traveller put the concubine outside the door instead.
“Well, she deserved it, don’t you think?” said Aunt Vidala. “She shouldn’t have run away. Think of all the suffering she caused to other people!” But when it was morning, said Aunt Vidala, the traveller opened the door, and the concubine was lying on the threshold. “Get up,” the man said to her. But she did not get up because she was dead. The sinful men had killed her.
“How?” Becka asked. Her voice was barely above a whisper; she was squeezing my hand hard. “How did they kill her?” Two tears were running down her cheeks.
“Many men doing lustful things all at once will kill a girl,” said Aunt Vidala. “This story is God’s way of telling us that we should be content with our lot and not rebel against it.” The man in charge should be honoured by the woman, she said. If not, this was the result. God always made the punishment fit the crime.
I learned the rest of the story later—how the traveller cut the concubine’s body into twelve pieces and sent one to each of the Tribes of Israel, calling on them to avenge the misuse of his concubine by executing the murderers, and how the Tribe of Benjamin refused because the killers were Benjaminites. In the war of vengeance that followed, the Tribe of Benjamin was almost obliterated and their wives and children were all killed. Then the other eleven tribes reasoned that to obliterate the twelfth would be bad, so they stopped killing. The remaining Benjaminites couldn’t marry any other women officially to make more children, since the rest of the tribes had taken an oath against that, but they were told they could steal some girls and marry them unofficially, which is what they did.
But we didn’t hear the rest of the story at the time because Becka had burst into tears. “That is horrible, that is horrible!” she said. The rest of us sat very still.
“Control yourself, Becka,” said Aunt Vidala. But Becka couldn’t. She was crying so hard I thought she would stop breathing.
“May I give her a hug, Aunt Vidala?” I asked at last. We were encouraged to pray for other girls but not to touch one another.
“I suppose so,” said Aunt Vidala grudgingly. I put my arms around Becka, and she wept against my shoulder.
Aunt Vidala was annoyed by the state Becka was in, but she was also concerned. Becka’s father was not a Commander, only a dentist, but he was an important dentist, and Aunt Vidala had bad teeth. She got up and left the room.
After several minutes, Aunt Estée arrived. She was the one called in when we needed calming down. “It’s all right, Becka,” she said. “Aunt Vidala didn’t mean to frighten you.” This was not exactly true, but Becka stopped crying and began to hiccup. “There’s another way of looking at the story. The concubine was sorry for what she had done, and she wanted to make amends, so she sacrificed herself to keep the kind traveller from being killed by those wicked men.” Becka turned her head slightly to the side: she was listening.
“That was brave and noble of the concubine, don’t you think?” A small nod from Becka. Aunt Estée sighed. “We must all make sacrifices in order to help other people,” she said in a soothing tone. “Men must make sacrifices in war, and women must make sacrifices in other ways. That is how things are divided. Now we may all have a little treat to cheer us up. I have brought us some oatmeal cookies. Girls, you may socialize.”
We sat there eating the oatmeal cookies. “Don’t be such a baby,” Shunammite whispered across at Becka. “It’s only a story.”
Becka did not seem to hear her. “I will never, ever get married,” she murmured, almost to herself.
“Yes you will,” said Shunammite. “Everyone does.”
“No they don’t,” said Becka, but only to me.
15
A few months after the wedding of Paula and my father, our household received a Handmaid. Her name was Ofkyle, since my father’s name was Commander Kyle. “Her name would have been something else earlier,” said Shunammite. “Some other man’s. They get passed around until they have a baby. They’re all sluts anyway, they don’t need real names.” Shunammite said a slut was a woman who’d gone with more men than her husband. Though we did not really know what “gone with” meant.
And Handmaids must be double sluts, said Shunammite, because they didn’t even have husbands. But you weren’t supposed to be rude to the Handmaids or call them sluts, said Aunt Vidala, wiping her nose, because they were performing a service to the community by way of atonement, and we should all be grateful to them for that.