I entered the office. Aunt Lydia was sitting behind her desk, which was stacked high with file folders. “Agnes,” she said. “I must congratulate you. Despite many obstacles, you have succeeded in making your way here, and have answered the call to join us.” I nodded. I was afraid she would ask me what that call had been like—had I heard a voice?—but she did not.
“You are very positive that you do not wish to marry Commander Judd?” I shook my head for no.
“Wise choice,” she said.
“What?” I was surprised: I’d thought she might give me a moral lecturing about the true duties of women or something of the sort. “I mean, pardon?”
“I am sure you would not have made him a fitting Wife.”
I breathed out in relief. “No, Aunt Lydia,” I said. “I would not. I hope he will not be too disappointed.”
“I have already proposed a more appropriate choice for him,” she said. “Your former schoolmate Shunammite.”
“Shunammite?” I said. “But she’s going to marry someone else!”
“These arrangements can always be altered. Would Shunammite welcome the change of husbands, do you think?”
I remembered Shunammite’s barely concealed envy of me and her excitement over the material advantages her wedding would bring. Commander Judd would confer ten times as many of those. “I am sure she would be deeply grateful,” I said.
“I agree.” She smiled. It was like an old turnip smiling: the dried-up kind our Marthas used to put in soup stock. “Welcome to Ardua Hall,” she continued. “You have been accepted. I hope you are grateful for the opportunity, and for the help I have given you.”
“I am, Aunt Lydia,” I managed to get out. “I am truly grateful.”
“I am glad to hear it,” she said. “Perhaps one day you will be able to help me as you yourself have been helped. Good should be repaid with good. That is one of our rules of thumb, here at Ardua Hall.”
XV
Fox and Cat
The Ardua Hall Holograph
41
All things come to she who waits. Time wounds all heels. Patience is a virtue. Vengeance is mine.
These hoary chestnuts are not always true, but they are sometimes true. Here’s one that is always true: everything’s in the timing. Like jokes.
Not that we have many jokes around here. We would not wish to be accused of bad taste or frivolity. In a hierarchy of the powerful, the only ones allowed to make jokes are those at the top, and they do so in private.
But to the point.
It has been so crucial for my own mental development to have had the privilege of being a fly on the wall; or, to be more exact, an ear inside the wall. So instructive, the confidences shared by young women when they believe no third party is listening. Over the years I increased the sensitivity of my microphones, I attuned them to whispers, I held my breath to see which of our newly recruited girls would provide me with the sort of shameful information I both craved and collected. Gradually my dossiers filled up, like a hot-air balloon getting ready for liftoff.
In the matter of Becka, it took years. She’d always been so reticent about the primary cause of her distress, even to her school friend Agnes. I had to wait for sufficient trust to develop.
It was Agnes who finally broached the question. I use their earlier names here—Agnes, Becka—since it was these names they used among themselves. Their transformation into perfect Aunts was far from complete, which pleased me. But then, no one’s is when push comes to shove.
“Becka, what really happened to you?” Agnes said one day when they were engaged in their Bible studies. “To make you so set against marriage.” Silence. “I know there was something. Please, wouldn’t you like to share it with me?”
“I can’t say.”
“You can trust me, I won’t tell.”
Then, in bits and pieces, it came out. The wretched Dr. Grove had not stopped at the fondling of his young patients in the dentist’s chair. I had known about this for some time. I had even collected photographic evidence, but I had passed over it, since the testimonies of young girls—if testimonies can be extracted from them, which in this case I doubted—would count for little or nothing. Even with grown women, four female witnesses are the equivalent of one male, here in Gilead.
Grove had depended on that. Also, the man had the confidence of the Commanders: he was an excellent dentist, and much latitude is given by those in power to professionals who can relieve them of pain. The doctors, the dentists, the lawyers, the accountants: in the new world of Gilead, as in the old, their sins are frequently forgiven them.
But what Grove had done to the young Becka—the very young Becka, and then the older but still young Becka—that, to my mind, demanded retribution.