Becka and I first saw Jade at the Thanks Giving held to welcome back the returning Pearl Girls and their converts. She was a tall girl, somewhat awkward, and kept gazing around her in a direct way that verged on being too bold. Already I had a feeling that she would not find Ardua Hall an easy fit, not to mention Gilead itself. But I did not think much more about her because I was caught up in the beautiful ceremony.
Soon that would be us, I thought. Becka and I were completing our training as Suppl
icants; we were almost ready to become full Aunts. Very soon we would receive the silver Pearl Girls dresses, so much prettier than our habitual brown. We would inherit the strings of pearls; we would set out on our mission; we would each bring back a converted Pearl.
For my first few years at Ardua Hall, I’d been entranced by the prospect. I was still a full and true believer—if not in everything about Gilead, at least in the unselfish service of the Aunts. But now I was not so sure.
* * *
—
We did not see Jade again until the next day. Like all the new Pearls, she’d attended an all-night vigil in the chapel, engaged in silent meditation and prayer. Then she would have exchanged her silver dress for the brown one we all wore. Not that she was destined to become an Aunt—the recently arrived Pearls were observed carefully before being assigned as potential Wives or Econowives, or Supplicants, or, in some unhappy cases, Handmaids—but while among us they dressed like us, with the addition of a large imitation-pearl brooch in the shape of a new moon.
Jade’s introduction to the ways of Gilead was somewhat harsh, as the next day she was present at a Particicution. It may have been a shock to her to witness two men being literally ripped apart by Handmaids; it can be shocking even to me, although I’ve seen it many times over the course of the years. The Handmaids are usually so subdued, and the display of so much rage on their part can be alarming.
The Founder Aunts devised these rules. Becka and I would have opted for a less extreme method.
One of those eliminated at the Particicution was Dr. Grove, Becka’s erstwhile dentist father, who’d been condemned for raping Aunt Elizabeth. Or almost raping her: considering my own experience with him, I didn’t much care which. I am sorry to say I was glad he was being punished.
Becka took it very differently. Dr. Grove had treated her shamefully when she was a child, and I could not excuse that, though she herself was willing to. She was a more charitable person than I was; I admired her in that, but I could not emulate her.
When Dr. Grove was torn apart at the Particicution, Becka fainted. Some of the Aunts put this reaction down to filial love—Dr. Grove was a wicked man, but he was still a man, and a high-status man. He was also a father, to whom respect was due by an obedient daughter. However, I knew otherwise: Becka felt responsible for his death. She believed that she should never have told me about his crimes. I assured her that I hadn’t shared her confidences with anyone, and she said she trusted me, but Aunt Lydia must have found out somehow. It was how the Aunts got their power: by finding things out. Things that should never be talked about.
* * *
—
Becka and I had returned from the Particicution. I’d made her a cup of tea and suggested she should lie down—she was still pale—but she’d said that she’d controlled her feelings and would be fine. We were engaged in our evening Bible readings when there was a knock at the door. We were surprised to find Aunt Lydia standing outside; with her was the new Pearl, Jade.
“Aunt Victoria, Aunt Immortelle, you have been chosen for a very special duty,” she said. “Our newest Pearl, Jade, has been assigned to you. She will sleep in the third bedroom, which I understand is vacant. Your task will be to help her in every way possible, and instruct her in the details of our life of service here in Gilead. Do you have enough sheets and towels? If not, I will arrange for some.”
“Yes, Aunt Lydia, praise be,” I said. Becka echoed me. Jade smiled at us, a smile that managed to be both tremulous and stubborn. She was not like the average new convert from abroad: these were likely to be either abject or filled with zeal.
“Welcome,” I said to Jade. “Please come in.”
“Okay,” she said. She crossed our threshold. My heart fell: already I knew that the outwardly placid life Becka and I had been leading at Ardua Hall for the past nine years was at an end—change had come—but I did not yet grasp how wrenching that change would be.
* * *
—
I have said our life was placid, but perhaps that is not the right word. It was at any rate orderly, albeit somewhat monotonous. Our time was filled, but in a strange way it did not seem to pass. I’d been fourteen when I’d been admitted as a Supplicant, and although I was now grown up, I did not appear to myself to have grown much older. It was the same with Becka: we seemed to be frozen in some way; preserved, as if in ice.
The Founders and the older Aunts had edges to them. They’d been moulded in an age before Gilead, they’d had struggles we had been spared, and these struggles had ground off the softness that might once have been there. But we hadn’t been forced to undergo such ordeals. We’d been protected, we hadn’t needed to deal with the harshness of the world at large. We were the beneficiaries of the sacrifices made by our forebears. We were constantly reminded of this, and ordered to be grateful. But it’s difficult to be grateful for the absence of an unknown quantity. I’m afraid we did not fully appreciate the extent to which those of Aunt Lydia’s generation had been hardened in the fire. They had a ruthlessness about them that we lacked.
48
Despite this feeling of time standing still, I had in fact changed. I was no longer the same person I’d been when I’d entered Ardua Hall. Now I was a woman, even if an inexperienced one; then I had been a child.
“I’m very glad the Aunts let you stay,” Becka had said on that first day. She’d turned her shy gaze full upon me.
“I’m glad too,” I said.
“I always looked up to you at school. Not just because of your three Marthas and your Commander family,” she said. “You lied less than the others. And you were nice to me.”
“I wasn’t all that nice.”
“You were nicer than the rest of them,” she said.