? It was unnerving to have the Aunts looking at me as if inspecting a vegetable. It was hard to direct my gaze at the floor, which was what was required: any higher and I might be staring at their torsos, which was impolite, or into their eyes, which was presumptuous. It was difficult never to speak unless one of the senior Aunts spoke to me first. Obedience, subservience, docility: these were the virtues required.
Then there was the reading, which I found frustrating. Maybe I was too old to ever learn it, I thought. Maybe it was like fine embroidery: you had to start young; otherwise you would always be clumsy. But little by little I picked it up. “You have a knack,” said Becka. “You’re way better than I was when I began!”
The books I was given to learn from were about a boy and a girl called Dick and Jane. The books were very old, and the pictures had been altered at Ardua Hall. Jane wore long skirts and sleeves, but you could tell from the places where the paint had been applied that her skirt had once been above her knees and her sleeves had ended above her elbows. Her hair had once been uncovered.
The most astonishing thing about these books was that Dick and Jane and Baby Sally lived in a house with nothing around it but a white wooden fence, so flimsy and low that anyone at all could climb over it. There were no Angels, there were no Guardians. Dick and Jane and Baby Sally played outside in full view of everyone. Baby Sally could have been abducted by terrorists at any moment and smuggled to Canada, like Baby Nicole and the other stolen innocents. Jane’s bare knees could have aroused evil urges in any man passing by, despite the fact that everything but her face had been covered over with paint. Becka said that painting the pictures in such books was a task that I’d be asked to perform, as it was assigned to the Supplicants. She herself had painted a lot of books.
It wasn’t a given that I’d be allowed to stay, she said: not everyone was suitable for the Aunts. Before I’d arrived at Ardua Hall she’d known two girls who’d been accepted, but one of them changed her mind after only three months and her family had taken her back, and the marriage arranged for her had gone ahead after all.
“What happened to the other one?” I said.
“Something bad,” said Becka. “Her name was Aunt Lily. There didn’t seem to be anything wrong with her at first. Everyone said she was getting along well, but then she was given a Correction for talking back. I don’t think it was one of the worst Corrections: Aunt Vidala can have a mean streak. She says, ‘Do you like this?’ when she does the Correction, and there isn’t any right answer.”
“But Aunt Lily?”
“She wasn’t the same person after that. She wanted to leave Ardua Hall—she said she was not suited for it—and the Aunts said that if so her planned marriage would have to take place; but she didn’t want that either.”
“What did she want?” I asked. I was suddenly very interested in Aunt Lily.
“She wanted to live on her own and work on a farm. Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Vidala said this was what came of reading too early: she’d picked up wrong ideas at the Hildegard Library, before her mind had been strengthened enough to reject them, and there were a lot of questionable books that should be destroyed. They said she would have to have a more severe Correction to help her focus her thoughts.”
“What was it?” I was wondering if my own mind was strong enough, and whether I too would be given multiple Corrections.
“It was a month in the cellar, by herself, with only bread and water. When she was let out again she wouldn’t speak to anyone except to say yes and no. Aunt Vidala said she was too weak-minded to be an Aunt, and would have to be married after all.
“The day before she was supposed to leave the Hall she wasn’t there at breakfast, and then not at lunch. Nobody knew where she had gone. Aunt Elizabeth and Aunt Vidala said she must have run away, and it was a breach of security, and there was a big search. But they didn’t find her. And then the shower water started smelling strange. So they had another search, and this time they opened the rooftop rainwater cistern that we use for the showers, and she was in there.”
“Oh, that’s terrible!” I said. “Was she—did someone murder her?”
“The Aunts said so at first. Aunt Helena had hysterics, and they even gave permission for some Eyes to come into Ardua Hall and inspect it for clues, but there weren’t any. Some of us Supplicants went up and looked at the cistern. She couldn’t have simply fallen in: there’s a ladder, then there’s a little door.”
“Did you see her?” I asked.
“It was a closed coffin,” said Becka. “But she must have done it on purpose. She had stones in her pockets—that was the rumour. She didn’t leave a note, or if she did Aunt Vidala tore it up. At the funeral they said that she’d died of a brain aneurysm. They wouldn’t want it to be known that a Supplicant had failed so badly. We all said prayers for her; I’m sure God has forgiven her.”
“But why did she do it?” I asked. “Did she want to die?”
“No one wants to die,” said Becka. “But some people don’t want to live in any of the ways that are allowed.”
“But drowning yourself!” I said.
“It’s supposed to be calm,” said Becka. “You hear bells and singing. Like angels. That’s what Aunt Helena told us, to make us feel better.”
* * *
—
After I’d mastered the Dick and Jane books, I was given Ten Tales for Young Girls, a book of rhymes by Aunt Vidala. This is one that I remember:
Just look at Tirzah! She sits there,
With her strands of vagrant hair;
See her down the sidewalk stride,
Head held high and full of pride.
See her catch the Guardian’s glance,