“People are looking,” I said.
When she’d first arrived, her hair was greenish—that was the sort of mutilation they went in for in Canada, it seemed—but outside our apartment she had to keep her hair covered, so this had not been generally noticed. Then she began pulling hairs out of the back of her neck. She said this helped her think.
“You’ll make a bald spot if you keep on doing that,” Becka said to her. Aunt Estée had taught us that when we were in the Rubies Premarital Preparatory classes: if you remove hairs frequently, they will not grow back. It is the same with eyebrows and eyelashes.
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p; “I know,” said Jade. “But nobody sees your hair around here anyway.” She smiled at us confidingly. “One day I’m going to shave my head.”
“You can’t do that! A woman’s hair is her glory,” said Becka. “It’s been given to you as a covering. That’s in Corinthians I.”
“Only one glory? Hair?” Jade said. Her tone was abrupt, but I don’t think she meant to be rude.
“Why would you want to shame yourself by shaving your head?” I asked as gently as I could. If you were a woman, having no hair was a mark of disgrace: sometimes, after a complaint by a husband, the Aunts would cut off a disobedient or scolding Econowife’s hair before locking her into the public stocks.
“To see what it’s like to be bald,” said Jade. “It’s on my bucket list.”
“You must be careful what you say to others,” I told her. “Becka—Aunt Immortelle and I are forgiving, and we understand that you are newly arrived from a degenerate culture; we are trying to help you. But other Aunts—especially the older ones such as Aunt Vidala—are constantly on the lookout for faults.”
“Yeah, you’re right,” said Jade. “I mean, Yes, Aunt Victoria.”
“What is a bucket list?” Becka asked.
“Stuff I want to do before I die.”
“Why is it called that?”
“It’s from ‘kick the bucket,’?” said Jade. “It’s just a saying.” Then, seeing our puzzled looks, she continued. “I think it’s from when they used to hang people from trees. They’d make them stand on a bucket and then hang them, and their feet would kick, and naturally they would kick the bucket. Just my guess.”
“That’s not how we hang people here,” said Becka.
Transcript of Witness Testimony 369B
55
I quickly realized that the two young Aunts in Doorway C didn’t approve of me; but they were all I had because I wasn’t on talking terms with anyone else. Aunt Beatrice had been kind when she’d been converting me, back in Toronto, but now that I was here I was no longer any concern of hers. She smiled at me in a distant way when I passed her, but that was all.
When I paused to think about it I was afraid, but I tried not to let fear control me. I was also feeling very lonely. I didn’t have any friends here, and I couldn’t contact anyone back there. Ada and Elijah were far away. There was no one I could ask for guidance; I was on my own, with no instruction book. I really missed Garth. I daydreamed about the things we’d done together: sleeping in the cemetery, panhandling on the street. I even missed the junk food we’d eaten. Would I ever get back there, and if I did, what would happen then? Garth probably had a girlfriend. How could he not have one? I’d never asked him because I didn’t want to hear the answer.
But one of my biggest anxieties was about the person Ada and Elijah called the source—their contact inside Gilead. When would this person show up in my life? What if they didn’t exist? If there was no “source,” I’d be stuck here in Gilead because there wouldn’t be anyone to get me out.
Transcript of Witness Testimony 369A
56
Jade was very untidy. She left her items in our common room—her stockings, the belt of her new Supplicants probationer uniform, sometimes even her shoes. She didn’t always flush the toilet. We’d find her hair combings blowing around on the bathroom floor, her toothpaste in the sink. She took showers at unauthorized hours until firmly told not to, several times. I know these are trivial things, but they can add up in close quarters.
There was also the matter of the tattoo on her left arm. It said GOD and LOVE, made into a cross. She claimed it was a token of her conversion to the true belief, but I doubted that, as she’d let slip on one occasion that she thought God was “an imaginary friend.”
“God is a real friend, not an imaginary one,” said Becka. There was as much anger in her voice as she was capable of revealing.
“Sorry if I disrespected your cultural belief,” Jade said, which did not improve things in the eyes of Becka: saying God was a cultural belief was even worse than saying he was an imaginary friend. We realized that Jade thought we were stupid; certainly she thought we were superstitious.
“You should have that tattoo removed,” Becka said. “It’s blasphemous.”
“Yeah, maybe you’re right,” said Jade. “I mean, Yes, Aunt Immortelle, thank you for telling me. Anyway, it’s itchy as hell.”
“Hell is more than itchy,” said Becka. “I will pray for your redemption.”