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THE LITTLE PRINCESS - by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Once on a dark winter's day, when the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd-looking little girl sat in a cab with her father and was driven rather slowly through the big thoroughfares.

She sat with her feet tucked under her, and leaned against her father, who held her in his arm, as she stared out of the window at the passing people with a queer old-fashioned thoughtfulness in her big eyes.

She was such a little girl that one did not expect to see such a look on her small face. It would have been an old look for a child of twelve, and Sara Crewe was only seven. The fact was, however, that she was always dreaming and thinking odd things and could not herself remember any time when she had not been thinking things about grown-up people and the world they belonged to. She felt as if she had lived a long, long time.

At this moment she was remembering the voyage she had just made from Bombay with her father, Captain Crewe. She was thinking of the big ship, of the Lascars passing silently to and fro on it, of the children playing about on the hot deck, and of some young officers' wives who used to try to make her talk to them and laugh at the things she said.

THE ELDEST OF ELEVEN

Ellen was hardly a commander, with either a capital C, much less a small one.  Yet there at ‘Mayday central’, she had the loudest voice - as well as an uncanny ability to sum things up for an unruly and unrestive crowd.

A ‘Mayday’ crowd.  They were by definition unruly.  Like Ellen’s former family of origin.

When thinking about why it was she, why was it her always the one to quiet the crowd so that someone could ‘summarize their marching orders’ and get everyone on the same page, that’s when it had clicked.  Before she herself had been kidnapped by Gilead, she’d been the eldest of 11 children - none of whom had survived the regime.  Now ‘free’, she was the one not afraid to wade into a crowd of PTSD’d Mayday types, more adrenaline than sense…. for either them in the crowd….

…. or her.

After apprising the crowd of whether or not they had won the ‘kill a commander’ lottery or not, after welcoming Moira and Luke back from No Man’s Land, after acknowledging the ‘star’ in the crowd, June Osborne of Angels Flight fame….

…. Ellen had immediately to contend with a hostile cadre of Mayday-ers.

Their plan to ‘kill commanders’ almost ready to hatch, it had been June Osborne herself who’d tried to pour cold water on all the adrenaline.  To challenge Ellen's authority from the floor.

Knowing that planning military-style actions was never done well, ‘by committee’, Ellen tried to calm things down.  She’d got the crowd to agree to a ‘trial run’, a reconnaissance to the hallowed halls of Commanders’ leisure - Jezebels, where sure enough, enough of Gilead’s elite would be gathered with their guard down.

Besides.  New Bethlehem had meant the opening of a new, unsecure trade route, through it into the heart of New Gilead.  In fact, it had probably been designed as a new contraband route used by Commanders themselves.   They needed their booze and European jewels meant to placate their Wives to pass underneath the gaze of prying Eyes….. on which Luke had said he could piggy back smuggled explosives.

They just needed to know where to send them, and how, specifically to get there.

So - by committee - they agreed that Moira, an ex-Jezebels herself, that she would go as the forward-scout.

But June Osborne, now too used to her public-self as a Mayday bad-ass, which hid well her private self as an anxious mess - in any event, she was starting to annoy Ellen.  Ellen, the eldest sister of eleven.

WHAT IS MAYDAY ANYWAY?

What is Mayday?

Offred, she’d first heard about it at a particicution.  Ofglen had told her, when Offred had been at her PTSD’d low.  Her most damaged.  Amongst the other Handmaids, June had been worked up to a lather about the charges the man in front of them faced.  June was drinking the Gilead kool-ade, had relished tearing a man apart.  Besides, Aunt Lydia had said he’d raped a pregnant Bilhah woman.  Both the Handmaid as well as the unborn baby had died.

Offred had got some of the man’s skin under her nails - before Ofglen had pulled her off of him, pulled Offred free of the pile of red.

“He’s Mayday,” Ofglen had said.  “Gilead is getting rid of him, making us do it.”

Mayday.  A linguistic corruption of the French, ‘m’aidez’, meaning ‘help me’.

June had also then got involved with the Martha Network, then one which had revered Martha Lori.  It took a while to realize it, but in that network, the word ‘Mayday’ had never been used.  Not even the rebels out in Chicago, they’d never heard of it either.

Yet when Luke and Moira heard the term, they instinctively knew what it was.  They threw themselves into it - even as in their first try, it had been Nicholas Blaine and June herself to have to come in and save their ass’s.

When June attended ‘the big meeting’, the one where Luke and Moira had been tweaking plans, where an unknown woman had climbed onto a chair (turned out to be someone named Ellen) and demanded people’s ears….

All eyes were, of course, on June.  She, the mastermind of Angels Flight, she was the most famous ‘Mayday’ person there’d been.  As a Handmaid, June had commandeered a cargo jet, ‘rescuing’ 86 children and 9 Marthas from right under Gilead’s nose.  Just how does a Handmaid move jets around the country!?!?!?

Whether you called yourself ‘Mayday’ or not, June’s street cred mattered.

Perhaps it took Luke and Moira to be the ones who knew that June Osborne was a little more ordinary, more flawed, more damaged, more anxious - than her Mayday bona fides which preceded her would suggest.

June was selfish.

Worse.  June was broken.

SUBVERSION JUNE-STYLE

Ellen pulled both Moira and Luke aside.  “Your wife, Luke,” she began, “she’s lobbying me hard.  Me, I’m not cut out for this.  I just have the loudest voice.  She wants me - me! - to tell you that neither of you can go.  She wants it to be her.  She says she’s the one who knows Gilead.  She’s the one who says that Gilead no longer can damage her any worse….”

Moira said calmly, but bitterly, “that cunt.  In her war against toxic Gilead-paternalism, what does she do?  She goes behind our back.  For her, it’s always what June wants.”

Ellen said that in insisting that it be she who goes, June had said, ‘I have a Commander on the inside.’  Ellen said that that made sense, that perhaps it should be June who went.

Luke said, “Yeah, I met him.  The guy’s an asshole.”

Moira looked at Luke, and said, “Luke, stow it.  Not now!”

Remembering a lifetime of sibling quarrels among her 10 sisters and brothers, Ellen was tempted just to box everyone’s ears.  But she knew her shrill, parent-voice was not going to quell this Mayday crowd.

“Look,” Ellen finally said, “fix this.  The reconnaissance mission, it is leaving, fix it - then tell me what you’re doing.  But fucking FIX IT!”

Moira said, “how does June do it?  How has June turned every conversation into a debate on WHAT SHE WANTS!”

RITA’S ERRAND OF MERCY

On the bus from Quebec, the one traveling south under the flag of Gilead - guaranteed safe passage - with ‘New Bethlehem’ as its destination in the window at the front…..

Clearing the Canada/No-man’s-land border southward induced a visceral panic in half the bus’s riders.

Rita Blue being one of them.

As per usual, it was Rita’s seat-mate who spoke first.  Rita, she was often not one for speaking, not even at the best of times.

“Jesus, friend, it was all I could do NOT to bolt from this bus!” the seat-mate said.  “It’s hard not to think about what Gilead has done to me…. has done to my family.”

In hearing that, all Rita could do was turn slightly to scan the scenery outside - visibly different than Quebec, which was now still only about a hundred meters behind them.  Rita did not want her seat-mate to see her trembling.

Being a ‘talker’, the seatmate asked, “and you?”

Rita thought briefly of staying silent, hoping that that would quiet the woman.  But as always, Rita did not want to appear rude.

So getting her trembling under control, Rita volunteered, “me, I’m hoping to see my sister.  I was told that she and her son, my nephew, had probably died.  In Toronto, a Catholic relief agency had collected the names of as many Gilead victims as they could - Gina and her son were never on any of their lists.”

“Are they at New Bethlehem?” the woman inquired.

“I’m told that Gina is.  But also that if I arrive and she’s not, then it had been mistaken identity, that Gilead’s records of unwomen were notoriously shabby.”

“Jeez,” the woman said, “even with that, you have infinitely more to go on than I do.  I’m going on a wing and a prayer.  I expect to be turned around quite quickly.  You must have some pull.”

“Well, I do, I guess.  Me, I was a Martha.  I escaped to Canada, I never, ever thought I’d come back here.  Believe me.  But my mistress, a Commander’s wife, she pulled strings.”

On being told that she was ‘lucky’ to have had such a benevolent ‘mistress’, a Wife of Gilead….

Rita barked, then felt ashamed.  “I won’t be called ‘lucky’, I am sorry to be so direct.”  Rita soaked in the silence between the two of them, then added, “you know, in all my time in slavery, I’d only been hit - assaulted - by women, never men.  My mistress, she was the worst.  I was a Martha, I did everything I could to placate the Lord and Lady of the manor, yet I’d get hit for the smallest thing.  They could break your jaw, then slap you for speaking poorly.  Always the women.”

Rita then thought about June Osborne, someone she’d known both in New Gilead, as well as in freedom in Toronto.  June, she had never assaulted Rita - in either place.  But Rita had soured on the woman - who seemed to always claim that the horrors that she’d suffered, were always a little worse than any other survivor.

June always pushed to have Rita’s emotional damage put aside, so that hers could be dealt with.  It was always what June wanted.

They rode the rest of the way in silence.

Hours later, the environs changed.  Where they were now, it looked like every small town that the old-USA had ever dreamt up.  ‘Gilead’ was nowhere to be seen, except on the side of military vehicles.  Tree-lined streets, playgrounds, parks, riverside benches.  But no people.  Just the odd troop carrier with Gilead livery.

Then the bus stopped outside of a gated community within the town.  The large metal entrance swung open, and a Guardian of Gilead got on the bus and explained the rules.  He explained what all this was.  He told everyone, “if you keep the peace, it will work out for you.  Go in grace.”

MOOD CHANGE

Alighting the bus and being ushered through the gate, Rita had not known what to expect.  Whereas most of the other de-bused passengers had already found their loved ones, Gina was nowhere in sight.  (I mean, what would she even look like after all these years?)

Oh no.  There was Mrs. Waterford, Serena Joy.  Standing there in all her glory, that big Wife smile on her face - as if giving an extra helping of dessert had made up for a life of slavery, or all the slaps.

Serena Joy, in fact she’d been the one to ‘move heaven and earth’ to find Gina.  Serena had also used her ties to Mark Tuello to communicate all of it to Rita, as well as to expedite her place on one of the early buses.

Walking up to and being greeted by Mrs. Waterford, Rita knew she was expected to be deferential.

But she was too busy trying to ignore the monster in front of her, looking for family.

Especially in Toronto, Serena had always pushed to have Rita’s emotional damage put aside, so that hers could be dealt with.

June and Serena - Rita was now having trouble telling them apart.  It was always what June wanted, or what Serena wanted.

Then…….. Gina.  Rita squealed, almost fainted - her legs went all rubbery.

But not so much so that she couldn’t push Mrs Waterford out of the way and run towards her.  “Gina, my baby!”

What Rita missed was that Serena’s smile had disappeared, knowing that she’d never have a reunion like that.  Not with anyone.

Once on a dark winter's day, when the yellow fog hung so thick and heavy in the streets of London that the lamps were lighted and the shop windows blazed with gas as they do at night, an odd-looking little girl sat in a cab with her father and was driven rather slowly through the big thoroughfares.

Chapter Text

FRAGILE

“When we lost Hannah, it broke us.  It broke me.  She’s what I’ve been chasing.  When Moira found me in Chicago, when you and me - when we’d been reunited on that boat at Sault Ste. Marie…. the Canadian one….. I thought you’d not talk to me.  I’d not brought Hannah.  I’d left her behind.  No, you’d not made ANY indication that you’d hold it against me…..”

“But Luke, Luke, I love you Luke, I really do.  But I’d not got Hannah.  Okay, sue me, I have an agenda, one that’s bigger than me, bigger than you…..”

“.…. I’ll say it, bigger than Nick.  An agenda.  I’d got close, I really did.  Commander Waterford, he thought I’d fall in love with him if he set up a reunion, one between me and Hannah.  All that did was get a Martha particicuted - killed.  We’d hanged her, we Handmaids, they made us do it…. Martha Frances.”

“Hannah, she’d loved Martha Frances.  Me, I continue to hurt our daughter, I am so sorry.”

“I know I strayed, Luke.  You have to know I’m not sorry, not about that part.  A Handmaid’s world, it it is so small, it is so smothering.  It wasn’t until the Mexicans, when they’d come to the Waterfords that I even knew you were alive.  Then Nick - blessed Nick - he got Moira’s package to you in Toronto.  I know, I know, I know, he didn’t tell you everything.  I get it - he’d implied that the pregnancy that it had been a Handmaid thing….”

“.…. when it had actually been conceived from love.  The ONLY love available in that smothering place.  So I have to be honest with you, my love…. I’m not sorry.  I’m not sorry about Nichole, I’m not sorry about Nick.  But what I love about you, Luke, is that you’ve kept it to yourself….”

“.….. mostly.”

“But when we lost Hannah, it broke us.  It breaks us everyday, including right now.”

Luke thought about reaching and gently caressing her arm, but thought better of it.  Instead he said softly, “we’re a broken family, that’s for sure.  June, you owe me nothing.”

“But I’ll tell you this,” Luke continued, “I have to do this.  WE have to do this.  Two lunatics going back into Gilead on a wing and a prayer.”

It was so unlike Luke, but he let the silence between them linger.  The silence was enough to amplify the night’s darkness into which they were confessing.

It was June, it was she who reached out to caress Luke’s arm.  “I love you,” she said.

Then she wiped tears from her eyes and her voice stiffened.  She said directly, “Ellen says I’m going.  Don’t argue, Luke.  And don’t….. ah, er, overreact.  The reason I’m going is because of Nick.  Nick and New Bethlehem.  Commander Lawrence still hasn’t given up on luring me there…. ‘June Osborne’s Mayday cred, it will draw others to New Bethlehem’.  That’s what Nick says, that’s what Nick fears.”

“Oh Jesus,” Luke said.  “Okay, I’ll behave myself.”  He stopped to consider his next words, “until I don’t.”

But the compact Luke and June made that night, was one which involved Hannah.

It was time for Hannah to be brought out.  To freedom.  That was their agenda.

And, oh yes, to make Gilead feel the pain they’d always felt.

JANINE AND JOSEPH

They’d sat in the Jezebels suite for more than 10 minutes without saying a word.

Back in the Penthouse lounge 10 minutes’ previous, Janine had been ordered to crawl on all fours and arrive on Commander Bell’s lap, meow’ing like a cat.

When Janine, being Janine had said ‘hi’ instead, she expected a slap.  Instead Bell chided her, called her stupid.  That one caused other Commanders to erupt in laughter….

…. not everyone thought of Bell’s comment as being particularly funny or cutting, but the Commanders laughed anyway, knowing that the task at hand was humiliation, not even the sex.

Given that this Penthouse ‘celebration’ was to honour the newly minted High Commander Joseph Lawrence, Commander Bell did the chivalrous thing and offered Janine to him.

It was something that Lawrence jumped at - it was something that Janine was now long since numb to.

Except in the suite, there they sat.  He on the bed, she on the settee, smoking.

“Can we go?” Janine said sharply, more a demand than a question.

“We have to give it a minute.  They know I’m old, if we come out too soon, it’ll give it away.”

Janine became even more impatient.  She waited while surveying the High Commander, judging her own appetite for trouble.

“How could you marry that cunt?” Janine demanded.

Lawrence put his glasses back on, him still sitting on the bed.  “That ‘cunt’, as you so eloquently describe her, she’s the mother of your child.  Angela is one of the first, bona fide Bilhah births in New Gilead.  That little girl is a poster-child for Gilead.  All Naomi ever wanted, young lady, was a friendly voice in the house.  You could have played ball…..”

“She wanted me to be her friend, Joseph.”  Janine waited to see where the use of his name would land her.  Hearing nothing, she continued somewhat emboldened.

“How could she not know that I despise her?  Are you people dense?”

THE GHOST OF DR. EMILY MALEK

Janine continued defiantly: “Do you know what Warren and Naomi Putnam used to do to me?”

“I know, I know,” Lawrence conceded with a sigh.  “All I can say is….. Gilead!”

“Well, fuck Gilead, Joseph,” she retorted.  She butted out the stub of the cigarette and lit another with an audible sucking sound…. “you got Emily out.  You even got her out with a baby.”

“Ah….. I’d almost forgotten….. Dr. Emily Malek, professor of microbiology…. not economics, but no one is perfect.”  He sat up straight, “I got her out because with a mind like she had, she needed to be at a university.  Teaching.”

Hardly listening, Janine became demanding.  She leaned forward towards him and asked, “why her and not me?  Do you know what you did to me, loading me in that Angel’s van?  I was preparing to die, Joseph.  Not that that would have been the worst thing.  This place, this whorehouse - this is the worst thing.  This is as bad as that cunt Naomi and that pervert Commander Putnam.”  Waiting impatiently for a response, she repeated, “why NOT ME?  Why not ME AND CHARLOTTE?”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, young lady,” Lawrence said, pulling his High Commander’s jacket back on.  “But Dr. Malek, she was smart.  No, no, no not street-smart like you.  She’s what I remembered from my own former life.  The life of the academy.  The life that was NOT this.”

Feeling the presence of a piece of paper in his inside jack pocket he remembered.  Reaching inside for it, he said, “here, I have something for you.”

He took it out, opened it, and turned it to Janine.  “This, this is Angela’s.  My wife, my real wife, she would have been impressed.  Angela is seriously another Helen Frankenthaler…..”

“Who?”

“.….. nevermind.  Eleanor loved Frankenthaler….. said she augmented Jackson Pollack.  But you, you take it.  It’s Angela’s…. er, Charlotte’s.”  Joseph stood up straightening his coat.  “Put a smile on your face, deary, and mess up your make-up a bit, remember: we’ve been having a good time.  But before you go, I’ll promise you one thing.  My daughter…. ‘our’ daughter, she’ll learn how to read.  She already is.”

“Me, I’ve given you a shot.  You’re alive.  It won’t always be like this.”  Going to the door, he put his hand on the knob, but instead of opening it, he turned and asked, “say, whatever happened to Dr. Malek?”

THE FOUNDER AUNTS

High Commander Wharton and the widow, Mrs. Fred Waterford, known now as Serene Joy Waterford.  The two of them, on display.

Yes, there was a curfew in New Bethlehem. The time everyone was to be indoors was 9:00 pm.  Guardians used to patrol its streets, beginning at 9:15, but everyone wanted this place to be real, so real that they obeyed all laws.  Eventually Guardians reduced their night-patrols to be deployed only at New Bethlehem’s perimeter, not that there was much security concern there either.

So it was, no one noticed.  Not one person in any of the nearby houses so much as parted a curtain to steal a peek outside.

There they were, out on the street, under a street-lamp, waltzing it up.  Instead of joining the other Commanders at the Jezebels’ Penthouse lounge, High Commander Gabriel Wharton was engaging in a more prosaic vice.  Woo’ing widow Waterford with a midnight waltz in the street, it was as old fashioned as it was cringe-worthy.

But Serena Joy, she was falling for it.  Falling for it hard.

There should have been no one else on the street, or any of the New Bethlehem streets for that matter, not at this time.  Not past curfew.

Then the voice echo’ed through the dark, the voice of an older, obviously determined woman.  The obvious voice of an Aunt - not that Wharton had ever met Aunt Lydia - he’d only known her by reputation.

But the voice - it was immediately recognized by Serena Joy.  Yessir, that was Aunt Lydia.  Serena, she was out on the street, accompanied by a D.C. High Commander….. and there was Aunt Lydia, she was all by her onsey.

As Aunts do.  If found out past curfew, like Moses Lydia had the power to part the most seasoned of Guardians, to pursue her agenda

Which that evening she had.  An agenda - and she was someone used to having it seen to.

Wharton and Waterford, they stopped their dance to face Lydia…. to hear her say….

“Mrs. Waterford.  Commander Wharton.  Blessed evening……”  Lydia had omitted the ‘High’ in Wharton’s title….. which could not have been an accident.  Not considering Lydia, steeped in Gilead’s rules and regulations.

That’s what immediately occurred to Serena Joy.  Not that they’d been caught dancing by an Aunt, out in public.  But that Aunt Lydia, she had an agenda, and now had leverage.

Principally, she was thinking of what a queer thing it was that at one time one was in India in the blazing sun, and then in the middle of the ocean, and then driving in a strange vehicle through strange streets where the day was as dark as the night. She found this so puzzling that she moved closer to her father. 'Papa,' she said in a low, mysterious little voice, which was almost a whisper, 'Papa.' 'What is it, darling?' Captain Crewe answered, holding her closer and looking down into her face. 'What is Sara thinking of?' 'Is this the place?' Sara whispered, cuddling still closer to him. 'Is it, Papa?' 'Yes, little Sara, it is.'"

Chapter Text

I’m just tired, I’m just so fucking exhausted - Rita Blue

GUESS WHO’S COMING TO DINNER

Gabriel Wharton, he was a student of people.  As the D.C. High Commander, he occupied the de facto highest office in Gilead.  He’d not got there because he did not know people - in a Commander’s case, men.

Tonight at dinner, one which his daughter Rosie had prepared for four, he surveyed his son-in-law to the left of him, Commander Nick Blaine of New Gilead.  Rosie’s place to his right was temporarily vacant as she was out in the kitchen putting the first batch of dirty dishes in the dishwasher - yes, a dishwasher….

…. not a Martha, but an automated modern convenience, emblematic of the promise of New Bethlehem.

It wasn’t the widow Mrs. Fred Waterford which occupied him, not yet.  Or maybe ‘still’, no matter. Serena Joy was seated across from him, at the symbolic foot-of-the-table, usually reserved for the Wife of the Commander’s house.  Right now, the thought of her as a compadre in the New Bethlehem project was insuffiecient……

… but no matter.  Gabriel turned his thoughts to Nick Blaine, if only to spare himself the impure thoughts which seemed to drive the vices of his brother Commanders.

Rosie still puttering in the kitchen, Gabriel Wharton noted that conversation at the table had been spartan.  Since they had sat down, and since Rosie had finished serving them - once Mrs. Waterford stopped suggesting that she herself help the pregnant, young woman with dinner…..

…. there had not been much talk among the gathered.  Nick had focussed about his meal, head down while he ate.  There had not been one, not one, exchange between he and Rosie, the married couple at the table.  Gabriel had known how hard his daughter had taken it when she’d found out the severe responsibilities a Commander of Gilead was required to do, himself doing the duty of particicuting Warren Putnam at a Commander’s breakfast.

That act could have doomed Nick in the eyes of his brother, New Gilead Commanders.  But because Blaine and Lawrence had brought more Guardian guns to the breakfast than Putnam had…. well, let’s just say that New Bethlehem had received a boost.

Wharton remembers it had been Rosie herself to have called him from Boston, called to him in D.C., telling about how Nick had been arrested after assaulting Commander Lawrence.  She’d visited him in prison, told her daddy that she’d had enough, that she wasn’t going to play, “the grateful crippled girl” any longer, and that she was headed home to D.C.

To give birth there.

Yet there they were, sharing a dinner table with himself, as well as Mrs. Waterford, Rosie the dutiful and heavily pregnant advertisement for New Bethlehem…. still in the kitchen, seemingly ignoring her guests.

It was Mrs. Waterford who broke the silence and the sound of the clean-up in the next room.

“That was such a lovely meal, High Commander.  I still feel sheepish that Rose did not allow any help.  But she certainly pulled out all the stops for this meal.  Are you sure she won’t be allowed a Martha?”

Wharton said, facing more Blaine’s way than Serena’s, “well, this is New Bethlehem.  If we’re going to get back our diaspora, it’s probably best to let those aspects of Gilead remain outside the gates here.”  Then looking straight at Nick he asked, “don’t you agree, Commander Blaine?”

It wouldn’t have surprised Wharton if Blaine’s response had been a guttural, “huh?” because Blaine’s mind was obviously somewhere else.  Neither here at dinner, nor wondering how Rose was doing in the kitchen.

Breaking the awkward silence, Mrs. Waterford announced, “well, it’s past curfew.  Where did the time go?  I should get back to my apartment.”

Wharton rose, and announced, “well, Mrs. Waterford, you’ll need an escort.  We don’t want any hyperactive Guardian questioning you on the way home.  I could provide you with some cover….”  He then looked at Nick, recalled that he himself had been considering the measure of men in Gilead, then said to Serena, “I just need a moment with my son-in-law, I’ll meet you in the entryway.  Please, don’t leave without me.”

As Serena was leaving to get her coat, then wait, Wharton walked the few steps to the kitchen door - because he’d not heard any activity from there for a while.  Leaving it alone, he saw that Rose had probably gone upstairs - probably the pregnancy was getting to her after all the busy-ness of dinner.

GABRIEL AND NICK

Then there was also what Wharton knew about her feelings for her husband.

High Commander Gabriel Wharton:  -sitting at the table -  I’m going to take Mrs. Waterford home, but I need to know a few things.

Commander Nick Blaine:  What’s that, High Commander?

HCGW:  Well, for now, just call me Gabriel.  You’re family, Nick.  - pause -  As family, I need you to know that I’m working on Rosie.  She’s not thrilled by what you’d done.  For next time, Nick, make sure you don’t come home with blood actually on you.  - pause -  I made that mistake when Rosie had been small.

CNB:  I’ve had a lot on my mind recently.

HCGW:  Ya, I get it.  It’s going to be hard for you and Rosie, particularly trying to be civil with each other during New Bethlehem’s roll out.  Rosie’s pregnancy, the fact of her existence given her… her…. her, challenges…. that’s attractive to the people we’re trying to draw in.

CNB:  You can count on me, sir.

HCGW:  Can I, Nick?  - pause -  Lawrence says I need not worry about you and June Osborne, Nick.  That even Rosie knows, has seen enough of the Commander Bell’s of the world to know the score with the demands of Command.  - silence -  Do I need to worry about Osborne, Nick?

CNB:  It’s under control, sir.

HCGW:  - standing -  Well, I’ve heard that before, usually those are the words before the Huns come over the wall……  - silence -  It’s hard to believe that Joseph Lawrence agreed to go to the Penthouse.

CNB:  He knows what goes on there….

HCGW:  As he should!  He was the one who proposed ‘Jezebels’ as an ‘institution of Gilead’, that’s what he’d called them.  Now there’s someone whose contributions to Gilead have outweighed his vices.

CNB:  You don’t need worry, High Commander.  Lawrence is a monk.  He’ll go, mainly to put in an appearance.  But believe me, he’s still driven by his wife…..

HCGB:  Naomi Lawrence?

CNB:  No.  The real Mrs. Lawrence.

High Commander Gabriel Wharton thought of the times other Commanders had said they valued his assessment of the men around him.  How he had managed to balance Commanders’ vices with their other contributions to God’s plan for Gilead.

That effort, it had exhausted Gabriel Wharton, the man.  He was tired of Gilead’s hypocrisy, and he was a High Commander - perhaps THE High Commander of the federal State.

Like with the young Commander Bell…. there was an apple which had not fallen far from the tree.  The senior Commander Bell, his vices of the flesh were legion - distasteful, as unpious as one could get.  But the senior Bell, he commanded Guardians as well.  He’d also never once been caught with his fingers in the till.  Being constantly on THAT guard had worn Wharton ragged.

Which, as an assessor of men, Wharton thought probably didn’t apply to Bell the younger.  Young Bell, he’d accomplished nothing, but he certainly knew Commanders’ perks.  The young one had been too quick to organize a ‘celebration’ in the Penthouse of Jezebels, to usher in the era of High Commander Lawrence….. or it could have been anything else, any excuse to head to the Penthouse, really.

The measure of men.  These events surrounding New Bethlehem, Wharton left the dining room to seek out Serena Joy to walk her home, through the curfew.

ROSE AND NICK

Rose came down from upstairs, Nick being unaware that his wife had earlier abandoned even the kitchen.  She came directly to the dining room, making no note, none at all, that both her father as well as Mrs. Waterford were gone.

She sat opposite Nick, with the solid oak dining table between them.

Finally, Nick said, “that was a beautiful dinner, Rose.  Your dad, he liked it.  I wish you would have taken Mrs. Waterford up on her offer to help.  But, wow, you really put on the dog for us tonight.”

Rose reached back to massage her lower back.  She reached down and took off a shoe, and massaged her foot.  She finally said, “I could have used some help, Nick.”

Having already mentioned Mrs. Waterford, Nick remained silent.

Stretching her back while sitting, she said, “I don’t know how much longer I can do this, Nick.  I just don’t.  I can’t smile like Mrs. Waterford does, that woman’s face is going to crack……”

“This is important, Rose,” Nick said.

Sarcastically, Rose noted, “oh is it?  I hadn’t noticed.”  She told Nick of what he’d missed during the meeting with the international delegation earlier - how everyone had wanted to touch the crippled girl’s swollen womb.  Rose was a walking poster for New Bethlehem.  She didn’t like it….

…. it was humiliating …. at her age, with her hip-dysplasia, with her pregnancy, with her marriage probably a sham…..

….. Rose was just so exhausted.  So tired of the same old, same old.  She did not know how she was going to summon the strength…..

…... especially if it meant staying any longer with Commander Nick Blaine than she had to.  She had promised her daddy.

RITA AND GINA

Rita’s mind froze.  She was now so, so aware that even if this was New Bethlehem, that she had voluntarily traveled into Gilead.  Hearing her long lost sister now speak, she felt herself even more trapped in Gilead, the place that she had always thought she’d die in.

Not only was her mind spinning, but her knees were weak.

It had been what Gina had said.  “Mrs. Waterford, she’s been so kind to me.  You must think of yourself as lucky to have been assigned to their house!”

“Lucky?” Rita exclaimed, scarcely believing the term being used.  “I was a Martha in a commander’s house.  They OWNED ME.”

“Sis, we all have a story to tell,” Gina said, recovering.  “Me, I lost Matthew.  You lost your son.  It’s not believable.”

Rita said more quietly, “I thought his loss would be valued, in Gilead…. it wasn’t.  Oh, they’d paid lip service to it, but that was all.”

Gina sat back - surveyed the crisp blue, warm sky above them.  “Mrs. Waterford, she was everything to me.  She’d confirmed that Matthew, that he’d…. he’d…….”

Rita finished the sentence, “…….. that he’d been salvaged.  You can say it, Gina.  It helps to say it, it really does.  But it does not make Mrs. Waterford a hero.”

“She got us together, you and me.  She pulled strings, Rita - for us.  We wouldn’t be here if not.  She said that Gilead, that it had done what it had to with Matthew.  That’s my shame - our family’s shame - he’d never told me.  Gender traitor.”

Rita could scarcely believe her ears.  “Family shame?  Being gay is nothing to be ashamed for!”

“Oh Rita, you were in Canada too long.  Drinking Canadian koolade, wokeism.  I miss him, I really do, but I don’t miss what he’d become.”

Rita did not reply.  Eventually she breathed quietly, “I’m just so tired, just so fucking exhausted.”

To those words, Gina chided her for the bad language, as if the language was somehow worse than what Gilead had done to Matthew.

Rita had come all this way for a reunion, all this way back in the belly of the beast….

…... and all she could feel was her exhaustion…….

Chapter Text

ALL WOMEN

I had thought all women, that all of them had vanished.  Of course I was still in shock, the terrible reality of having lost my daughter, lost my husband - being enslaved and then posted to the Waterford house.

I guess I knew not ‘all’ had vanished.  I mean, the Waterford’s, they thought they’d done me a kindness by pairing me with Ofglen, the Handmaid next door.  At Loaves and Fishes, there were other women.  But Aunts and Guardians patroled the aisles, all we could risk was a ‘Blessed Day’, or that the Lord had sent us fine weather.  At the time, referring to ‘women’, I’d meant it as Moira.  I mean, Moira and me - inseparable, she’d been the one to throw me at Luke.

MOIRA.  She was the one with the attitude.  She was the one to voice opposition.  My mom, Holly, she’d often said she’d wanted me to show more ‘awareness’, like Moira.  No, I’d not taken that as an insult from mom - she was right.  Moira, I looked up to.

If there was balm in Gilead, it was Moira.  If only in my mind.

Moira, after what she’d done at the Red Centre, after stealing Aunt Elizabeth's fucking clothes….. I mean, Moira was going to wrestle Gilead to the ground.

When I’d first seen “Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum”, I’d been locked upstairs at the Waterford’s for a time, a time I’d lost track of.  I was crawling over every inch of floor, I was counting every small flower on the duvet.  I was searching the farthest crevices and corners of my room - that room with a desk and a chair, a reminder that no woman was allowed to sit and read or write.

Mrs Waterford, she’d not decked out my room like that to be ironic.  She did it to be cruel.  They’d even removed the ceiling chandelier…. I was only later to learn why - it had to do with the first Offred.

Yet I was to find echoes of Offred #1.  “Nolite te Bastardes Carborundorum”, I’d found it during a time of lying on the closet floor.  I’d once scared Rita, the Martha, she’d walked in while I was laying on the floor inside, running my finger over the faux-Latin phrase.  Rita had let out a silent shriek… I mean, she’d been the one to find the first Offred.

But the phrase, it was a phrase in a version of Latin which made no sense - as a former-copy editor, if I'd let that one pass, I'd have got into shit. But I understood it.

It’s why I imagined that I at first thought it had to have been Moira who’d etched it.  Moira, she was like that - a role model - as much that as a friend.  Mom thought her a role model - for me.  For me being so dense.  Someone who on the outside would appear to be complying, but on the inside she’d be conspiring.

I envied that.

I turned the author of “Nolite te Bastardes” into Moira, Moira as she was when she was in college, in the room next to mine: quirky, jaunty, athletic, with a bicycle once, and a knapsack for hiking. Irreverent, resourceful.  I wonder who the previous Handmaid, who she was or is, and what’s become of her.

I needed her to be Moira.

What’s happened between Moira and me?  Once I’d found her again, she at Jezebels, my Commander allowing me to have a reunion with her - Moira had given up.  Jesus, not you Moira?  I’d needed you to be the type who would fight to the end.

If you weren’t fighting, what hope was there for me?

We’d pinky-swore.  We’d promised each other we’d get to Hannah, then we’d get her out.  Then Moira became ‘Ruby’, she was going to behave herself as a whore at Jezebels, until her snatch wore out.  She said that the only way out of there was horizontally.  That we were to all do their bidding because it was too dangerous not to.

Moira!  Get your fucking shit together!

This had been the girl to tie up Aunt Elizabeth and flee, with me, flee in plain sight from the Red Centre.  That was the Moira I’d known.  Now?  Now I told her she had no right to give up - a saying what she’d used on me countless times.

In my room at the Waterfords, that claustraphobic room, they’d given me a fan - one to combat the heat and humidity of the dog days of summer.  In those old houses, all the heat always settled up on the top floors.

The fan, its blades were encased in a grill, if I’d been Moira, so I then thought, I’d know how to take it apart, reduce it to its cutting edges.  True, I’d had no screwdriver, but that wouldn’t have stopped Moira.

Okay, my mind wandered, that’s what happened when I obsessed about Moira.

MOIRA AND LUKE

She’d been the one who’d introduced us, me and Luke - but then she found out he was married.  It had confused her that Luke was so nonchalant about pursuing me… she told me to stop, to cut him loose, that I was now poaching, on another woman’s ground.

Did I say that it was her who’d introduced us?

I guess that had been our first argument, one that threw up a wall between us.  It was a side of Moira I would never figure out, even as we remained friends, even as we shared slavery in Gilead.

I said Luke wasn’t a fish or a piece of dirt either, he was a human being and could make his own decisions. She said I was rationalizing. I said I was in love. She said that was no excuse. Moira was always more logical than I was.

Not now.  Now?  Now Luke wants to join Moira in storming back into Gilead, flying the Mayday flag, blowing up some shit at a Jezebels, one where there was going to be a lot of Commanders.

The man that Moira told me to ditch, she’s now shacked up with him emotionally, Mayday-style, to damage Gilead.

To rescue Hannah?

Unsure.

THE LAWRENCE TAPES ODE TO MOIRA

Remember the travel tapes belonging to Joseph Lawrence?  The ones I’d over-recorded, to chronicle my Handmaids Tale?  The only thing I’d wanted about overdubbing those, then sneaking them up the Underground femaleroad to Maine - all I’d wanted was to be remembered.  Not forgotten.

Up at Passamaquoddy, a Quaker guy, he’d found them.  They’d almost been forgotten in one of their safehouses.  He sat down, listened to them all, he made the decision to store them more properly in a military-supply box.

I’d met him.  In Canada.  He’d got out north from Maine - me I’d got out, no surprise it was Moira who’d got me out, I’d got out through Chicago and Lake Michigan.

He’d said he was honoured to meet me.  Said the tapes were still back at that safehouse, but he could not forget listening.  Even more, he looked forward to meeting this ‘Moira’, the Moira of the audiotapes I’d made.  He said that even though other Quakers had called my oral history, ‘The Handmaids Tale’, that some were calling it ‘Moira’s tale’.

That although in my voice, those tapes were to have folk remember her.

Me, I’d never actualy listened to them.  What had I said about Moira?  I’d thought they’d been about me - about the claustraphobic horror of Handmaidendom…. he said, that I was speaking mostly about Moira.  That he’d counted…. that on those tapes I’d mentioned Moira more than anyone else - both pre- and post-slavery.

More than mom.  More than Luke.

He’d said, “Moira was your mentor, Moira was who you’d wanted to be - heroic in the midst of horror.”

Moira used to say that I was such a wimp.  She’d been right.  But with this Mayday plan, the one to infiltrate Gilead, the one approved by Ellen, to blow up a Jezebels, kill commanders…. that does not make her heroic, any more than me opposing it makes me a wimp.

MOIRA AND MAYDAY

Rita, I’d heard she’d sold out.  Had accepted an invitation to New Bethlehem in exchange for seeing her sister.  I’d thought of Rita as part of Martha Lori’s network.  Apparently, Canada had exposed her.  Rita cannot keep her shit together.

Moira?  Went over my head and complained straight to Ellen.  Me, I’d dealt with challenges to my plans like that before.  I’d even once got Martha Lori herself to promise not to stand in the way of Angels Flight - and, yes, I would accept the consequences.

Yes if Marthas had been lost in the process, Gilead would still have been punished. Beth. Sienna.

Moira:  June!  What did you say to Ellen?

June:  Look, I’m just trying to keep you safe, okay?

Moira:  Fuck you June.  Who asked you to keep me ‘anything’?  You told her to send you and not me.  Fuck you, bitch.

June:  It’s my friend, she’s the one at Jezebels, I need to see her.  You guys, you don’t know what you’re doing.  Moira, the last time at Jezebels, you were caving in…… there’s no guarantee….

Moira:  Fuck you and the horse you rode in on.  Your street cred is starting to get annoying, girl.

June:  I was in there longer than you.

Moira:  You went behind my back, we didn’t even discuss this.  This is so, so ‘June’.  You do the deciding, we do the dying.

June:  The disrespectful thing?  You lying to me about all this….

Moira:  Because we knew, we knew that you’d DO SOMETHING LIKE THIS! 

June:  Ok, be mad.  Be mad at me!  That’s absolutely fine.  I don’t give a shit.  Because you’ll be alive.  Moira, I cannot, I simply cannot lose you, not you, too.

Moira:  I’m telling Ellen that I’m going.  You can come if you want - get killed - but I’m going.

June:  What the fuck are you trying to prove?

Moira:  I don’t have anything to prove to the likes of you, bitch.

June:  You’re out of your depth.  You don’t know what you’re doing?  You don’t have someone on the inside, like I do.

Moira:  I’ve met the guy, June.  I’m just not wanting to fuck him.

June:  You won’t survive!

- silence -

Moira:  - now softly -  You think that little of us.  - then pointedly -  This is about you, June.  You and what you want.  Do.  Not.  Follow.  Me.

June:  What are you talking about?

Moira:  Exactly.  Go back to Alaska.  You don’t want to get Hannah, you just want to blow shit up.

There was now no balm in Gilead.  It used to be Moira.