The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood Read Free Book Online Page B

that she’s been taken at her word.
    She’s looking at the tulips. Her cane is beside her, on the grass. Her profile is towards me, I can see that in the quick sideways look I take at her as I go past. It wouldn’t do to stare. It’s no longer a flawless cut-paper profile, her face is sinking in upon itself, and Ithink of those towns built on underground rivers, where houses and whole streets disappear overnight, into sudden quagmires, or coal towns collapsing into the mines beneath them. Something like this must have happened to her, once she saw the true shape of things to come.
    She doesn’t turn her head. She doesn’t acknowledge my presence in any way, although she knows I’m there. I can tell she knows, it’s like a smell, her knowledge; something gone sour, like old milk.
    It’s not the husbands you have to watch out for, said Aunt Lydia, it’s the Wives. You should always try to imagine what they must be feeling. Of course they will resent you. It is only natural. Try to feel for them. Aunt Lydia thought she was very good at feeling for other people. Try to pity them. Forgive them, for they know not what they do. Again the tremulous smile, of a beggar, the weak-eyed blinking, the gaze upwards, through the round steel-rimmed glasses, towards the back of the classroom, as if the green-painted plaster ceiling were opening and God on a cloud of Pink Pearl face powder were coming down through the wires and sprinkler plumbing. You must realize that they are defeated women. They have been unable …
    Here her voice broke off, and there was a pause, during which I could hear a sigh, a collective sigh from those around me. It was a bad idea to rustle or fidget during these pauses: Aunt Lydia might look abstracted but she was aware of every twitch. So there was only the sigh.
    The future is in your hands, she resumed. She held her own hands out to us, the ancient gesture that was both an offering and an invitation, to come forward, into an embrace, an acceptance. In your hands, she said, looking down at her own hands as if they had given her the idea. But there was nothing in them. They were empty. It was our hands that were supposed to be full, of the future; which could be held but not seen.
    I walk around to the back door, open it, go in, set my basket down on the kitchen table. The table has been scrubbed off, cleared of flour; today’s bread, freshly baked, is cooling on its rack. The kitchen smells of yeast, a nostalgic smell. It reminds me of other kitchens, kitchens that were mine. It smells of mothers; although my own mother did not make bread. It smells of me, in former times, when I was a mother.
    This is a treacherous smell, and I know I must shut it out.
    Rita is there, sitting at the table, peeling and slicing carrots. Old carrots they are, thick ones, over-wintered, bearded from their time in storage. The new carrots, tender and pale, won’t be ready for weeks. The knife she uses is sharp and bright, and tempting. I would like to have a knife like that.
    Rita stops chopping the carrots, stands up, takes the parcels out of the basket, almost eagerly. She looks forward to seeing what I’ve brought, although she always frowns while opening the parcels; nothing I bring fully pleases her. She’s thinking she could have done better herself. She would rather do the shopping, get exactly what she wants; she envies me the walk. In this house we all envy each other something.
    â€œThey’ve got oranges,” I say. “At Milk and Honey. There are still some left.” I hold out this idea to her like an offering. I wish to ingratiate myself. I saw the oranges yesterday, but I didn’t tell Rita; yesterday she was too grumpy. “I could get some, tomorrow, if you’d give me the tokens for them.” I hold out the chicken to her. She wanted steak today, but there wasn’t any.
    Rita grunts, not revealing pleasure or acceptance. She’ll