“I thought it might be the end, for me. Or back to the Centre and the attentions of Aunt Lydia and her steel cable. She enjoyed that, you know. She pretended to do all that love-the-sinner, hate-the-sin stuff, but she enjoyed it. I did consider offing myself, and maybe I would have if there’d been any way. But they had two of them in the back of the van with me, watching me like a hawk; didn’t say a hell of a lot, just sat and watched me in that wall-eyed way they have. So it was no go.
“We didn’t end up at the Centre though, we went somewhere else. I won’t go into what happened after that. I’d rather not talk about it. All I can say is they didn’t leave any marks.
“When that was over they showed me a movie. Know what it was about? It was about life in the Colonies. In the Colonies, they spend their time cleaning up. They’re very clean-minded these days. Sometimes it’s just bodies, after a battle. The ones in city ghettoes are the worst, they’re left around longer, they get rottener. This bunch doesn’t like dead bodies lying around, they’re afraid of a plague or something. So the women in the Colonies there do the burning. The other Colonies are worse, though, the toxic dumps and the radiation spills. They figure you’ve got three years maximum, at those, before your nose falls off and your skin pulls away like rubber gloves. They don’t bother to feed you much, or give you protective clothing or anything, it’s cheaper not to. Anyway they’re mostly people they want to get rid of. They say there’s other Colonies, not so bad, where they do agriculture: cotton and tomatoes and all that. But those weren’t the ones they showed me the movie about.
“It’s old women, I bet you’ve been wondering why you haven’t seen too many of those around any more, and Handmaids who’ve screwed up their three chances, and incorrigibles like me. Discards, all of us. They’re sterile, of course. If they aren’t that way to begin with, they are after they’ve been there for a while. When they’re unsure, they do a little operation on you, so there won’t be any mistakes. I’d say it’s about a quarter men in the Colonies, too. Not all of those Gender Traitors end up on the Wall.
“All of them wear long dresses, like the ones at the Centre, only grey. Women and the men too, judging from the group shots. I guess it’s supposed to demoralize the men, having to wear a dress. Shit, it would demoralize me enough. How do you stand it? Everything considered, I like this outfit better.
“So after that, they said I was too dangerous to be allowed the privilege of returning to the Red Centre. They said I would be a corrupting influence. I had my choice, they said, this or the Colonies. Well, shit, nobody but a nun would pick the Colonies. I mean, I’m not a martyr. I’d already had my tubes tied, years ago, so I didn’t even need the operation. Nobody in here with viable ovaries either, you can see what kind of problems it would cause.
“So here I am. They even give you face cream. You should figure out some way of getting in here. You’d have three or four good years before your snatch wears out and they send you to the boneyard. The food’s not bad and there’s drink and drugs, if you want it, and we only work nights.”
“Moira,” I say. “You don’t mean that.” She is frightening me now, because what I hear in her voice is indifference, a lack of volition. Have they really done it to her then, taken away something – what? – that used to be so central to her? But how can I expect her to go on, with my idea of her courage, live it through, act it out, when I myself do not?
I don’t want her to be like me. Give in, go along, save her skin. That is what it comes down to. I want gallantry from her, swashbuckling, heroism, single-handed combat. Something I lack.
“Don’t worry about me,” she says. She must know some of what I’m thinking. “I’m still here, you can see it’s me. Anyway, look at it this way: it’s not so bad, there’s lots of women around. Butch paradise, you might call it.”
Now she’s teasing, showing some energy, and I feel better. “Do they let you?” I say.
“Let, hell, they encourage it. Know what they call this place, among themselves? Jezebel’s. The Aunts figure we’re all damned anyway, they’ve given up on us, so it doesn’t matter what sort of vice we get up to, and the Commanders don’t give a piss what we do in our off time. Anyway, women on women sort of turns them on.”
“What about the others?” I say.
“Put it this way,” she says, “they’re not too fond of men.” She shrugs again. It might be resignation.