Facing us are two rows of women: one standing, one kneeling. They are not wearing blindfolds. I can see their faces. I recognize them, each and every one. Former friends, former clients, former colleagues; and, more recently, women and girls who have passed through my hands. Wives, daughters, Handmaids. Some have missing fingers, some have one foot, some have one eye. Some have ropes around their necks. I have judged them, I have passed sentence: once a judge, always a judge. But they are all smiling. What do I see in their eyes? Fear, contempt, defiance? Pity? It’s impossible to tell.
Those of us with rifles raise them. We fire. Something enters my lungs. I can’t breathe. I choke, I fall.
I wake up in a cold sweat, heart pounding. They say that a nightmare can frighten you to death, that your heart can literally stop. Will this bad dream kill me, one of these nights? Surely it will take more than that.
* * *
—
I was telling you about my seclusion in the Thank Tank and the luxurious experience in the hotel room that followed. It was like a recipe for tough steak: hammer it with a mallet, then marinate and tenderize.
An hour after I’d put on the penitential garb provided for me there was a knock at the door; a two-man escort was waiting. I was conducted along the corridor to another room. My white-bearded interlocutor from the time before was there, not behind a desk this time but seated comfortably in an armchair.
“You may sit down,” said Commander Judd. This time I was not forced into the chair: I sat down in it of my own accord.
“I hope our little regimen was not too strenuous for you,” he said. “You were treated only to Level One.” There was nothing to be said to this, so I said nothing. “Was it enlightening?”
“How do you mean?”
“Did you see the light? The Divine Light?” What was the right answer to this? He would know if I were lying.
“It was enlightening,” I said. This seemed to be sufficient.
“Fifty-three?”
“You mean my age? Yes,” I said.
“You’ve had lovers,” he said. I wondered how he had found that out, and was slightly flattered that he’d bothered.
“Briefly,” I said. “Several. No long-term successes.” Had I ever been in love? I didn’t think so. My experience with the men in my family had not encouraged trust. But the body has its twitches, which it can be humiliating as well as rewarding to obey. No lasting harm was done to me, some pleasure was both given and received, and none of these individuals took their swift dismissal from my life as a personal affront. Why expect more?
“You had an abortion,” he said. So they’d been rifling through some records.
“Only one,” I said fatuously. “I was very young.”
He made a disapproving grunt. “You are aware that this form of person-murder is now punishable by death? The law is retroactive.”
“I was not aware of that.” I felt cold. But if they were going to shoot me, why this interrogation?
“One marriage?”
“A brief one. It was a mistake.”
“Divorce is now a crime,” he said. I said nothing.
“Never blessed with children?”
“No.”
“Wasted your woman’s body? Denied its natural function?”
“It didn’t happen,” I said, keeping the edge out of my voice as much as I could.
“Pity,” he said. “Under us, every virtuous woman may have a child, one way or another, as God intended. But I expect you were fully occupied in your, ah, so-called career.”
I ignored the slight. “I had a demanding schedule, yes.”
“Two terms as a schoolteacher?”