The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood [59]
Nobody asked her whether or not she had loved him.
What I remember now, most of all, is the make-up.
I stand up, in the dark, start to unbutton. Then I hear something, inside my body. I've broken, something has cracked, that must be it. Noise is coming up, coming out, of the broken place, in my face. Without warning: I wasn't thinking about here or there or anything. If I let the noise get out into the air it will be laughter, too loud, too much of it, someone is bound to hear, and then there will be hurrying footsteps and commands and who knows? Judgment: emotion inappropriate to the occasion. The wandering womb, they used to think. Hysteria. And then a needle, a pill. It could be fatal.
I cram both hands over my mouth as if I'm about to be sick, drop to my knees, the laughter boiling like lava in my throat. I crawl into the cupboard, draw up my knees, I'll choke on it. My ribs hurt with holding back, I shake, I heave, seismic, volcanic, I'll burst. Red all over the cupboard, mirth rhymes with birth, oh to die of laughter.
I stifle it in the folds of the hanging cloak, clench my eyes, from which tears are squeezing. Try to compose myself.
After a while it passes, like an epileptic fit. Here I am in the closet. Nolite te bastardes carborundorum. I can't see it in the dark but I trace the tiny scratched writing with the ends of my fingers, as if it's a code in Braille. It sounds in my head now less like a prayer, more like a command; but to do what? Useless to me in any case, an ancient hieroglyph to which the key's been lost. Why did she write it, why did she bother? There's no way out of here.
I lie on the floor, breathing too fast, then slower, evening out my breathing, as in the Exercises, for giving birth. All I can hear now is the sound of my own heart, opening and closing, opening and closing, opening
X. Soul Scrolls
25
What I heard first the next morning was a scream and a crash. Cora, dropping the breakfast tray. It woke me up. I was still half in the cupboard, head on the bundled cloak. I must have pulled it off the hanger, and gone to sleep there; for a moment I couldn't remember where I was. Cora was kneeling beside me, I felt her hand touch my back. She screamed again when I moved.
What's wrong? I said. I rolled over, pushed myself up.
Oh, she said. I thought.
She thought what?
Like ... she said.
The eggs had broken on the floor, there was orange juice and shattered glass.
I'll have to bring another one, she said. Such a waste. What was you doing on the floor like that? She was pulling at me, to get me up, respectably onto my feet.
I didn't want to tell her I'd never been to bed at all. There would be no way of explaining that. I told her I must have fainted. That was almost as bad, because she seized on it.
It's one of the early signs, she said, pleased. That, and throwing up. She should have known there hadn't been time enough; but she was very hopeful.
No, it's not that, I said. I was sitting in the chair. I'm sure it isn't that. I was just dizzy. I was just standing here and things went dark.
It must have been the strain, she said, of yesterday and all. Takes it out of you.
She meant the Birth, and I said it did. By this time I was sitting in the chair, and she was kneeling on the floor, picking up the pieces of broken glass and egg, gathering them onto the tray. She blotted some of the orange juice with the paper napkin.
I'll have to bring a cloth, she said. They'll want to know why the extra eggs. Unless you could do without. She looked up at me sideways, slyly, and I saw that it would be better if we could both pretend I'd eaten my breakfast after all. If she said she'd found me lying on the floor, there would be too many questions. She'd have to account for the broken glass in any case; but Rita would get surly if she had to cook a second breakfast.
I'll do without, I said. I'm not that hungry. This was good, it fit in with the dizziness. But I could manage the toast, I said. I didn't want to go without