The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood [82]
"You can sit," she says. "Here, take the cushion. I need you to hold this wool." She's got a cigarette, the ashtray's on the lawn beside her, and a cup of something, tea or coffee. "It's too damn close in there. You need a little air," she says. I sit, putting down my basket, strawberries again, chicken again, and I note the swear word: something new. She fits the skein of wool over my two outstretched hands, starts winding. I am leashed, it looks like, manacled; cobwebbed, that's closer. The wool is gray and has absorbed moisture from the air, it's like a wetted baby blanket and smells faintly of damp sheep. At least my hands will get lanolined.
Serena winds, the cigarette held in the corner of her mouth smoldering, sending out tempting smoke. She winds slowly and with difficulty because of her gradually crippling hands, but with determination. Perhaps the knitting, for her, involves a kind of willpower; maybe it even hurts. Maybe it's been medically prescribed: ten rows a day of plain, ten of purl. Though she must do more than that. I see those evergreen trees and geometric boys and girls in a different light: evidence of her stubbornness, and not altogether despicable.
***
My mother did not knit or anything like that. But whenever she would bring things back from the cleaner's, her good blouses, winter coats, she'd save up the safety pins and make them into a chain. Then she'd pin the chain somewhere—her bed, the pillow, a chair back, the oven mitt in the kitchen—so she wouldn't lose them. Then she'd forget about them. I would come upon them, here and there in the house, the houses; tracks of her presence, remnants of some lost intention, like signs on a road that turns out to lead nowhere. Throwbacks to domesticity.
"Well then," Serena says. She stops winding, leaving me with my hands still garlanded with animal hair, and takes the cigarette end from her mouth to butt it out. "Nothing yet?"
I know what she's talking about. There are not that many subjects that could be spoken about, between us; there's not much common ground, except this one mysterious and chancy thing.
"No," I say. "Nothing."
"Too bad," she says. It's hard to imagine her with a baby. But the Marthas would take care of it mostly. She'd like me pregnant though, over and done with and out of the way, no more humiliating sweaty tangles, no more flesh triangles under her starry canopy of silver flowers. Peace and quiet. I can't imagine she'd want such good luck, for me, for any other reason.
"Your time's running out," she says. Not a question, a matter of fact.
"Yes," I say neutrally.
She's lighting another cigarette, fumbling with the lighter. Definitely her hands are getting worse. But it would be a mistake to offer to do it for her, she'd be offended. A mistake to notice weakness in her.
"Maybe he can't," she says.
I don't know who she means. Does she mean the Commander, or God? If it's God, she should say won't. Either way it's heresy. It's only women who can't, who remain stubbornly closed, damaged, defective.
"No," I say. "Maybe he can't."
I look up at her. She looks down. It's the first time we've looked into each other's eyes in a long time. Since we met. The moment stretches out between us, bleak and level. She's trying to see whether or not I'm up to reality.
"Maybe," she says, holding the cigarette, which she has failed to light. "Maybe you should try it another way."
Does she mean on all fours? "What other way?" I say. I must keep serious.
"Another man," she says.
"You know I can't," I say, careful not to let my irritation show. "It's against the law. You know the penalty."
"Yes," she says. She's ready for this, she's thought it through. "I know you can't officially. But it's done. Women do it frequently. All the time."
"With doctors, you mean?" I say, remembering the sympathetic brown eyes, the gloveless hand. The last time I went it was a different doctor. Maybe someone caught him out, or a woman reported him. Not that they'd take her word, without evidence.
"Some do that," she says, her tone almost