The Handmaid's Tale

The narrator recalls sleeping with other women in a former gymnasium converted into a guarded dormitory. Aunts Sara and Elizabeth patrol the rows of army cots with electric cattle prods, while armed Angels remain outside the barbed-wire fence. The women are permitted outside only for paired walks around the football field. Traces of the gymnasium's former dances and students prompt memories of desire and expectation from the time before.

Communication is forbidden, but the women secretly touch hands, whisper, and lip-read across the spaces between their beds. They exchange the names Alma, Janine, Dolores, Moira, and June. They also imagine attracting the guards and making some kind of trade with them, regarding their own bodies as one of the few things they still possess.

The narrator describes her assigned room, where potential means of self-harm have been removed or altered: the window opens only partly, its glass is shatterproof, and the flower print has no glass. Aunt Lydia has taught the women to regard such confinement as a privilege, and the narrator resolves to ration her thoughts because she intends to survive. She dresses in the prescribed red clothing and white wings and leaves the room to go shopping.

Downstairs, the household's color-coded roles are visible even in the umbrellas reserved for the Commander, his Wife, and the narrator. In the kitchen, Rita, a Martha, gives the narrator tokens for eggs, cheese, and meat. The narrator remembers overhearing Rita and Cora discussing Handmaids: Rita said she would rather go to the Colonies, while Cora argued that Handmaids are said to be serving everyone. The narrator longs for ordinary conversation with the Marthas, but knows they are not supposed to fraternize with Handmaids. Rita tells her to demand fresh eggs and a chicken, and the narrator takes the tokens without encouraging friendship.

The narrator crosses the Commander's Wife's garden and remembers arriving at the household five weeks earlier for her third posting. She had hoped the Wife might be protective, but their first meeting was tense from the doorway onward. The Wife made the narrator carry in her own bag, then told her she wanted to see as little of her as possible and described their arrangement as a business transaction. She warned that any trouble would be answered in kind and insisted that the Commander was her husband until death.

The Wife smokes a black-market cigarette during the meeting, which briefly gives the narrator hope that rules can be bent and exchanges can still be made. As they speak, the narrator recognizes her from childhood television: she is Serena Joy, once the lead soprano on the Growing Souls Gospel Hour. The recognition makes the narrator's new posting feel more unsettling rather than more familiar.

On her way out to shop, the narrator sees Nick, a Guardian who lives over the garage, washing the Commander's car. She knows his name from Rita, Cora, and the Commander. Nick has a cigarette, behaves more casually than his low status would suggest, and winks at her. She cannot tell whether the gesture is friendly, a test, or evidence that he may be an Eye, so she hides her face and continues to the corner.

There she meets Ofglen, the shopping partner assigned to her for the past two weeks. They exchange the prescribed greeting and walk together because Handmaids are not permitted into town alone. The narrator distrusts Ofglen and assumes that each woman is expected to watch the other. Ofglen reports that Baptist rebels in the Blue Hills have been defeated.

At a checkpoint, two young Guardians inspect and stamp their passes. The narrator remembers that Guards recently shot a Martha there when they mistook her attempt to produce a pass for reaching for a bomb. One of the young men tries to see the narrator's face; she lets him meet her eyes, then later deliberately sways her hips as she and Ofglen walk away. She regards the forbidden attention as a small, passive form of power, even while recognizing that the young Guardians are themselves constrained by Gilead's rules.

The narrator and Ofglen walk through the center of Gilead, where large houses and quiet streets remind the narrator of the life she once imagined with Luke. She recalls the choices she used to make about clothes, money, and movement, alongside the precautions women once took against harassment and assault. Aunt Lydia's distinction between "freedom to" and "freedom from" comes back to her as she compares that past with the regulated present.

At Milk and Honey, the narrator notices rare oranges and sees a heavily pregnant Handmaid. The woman is Ofwarren, whom the narrator recognizes as Janine from the Red Center. The pregnancy draws envy and attention because it is both valuable and dangerous. At All Flesh, Ofglen buys steak and the narrator collects the chicken Rita requested.

Outside, they encounter Japanese tourists whose uncovered hair, short skirts, and makeup now seem startling to the Handmaids. An interpreter asks whether the tourists may photograph them; both women refuse. When he then asks whether they are happy, Ofglen remains silent and the narrator answers, "Yes, we are very happy," because she believes silence could itself be dangerous.

Ofglen suggests taking their usual long route past an old church. The church is now a museum, and the narrator thinks about the river, dormitories, stadium, and other places that remain physically nearby but are no longer freely accessible. She distrusts Ofglen's bowed-head piety, while recognizing that Ofglen may be making similar judgments about her.

Their actual destination is the Wall. Six bodies hang from hooks there after a Men's Salvaging, all wearing white coats and placards marked with a fetus. The narrator identifies them as doctors who performed abortions when those procedures were legal, crimes that Gilead now punishes retroactively. The bodies are displayed as warnings, but the narrator does not feel the hatred she has been taught to feel.

Instead, she concentrates on emotional control and feels relief that none of the executed men is Luke. She notices Ofglen trembling beside her but refuses to reveal her own reaction. Aunt Lydia's warning that repeated exposure will eventually make such sights seem ordinary returns to her as she grips her shopping basket.

At night, while required to remain quiet and still in her room, the narrator treats memory as the one activity that is still her own. She recalls Moira visiting her college room and urging her to go out for a beer, then remembers being a child with her mother at a public burning of pornographic magazines. Her mother lets her throw one magazine into the fire.

Her memories shift to the separation from her daughter. After an interval she believes involved drugs or injections, she wakes confused and repeatedly asks where her child is. She is told that she is unfit and shown a photograph of her daughter standing beside an unknown woman in a long white dress.

The narrator then considers the act of telling her experience. She wishes she could believe it were only a story because a storyteller might control the ending, but acknowledges that it is also real. With writing forbidden, she composes the account in her head and imagines addressing an unnamed "you," as if the telling could reach someone beyond herself, even though she knows she has no assurance that anyone can hear it.

On the return trip, the narrator and Ofglen see three new bodies on the Wall: a priest and two Guardians marked for "Gender Treachery." Ofglen calls the weather a beautiful "May day," which reminds the narrator that Luke once explained mayday as a distress call derived from the French m'aidez. They then pass three Econowives in mourning. One carries a small black jar containing the remains of a pregnancy lost after only a few months; the mourners respond to the Handmaids' gesture of sympathy with hostility.

Back at the Commander's house, Nick speaks to the narrator while polishing the car even though he is not supposed to address her. In the garden she sees Serena Joy and recalls that Serena's real name was Pam, that she later gave public speeches about women remaining at home, and that she survived both a shooting attempt and a car bombing. The narrator thinks Serena must now be angry to be confined to the domestic role she once advocated.

In the kitchen, Rita inspects the chicken and the narrator tells her that Milk and Honey has oranges. The smell of bread evokes memories of being a mother, but she deliberately shuts them out. Rita and Cora discuss the narrator's bath as if she were another household task. Upstairs, the narrator finds the Commander near the door of her room, where custom does not permit him to be. He passes her with only an inclination of his head, leaving her unsure whether he had entered or looked into the room and what his presence signifies.

Waiting in the room she has begun to call hers, the narrator remembers hotel rooms where she met Luke while he was still married to his first wife. The privacy, food, telephones, writing materials, and freedom of those rooms now seem extraordinary. Exploring her present room a section at a time, she finds old stains on the mattress and thinks again of Luke and of the precautions meant to prevent Handmaids from harming themselves.

In the cupboard she discovers a tiny scratched message: "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum." She does not know what it means, but the forbidden writing gives her pleasure because it was left by a previous occupant for whoever came next. She imagines the unknown woman as someone like Moira and repeats the words to herself.

When she asks Rita about the earlier occupant, Rita's answers reveal that more than one woman has stayed in the room and that some did not complete their two-year postings. The narrator lies that she knew the lively, freckled woman before. Rita says only that the woman "didn't work out" and refuses to explain further.

The narrator silently recalls songs that are no longer permitted in public, including a hymn using the word "free" and a song from one of her mother's old cassette tapes. Music is scarce in the house: Rita sometimes hums, while Serena Joy occasionally listens at low volume to recordings from her former singing career. The narrator also remembers Aunt Lydia condemning women's former clothing and behavior while claiming to give the Handmaids their best chance of safety.

A memory of Moira follows. In college, Moira barged into the narrator's room while organizing an "underwhore party" to sell lingerie and made her laugh. Thinking about that ordinary life leads the narrator to reflect that people often live by actively ignoring disturbing events around them. Newspaper reports of murdered women once seemed to belong to other people's lives, while she and those she knew occupied what she calls the blank spaces between such stories.

From the window, the narrator sees Nick open the Commander's car door and the Commander leave the house. The sight also recalls college pranks with Moira. She tells herself she ought to hate the Commander, but admits that her feeling is more complicated and that she cannot name it, except to say that it is not love.

The narrator is taken alone to a monthly medical examination, where compulsory tests monitor her reproductive health. A sheet separates her face from the doctor while he examines her body. Although he is supposed to speak only when necessary, he tells her there is nothing wrong with her and then quietly offers to impregnate her, saying that many older men cannot father children and using the officially forbidden word "sterile."

The doctor says he has helped other women and argues that the narrator is fertile now, but accepting his offer could carry a death sentence if they were caught. He touches her and presses the proposal while claiming sympathy for what Handmaids endure. The narrator refuses because the risk is too great. She thanks him only because she does not want to antagonize a man who has power over her medical record. He tells her to think about it and says, "Next month."

Afterward, her hands shake. She has not accepted the offer or crossed the prohibited boundary, yet she realizes that having a choice is itself frightening. The doctor's proposal represents a possible way out of her reproductive predicament, but acting on it would expose her to extreme danger.

During her required bath, the narrator removes the clothing and headdress that usually conceal her body. The bathroom has no lock, mirror, or razors because earlier Handmaids cut or drowned themselves there, and Cora waits outside. The narrator feels estranged from a body that now determines her social value so completely.

The smell of the soap brings back a memory from when her daughter was eleven months old. In a supermarket, an unknown woman took the baby from the cart and claimed that God had given the child to her. The woman was stopped before leaving and held for the police, and the narrator then regarded the incident as an isolated act. She contrasts that memory with her later separation from her daughter, who would now be about eight. She hopes the girl is alive, while imagining that she may have been told her mother is dead.

As she finishes bathing, the narrator notices the four-digit number and Eye tattooed on her ankle, a mark intended to keep a scarce reproductive "national resource" identifiable. She knows she will not be allowed to wash again until the next day. Cora later brings her dinner; despite nausea and nervousness, she forces herself to eat. She hides a pat of butter in a spare shoe for later use, as she has done before, then waits and deliberately composes the self she must present.

With time to spare before the evening ritual, the narrator thinks about the enforced idleness of her life. Nineteenth-century harem paintings now suggest suspended animation and boredom to her, and she compares herself with penned animals given objects or unpredictable rewards simply to keep them occupied. She performs the pelvic exercises prescribed at the Red Center and remembers that the trainees were also required to spend an hour each afternoon resting, which she now interprets as practice for empty time.

She recalls Moira arriving at the Red Center with a bruise on her cheek. Because visible friendship was risky, they waited several days before arranging to meet through the hole between two washroom stalls. During the Testifying session that delays the narrator's trip to the washroom, Janine again describes being gang-raped at fourteen and having an abortion. The narrator is unsure whether every detail is true, but the Aunts make the women chant that Janine caused and deserved what happened. Janine has begun repeating that judgment herself.

After finally making contact with Moira in the washroom, the narrator returns in thought to her present body and the monthly fear of menstruation, which would mean another failure to become pregnant. She then slips into a nightmare of the family's attempted escape: she runs through the woods with her drugged, frightened daughter, hears shots behind them, covers the child, and is restrained as her daughter is carried away. The bell and Cora's knock wake her, and she identifies it as the worst of her recurring dreams.

The household assembles in the sitting room for the Ceremony. The narrator kneels near Serena Joy's chair while Cora, Rita, and Nick stand behind her. She briefly imagines stealing a small object from the room because possession would make her feel powerful, but rejects the idea as both illusory and too risky. Nick twice lets the tip of his boot touch hers beneath her skirt, and she moves her foot away.

Serena turns on the television while they wait for the Commander. The news shows fighting against Baptist guerrillas, the arrest of Quakers accused of helping people cross into Canada, and the announced resettlement of the "Children of Ham" to National Homeland One. The narrator doubts whether the broadcasts are current or truthful because only victories are shown, but she watches closely because even uncertain news is valuable.

After Serena turns the television off, the narrator thinks about the personal name that Gilead no longer allows her to use. She keeps it mentally hidden and does not reveal it. Her thoughts then return to a September morning when she, Luke, and their daughter drove north with forged passports and a cover story about a day trip. They carried little luggage and planned to give the child a sleeping pill before the border so she could not accidentally expose them. They pass an initial checkpoint successfully, but the narrator remains intensely afraid as Luke drives on.

The Commander enters the sitting room before Serena Joy can grant the permission prescribed by household protocol. The narrator cannot tell whether he has forgotten the rule or is deliberately ignoring it. He unlocks the box containing the household Bible, which the women are forbidden to read themselves, and reads passages about fertility and the stories of Rachel, Bilhah, Leah, and their maids. The narrator remembers that at the Red Center biblical passages were also read or played to the Handmaids, sometimes in altered form that they had no means to verify.

During the reading, her memory returns to Moira at the Red Center. Moira planned to fake an illness so an ambulance would take her to a hospital, despite the narrator's warning that she would be guarded. Moira carried out the attempt, but the ambulance brought her back. The Aunts punished her by beating her feet with frayed steel cables until they were so swollen she could not walk normally for a week. The other women carried her to classes and secretly brought her packets of sugar.

In the sitting room, Serena quietly cries as she usually does before the Ceremony. During the prescribed silent prayer, the narrator repeats "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum," the message left by the previous Handmaid, even though she still does not know what it means. She pictures Moira's injured feet until the Commander ends the prayer and dismisses the household.

During the Ceremony, the narrator lies fully clothed except for her underdrawers between Serena Joy's legs, with her head against Serena's body and her hands held in Serena's. The arrangement is supposed to signify that the Wife and Handmaid are one person, while the narrator understands Serena's grip as control over the reproductive process and any resulting child.

The Commander has sex with the narrator while all three remain within the prescribed positions. The narrator explicitly distinguishes the act from love, romance, or mutual sexual desire. She also resists calling it rape because, as she puts it, she entered the Handmaid system with very limited but not nonexistent choice. She copes by remaining still, describing what is happening, and focusing her attention elsewhere. Kissing between the Commander and Handmaid is forbidden.

After the Commander finishes, he withdraws, dresses, and leaves. Serena releases the narrator's hands and orders her to get up and leave rather than observe the prescribed ten-minute rest intended to improve the chance of conception. The narrator sees Serena remain rigid on the bed and ends by wondering which of them experiences the Ceremony more painfully.

Back in her room after the Ceremony, the narrator retrieves the butter hidden in her shoe and rubs it into her face and hands. Handmaids are denied lotions and creams, so women at the Red Center learned to save butter or margarine for their skin. The narrator treats this private practice as a way to imagine that she may someday leave and again be touched with love or desire.

Unable to sleep, she looks at the moon and longs for Luke, for her former name, and for the feeling of being valued as a person rather than for her reproductive function. She then illegally leaves her room and slips into the sitting room, intending to steal something small. Instead of the knife she briefly considers, she takes a withered daffodil from the current vase, planning to press it and leave it for a future Handmaid.

Nick enters the sitting room behind her. Because both are there illegally, neither can safely expose the other. They kiss and begin touching each other, but stop because the risk is too great. Nick then explains that he was looking for her on the Commander's orders: the Commander wants her to come to his office the following night. The narrator leaves the sitting room without knowing what the Commander intends.

Still trembling after the encounter with Nick, the narrator lies awake and longs for the physical presence of someone she loves. She remembers lying beside Luke while pregnant with their daughter and decides that what she fears losing is not sex but love. With Luke, her daughter, and the others she cares about absent, she also thinks of herself as a missing person to them.

She imagines three mutually incompatible possibilities for Luke. In one, he was shot and died in the woods during their escape. In another, he is alive in detention, injured and possibly being interrogated. In the third, he escaped across the border, received help from sympathetic people, and connected with some form of resistance. She deliberately believes all three possibilities because she has no way to determine which is true.

In the hopeful version, she imagines that Luke will somehow send a message telling her to endure, that he still loves her, and that they will eventually find their daughter and reunite. She acknowledges that this message may never come, but says belief in it keeps her alive. The chapter ends with her recalling a gravestone inscribed "In Hope" and questioning who, among the dead and the living, is doing the hoping.

The narrator wakes from layered dreams of her daughter and her mother and uses familiar details of her room to confirm that she is truly awake and sane. At breakfast she focuses intensely on an egg, reflecting on how reduced circumstances can concentrate the desire to live on small objects and pleasures.

A red Birthmobile arrives with its siren sounding, summoning her to Ofwarren's labor. In the van, other Handmaids react with excitement, prayer, and anxiety. The narrator remembers Red Center instruction about the high risk of babies with severe abnormalities, which the women call Unbabies, and about pollution, radiation, disease, and other factors said to have contributed to declining fertility and birth defects. Prenatal diagnosis and abortion are no longer permitted, so every pregnancy must be carried to term.

At Ofwarren's Commander's house, the Handmaids file inside while medical staff wait outside in an Emerge van unless intervention becomes unavoidable. The narrator recalls the Aunts presenting older hospital births, anesthesia, and surgical intervention as shameful and contrary to scripture. A blue Birthmobile for Wives arrives as she enters; the narrator assumes Serena Joy is among those coming to participate in the Wife's parallel ritual.

At the birth house, the Wives and Handmaids occupy separate parts of the ritual. The Wife of Warren lies downstairs on the sitting-room floor while other Wives massage her small belly as if she were laboring. Upstairs, Ofwarren, Janine, is the one actually giving birth: she sits propped on the master bed while Handmaids support her and Aunt Elizabeth supervises. The birthing stool waits nearby until labor advances. The narrator briefly feels sympathy for Janine, seeing her as another woman trying to live as agreeably as circumstances allow.

The gathering reminds the narrator of Red Center films used during training. Some were violent pornography presented as evidence of how women had once been treated; others were "Unwoman" documentaries whose soundtracks were withheld. In one such film, the narrator unexpectedly sees her mother as a young woman marching with other protesters beneath signs including "TAKE BACK THE NIGHT" and "FREEDOM TO CHOOSE."

The narrator then recalls her mother's later stories about choosing to have a child at thirty-seven, raising her largely alone, and arguing with the narrator and Luke about feminism, domestic labor, and the gains of earlier women. Their relationship was difficult because the narrator felt her mother expected her to justify her choices and ideals. In the present, however, the narrator says simply that she wants her mother back and wants the lost world back, while recognizing that wanting cannot restore either.

The Handmaids chant and breathe with Janine through labor until the women begin to feel sympathetic pains of their own. Ofglen is seated nearby, but when the narrator quietly asks whether anyone has seen Moira, she is speaking to a different Handmaid beside her. That woman identifies herself as Alma and offers to watch for Moira. The exchange ends when Aunt Elizabeth notices the interruption in the chanting.

As Janine enters transition, someone spikes the Handmaids' grape juice with alcohol. Janine is eventually placed on the lower seat of the birthing stool, and the Wife of Warren arrives to sit above and behind her on the raised seat, performing the ritualized role of the mother. Aunt Elizabeth catches the child as Janine gives birth. The baby is a girl with no visible abnormality on immediate inspection, and the Handmaids react with collective relief and joy.

The baby is then placed in the Wife's arms, and the Wives name her Angela while the Handmaids stand between Janine and the bed. Janine continues to suffer afterbirth pains and cries. She will be allowed to nurse Angela for several months before being transferred to another household to try to conceive again; because she has produced a viable child, she will not be declared an Unwoman or sent to the Colonies.

On the ride home, the excitement has drained away. The Handmaids feel physical symptoms resembling lactation and imagine phantom babies in their laps, confronting their own lack of pregnancies. The narrator thinks of her mother and remarks that Gilead has indeed created a women's culture, though not the one her mother wanted.

Exhausted from the intense birthing ceremony, the narrator climbs the stairs to her room, seeking solace in solitude. Too tired to sleep, her thoughts drift to Moira, who had once escaped from the Red Center. The narrator pieces together Moira's daring escape from bits of information shared by Alma, Dolores, and Janine. Moira's plan began when she raised her hand to use the washroom during exercises, tricking Aunt Elizabeth into entering the bathroom to fix an overflowing toilet. Using a dismantled toilet lever, Moira overpowered Aunt Elizabeth, taking her cattle prod and whistle, and marched her to the basement. Disguised in Aunt Elizabeth's clothes and adopting a confident demeanor, Moira walked out of the Red Center, fooling the guards. Aunt Elizabeth was later found and interrogated, but Moira remained at large.

Janine, summoned to Aunt Lydia's office to hear the story, was tasked with monitoring the other girls for any signs of involvement. This new responsibility made Janine a figure of suspicion and isolation among the women. The news of Moira's escape spread rapidly, inspiring awe and fear in equal measure. The possibility of Moira's freedom, whether real or imagined, infused the women with a mix of hope and unease. The chapter concludes with the narrator reflecting on the profound impact of Moira's escape, which served as a symbol of resistance and a reminder that the Aunts' control was not invincible.

Still reeling from the emotional and physical toll of the birthing ceremony, the narrator contemplates the nature of reconstruction and storytelling. She emphasizes the impossibility of exact recall and the power of forgiveness, particularly in the context of the Commander's request for a kiss. The underlying power dynamics and the temptation to forgive weigh heavily on her thoughts.

Cora interrupts her reflections by bringing dinner and inquiring about the baby, offering a brief moment of human connection. Later, the narrator realizes she must go to the Commander's study as he requested. She feels a mix of fear and curiosity, aware that her presence there is illegal.

The Commander greets her with an outdated form of politeness, inviting her to sit and play a game of Scrabble. The game, once mundane, is now forbidden and thus dangerous and desirable. They play two games of Scrabble, with the narrator winning the first and letting him win the second, sensing a potential for negotiation. The Commander then asks her to kiss him, and she complies, though the kiss feels mechanical and insincere.

The chapter ends with the narrator reflecting on the Commander's sadness and the complexity of her feelings.

After the secret Scrabble meeting with the Commander, the narrator returns to her room and tries to gain perspective on what has changed. She reminds herself that her current name is Offred, that she is thirty-three, and that she has one more reproductive chance. More importantly, the Commander's forbidden request has created a possible bargaining position: he wants something from her, and she may eventually be able to ask for something in return. She also recognizes that his desire could either help her or lead to her downfall.

Her thoughts shift to a documentary she saw as a child about the Holocaust. One interview featured the former mistress of a man who had supervised a camp where Jews were killed. Decades later, the woman insisted that he had not been a monster and denied knowing about the ovens. The narrator reflects on how easily someone can construct an ordinary, endearing version of a brutal person in order to continue living beside him. The interview subject killed herself several days after filming.

Without warning, the narrator begins to laugh uncontrollably. Because such visible emotion could bring punishment or medication, she covers her mouth and hides in the cupboard until the fit passes. There she traces "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum." The phrase now sounds less like a prayer and more like a command, but she still does not know what it means or what action it could demand. Lying on the cupboard floor, she slows her breathing until only her heartbeat remains.

The morning after the narrator's laughing fit, Cora finds her asleep partly inside the cupboard and drops the breakfast tray in alarm. The narrator claims she fainted rather than explain why she never reached the bed. Cora immediately hopes the fainting might indicate pregnancy, though the narrator insists it is too soon. To avoid questions about the broken tray, they agree to conceal what happened, and the narrator is pleased that Cora is willing to lie with her, even partly for Cora's own convenience.

By the time the narrator recounts this, spring has advanced into warmer weather. She watches Serena Joy cutting seed pods from the garden and covets the shears. The flowers, heat, and summer clothing intensify the narrator's sense of physical desire. Meanwhile, she and the Commander have established a regular secret arrangement two or three nights a week. Nick signals a meeting by the angle of his hat while polishing the car, and the narrator goes only when she can pass Serena without being detected.

The narrator reconstructs several early meetings. During the second, the Commander lets her read an old Vogue magazine, one of the forbidden publications supposedly destroyed after Gilead's rise. He says he has no one else to show it to and complains that Serena no longer talks to him or shares much with him. On a later visit, the narrator uses the emerging bargain to ask for hand or face lotion because Handmaids are denied it. The Commander eventually provides a bottle, but the narrator explains that room searches make it unsafe to keep there, forcing him to store it in his study.

The arrangement gives the narrator access to forbidden reading, conversation, and small goods, but she remains conscious that she is dispensable and that the Commander does not fully understand the restrictions governing her daily life.

A few weeks after the last incident, the night of the Ceremony arrives again. The narrator notices a significant shift in the atmosphere. Once, she approached the Ceremony as a mere task to endure, but now, she feels an awkwardness and shyness towards the Commander, who looks at her in a way that makes her uncomfortable. The harsh, clinical lighting of the room, chosen by Serena Joy to avoid any romantic or erotic connotations, exposes the narrator, making her feel uncouth and vulnerable.

The sexual act, once impersonal and detached, has become an embarrassing breach of propriety. The Commander, previously absent and disengaged, is now present and observant, complicating the narrator's feelings. She experiences a new, complex set of emotions towards Serena Joy. Although she still hates her, she now feels jealousy and guilt, as if she is an intruder in a territory that should belong to Serena Joy. The narrator recognizes that her secret meetings with the Commander, even if they are just for Scrabble and conversation, are blurring the lines of their roles.

Her newfound power over Serena Joy, though unrecognized by the latter, brings a sense of enjoyment and control. However, she is acutely aware of the risk of the Commander inadvertently revealing their secret through a look or gesture. During the Ceremony, he almost does so by reaching out to touch her face, and she has to subtly warn him off. The next time they meet privately, she firmly tells him not to repeat such actions, as they could lead to her being transferred to the Colonies or worse. The Commander apologizes, acknowledging that the Ceremony feels impersonal to him, and the narrator's tone indicates that their relationship has indeed shifted.

The chapter concludes with the narrator reflecting on the absurdity and ignominy of her position as the Commander's mistress. She acknowledges that men at the top have always had mistresses, but the current arrangement is more integrated into the household. Despite the risks and the complexity of her feelings, the narrator admits to being happier than before. The secret meetings provide her with something to do and think about, filling the void in her life. To the Commander, she is no longer just a body but a person of interest, which brings a sense of validation and purpose.

On a summer shopping walk, the narrator and Ofglen pass an empty Wall and stop at Soul Scrolls, where automated machines print, recite, and recycle prayers ordered by account. Reflected in the shop window, Ofglen looks directly at the narrator and quietly asks whether she thinks God listens to the machines. The narrator answers no, and Ofglen agrees. Their mutual admission crosses a line that both had previously avoided.

Ofglen says the outdoor location is relatively safe for conversation and tells the narrator, "You can join us." The word "us" confirms that Ofglen claims to belong to a larger opposition network. The narrator is excited and hopeful but does not discard the possibility that Ofglen could be a spy or a trap. She wants to ask about Moira, Luke, her daughter, and her mother, but they reach a busier street before there is time.

A black Eyes van then approaches. The narrator initially fears that their conversation was overheard. Instead, two Eyes seize an ordinary-looking man with a briefcase, strike him, and throw him into the van. Traffic resumes almost immediately. The narrator's strongest immediate reaction is relief that the arrest was not hers.

Unable to nap after Ofglen's revelation, the narrator remembers arguments with Moira about her affair with Luke and about power between men and women. She also remembers her own work before Gilead, first at an insurance company and later at a library transferring books onto computer discs. The ordinary fact that women held jobs and money now seems remote.

She reconstructs the political takeover. After the president was shot and Congress was machine-gunned, a state of emergency was declared and the attacks were blamed on Islamic fanatics. The Constitution was suspended as a supposedly temporary measure. Newspapers were censored or closed, roadblocks and Identipasses appeared, and promised elections did not occur. The narrator remembers how people were repeatedly told to continue as usual while the new restrictions accumulated.

The decisive personal change came when her Compucard suddenly stopped working and she was dismissed from the library under a new law. Armed men waited outside the workroom while the women employees were ordered to leave. Moira later explained that accounts marked female had been frozen and that women could no longer hold property; their money was to be transferred to a husband or male next of kin. Moira said she would go underground. When Luke came home, he promised to take care of the narrator, but his reassurance made her feel that the balance between them had already changed.

The narrator also remembers demonstrations that diminished after authorities began firing on them, her mother's earlier abortion-rights activism, and her own increasing fear and domestic withdrawal. In the present, she sees Nick outside with his cap turned sideways, the signal that the Commander wants her that night, and wonders what Nick gains from serving as messenger. Her thoughts return to the night after she lost her job, when Luke wanted sex and she felt too numb to respond. She remembers feeling that they were no longer equally each other's, but that she had become his, and now wonders whether that judgment was fair.

The narrator's visits to the Commander's office have become familiar enough that both sit more casually. After Scrabble, he offers her forbidden reading, as has become routine, but she asks to talk instead. She draws out a few details about him: he says he began in market research and later "branched out," describing himself vaguely as a kind of scientist. The narrator still does not know what his Commander's authority specifically covers.

She then risks asking about "Nolite te bastardes carborundorum." The Commander lets her write the phrase down, giving her the rare physical experience of holding a pen. He laughs and shows her an old Latin textbook in which the same mock-Latin phrase is written in the margin. He translates it as "Don't let the bastards grind you down" and explains that it was a schoolboy joke.

The textbook makes the narrator realize that the previous Handmaid must also have visited this study. When she asks what happened to the woman, the Commander says she hanged herself and that Serena Joy had found out about the secret arrangement. This is why the room's light fixture was removed. The narrator now knows she is not the first Handmaid with whom the Commander established private meetings.

When she suggests that perhaps she should stop coming, the Commander asks her to continue and says he wants her life to be bearable. The narrator recognizes that her possible death and his guilt give her some leverage. Asked what she wants besides lotion, she says that she wants to know "what's going on." The chapter ends with that request; the Commander has not yet answered it.

Night falls, and the narrator sits by the window, reflecting on the oppressive weight of darkness. She contemplates the nature of night, likening it to a thick curtain or wool blanket pressing down on her. The garden's scent rises strongly, and she notices Nick emerging from the shadows, pausing to look up at her window. They share a moment of intense, silent connection, but the narrator quickly pulls the curtain to block his view, recognizing the danger of their attraction.

Her thoughts turn to the past, specifically to the night before she and Luke attempted to flee. She recalls walking through their house, feeling a sense of finality and sorrow. Luke found the cat hiding under their bed and went to the garage to kill it, a task that weighed heavily on both of them. The narrator regrets not being there with him, feeling responsible for the cat's fate. She reflects on the betrayal that led to their capture, suspecting a neighbor or even the man who provided their forged passports.

The narrator's reflections deepen as she contemplates the nature of betrayal and the psychological manipulation of the regime. She remembers the strict prayer sessions at the Red Center, where Aunt Lydia enforced rigid postures and punished any signs of weakness. The women were taught to pray for emptiness, self-denial, and fertility, and some would become overwhelmed with ecstasy. The narrator now prays in her own way, sitting by the window and looking out at the garden. She prays for the safety of those she loves and for the strength to endure, struggling with the concept of forgiveness and the temptation to know more about the regime's inner workings.

Feeling deeply alone, the narrator questions the presence of a higher power. She wonders why God allows such suffering and feels disconnected from the divine, as if talking to a wall. Despite her doubts, she clings to the phrase 'In Hope,' a symbol of enduring faith in the face of despair.

In the continuing summer heat, the narrator marks time by the moon and thinks about the ordinary domestic arguments she would like to have with Luke. During her shopping walk with Ofglen, they find two bodies on the Wall, one marked with an unidentified red J. Ofglen says some people once escaped by pretending to be Jewish, but the regime has tightened the tests used to identify those seeking that route out.

Near the former university's Memorial Hall, Ofglen tells the narrator that the resistance has a password: "Mayday." It can be used to identify members of the network, but she warns against learning too many identities because captured members might be forced to reveal them. The narrator still finds the existence of passwords and networks difficult to reconcile with her old sense of ordinary reality.

When the narrator returns home, Nick's crooked cap signals another summons from the Commander. Before she can go inside, Serena Joy calls her over and asks whether there is still no pregnancy. Serena then openly suggests that the Commander may be unable to father a child and proposes that the narrator secretly try with another man. She says Ofwarren conceived that way and offers to arrange a meeting with Nick, whom she considers loyal.

The narrator agrees despite the risk. Serena then offers a possible photograph of the narrator's daughter, revealing that she has access to information about where the child is. The narrator is furious that Serena has withheld such knowledge but cannot risk losing the chance to see her daughter. At the end of the exchange, Serena gives her a cigarette and authorizes her to obtain one match from Rita.

In the kitchen, the narrator asks Rita for the match Serena Joy authorized. Rita complains about the fire risk and initially resists, but she does not actually verify the request with Serena; she ultimately gives the narrator one match and even offers her an ice cube. The small voluntary gesture surprises the narrator.

Upstairs, the narrator considers smoking Serena's cigarette but realizes that keeping the match could be more valuable. She imagines hiding it in the mattress and using it to burn the house down, describing fire as a narrow form of escape. She lies down without yet deciding what to do.

Her thoughts return to recent evenings with the Commander. He sometimes drinks, plays loose versions of Scrabble, lets her hear Radio Free America briefly, or sits beside her holding her hand. During one conversation he tries to explain the rationale behind Gilead. He says the old social order left men with nothing meaningful to do with women, that sex had become too easy, and that men complained of an inability to feel.

When he asks what she thinks of what they have done, the narrator refuses to give him an opinion. The Commander says they thought they could make things better, then qualifies the claim: "Better never means better for everyone. It always means worse, for some." Back in her room, the narrator imagines the previous Handmaid hanging from the removed chandelier and feels as if the dead woman remains present with her.

The narrator and Ofglen join the district Women's Prayvaganza, where Handmaids are segregated in a roped enclosure and kneel on the concrete floor while Wives sit in chairs and lower-ranking women watch from galleries. Ofglen steers the narrator toward the back because the crowd and ceremonial noise make it easier for Handmaids to exchange information quietly.

Janine arrives with a new shopping partner, visibly thin and pale after her transfer. Ofglen tells the narrator that Angela was a "shredder" after all and that Janine previously suffered an eighth-month miscarriage during this posting cycle. She also says Janine believes the loss is her own fault and repeats a rumor that Janine conceived through a doctor rather than her Commander. The narrator feels sick at the news and watches Janine kneel without acknowledging her.

The sight recalls an earlier breakdown at the Red Center. Janine once remained in her nightgown and mentally returned to her old life as a waitress, smiling and offering coffee to people who were not there. Moira slapped and shook her back to awareness, warning that the Aunts would not treat or tolerate a deeper collapse. Janine eventually dressed and resumed the routine.

Moira later told the narrator that if Janine began slipping away again, someone had to force her back because such dissociation could spread through the group. The memory also suggests that Moira was already thinking about another escape.

At the Women's Prayvaganza, a Commander presiding over the service gives a brief speech about thanksgiving, victory, and sacrifice, followed by prayer and a hymn. Twenty decorated Angels then enter with twenty white-veiled daughters whose marriages have been arranged. Some of the girls are no more than fourteen. Their mothers, not their fathers, present them for the group wedding.

While watching, the narrator remembers a separate private conversation with her own Commander about arranged marriage. He argued that Gilead had removed the insecurity, abandonment, domestic violence, economic pressure, and romantic competition that he associated with the former system. When he asked what the architects of Gilead had overlooked, the narrator answered, "Love." He dismissed romantic love as a historically unusual arrangement and claimed that arranged marriages worked as well or better.

The narrator also reflects that Women's Prayvaganzas are usually group weddings, though some separate ceremonies are held for young fertile nuns who renounce celibacy and become Handmaids; older nuns and many who refuse conversion are sent to the Colonies. That is background about other Prayvaganzas, not an event occurring at this wedding ceremony.

During the present service, the presiding Commander reads scriptural passages requiring female modesty, silence, submission, and salvation through childbearing. As the wedding concludes, Ofglen tells the narrator that the resistance knows about her private meetings with her Commander. Ofglen does not blame her for being unable to refuse, but instructs her to use the access to learn and report anything she can.

Waiting in her room, the narrator returns to the family's failed border crossing. The guard took their forged passports inside, and Luke saw him reach for a telephone. Luke abruptly drove away, then abandoned the car with the narrator and their sleeping daughter so they could run into the woods. The narrator remembers having no clear plan beyond getting away.

She resists continuing that memory and instead returns to an earlier conversation with the Commander about falling in love. She recalls how central romantic love once seemed, along with the uncertainty, fear, self-revision, and physical precautions that accompanied relationships in the former time. She insists on thinking of Luke in the present tense even while fearing that he died during their attempted escape.

Serena Joy unexpectedly brings the dinner tray herself and produces the promised Polaroid of the narrator's daughter. The girl is older and taller, dressed in white, and appears to have continued growing into a life in which her mother is absent. The narrator is relieved that her daughter exists and lives, but the photograph is also devastating because it makes her feel erased from the child's present. She thinks that having no photograph might have been easier than confronting that loss directly.

Serena allows her only a brief look because the photograph must be returned before its absence is noticed. The narrator infers that a Martha probably obtained it and that Marthas therefore have their own information network. After Serena leaves, the narrator eats with only a fork and spoon; knives are deliberately withheld from Handmaids.

The narrator knocks on the Commander's door and finds him standing by the fireplace, slightly flushed from drinking. In a courtly mood, he asks if she is up for a little excitement. Sensing his embarrassment and uncertainty, the narrator plays along with his playful demeanor. The Commander reveals a surprise: a theatrical and glittery costume adorned with mauve and pink feathers, sequins, and thigh holes. Despite the costume's questionable origins and the fact that such clothing was supposed to be destroyed, the narrator feels a blend of prudishness and allure.

The Commander explains that the costume is a disguise for a secret outing, providing her with makeup to complete the look. The narrator, feeling both silly and rebellious, puts on the costume and makeup, with the Commander holding Serena Joy’s mirror for her. Dressed in the costume, they set out, with the Commander guiding her through the checkpoints using a borrowed cloak and a false pass. The narrator experiences a sense of thrill and danger, aware of the risk but eager for the break from monotony.

As they drive, the Commander instructs her to hide on the floor of the car to pass through a back entrance. Sweating and uncomfortable under the cloak, the narrator wonders if Nick, the driver, is aware of her disguise and what he thinks of her actions. They arrive at a back entrance of a building, and the Commander helps her out, giving her a purple tag and instructing her to say she is an evening rental if questioned. He guides her through a concrete-block corridor, and she feels a mix of anxiety and curiosity about their destination.

The Commander leads the narrator through the corridors of a former hotel she recognizes from afternoons with Luke. Its central courtyard is now filled with women in salvaged costumes and men in uniforms or suits. Without her white wings, the narrator can look freely. She is not shocked by the women; instead, she notices that their very presence contradicts Gilead's official sexual rules.

The Commander introduces her only as someone new and moves among other men while showing her off. Seated later on a lobby sofa, he calls the place their "club" and admits that it is officially forbidden. He says men require sexual variety by nature. He also explains that the club is reserved for officers, senior officials, and trade delegations, where business and information can be exchanged. Some women were sex workers before Gilead; others were professionals such as a sociologist, lawyer, or executive. He says they prefer the club to the alternatives available to them.

The Commander goes to get the narrator a gin and tonic. While he is away, she sees Moira in a worn, ill-fitting rabbit costume. Moira eventually notices her and gives their old signal: five spread fingers and a slight head movement, telling the narrator to reach the women's washroom within five minutes. When the Commander returns, the narrator asks where the washroom is. He tells her to display the purple tag identifying her as already taken if anyone challenges her. The chapter ends as she crosses the room toward the washroom in unfamiliar high heels.

The women's washroom is supervised by an Aunt who issues fifteen-minute rest cards and controls entry and exit. Inside, Moira emerges from a cubicle, vouches for the narrator, and embraces her. The narrator quietly explains that she is at the club only for the night because her Commander smuggled her in. Moira says she has encountered him before and interprets such outings as another exercise of male power over supposedly chaste Handmaids.

Moira then recounts what happened after her escape from the Red Center. Still disguised as an Aunt, she reached a married Quaker couple whose address she remembered from an old mailing list. They connected her to the Underground Femaleroad, a network of safe houses. She remained underground for eight or nine months and was moved north through a succession of helpers, eventually reaching Maine in a truck carrying chickens. She was about to be taken across the border by boat when the Eyes captured her and the older couple sheltering her.

After her capture, Moira was interrogated and abused in ways she does not describe in detail. She was shown a film about the Colonies, including toxic and radioactive cleanup sites where survival was measured in only a few years. She says the Colonies also contain older women, Handmaids who have exhausted their chances, other people the regime wants removed, and some men. Because the authorities considered her too dangerous to return to the Red Center, they offered her a choice between the Colonies and the club.

Moira chose the club, which the Commanders call Jezebel's. She describes the food, alcohol, drugs, cosmetics, night work, and eventual disposal of women whose usefulness there ends. The narrator is disturbed by Moira's apparent resignation because she has depended on an image of Moira as fearless and defiant. Moira briefly recovers some of her old humor, but the narrator refuses to invent a heroic ending for her. She says that she never saw Moira again and does not know what ultimately happened to her.

The Commander takes the narrator to a hotel room above Jezebel's, a room whose furnishings are almost unchanged from the time before. She retreats to the bathroom, where familiar soap, towels, and ordinary plumbing give her an unexpected sense of normality. Her thoughts return to something Moira told her in the washroom: Moira recognized the narrator's mother in the film about the Colonies, dressed in gray and working there.

The news forces the narrator to reconsider her mother's disappearance. She remembers trying to telephone her after the political situation worsened, then going with Luke to her apartment. They found the rooms ransacked and the mattress torn open, but her mother was gone. In the present, the narrator briefly imagines that her mother's energy might somehow save her from the Colonies, then acknowledges that she does not believe this. She has already mourned her mother and knows she will mourn her again.

Returning to the hotel room, the narrator knows she must be back at the Commander's house before midnight because Serena Joy expects to carry out the arrangement with Nick that night. The Commander is waiting on the bed. The narrator would rather avoid sex with him, but he says he brought her there because he thought she might enjoy a change and because she had said she wanted to know more about the world hidden from her.

The encounter remains emotionally flat. The narrator reminds herself that the Commander is not a monster and that she cannot afford pride or aversion, yet she cannot respond naturally to him. When he suggests turning off the lights, she resolves to imitate enthusiasm simply to finish the encounter and leave.

At midnight, with the household searchlights unexpectedly off, Serena Joy leads the narrator downstairs and directs her through the kitchen toward Nick's room over the garage. Serena remains behind in the kitchen to provide cover if anyone wakes. The narrator crosses the yard alone, unsure whether Serena has arranged the Guardians' cooperation, and climbs the dark stairs to Nick's sparse room.

The narrator first tells an idealized version of the encounter in which she and Nick immediately fall into passionate intimacy. She then retracts it: "I made that up. It didn't happen that way." In the version that follows, Nick offers her a cigarette and initially treats the meeting as a blunt reproductive assignment. Their conversation is awkward and defensive until shared jokes from the time before let them acknowledge the artificial situation they have been placed in.

The narrator begins to cry. Nick finally embraces and comforts her, then leads her to the bed. He says there should be "no romance," which she understands as a warning against risking themselves for each other. They have sex, but the narrator again qualifies her account, admitting that she cannot reconstruct exactly how it happened and that remembered love is necessarily approximate.

During and after the encounter, she thinks of Serena waiting below and of Luke. What feels like betrayal is not simply the prohibited act but the narrator's own emotional and physical response to Nick. She wonders whether certainty that Luke is dead would change that feeling and ends by wishing she could be free of shame and knowledge.

The narrator interrupts her account to apologize for its fragmentation, pain, gossip, secrecy, and long stretches of waiting. She says she continues because telling the story requires her to imagine a listener into existence, and because she wants to leave out as little of the truth as she can.

She then admits that she returned to Nick repeatedly on her own initiative, without Serena Joy's knowledge and without any official excuse. Each visit requires crossing the illuminated lawn at night and risking discovery. With Nick she keeps her eyes open, tries to memorize his body, tells him her real name, and talks too freely about Moira and Ofglen, while withholding Luke and the previous Handmaid. She recognizes that treating Nick as a place of safety is a dangerous delusion and that she knows very little about what he actually does or whether he could betray her.

Her attachment to Nick begins to displace both the Commander and the resistance. Ofglen urges her to search the Commander's study and later says the network could get her out if she were in immediate danger, but the narrator refuses. She tells herself she is too afraid and would be caught, yet admits that she no longer wants to escape because she wants to remain where she can reach Nick. She also tells Nick that she thinks she may be pregnant and wants the child to be his, while acknowledging to herself that this is wishful thinking.

By the end of the chapter, Ofglen has largely stopped pressing her and talks more about the weather. The narrator feels relief rather than regret. She describes her life with Nick as a small, compromised life she has made for herself and recognizes how readily people can adapt when they have even a few compensations.

The women are summoned without breakfast to a district Salvaging for women. Special-detail Angels in riot gear surround the former university grounds, now controlled by the Eyes. On the lawn before the old library, a stage has been built with three posts and hanging ropes. Wives and daughters sit at the back, Econowives and Marthas occupy the edges, and Handmaids kneel in front beside a long tarred rope that winds through the assembled crowd.

Three condemned women wait on the stage: two Handmaids and one Wife. Aunt Lydia appears with two hooded Salvagers and announces a change in procedure. Gilead will no longer state the prisoners' crimes publicly because officials claim that televised descriptions have encouraged copycat offenses. The women dislike this because the crimes had given them a coded way to imagine what forms of transgression were still possible.

The first prisoner is Ofcharles. She appears drugged as the Salvagers bind her hands, cover her head, place the noose, and prepare the hanging. The narrator remembers the required participation from an earlier Salvaging: the assembled women touch the long rope, place a hand over the heart, and thereby signify unity, consent, and complicity in the execution. As Ofcharles is hanged, the narrator refuses to watch the body and instead fixes her attention on the grass and the rope.

After the three women have been hanged, Aunt Lydia orders the Handmaids to form a circle for a Particicution. A badly beaten former Guardian is dragged forward. Aunt Lydia says he was convicted of raping two women at gunpoint and that a pregnant victim lost her baby. The accusation produces the intended rage in the crowd, including in the narrator, who feels an immediate desire to attack him.

When Aunt Lydia blows the whistle, the man tries to say, "I didn't . . ." Before the crowd reaches him, Ofglen forces her way forward, knocks him down, and kicks him sharply in the head several times. The other Handmaids then swarm over him. The narrator hangs back and, once Ofglen returns, angrily confronts her.

Ofglen tells the narrator that the man was not a rapist but a political prisoner and "one of ours." She says she knocked him unconscious to spare him from what the crowd and authorities were doing to him. The narrator has no independent way to verify this claim in the moment. When the whistle ends the Particicution, Janine walks past with blood on her clothing and a clump of blond hair in her hand, apparently dissociated from what has happened.

The narrator is sickened by the tar smell on her hands and wants to scrub herself clean. At the same time she is intensely hungry and sexually aroused. She recognizes these reactions as monstrous but also as evidence of the body's insistence on remaining alive.

By afternoon, routine has resumed enough for the narrator to take comfort in lunch and the ordinary shopping schedule. Nick is washing the car with his hat sideways, but he and the narrator avoid looking at each other. At the corner, the woman who arrives as her shopping partner is not the Ofglen she knows. The replacement calmly says, "I am Ofglen," because the name belongs to the posting rather than to the individual woman.

During the shopping trip, the narrator cautiously tries to determine what the new Ofglen knows. At the Wall, where the three women executed that morning are now displayed, the replacement says, "Let that be a reminder to us." The narrator cannot tell whether she means the executions expose Gilead's brutality or warn them to obey, so she answers only "Yes."

The disappearance of the former Ofglen makes the narrator alert to danger again. She nevertheless pushes too far by mentioning "May Day." The new Ofglen warns her to clear her mind of such "echoes," convincing the narrator that the woman is not openly aligned with the resistance but does understand the reference. The narrator then panics that the former Ofglen may have been captured and could be forced to identify her.

At their parting, however, the replacement leans close and quietly tells her what happened: the former Ofglen saw a van coming for her after the Salvaging and hanged herself before she could be taken. The new Ofglen says, "It was better," then walks away.

After learning that the former Ofglen hanged herself before the van could take her, the narrator feels immediate relief and gratitude because Ofglen can no longer be forced to expose her. She also recognizes that the replacement could be lying. The shock pushes her into an abject promise to accept whatever Gilead demands if she can simply remain alive: she imagines giving up Nick, abandoning complaint, and surrendering her body to others' uses. She knows the response is not rational, but for the first time feels the regime's power as a direct fear of pain and death.

As she approaches the house, Serena Joy calls her over and says, "I trusted you. I tried to help you." The narrator does not know which secret Serena has discovered and stays silent rather than confess to something Serena may not know. Serena then produces the winter cloak Offred wore to Jezebel's, with lipstick on it, followed by the purple sequined costume. The evidence shows that Serena has discovered the Commander's illicit outing with Offred.

Serena calls her vulgar and compares her with the previous Handmaid, saying she will "end up the same." She raises her cane but does not strike. Offred picks up the costume and goes inside as ordered. Nick has stopped whistling behind her, but she resists the impulse to run to him because he could not safely intervene. She reaches the house outwardly orderly and calm.

In her room after Serena's confrontation, the narrator waits without knowing what will happen next. She considers setting a fire, hanging herself, attacking Serena, trying to flee on foot, appealing to the Commander, or seeking shelter with Nick. None of the possibilities feels preferable; exhaustion and indifference leave her suspended rather than decisive. She also imagines the previous Handmaid's suicide and hears an imagined voice urging her to finish the situation herself.

A black van arrives before she acts. Nick enters with two men behind him and whispers that it is all right, that the men are Mayday, and that she should go with them. He calls her by her real name. The narrator remains suspicious because Nick could himself be an Eye and any Eye might know about Mayday, but she accepts his request to trust him because she sees no other usable choice.

As the men escort her downstairs, Serena Joy and the Commander are visibly surprised, establishing that neither appears to have summoned this arrest. The Commander asks for authorization and a warrant; one of the men replies that none is needed and gives "violation of state secrets" as the charge. Serena calls Offred a bitch, while Cora begins to cry and Rita stands with her. Offred thinks that her removal destroys Cora's hope for a child in the household.

The men lead her to the open van and help her inside. She cannot know whether Nick told the truth, whether she is being rescued or arrested, or whether entering the van is an ending or a beginning. With no way to resolve the uncertainty, she steps into what she calls "the darkness within; or else the light."