SHOPPING
Reading The Handmaid’s
Tale months before the Election is terrifying.
Identifying our missteps now, before they distort and bleed
into our future is the cautionary tale warned by Nineteen Eighty-Four, Brave
New World and Margaret Atwood’s The
Handmaid’s Tale. The novel depicts the United States of America being
transformed into a slave state, governed ideologically by the Book of Genesis.
Women are catalogued into sub-classes of unwomen, jezebels, wives, servants and
breeders, all wearing assigned uniforms. Males are “hunters” and those higher
in rank may obtain a “breeder” or Handmaid. The novel’s main character, Offred
lives as a Handmaid with The Commander and his wife, Serena Joy. Serena, once a
televangelist, has lost her power and is thought to be barren. It is actually
The Commander who is sterile. However, according to new law, only women can
suffer from this.
I take this in as my boyfriend lounges on the couch watching
what has become a political farce, thinking: it will always be like this. I
pause when an anti-Trump ad appears on the screen, proclaiming, “we’ll round
them up in a humane manner!” I congratulate myself on the ironic timing that
I’ve chosen to read this omen.
That night as I fall asleep my mind wanders back to The Handmaid’s Tale.
NIGHT
November 9th was a surreal day. I imagine the
only comparison could be made to the day after a National Purge, if such a
thing existed. We walked deserted city streets, neon signs still illuminating shuttered
shops. “At least we’ll always have the beach”, he said; as we walked under star
lined palm trees, wet sand at our feet, a warm celestial sky above us. Somewhere
in Washington D.C., a man with the gleam of American Puritanism in his eyes
whispered “just when and where”.
By January we’ve become so rundown we don’t even notice
what’s happening. At first we thought we were safe. We were white after all.
The journalists were the first to go. We thought it would
start with the Mexican border; we were wrong. We settled back into our
routines, still hung over from the holidays and New Year. This year looking a
little bleaker, trying to push the lingering feeling of uncertainty down inside
ourselves. Opening Gmail I expected several days worth of headlines to load
from The Daily Beast, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Salon, Vice News,
anything; there was nothing. I checked the Twitter account of Charles M. Blow;
it had ceased to exist. C-Span Washington Journal continued to air regularly.
I wake up drenched in sweat, stomach eroded. This is not
real life. Every effort to drift back into my dreams ends as my heart shudders
with thunderous beats inside my chest that heave my entire consciousness awake
again.
Somehow in the next hour, I find sleep.
They say dreams only last 30 seconds. They say dreams aren’t
recurring. I tell myself this isn’t real life, that this is only just a dream.
There
is something subversive about this garden of Serena’s, a sense of buried things
bursting upwards, wordlessly, into the light, as if to point, to say: Whatever
is silenced will clamor to be heard, though silently. (Handmaid, 153)
I see Serena’s slumped figure gardening in the yard. As I
approach her from behind the edges of my subconscious vignette waver and
shimmer like hot pavement vapors in the desert sun. I reach out to her, and she
turns to me but her face is gone. My vision blurs and her face is back, but
this time it is Melania Trump. She says in a muted but frantic speech: “What a
beautiful spring day this is, a beautiful May day”. She continues on gardening
as I keep staring. She looks up at me and in one quick movement, motions, as if
to say: “Stay Quiet”.
Sometimes
I think she knows. Sometimes I think they’re in collusion. Sometimes I think
she put him up to it, and is laughing at me; as I laugh, from time to time and
with irony, at myself. Let her take the weight, she can say to herself. Maybe
she’s withdrawn from him, almost completely; maybe that’s her version of
freedom. (Handmaid, 163)
This time we are not in Serena’s garden. This time it is no
longer Serena. This time Melania’s face is clearer than before. We are in the
sitting room, waiting for The Commander to enter and turn on the television.
She watches me, knowingly, letting me stew over her carefully chosen words in
the garden. Almost as if to taunt me, to let me know what she is doing, by
choosing not to do anything at all. At once The Commander enters, mouth full of
bright teeth that dazzle against an agitated spray tan, and she goes about her
nightly routine, though there is a pause to her step, a defiant delay that I
think I am imagining. She hands him his pipe and newspapers but does not engage
him as usual. There is a feeling of distance and strength. Again, I am
imagining things. She settles back into her chair once The Commander is
comfortably set up. She glances at me for a millisecond. I think I see the
traces of a faint smile. I think I am imagining things. Deep down I know I am
not.
HOUSEHOLD
I am no longer dreaming, but I’m not fully awake and I have
overslept. Usually, woken by lawnmower at 7AM on a Monday by Raul and Gus. I
would wonder about their whereabouts if I wasn’t living in a cloud of
uncertainty. I leave for work at 9AM, arriving to my office by 9:15. This is
unheard of. I think back and realize the roads were barren. I can only recall fancy
white people driving along in gleaming Mercedes Benz. Come to think of it,
there was no massive Ford F-150 pick-up trucks that I so frequently pass on my
daily commute, filled with expensive equipment, ladders, buckets and Gatorade
drink-coolers. I leave my office, hoping this is just an oversight. I walk to
the upscale hair salon next door, owned by Johnny Flores, famously from Mexico.
The doors are locked. I leave feeling crazy, they must always be closed on
Mondays.
I spin the control on my car radio, trying to find the
consoling logic of KCRW. Nothing. Gone. I do however come across a channel with
an eerie message being broadcast: dot dot dot dash… dot dot dot dash… This goes
on indefinitely. It means nothing to me but I can’t get it out of my head. An
empty tapping, full of meaning.
Still driving, I float past the dense populous of Los
Angeles. Across so many different situations; just below and beyond the 10
freeway. Glittering lights illuminating the sky, one-by-one coming alive to
tell me that yes, there is still life here. And maybe, just maybe, this is all
in your mind. Next on the 405 freeway, the beauty of the California landscape
is foreboding and unmistakable. Smog that conceals itself as pink haze nestles
in between peaks of arid mountain canyons, settling deep into its deadly yet
beautiful gullies. For a brief moment I am placated by its beauty, thinking of
how tricky the terrain of California is. So many hostile pieces of land, so
ripe for natural disaster, poisonous snakes and flowers – masquerading in beautiful
vivid colors, strong heady scents temporarily stunning and disarming whoever it
holds in it’s grasp. How easily we are fooled.
When I get home, he looks nervously at me and his eyes tell
me that we are thinking the same thing. Later that night, he disappears on the
phone for a while. Coming back he says to pack an overnight bag. We are heading
to the mountains. We drive in silence, probably thinking the same thing, or
not. The dog is with us and fidgety. She has not yet sensed the trouble surging
and swelling beneath the surfaces of our exteriors. We arrive to a cabin in Big
Bear surrounded by several other cars. The home belongs to Declan, previously a
government employee with left leaning tendencies. Apparently, he has dire
information that cannot be spread over telephone.
SALVAGING
We all gather around the piece of equipment on the floor of
the lodge. We tune the satellite radio to channel 5. It is static. After a
decade long moment however, we hear that same empty tapping. This continues for
2 hours, just long enough for the batteries to die. Declan says that if one of
these devices fell into the wrong hands, they most likely wouldn’t have
procured the necessary batteries. This seems assumptive to me, but I dare not
offer any opposition. It’s funny how quickly you fall into place when
oppression is tapping on your shoulder and whispering in your ear. We quickly
replace the devices batteries, hands shaking. Moments after we tune the channel
again, we hear a low guttural voice…
“nolite te bastardes carborundorum”…
“nolite te bastardes carborundorum” …
More silence.
A slow crackling, then we hear him; the voice of salvation,
sounding far, far away. It is a call to arms for those of us left. We learn
that the new government intends to fully shut off the Internet using an EMP
launch. We learn that mass quantities of kale and high-grade essential oils have
been contaminated with fast-acting radioactive poison, targeting liberal vegans.
We learn that they will forbid women to own property, repossessing anything
female-owned in the coming weeks. We learn that society will be divided into
groups; based on class status and reproduction viability. We learn that Bill
Mahar & Michael Moore have started an underground movement somewhere in
Cuba. We learn that many of the most stringent Trump supporters are not being
rewarded. In fact those who vowed to “start a movement” are being considered
threats to the new order. No one is rewarded. No one wins. We learn a lot of
things.
In a national emergency you don’t think you’d be concerned
with material things. You don’t think a lot of things. The consequential order
in which you experience events makes you thankful or thankless. We have packed
the bare necessities, including the dog and two cats. My refusal to leave them
behind, acknowledges a willingness to give myself away. Forsaken items that you
worked your entire life for creates a type of resentment that I cannot properly
put into words.
As we approach Mexico, we realize how stupid we were to
think Border Patrol would not be expecting us. They ask where we are headed and
we say on vacation, first stopping in Mazatlan, then Guadalajara, then Mexico
City and eventually arriving at the Las Brisas Resort in Acapulco. In the
rearview mirror I see four Border Patrol Agents armed with AK-47s heading
towards us. I feel a sense of panic, while trying to maintain absolute
serenity. The dog is whining in the back seat. I hear a tiny cat’s meow and I
think, “who goes on a road trip with cats”. How can our government force us to
abandon or betray those that rely on us most? The four agents are thirty feet away;
I feel whispering almost chanting voices swirling around in my stomach. I start
active yoga breathing. He is speaking with the border agent at the window but
their words have become humming noises. The kind of humming that surrounds and
overwhelms you just before you lose consciousness. The agents are twenty feet
away and the voices are spiraling out of control, up into my esophagus trying
to escape out of my throat. I push them back down with another breath drawn
from deep in my belly. I think the agent at the window has asked me a question
but I am frozen. If I move an inch the spiraling, chanting, whispering voices
will come bursting out of the top of my head. The agents are ten feet way and
the dog is barking. The skin on my face feels red, my temples are on fire, the
back of my skull feels wet. I pull myself upright with what feels like every
single muscle available in my head, neck and face to look at the agent, and
that’s when I see the barrel of the gun. And everything goes black.
BIRTH DAY
My eyes open. I’m staring at the ceiling. I am in my home in
the United States. I feel sick. My subconscious lingers in a way that leaves me
unable to fully assert the difference between dreams and reality. That feeling
that renders you unable to sleep again until the sun rises. I look at the clock, it is November 9th,
2016. I am afraid to look at my phone or CNN. This is a historical moment, one
that will forever change things for women. The direction of that change
however, depends on one thing and one thing only. Your Vote.
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