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“So, you’ve been visiting Becka for a while now,” Shu started conversationally, leaning forward across the table as they ate their lunch. The Aunts were watching nearby, like threatening shadows amongst all the chatter that broke out after their daily prayers. “What’s Commander Garth like, then?” She waggled her eyebrows at Agnes.
Agnes’ jaw clenched. “He’s the perfect gentleman, of course.”
Daisy snorted. “Yeah, I guess you could say that…”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” she snapped.
Daisy sat straighter, setting her cutlery down. “Look, I’m happy for Becka, I am. This was the best outcome for her,” her voice dropped to a murmur, enough for both Agnes and Shu to catch. No one else dared to sit with them, what with Agnes’ failed engagement. They believed her sin—as it must be sin, to have failed so egregiously—to be infectious. “Garth is good to her. I think… Well, it’s just a shame, isn’t it?” She shrugged nonchalantly, but Agnes felt like she could teeter off her seat at any given second, given her increasing interest. “They’re clearly not attracted to each other. There’s no passion.”
“Why do you say that?” Agnes asked curiously, even as she felt something twist in her chest. “Why wouldn’t they both be attracted to each other? They’re married now.”
Daisy and Shu exchanged a rather worrisome look—worrisome for Agnes, as a matter of fact, because she appeared to have momentously misunderstood something.
“We sort of accepted we’d marry someone whose looks weren’t our… exact preference, no? It makes sense.” Shu questioned her meaningfully, her eyebrows raised.
“Yes, but,” Agnes spluttered. “Garth isn’t…”
“It doesn’t mean Becka’s attracted to him, even if you are,” Daisy said rather bluntly.
Agnes immediately shushed her, horrified. “Are you insane? How dare you—”
Shu snorted. “It was rather obvious, wasn’t it?”
Daisy smirked and drawled out, “I’m glad I’m not the only one with a pair of functioning eyes.”
“Are you both quite finished?” Agnes hissed, feeling her temperature rise with her anger.
“Perhaps, so long as you accept that some people need more than just looks… They need connection. Clearly, Becka and Garth don’t have that.”
“Connection,” Agnes breathed, mystified by the very word. “And what constitutes a… connection?”
Shu seemed overtly attentive too, ready to absorb everything Daisy was about to explain, practically greedy for it.
Daisy swallowed, clearly not having expected this, Pearl Girl at heart that she was. “Well, that feeling of… butterflies, in your stomach.” She waved her hands under the table as though to display said fact, her eyes straying as though in recollection. “Sometimes it feels like electricity when you’re close…”
“Electricity? How absurd,” Shu noted, sounding appalled despite her clear fascination.
“It’s true!” Daisy defended. “But I suppose it doesn’t matter. In Gilead, it’s practically impossible to experience.”
The statement rattled her, rattled them both if she could read the very emotions fluttering across Shu’s face before she delved into another topic as a form of distraction. But it didn’t seem very fair, considering how nostalgic Daisy had looked, as though she would welcome that feeling again if she had the opportunity to.
Butterflies. Electricity. Had she felt that before? For Garth? She could hardly remember. The moments they’d seemed to share felt so nonsensical and faraway, she wouldn’t be able to get a read of what she felt back then for now, to compare it to Daisy’s rather lacklustre explanation. It was too late.
Daisy was right, though. In Gilead, it was hardly a worry. In Gilead, you were matched to someone regardless of what you felt. For Agnes, she’d be called lucky to be matched to anyone.
However, even though that might have been the end to the conversation, Agnes continued to ruminate on it, could hardly sleep properly for it, and she was resolved to carry the conversation on in order to itch the urge and finally lay the matter to rest.
She waited until her next visit to the Chapin household, until she could ask Becka, despite her innate aversion to doing so, only because she wouldn’t dare bring it up again to Daisy and Shu. She would only be teased for it.
Daisy had said that connection is what Becka and Garth lacked though… Becka might not be the right person at all to ask about this.
(Honestly, Agnes might have been afraid that they would find happiness in a marriage together, but she dared not think too long on that. It was incredibly selfish… a horrible, wicked, sinful thought. She should want them to be happy, but it all felt so utterly unfair—)
“Do you feel electricity, with Garth?” Agnes asked her stiffly, despite her every intention otherwise.
She was sat on the opposite settee, because since that first visit, Agnes had felt uncomfortable ever since Daisy’s knowing look when they appeared too close. Agnes knew she could… trust Daisy, to an extent. But that look had made her uneasy, like she’d been doing something wrong, even though she couldn’t even begin to understand what was so wrong about comforting a friend.
Becka’s eyebrows furrowed. “Agnes?”
“When you’re close… as husband and wife,” she asked, her voice muted and defiant, all at once. “Do you feel your stomach flutter, like butterflies going wild? Do you feel sparks on your skin?”
“Close, as husband and wife,” Becka repeated, her lip curling in disgust. “No, I don’t. I feel nothing,” she said finally, her voice clipped.
The relief was so profound, that she barely refrained from sighing. But then she realised—
I feel nothing.
Becka deserved more than this.
Agnes stared soulfully into Becka’s faltering expression, feeling her chest tighten, her heart squeeze. “You’re not happy with him.”
Becka looked away. “I don’t see why that matters.”
“It matters,” Agnes said emphatically, almost disbelieving. “Of course it matters.”
“Does it? I could have been wed to someone cruel. Or not at all,” Becka said pointedly, clearly insinuating Agnes’ dire circumstances.
“Yes, but… I want you to be happy,” Agnes whispered, and sadness over the fact that Becka clearly wasn’t happy almost toppled her whole.
(Becka could never be happy in Gilead, not when she was trapped in a marriage that she never wanted. But she couldn’t think like that, it was wrong, it was traitorous—)
Becka inhaled a deep, fortifying breath. Her gaze, when it snapped back to her, was deep and probing and swimming with complicated emotions. The air of Agnes’ lungs suddenly expunged, yet still, she found it even more difficult to look away, like she was spellbound.
“I’m happy with you,” Becka murmured, and Agnes’ stomach roiled, her skin burning with a longing that scattered like tingles across her very skin. “Why isn’t that enough?”
Oh.
Agnes abruptly stood up. At the signal, so did Becka, her eyes widening fearfully, as though she had done something wrong, had said the wrong thing.
No, the only person here who was wrong was...
Agnes raised a hand to her mouth like she was about to be sick. Becka looked about the same, as pale as a white sheet.
They were at a horrible impasse, and Agnes felt like she couldn’t breathe.
“I need air, I… I should…”
“Don’t leave,” Becka pleaded, moving with her to the door.
Agnes hadn’t even felt her feet headed there. It was as though she was in a daze.
Butterflies. Electricity. The words hitched a ride in her head and she couldn’t shake them.
“In Gilead, it’s practically impossible to experience.” Daisy’s impassive speech repeated like a horrible reckoning that she couldn’t stop—
Becka grabbed her arm, hasty, tears already falling. She was so fragile, ever since…
“Don’t touch me,” Agnes snapped, a frightening lurch in her chest as soon as the touch ignited on her skin.
Butterflies. Electricity.
No, Agnes thought, in deep panic. No, it couldn’t be.
But why had she kissed her, all that time ago? That hadn’t been the behaviour of friends, of best friends; even if she had defensively cautioned it off in her head as though it was perfectly normal for how special they were to each other. She’d thought… no one else could understand their connection. They would only misunderstand them to be traitors.
Gender traitors.
She had been fooling herself.
All along…
Becka gasped, her hand snapping away.
Agnes took the opportunity to hazard an escape. But she couldn’t escape her mind, could she? Not with this type of dangerous revelation.
A realisation like this in Gilead—
A sob hitched desperately in her chest, but she had to hold herself together—the Guardian couldn’t be allowed to wonder. This was a threat on an entirely new scale. A level of paranoia so profound that she couldn’t even take heed to the fact that Becka hadn’t even attempted to follow her.