15

Months after Paula marries Commander Kyle, a Handmaid, Ofkyle, is assigned to their home, revealing Paula’s desire for a baby and underscoring that Agnes is not counted as Paula’s child. Agnes feels invisible to both Paula and Commander Kyle. School teachings frame Handmaids as atoning vessels for childbirth despite social contempt.

As Agnes approaches womanly age, she notes her changing body with mixed pride and alarm. Embarrassing school lectures on female duty fail to reassure her, and she grapples with fear of menstruation and the sense that the adult female body is a dangerous trap. She briefly attempts to control her body by not eating, but gives up.

Agnes’s status at school declines: classmates turn cold, though Becka stays quietly supportive. Agnes suspects gossip is spreading through the household Marthas and the Wives’ networks, reflecting Paula’s hostility and Agnes’s loss of her late mother Tabitha’s protection.

During lunch on the school lawn, Shunammite delivers the core rumor: Agnes was taken from her birth mother—labeled a “slut”—who tried to flee Gilead with her through the forest before being intercepted. Shunammite claims Tabitha received Agnes because Tabitha was barren. Agnes resists, then feels belief take hold, reinterpreting Tabitha’s rescue story as partial truth.

Agnes realizes she is motherless and effectively fatherless, concluding Paula and Commander Kyle want a “real” child from Ofkyle. She imagines classmates branding her as the daughter of a slut and assumes the Aunts, especially Aunt Lydia, know such secrets. In her despair, Agnes briefly considers praying to Aunt Lydia instead of God but rejects the thought.