The White Centre

“Blessed be the fruit.”
I rise from my place opposite the door and reply,
“May the Lord open, Magdala My Sister.”
This is what we have to call our family’s leader: always a young woman who is our carer; our minder; who alters our minds. Erasing past, inserting present and dictating future.

Many believed it would have been simpler to call them Sister, but no confusion with the nuns from the old times could be allowed, so the sisters are addressed as My Sister.
My Sister glides through the stark, clinical room to the table I have been placed at for a considerable amount of time – the bell has been sounded three times during my solitude. She motions for me to sit again with a rustle of her deep purple sleeve. The hue pulsates fear into my veins, causes my breathing to accelerate, but I do not remember why. It is from my life before, this fear, not from this life.

“I hope, Little Child, that your solitary time has been well filled with reflection and prayer?”
“Yes, praise be Magdala My Sister, it has.” Her full title must be used at Indemption progression meetings, as must mine, which here is merely Little Child, despite my being one of the oldest generations left in the White Centre.
“Let us then proceed. How long have you lived here?”
“All of my life Magdala My Sister.”
“Who is your mother?”
“Mother Eve, who has given me to the care of Mother Gilead and Magdala My Sister.”
“Who is your father?”
“God, who gave all mankind into the care of Father Adam, thence to Father Gilead.”
“Where will you next proceed from the Centre of Jairus and His Daughter?”
“Into a household to serve as a worthy wife and vessel to the Commanders of Gilead.”
“Correct, finally correct Little Child. That is all for today.”
There was a strange tone to My Sister’s voice then, but I couldn’t understand it. She sounded as though she were almost smiling, she sounded like Mother Sister does when a generation leaves the White Centre…
I cannot explain it.

Flashes of light, voices and masks, a prick in my neck, suddenly I am back in my dormitory. There are no windows, just twelve bunks beneath aching, electric light, but I can see rays streaming into my vision, balmy golden and mellow, but terrifying. Brittle explosions reverberate off the trees surrounding me. Us. The screaming and sobbing fills my head drowning out the voice that tells me that it’s alright, to be quiet.
Not this dream again, please not again. All I can feel are the wet leaves that I am suffocating in and the sweating body curled around me.

The bells ring for morning victuals, the sound of feet landing on the floor hammers around the Centre as we uniformly dress in the time given between chimes. Our dresses are full length, white cotton creations with long sleeves and high necks covered with white petticoats and white gloves. After the bleeding begins, white lace scarves are placed over our hair. I have eaten and am moving into classes before consciousness seeps in. I often lose time like this, it happens to most of us. For those who remember, it is so much worse; they are the ones who forget their minds soon enough.

Classes begin after victuals for the younger girls, those who do not yet bleed. In the West Wing the low sector girls are taught to cook, sew, knit and clean. Little Alice once told me in broken whispers in the washrooms that the high sector girls, which I was soon to be elevated to, must simply sit and sew, or view films showing them how to have and raise a Gileadean family. Sometimes one of Our Sisters will tell us a story told in the Believer’s Scriptures from behind a screen. We don’t think that Our Sisters want us to know where the stories come from, but they are sighed down the generations, those forbidden words: writing, reading, book.

Little Alice tried to describe how families are made that day in the baths, but My Sister Leah came in and took us away for punishment.

The purple flowers dying on the ground amidst the rotting leaves were the last things I saw clearly for a long time; the last sound the whimpers of Her, the woman who had stroked my face, begging for Rabbit to go with me. Darkness for many moons afterwards, then voices and machines.
Welcome, Little One, they said. You have been ill but now you are better.
I sobbed for Her and pleaded for Rabbit, but each time I did the sleep entered my neck.
Then,
Good morning Little One. You are better now. What is your name?
I answered:
Another prick, firmer and longer than before. They said it went against God’s law and religion, a name of such reverence, of the First Mother. I could not wear it.
After that they called me Little Child; I gave up crying when they burned Rabbit and stole my name.

Our Sister Leah raged. To tell a low sector girl of the secret training, about babies, was wrong. Little Alice returned to her dormitory with threads through her lips. The cold air cradled my scalp when she finished shaving, just retribution for what I had heard. Upheld by St. Paul, she told me. In my Wife’s portrait with My Sister, sent to all my possible Commanders for consideration, my hair had grown back, but darker, no longer the colour of vanilla ice. She once called it that.

When I was better I had to go alone every day to Indemption with Magdala My Sister. The same question, over and over again:
Who is your mother?
I always replied Her! Was rewarded with biscuits for my answer, which made me so weary. If I cried out for Her, asked to leave, shrieked in passion, wept for my mother, I would be pricked and be threaded through the tongue and lips for a week.
When I began Communal Indemption, Her name began to fade, her voice, her touch and then her face. He had gone long before. Now they are lost in the chasm, with my name and my self. They tell us God will save us, purify and redeem us. God has forgotten the children of the White Centre – that is the truth we pass through the walls and floors, along desks and across rooms, to every girl who enters through the marbled doors; we cannot be saved from them.

The only aim of the girls in the White Centre is to pass through Indemption and be transferred; it is our only wish in the world.
My only wish.
That is what I have been told.

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