Ada
Ada is a central figure in the Mayday resistance, a hardened operative who emerges from the shadows to rescue Daisy (Nicole) after a car bomb kills her adoptive parents, Neil and Melanie. She is introduced as a woman in her forties or fifties, dressed in a black leather jacket, black jeans, and heavy boots, with long dark hair pulled back and no makeup—a look that suggests a biker but is more like an advertisement for one. She moves with an angular, striding gait and never stays long, always leaving with cardboard boxes of castoffs from The Clothes Hound, which she stows in cars that are never the same. Her connection to Melanie is that of an old friend, but her role is far more dangerous: she is a courier and a fixer for the underground railroad that smuggles women out of Gilead.
Role in the Escape and Revelation
Ada is the first person to reach Daisy after the explosion, intercepting her at school with the grim news that Neil and Melanie are dead. She destroys her own phone with a small wrench, a precaution that signals her experience in covert operations, and drives Daisy to a SanctuCare refugee center, then to a safe house in Parkdale called Carnarvon. There, with Elijah, she reveals the truth: Daisy is not who she thinks she is. She is Baby Nicole, the infant smuggled out of Gilead years ago, and Neil and Melanie were not her parents but Mayday operatives tasked with protecting her. Ada’s delivery is blunt and unsentimental—"You're in shock. It's no wonder"—but her actions show a fierce protectiveness. She provides a birthday cake with a single candle, knowing Daisy’s favorites, and later admits that Melanie and Neil sent pictures of Daisy to her biological mother, a detail that reveals Ada’s role as a go-between.
Training and Preparation for Gilead
Ada takes charge of Daisy’s transformation into a street person and then a Pearl Girl convert. She oversees the physical training with Garth—punching, kicking, eye-poking—and attempts to teach the praying and pious language needed to pass as a Gilead convert. Her own knowledge of Gilead comes from having grown up there before it was Gilead; she saw it coming and got out in time, leaving many people she knew behind. This personal history fuels her commitment to Mayday. She is pragmatic about the risks: when Daisy fears the source might be a trap, Ada replies, "It's a gamble every time you get up in the morning." She arranges for the GOD/LOVE tattoo on Daisy’s arm, a scarification that will later hold the microdot, and for the green hair dye and street clothes that complete the disguise.
Relationship with Daisy and the Mayday Network
Ada’s relationship with Daisy is marked by a gruff, no-nonsense affection. She does not coddle; when Daisy cries, she hands her a tissue and keeps driving. But she also shows a dry humor—"Part stealer, part stolen. I'm ambidextrous"—and a willingness to share her own mixed heritage, which she traces to the old smuggling routes of New England. She is the one who tells Daisy that her mother is still alive and has kept up with her through pictures, a revelation that softens Daisy’s anger. Ada’s loyalty to the network is absolute: she works with Elijah, Garth, and George, and she knows Captain Mishimengo from deer-hunting days in Nova Scotia. Her final act in the narrative is to be among the first to greet Daisy and Agnes when they land on the Canadian shore, holding a flashlight and saying, "You did it."
Thematic Significance
Ada embodies the practical, unsentimental face of resistance. She is not a symbol or a martyr but a worker who gets her hands dirty—literally, in the case of the eye-poke training. Her existence in the novel counters the idea that heroism is only for the young or the ideologically pure; she is middle-aged, scarred, and ambidextrous in her methods, part stealer and part stolen. She represents the continuity of the underground, the network of ordinary people who risk their lives because the fight is personal. Her final words to Daisy—"You did it"—are a quiet acknowledgment of the courage she helped to forge.
