Zilla

Zilla is the gentlest and most trusted of the three Marthas who serve Commander Kyle's household, the one to whom Agnes Jemima turns for comfort and truth. While Vera has a harsh voice and Rosa a perpetual scowl, Zilla speaks very softly and is Agnes's favourite. She is the Martha who gives Agnes scraps of bread dough to play with, baking them into dough men that Agnes eats to feel a secret power over men. Zilla is also the one who, when Agnes asks to make bread from scratch, gently explains that as a future Commander's Wife she will have Marthas to do that for her, and that her husband would not want her smelling of bread dough. It is Zilla who, after Tabitha's death, tells Agnes the truth about her mother's condition, saying gently, "We thought you knew. We thought your mother would have told you." She later confirms the devastating news that Tabitha was not Agnes's biological mother, and that Agnes's real mother was a Handmaid who tried to escape with her through a forest. When Agnes asks if her real mother was killed, Zilla reassures her that they would not kill a valuable woman who could have babies, and that most likely they changed her mind at the Rachel and Leah Centre and made her into a Handmaid. Zilla offers the only comfort she can: a hot biscuit with honey. She is also the one who, when Agnes returns from the dentist after being molested by Dr. Grove, makes her a hot drink with lemon and honey and brings it to her room, saying, "I should have gone with you. But he's the best dentist. Everyone agrees." This coded language signals that Zilla knows or suspects what happened but is warning Agnes not to speak of it. Throughout Agnes's childhood, Zilla is the Martha who makes her favourite treats—cookies with raisin eyes and pumpkin-seed teeth—and who, after the birth of Baby Mark and the death of the Handmaid Ofkyle, sits in the kitchen with the other Marthas eating leftover party food and says, "The poor girl. To go through all of that for nothing." Zilla embodies the quiet, protective love that sustains Agnes in a world of loss and betrayal, and her role as a keeper of secrets and a source of comfort makes her one of the few genuinely kind figures in Agnes's early life.