Arrest of Aunt Lydia and Her Colleagues

The arrest of Aunt Lydia—then a family court judge—and her female colleagues was the moment the old constitutional order of the United States was definitively replaced by the emerging theocracy of Gilead. It was a viciously hot day, shortly after the Sons of Jacob attack that liquidated Congress. The courts had been closed temporarily, but some judges had gone into work anyway, hoping to tackle the document backlog or simply seeking company. None of their male colleagues had felt the same need. Lydia herself had spent decades climbing from a hardscrabble childhood to the bench, performing her function as equitably as she could, contributing to charities, voting in elections, holding worthy opinions. She had assumed she was living virtuously and would be moderately applauded. She was very wrong about that, and about many other things, on the day she was arrested.

The Coup at the Courthouse

Lydia was reading through casework when a younger colleague, Katie, came in and said they needed to leave the country. Katie's bank card and both credit cards had been cancelled; the airline told her that the provisional government had just passed new laws making women's money belong to the male next of kin. Another colleague, Anita, arrived in tears, having heard that the Constitution had been abolished. Lydia felt stunned and called it completely unconstitutional, but Anita told her to forget the Constitution. Before they could act, the main door was kicked in. Five men entered, two by two and then one on his own, carrying submachine guns. Two were young and fit; the other three were middle-aged with beer bellies, wearing camouflage gear. Lydia tried outrage, asking who was responsible for the damage, but Anita nudged her to keep quiet, already grasping the situation better than she did.

Separation and Classification

The second-in-command held up a list. He asked who the pregnant one was; Katie stepped forward. She had chosen single motherhood via sperm bank, but the men said she was going to a place of safety—the high school. The two younger men grabbed her by the arms and hauled her out, screaming. The leader then dealt with the receptionist, Tessa, who was shivering with terror. They debated whether to send her to the box store, the high school, or the stadium, settling on the box store on the chance some man might marry her. Tessa had wet herself. The leader said a fearful one might do as she was told. The two young men returned, reporting Katie was in the van. The leader then asked about the two other so-called lady judges, Loretta and Davida, who were on lunch. He ordered the men to wait for them, lock Tessa in the box-store van, and bring the two lunch ones. For Lydia and Anita, the destination was the stadium: one was overage, and both had law degrees. The second-in-command muttered that it was a waste in some cases, nodding toward Anita, but the leader said Providence would decide.

The Stadium Prison

Lydia and Anita were taken down five flights of stairs, handcuffed with their hands in front of them, and inserted into a black van with a solid panel between them and the driver and mesh inside the darkened windows. They sat in silence, knowing cries for help would go unanswered. The van paused at a checkpoint, then moved, then halted. The back doors were opened, and they clambered out onto the ground of a stadium that was now a prison. They were herded into a section of the bleachers marked off with yellow crime-scene tape, about forty of them, all middle-aged professional women in suits and good haircuts, without handbags, combs, lipsticks, or tissues. The sun beat down; they had no hats or sunblock. They were not allowed to get up to stretch, and attempts to do so produced shouts. Lydia berated herself for having believed in the eternal verities of life, liberty, democracy, and the rights of the individual. She resolved to revert to the mulish underclass child, the determined drudge, the strategic ladder-climber who had got her to the social perch from which she had just been deposed.

The Executions and the Aftermath

At four o'clock, twenty women in business attire were led into the center of the field, blindfolded and handcuffed, arranged in two rows of ten. The front row was forced to kneel. A man in a black uniform orated about how sinners were always visible to the Divine Eye, concluding with "God will prevail." The men who had escorted the blindfolded women raised their guns and shot them. Their aim was good; the women keeled over. There was a collective groan from the bleachers, screams and sobbing. Some women leapt to their feet but were silenced by being hit on the backs of their heads with the butts of guns. One blow sufficed. The message was clear: they were to see but not speak. At sundown, they were given one sandwich each. Lydia gobbled hers with relish. They were then filed out, row by row, in eerie silence, and ushered into the locker rooms and corridors, where they spent the night on filthy floors with no amenities. The lights were left on, but Lydia realized it was not a mercy—it was a convenience for those in charge. Mercy was a quality that did not operate in that place.