Chapter 2

• A chair, a table, a lamp.
• a relief ornament in the shape of a wreath
• A blank space, plastered over, like the place in the face where the eye has been taken out
• They've removed anything you could tie a rope to.
• it only opens partly
• I can sit on the chair, or the window seat, hands folded
• Waste not want not. I am not being wasted. Why do I want?
• a picture, framed but with no glass
• a print of flowers, blue irises, watercolour
• Think of it as being in the army, said Aunt Lydia
• Nothing takes place in the bed but sleep
• Does each of us have the same print, the same chair, the same white curtains, I wonder?
• I try not to think too much
• thought must be rationed
• We wouldn't get far.
• It's those other escapes, the ones you can open in yourself, given a cutting edge.
• this could be a college guest room
• For that is what we are now. The circumstances have been reduced; for those of us that still have circumstances.
• Where I am is not a prison but a privilege, as Aunt Lydia said, who was in love with either/or.
• Time here is measured in bells, like once in nunneries
• red shows, flat-heeled to save the spine
• everything expect the wings around my face is red: the colour of blood, which defines us
• they are to keep us from seeing, but also from being seen
• I never looked good in red
• not my room, I refuse to say my
• myself in it like a distorted shadow, a parody of something, like a fairytale figure in a red cloak
• a Sister, dipped in blood
• black, for the Commander, blue, for the Commander's Wife, and the one assigned to me, which is red
• dull green, like a surgeon's gown
• long and concealing
• a bib apron over it
• nobody much cares who sees the face of a Martha
• Her sleeves are rolled to the elbow, showing her brown arms.
• But the frown isn't personal: it's the red dress she disapproves of, and what it stands for.
• She thinks I may be catching, like a disease or any form of bad luck.
• Sometimes I listen outside closed doors, a thing I never would have done in the time before
• debase herself
• They have the choice.
• they're doing it for us all
• would like to stay here in the kitchen