Chapter 21

• “it’s hot in here, and too noisy”
• “Sometimes you can find things out, on Birth Days”
• “We grip each other’s hands, we are no longer single”
• “here’s the crowning, the glory, the head, purple and smeared with yoghurt, another push and it slithers out, slick with fluid and blood, into our waiting. Oh praise.”
• “it’s a girl, poor thing”
• “we are one smile”
• “the Commander’s Wife looks down at the baby as if it’s a bouquet of flowers: something she’s won, a tribute”
• “it’s a victory, for all of us. We’ve done it”
• “But she’ll never be sent to the Colonies, she’ll never be declared an Unwoman. That is her reward”
• “we’re without emotion now, almost without feeling, we might be bundles of red cloth”
• “we’re without emotion now, almost without feeling, we might be bundles of red cloth”
• Each of us holds in her lap a phantom, a ghost baby. What confronts us, now the excitement’s over, is our own failure”
• “Mother, I think. Wherever you may be. Can you hear me? You wanted a women’s culture. Well, now there is one. It isn’t what you meant, but it exists. Be thankful for small mercies.”
• “she’s crying helplessly, burnt-out miserable tears”
• "Two of the wives in their blue dresses and veils hold her by the arms, as if she needs it"

   
• "We stand between Janine and the bed, so she won't have to see this."
• she's like a doll, an old one that's been pillaged and discarded, in some corner, akimbo.
• they'll turn a blind eye. We too need our orgies.
• in her ridiculous white cotton nightgown, her spindly legs sticking out beneath it.
• she'll be transferred, to see if she can do it again, with someone else who needs a turn.
• a smell of dens, of inhabited caves [...] smell of matrix