A Sissy at Jezebels

The war had only just ended, and although my husband had served as a Commander for the Republic of Gilead, I now sit gagged and handcuffed in the back of a transport truck, on my way to one of the many brothels known as Jezebels. I’m still wearing my teal—some would call it turquoise—dress, the color that once marked me as a Commander’s Wife. That life feels impossibly distant now.

You may wonder how a transgender woman ever became a Commander’s Wife in the first place. Before the war, I had transitioned—at least socially and hormonally—though I had not undergone what is colloquially called “bottom surgery.” I met my husband long before the revolution, and together we decided that my history would remain private. For years, as I lived the role of a traditional Gileadean Wife, no one questioned a thing. We refused Handmaids with the familiar excuse: “We’re going to keep trying.”

What exposed me was the hormone therapy my husband had been smuggling into Gilead. The Eyes discovered it, and the trial that followed was swift. My husband was sent to the Wall. My own fate was more complicated. As a transgender woman, I was labeled an abomination, yet the Commanders claimed that Scripture demanded mercy. Their version of mercy was to send me to Jezebels instead of executing me or the colonies.

And so here I am, in this dim, rattling prison truck, wrists bound, dress torn at the hem, the last remnants of my former life clinging to me like dust. This is where my story begins.