Aunt Sally, the dead Pearl Girl’s partner, tells Aunt Lydia that Aunt Adrianna had attacked her, so she had killed her out of self-defense. Aunt Lydia assures Aunt Sally that Aunt Adrianna had no doubt had a psychotic break due to living in Canada. Aunt Sally believes that Daisy might be Baby Nicole, but Aunt Adrianna had thought it too premature to report to the Consulate. Aunt Sally has told no one else. Aunt Lydia arranges for Aunt Sally to recuperate at the Margery Kempe Retreat House, where the staff will ensure that Aunt Sally is “incoherent.”

Aunt Lydia is summoned to Commander Judd’s office to speak about the death of the Pearl Girl in Canada. He says that the Canadian government deems her death a suicide, but Gilead believes that Mayday terrorists murdered her. Commander Judd tells Aunt Lydia that the Pearl Girls have helped lead his Eyes to a microdot camera, which prints documents on tiny plastic dots. He says that there must be someone in Gilead who is receiving these dot messages and sending others back, though they have not yet found the culprit. Aunt Lydia assures him that the Aunts will continue to help the effort to destroy Mayday, as her heart clenches with fear.

Aunt Lydia returns to her memoir. Life falls into a pattern in the stadium, sitting in the bleachers during the day and trying to sleep in the locker rooms at night. The women receive little food, and the toilets are perpetually clogged. Sometimes water comes out of the faucets but sometimes not. Lydia believes the guards orchestrate these filthy conditions to break the women down.

Each day, more wailing women come to the stadium, and a tedium sets in: “How tedious is a tyranny in the throes of enactment. It’s always the same plot” (143). Lydia and Anita try to sit together each day, comforted by their shared experiences prior to this time. In the afternoons, there are executions, some of the blindfolded women are barely able to walk. Lydia wonders what happened to them and why the guards have chosen them. Each time, the same man in black ends his speech with “God will prevail!” On the fourth day of Lydia’s imprisonment, three of the executioners are women, in long brown gowns. Anita and Lydia call them monsters and wonder how they could do such a thing.

Each night, the guards take away some of the women. Anita is gone one morning. The next night, Lydia is awakened by guards. The guards drive her to a former police station, now a headquarter of the Eyes. There, she meets Commander Judd for the first time. He apologizes for the inconveniences, and she flippantly says that it was nothing. Commander Judd doesn’t care for her tone and orders her to the “Thank Tank.” He says that he prays that she will learn to be more thankful.

The Thank Tank is a modified police isolation cell, with no lights. Lydia quickly feels the strain of solitary confinement. She hears sounds of screaming and moaning from outside the cell, but she doesn’t know if they are real or recordings meant to break her resolve. After some time, three men come into the cell and kick and taser her. This happens two more times. Lydia says that she does weep, but also feels a third eye open, one that watches what the guards do to her. After more time, the lights suddenly come on in Lydia’s cell and guards drive her to a hotel, then to a room and she’s told to enjoy her three-day stay. There is room service food waiting, and a functioning shower and toilet.

Lydia eats and showers repeatedly, then sleeps. More room service food arrives, and the staff takes her stinking clothes away. At first, Lydia simply accepts all this. By the third day, she can think coherently again. A brown gown is laid out for her, like those of the female shooters in the stadium. Lydia puts it on, though she feels a chill while doing so.