The protagonist and narrator, Offred, recalls sleeping in an old gymnasium with several other women, on “army cots that had been set up in rows, with spaces between so we could not talk” (13). Women known as “Aunts” patrolled the room with “electric cattle prods slung on thongs from their leather belts” because “even they could not be trusted with guns” (14).

Outside, armed men “specially picked from the Angels,” or high-ranking soldiers, (14) guarded the building, known as the Red Centre. The women thought that if they could only talk to the guards, “[s]omething could be exchanged […] some deal made, some trade-off, we still had our bodies. That was our fantasy” (14). However, the guards were not allowed in the building, and the captive women were not allowed out except for “twice daily” walks around an old football field surrounded by “a chain-link fence topped with barbed wire” (14).

Despite the Aunts’ vigilance, the women would reach out their arms “and touch each other’s hands across space” (14). They also “learned to lip-read” (14), lying down “watching each other’s mouths” and “exchang[ing] names, from bed to bed” (14).