Parable of the Talents by Octavia E. Butler
I had wrapped my gun in my spare clothes and put it at the bottom of my pack. I did this on purpose so that there would be no quick way for me to get at it. I didn’t want to be tempted to get at it. If I needed it inside the CA Center, I was already dead. I couldn’t leave it anywhere, but I could unload it. I took a lot of time earlier that evening, unloading it and wrapping it up, watching myself wrap it up so that even in the deepest panic I would know I couldn’t get at it.
It worked. It was necessary, and it worked.
Years ago, when my neighborhood in Robledo burned, when so much of my family burned, I had to go back. I got away in the night, and the next day, I had to go back. I had to retrieve what I could of that part of my life that was over, and I had to say goodbye. I had to. Up to that moment, and long afterward, going back to my Robledo neighborhood was the hardest thing I had ever done. This was worse.
When I went to the CA Center for the second time several days later, it wasn’t as bad. I could look and think and listen. I have no memory of any word said during the first visit. I tried to listen, but I couldn’t take anything in. But during the second, I heard people talking about the food, about employers who didn’t pay, about women—I was in the men’s section—about places up north, out east, or down south were there was work, about joints that hurt, about the war… I listened and I looked. After a while, I saw myself. I saw a man crouching over his food, spooning it into his mouth with intense and terrible concentration. His eyes, when he looked up, looked around, were vacant and scary. In line, he shambled more than he walked. If anyone got close to him, he looked insanity and death at them. He was barely human. People kept away from him. Maybe he was on something. He was big. He might be dangerous. I kept away from him myself. But he was me a few days before. I never found out what his particular problems were, but I know they were as terrible to him as mine are to me.
I heard almost nothing about orphaned children or Jarret’s Crusaders. A couple of the men mentioned that they had kids. Most don’t talk much, but some can’t stop talking: their long-lost homes, women, money, brave deeds and suffering during the war… Nothing useful.
Still I went back for the third time last night. Same food. They throw in different vegetables—whatever they happen to have, I suppose. The only inevitable ingredient in the stew is potatoes, but dinner is always vegetable stew and bread. And after the meal, there’s always at least an hour of sermon to bear. The doors are shut. You eat, then you listen. Then you can leave or try to get a bed.
My first sermon I couldn’t remember if my life depended on it. The second was about Christ curing the sick and being willing to cure us too if we only asked. The third was about Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, today, and forever.
The lay minister who delivered this third sermon was Marc.
It was him, my brother, a lay minister in the Church of Christian America.
In fear and surprise, I lowered my head, wondering whether he had seen me. There were about two hundred other people in the men’s cafeteria that night—men of all races, ethnicities, and degrees of sanity. I sat toward the back of the cafeteria, and off to the left of the podium or pulpit or whatever it was. After a while I looked up without raising my head. Nothing of Marc’s body language indicated that he had seen me. As he warmed to his sermon, though, he did mention that he had a sister who was steeped in sin, a sister who had been raised in the way of the Lord, but who had permitted herself to be pulled down by Satan. This sister had, through the influence of Satan, done him a great injury, he said, but he had forgiven her. He loved her. It hurt him that she would not turn from sin. It hurt him that he had had to turn from her. He shed a few tears and shook his head. At last he said, “Jesus Christ was your Savior yesterday. He is your Savior today. He will be your Savior forever. Your sister might desert you. Your brother might betray you. Your friends might try to pull you down into sin. But Jesus will always be there for you. So hold on to the Lord! Hold on! Stand firm in your faith. Be courageous. Be strong. Be a soldier of Christ. He will help you and protect you. He will raise you up and never, never, never let you down!”
When it was over, I started to slip away with the crowd. I needed to think. I had to figure out how to reach Marc outside the CA Center. At the last minute, I went back and left a note for the lay minister with one of the servers. It said, “Heard you preach tonight. Didn’t know you were here. Need to see you. Out front tomorrow evening where dinner line forms up.” And I signed it Bennett O.
One of our brothers was named Bennett Olamina. Olamina was an unusual name. Someone in CA might notice it and remember it from records of the inmates at Camp Christian. Also, it occurred to me that signing the name I was using, “Cory Duran,” might be cruel. Cory was Marc’s mother, after all, not mine. I didn’t want to remind him of the pain of losing her or hint that she might be alive. And if I had written Lauren O., I thought Marc might decide not to come. We hadn’t parted on the best of terms, after all. Perhaps it’s also cruel to hint to him that one of our two youngest brothers might still be alive. Perhaps he’ll know or guess that I wrote the note. But I had to use a name that would get his attention. I must see him. If he won’t do anything else, surely he’ll help me find Larkin. He can’t know what happened to us. I don’t believe he would have joined CA if he knew it was made up of thieves, kidnappers, slavers, and murderers. He wanted to lead, to be important, to be respected, but he had been a slave prostitute himself. No matter how angry he was at me, he wouldn’t wish me captivity and a collar. At least, I don’t believe he would.
The truth is, I don’t know what to believe.
An old man is letting me sleep in his garage tonight. I chopped weeds and cleared trash for him today. Now I’m content. I’ve spread some flat boards over the concrete and covered the boards with rags. In my sleepsack on top of these, I’m pretty comfortable. There’s even a filthy old flush toilet and a sink with running water out here—a real luxury. I had a wash. Now I want to sleep, but all I can do, all I can think of is Marc in that place, Marc with those people. Maybe he was even there at the time of my first visit. We might have seen each other and not known. What would he have done, I wonder, if he had recognized me?
EIGHTEEN
❏ ❏ ❏
From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
Beware:
All too often,
We say
What we hear others say.
We think
What we’re told that we think.
We see
What we’re permitted to see.
Worse!
We see what we’re told that we see.
Repetition and pride are the keys to this.
To hear and to see
Even an obvious lie
Again
And again and again
May be to say it,
Almost by reflex
Then to defend it
Because we’ve said it
And at last to embrace it
Because we’ve defended it
And because we cannot admit
That we’ve embraced and defended
An obvious lie.
Thus, without thought,
Without intent,
We make
Mere echoes
Of ourselves—
And we say
What we hear others say.
FROM Warrior by Marcos Duran
I’VE ALWAYS BELIEVED IN the power of God, distant and profound. But more immediately, I believe in the power of religion itself as a great mover of masses. I wonder if that’s odd in the son of a Baptist minister. I think my father honestly believed that faith in God was enough. He lived as though he believed it. But it didn’t save him.
I began preaching when I was only a boy. I prayed for the sick and saw some of them healed under my hands. I was given tithings of money and food by people who had not enough to eat themselves. People who were old enough to be my parents came to me for advice, reassurance, an
But when the city authorities decided that we were no more than trash to be swept out of our homes, my prayers had no power to stop them. The city authorities were stronger and richer.
They had more and better guns. They had the power, the knowledge, and the discipline to bury us.
The governments, city, county, state, and federal plus the big rich companies were the sources of money, information, weapons—real physical power. But in post-Pox America, successful churches were only sources of influence. They offered people safe emotional catharsis, a sense of community, and ways to organize their desires, hopes, and fears into systems of ethics. Those things were important and necessary, but they weren’t power. If this country was ever to be restored to greatness, it wasn’t the little dollar-a-dozen preachers who would do it.
Andrew Steele Jarret understood this. When he created Christian America and then moved from the pulpit into politics, when he pulled religion and government together and cemented the link with money from rich businessmen, he created what should have been an unstoppable drive to restore the country. And he became my teacher.
I love my Uncle Marc. There were times when I was more than half in love with him. He was so good-looking, and a beautiful person, male or female, can get away with saying and doing things that would destroy a plainer one. I never stopped loving him. Even my mother, I think, loved him in spite of herself.
What Uncle Marc had been through as a slave marked him, I’m sure, but I don’t know how much. How can you know what a man would be like if he had grown up unmarked by horror? What did my mother’s time as a beaten, robbed, raped slave do to her? She was always a woman of obsessive purpose and great physical courage. She had always been willing to sacrifice others to what she believed was right. She recognized that last characteristic in Uncle Marc, but I don’t believe she ever saw it clearly in herself.
FROM The Journals of Lauren Oya Olamina
MONDAY, MAY 14, 2035
I met with my brother earlier tonight.
I spent the day helping my latest employer—a likable old guy full of stories of his adventures as a young man in the 1970s. He was a singer and guitar player, with a band. They traveled the world, played raucous music, and had wild sex with hundreds, maybe thousands, of eager young girls. Lies, I suppose.
We put in a vegetable garden and pruned some of the dead limbs from his fruit trees. I don’t mean “we,” of course. He said, “Well, how about we do this?” Or, “Do you think we can do that?” And he tried to help, and that was all right. He needed to feel useful, just as he needed someone to hear his outrageous stories. He told me he was 88 years old. His two sons are dead. His middle-aged granddaughter and his several young great-grandchildren live in Edmonton, Alberta, up in Canada. He was alone except for a neighbor lady who looked in now and then. And she was 74 herself.
He said I could stay as long as I wanted to if I would help him out in the house and outside. The house wasn’t in good shape. It had been neglected for years. I couldn’t have done all the repairs, of course, even if he could have afforded the needed materials. But I decided to stay for a few days to do what I could. I didn’t dare stay long enough for him to begin to depend on me, but a few days.
I thought that would give me a base to work from while I got to know my brother again.
I’m trying to decide how to talk about my meeting with Marc. Tonight’s walk back to the old man’s house has helped me to relax a little, calm down a little. But not enough.
Marc was waiting near the long dinner line when I arrived. He looked so handsome and at ease in his clean, stylish, casual clothing. He had worn a dark blue suit when he preached the night before, and he had managed, even as he told a couple of hundred thieves and winos how awful I was, to look startlingly beautiful.
“Marc,” I said.
He jumped, then turned to stare at me. He had glanced in my direction, but it was obvious that he hadn’t recognized me until I spoke to him. He had been encouraging a man in line ahead of me to accept Jesus Christ as his personal Savior and let Jesus help with his drinking problem. It seemed that the CA Center had a rigorous drying-out program, and Marc had been working hard to sell it.
“Let’s take a walk around the corner and talk,” I said, and before he could recover or answer, I turned and walked away, certain that he would follow. He did. We were well away from the line and well away from any listening ears when he caught up.
“Lauren!” he said. “My God, Lauren, is it you? What in hell are you—?”
I led him around the corner, out of sight of the line, and onto a dirty little side street that led to the bay. I went on several steps down that street, then stopped and turned and looked at him.
He stood frowning, staring at me, looking uncertain, surprised, almost angry. There was no shame or defensiveness about him. That was good. His reaction on seeing me would have been different, I’m sure, if he had known what his Camp Christian friends had been doing to me.
“I need your help,” I said. “I need you to help me to find my daughter.”
This made nothing at all clear to him, but it did shift him away from anger, which was what I wanted. “What?” he said.
“Your people have her. They took her. I don’t… I don’t believe that they’ve killed her. I don’t know what they’ve done with her, but I suspect that one of them has adopted her. I need you to help me find her.”
“Lauren, what are you talking about? What are you doing here? Why are you trying to look like a man? How did you find me?”
“I heard you preach last night.”
And again he was reduced to saying, “What?” This time he looked a little embarrassed, a little apprehensive.
“I’ve been coming here in the hope of finding out what CA does with the children it takes.”
“But these people don’t take children! I mean, they rescue orphans from the streets, but they don’t—”
“And they ‘rescue’ the children of heathens, don’t they? Well, they ‘rescued’ my daughter Larkin and all the rest of the younger children of Acorn! They killed my Bankole! And Zahra! Zahra Moss Balter from Robledo! They killed her! They put a collar around my neck and around the necks of my people. CA did that! And then those holy Christians worked us like slaves every day and used us like whores at night! That’s what they did. That’s what kind of people they are. Now I need your help to find my daughter!” All that came out in a rush, in a harsh, ugly whisper, my face up close to his, my emotions almost out of control. I hadn’t meant to spit it all out at him that way. I needed him. I meant to tell him everything, but not like that.
He stared at me as though I were speaking to him in Chinese. He put his hand on my shoulder. “Lauren, come in. Have some food, a bath, a clean bed. Come on in. We need to talk.”
I stood still, not letting him move me. “Listen,” I said in a more human voice. “Listen, I know I’m dumping a lot on you, Marc, and I’m sorry.” I took a deep breath. “It’s just that you’re the only person I’ve felt that I could dump it on. I need your help. I’m desperate.”
“Come on in.” He wasn’t quite humoring me. He seemed to be in denial, but not speaking of it. He was trying to divert me, tempt me with meaningless comforts.
“Marc, if it’s possible, I will never set foot in that poisonous place again. Now that I’ve found you, I shouldn’t have to.”
“But these people will help you, Lauren. You’re making some kind of mistake. I don’t understand it, but you are. We would rather take in whole families than separate them. I’ve worked on the apartments that
Now he was humoring me. “Have you ever heard of a place called Camp Christian?” I asked, letting the harshness come back into my voice. He was silent for a moment, but I knew before he spoke that the answer to my question was yes.
“I wouldn’t have named it that,” he said. “It’s a reeducation camp—one of the places where the worst people we handle are sent. These are people who would go to prison if we didn’t take them. Minor criminals, most of them—thieves, junkies, prostitutes, that kind of thing. We try to reach them, teach them skills and self-discipline, stop them from graduating to real prisons.”
I listened, shaking my head. He was either a great actor or he believed what he was saying. “Camp Christian was a prison,” I said. “For seventeen months it was a prison. Before that, it was Acorn. My people and I built Acorn with our own hands, then your Christian America took it, stole it from us, and turned it into a prison camp.”
He just stood there, staring at me as though he didn’t know what to believe or what to do.
“Back in September,” I said, keeping my voice low and even. “Back in September of 33, they came with seven maggots, smashing through our thorn fence, picking off our watchers. I knew we couldn’t fight a force like that. I signaled everyone to run like hell, scatter. You know we had drills—drills for fighting and drills for fading into the hills. None of it mattered. They gassed us. Three people might have gotten away: the mute woman named May and the two little Noyer girls. I don’t know. They were the only ones we never heard anything about. The rest of us were captured, collared, and used for work and for sex. Our younger children were taken away. No one would tell us where. My Bankole, Zahra Balter, Teresa Lin, and some others were killed. If we asked anything, we were punished with the collars. If we were caught talking at all, we were punished. We slept on the floor or on shelves in the school. Your holy men took our houses. And they took us, too, when they felt like it. Listen!”