Parable of the Talents p-2

by Butler, Octavia

  Then Kayce was there, snatching the doll from me. When I reached for it, wanting it back, she slapped me. She had come up behind me, seen what was in my hands, and in her sudden rage, lost control. She was a stem disciplinarian, but she rarely hit me. To give her her due, this was the only time I remember her just lashing out at me that way in anger. Maybe that's why I remember it so well.

  A man who grew up at the Pelican Bay Christian American Children's Home told me about a Matron who went into a similar rage and killed a child.

  Her victim was a seven-year-old boy who had Tourette's syndrome. My informant said, "We kids didn't know anything about Tburette's syndrome, but we knew this particular kid couldn't help yelling insults and making noises. He didn't mean it Some of us didn't like him. Some of us thought he was crazy. But we all knew he didn't mean the things he yelled out. We knew he couldn't help it. But Matron said he had a devil in him, and she was always screaming at him— every day.

  "Then one day she hit him, knocked him into the edge of a kitchen cabinet. He hit the cabinet with his head, and he died.

  "I don't believe Matron was sentenced and collared, but she was fired. I just hope that she couldn't find another pro­fessional job and had to indenture herself. One way or another, a person like her should wind up wearing a collar."

  There was a mindless rigidity about some Christian Amer­icans—about the ones who did the most harm. They were so certain that they were right that, like medieval inquisitors, they would kill you, even torture you to death, to save your soul. Kayce wasn't that bad, but she was more rigid and literal-minded than any human being with normal intelli­gence should have been, and I suffered for it.

  Anyway, she snatched the doll from me and began slap­ping my face. All the while, she was shouting at me. I was so scared, and screaming so loud myself that I didn't know what she was saying. Looking back now, I know it must have been something to do with idolatry, heathenism, or graven im­ages. Christian America had created whole new categories of sin and expanded old ones. We were not permitted pictures of any kind. Movies and television were forbidden, but some­how Dreamasks were not—although only religious topics were permitted. Later, when I was in school, older kids would pass around secular masks that offered stories of adventure, war, and sex. I had my first pleasurable sexual experience, wearing a deliberately mislabeled Dreamask. The label said "The Story of Moses." In fact, it was the story of a girl who had wild sex with her pastor, the deacons, and anyone else she could seduce. I was eleven years old when I discovered that Mask. If Kayce had ever known what it was, she might have done more than just slap my face. I kept the dirty Mask well hidden.

  But at three, I hadn't known enough to hide the doll. Only Kayce's reaction told me what a terrible thing it was. She made me watch while she dug a hole in our backyard, put the doll in, covered it with cooking oil and old papers, and burned it. This, she said, was what would happen to me if I went on defying God and working for Satan. I would go down to hell, and what she had done to the doll, the devil would do to me. I remember she made me look at the shapeless blackened plastic lump that the doll had become. She made me hold it, and I cried because it was still hot, and it burned my hand.

  "If you think that hurts," she said, "you just wait until you get to hell."

  Years later, when I was a grown woman, the small daugh­ter of a friend showed me her doll. I managed to stand up quickly and get out of the house. I didn't scream or thrust the doll away. I just ran. I panicked at the sight of a little girl's doll—real panic. I had to think and remember for a long time before I understood why.

  The purpose of Christian America was to make America the great, Christian country that it was supposed to be, to prepare it for a future of strength, stability, and world leadership, and to prepare its people for life everlasting in heaven. Yet some­times now when I think about Christian America and all that it did when it held power over so many lives, I don't think about order and stability or greatness or even places like Camp Christian or Pelican Bay. I think about the other extremes, the many small, sad, silly extremes that made up so much of Christian American life. I think about a little girl's doll and I try to banish the shadows of panic that I still can't help feeling when I see one.

  from The Journals of Lauren Oya Olamina

  wednesday, march 28, 2035

  We have found Justin Gilchrist—or rather, he has found us. In the weeks we've been at Georgetown, this is the best thing that's happened to us.

  We've been working for the Georges for room and board while we regained our health, tried to find out where our children might be, caught up on the news, and tried to find ways of fitting ourselves into the world as it is now. Be­cause we've worked for our keep, we still have most of the money we arrived with. I've even managed to earn a little more by reading and writing for people. Most people in Georgetown are illiterate. I've begun to teach reading and writing to some of the few who want to learn. That's also bringing in a little hard currency. And I sell pencil sketches of people's children or other loved ones. This last, I must be careful about. It seems that some of the more rabid Christian America types have decided that a picture of your child might be seen as a graven image. That seems too extreme to catch on with most people even though Jar­ret is much loved in Georgetown. Many people here have sons, brothers, husbands, or other male relatives who have been injured or killed in the Al-Can War, but still, they love Jarret.

  In fact, Jarret is both loved and despised here. The reli­gious poor who are ignorant, frightened, and desperate to improve their situations are glad to see a "man of God" in the White House. And that's what he is to them: a man of God.

  Even some of the less religious ones support him. They say the country needs a strong hand to bring back order, good jobs, honest cops, and free schools. They say he has to be given plenty of time and a free hand so he can put things right again.

  But those dedicated to other religions, and those who are not religious at all sneer at Jarret and call him a hypocrite. They sneer, they hate him, but they also fear him. They see him for the tyrant that he is. And the thugs see him as one of them. They envy him. He is the bigger, the more successful thief, murderer, and slaver.

  The working poor who love Jarret want to be fooled, need to be fooled. They scratch a living, working long, hard hours at dangerous, dirty jobs, and they need a savior. Poor women, in particular, tend to be deeply religious and more than willing to see Jarret as the Second Coming. Religion is all they have. Their employers and their men abuse them. They bear more children than they can feed. They bear everyone's contempt.

  And yet, whether or not extreme Jarretites say it is a sin, they want pictures of their little ones. And I charge less than local photographers. I'm kinder than photographers too. I've never drawn a child's dirt or its sores, or its rags. That isn't necessary. I've made older plain boys handsome and plain girls pretty for their lovers or for their parents. I've even managed after many tries to draw the dead, guided by the loving memory of a relative or friend. I don't know how ac­curate these drawings are, of course, but they please people.

  I think I'll be able to earn a living sketching, teaching, reading, and writing for people as long as I stick to squatter settlements and the poor sections of towns. And mere is a bonus to my becoming acquainted with the people in these places. Many of the people in the squatter settlements work in the yards and homes of somewhat-better-off people in the towns and cities. The squatters do gardening, housecleaning, painting, carpentry, childcare, even some plumbing and elec­trical work. They serve people who have houses or apartments to live in but can't afford to support even unsalaried live-in servants. Such people pay small sums of money or provide food or clothing to get their work done. Squatters who do this kind of work get a chance to see and hear any number of useful things. If, for instance, new children have appeared at an employer's home or at a home nearby, regular day laborers know of it. And if the price is right, they'll tell what they know. Information
is as much for sale here as is any­thing else.

  In spite of my efforts, though, we found Justin not by buy­ing information, but because he escaped from his new fam­ily and came looking for us. He's 11 years old now—old enough to decide for himself what's true and what isn't and too old to be told that the woman he's called mother for eight of his 11 years was evil and worshiped the devil.

  ************************************

  I had just finished a pen-and-ink sketch of a woman and her two youngest kids, sitting outside their wood-and-plastic shack. I was headed back up to my room at the hotel. The streets in Georgetown are all dirt tracks or trash-filled ditches—open sewers—where you might step in anything. The Georges were sensible enough to build their collection of businesses upslope from the worst of the mess, but I can only do my work by going down to where most of the peo­ple are. I haven't bought much since I've been here, but I have invested in a pair of well-made, water-resistant boots.

  I was thinking, as I walked, about the woman whom I had just drawn with her three-month-old and her 18-month-old. The mother isn't 30 yet, but she looks fifty. She has nine kids, sparse, graying hair, and almost no teeth. I felt as though I had gone back in time. Farther back, I mean. We were nineteenth-century in Acorn. What is this, I wondered? Eighteenth? And yet, perversely, I found myself filled with envy. Sometimes I look at these poor, sad women and I'm almost sick with envy. At least they have their children. If they have nothing else, they have their children. I look at the children and I draw them, and I can hardly stand it.

  As I tramped up the hill toward my room at George's, I saw a little boy squatting by the side of the path, his head in his hands. He was just another scrawny little kid in rags. I thought he might be having a nosebleed, and that made me want to hurry past him. My sharing makes me a coward sometimes. But it also makes me resist being a coward.

  I stopped. "Are you all right, honey?" I asked.

  He jumped at the sound of my voice, then stared up at me. He was not bleeding, but his Lips were cut and swollen and he had an old slash in his cheek and a big black-and-blue swelling on the left side of his forehead. I froze the way I had learned to freeze when confronted with unexpected pain, and the kid mumbled something that I didn't understand because his mouth was so swollen. Then he just launched himself at me.

  I thought at first that it was some kind of attack. I thought he might have a knife or an old-style razor or even a skin patch of some poison or a drug. There's nothing new about thieving or murderous children. In a big squatter settlement like Georgetown, there were quite a few of them, although they tended to go after the small, the weak, or the sick. And they tended to travel in packs. Then somehow, before the boy touched me, I knew him. I recognized his wounded, dis­torted face in spite of the pain he was giving me.

  Justin! Justin beaten and cut, but alive. I held him, ignor­ing the people around us who stared or muttered. Justin is small and wiry. I suspect he still has quite a bit of growing to do. He's White, red-haired, and freckled. In short, he doesn't look like someone who should be hugging me. But in Georgetown although people might stare, they don't interfere. They mind their own business. They don't need any­one else's trouble.

  I held him away from me and looked him over. He was filthy and bloody, and he didn't look as though he had had much to eat recently. The cuts on his face and mouth and his bruised head weren't his only injuries. He moved as though he hurt elsewhere.

  "Is Mama here, too?" he asked.

  "She's here," I said.

  "Where?"

  "I'm taking you to her." We had begun to walk together up toward the George complex.

  "Is the Doctor there too?"

  I stopped, staring up toward the complex, and looked down, waiting until I could keep my voice steady. "No, Jus. He's not here."

  The Justin I had known back before Camp Christian would have accepted these words at face value. He might have asked where Bankole was, but he wouldn't have said what this much older, wounded, wiser child said.

  "Shaper?"

  I hadn't heard that title for a while. In fact, I hadn't heard my name for a while. In Georgetown, I called myself Cory Duran. It was my stepmother's maiden name, and I used it in the hope of attracting my brother's attention if he hap­pened to be around. The false name is accepted here because even though I'd been to Georgetown several times before the destruction of Acorn, among the permanent residents, only Dolores George and her husband knew my name. And the Georges don't gossip.

  As for the title, in Acorn, all the children called me "Shaper." It was the title that seemed right for one teaching Earthseed. Travis, too, was called Shaper. So was Natividad.

  "Shaper?"

  "Yes, Jus."

  "Is the Doctor dead?"

  "Yes. He's dead."

  "Oh." He had begun to cry. He had not been crying over his own injuries, but he cried for my Bankole. I took his hand and we walked up the hill to George's.

  Like the rest of us, Allie has been working for Dolores George. I never worried about my own ability to earn my way. I worried about Harry's depression, but not about his resourcefulness. He would have little trouble. Nina Noyer didn't give me time to worry about her. She arrived at Georgetown and almost immediately fell in love with one of the younger George sons. In spite of her two lost sisters, in spite of Dolores George's disapproval, Nina and the boy are so intense, so wrapped up in one another that Dolores knows she could only alienate her son by objecting. She hopes the sudden passion will bum itself out. I'm not so sure.

  But I worried about Allie. She is healing. She talks now as much as she ever did—which is to say, not a lot She can think and reason. But not all of her memory has come back. For that reason, I told Dolores some of her story and hoped aloud that some permanent job could be found for her. Dolores first gave her small jobs to do, cleaning floors, repairing steps, painting railings When she saw that Allie worked well and made no trouble, she said Allie could stay as long as she wanted to. No salary, just room and board.

  I stopped at a tree stump about halfway up the hill and sat down and took both of Justin's hands between mine. His face looked bad, and it was hard to look at him, but I made myself do it. "Jus, they hurt your mother."

  He began to look afraid. "Hurt her how?"

  "They put a collar on her. They put collars on all of us. They hurt her with the collar. I don't know whether you've ever seen—"

  "I have. I saw collar gangs working on the highway and in Eureka, fixing potholes, pulling weeds, stuff like that. I saw how a collar can hurt you and make you fall down and twitch and scream."

  I nodded. "Collars can do more than that. Someone got really mad at your mother and used the collar to hurt her badly. She's almost okay now, but she's still having some trouble with her memory."

  "Amnesia?"

  "Yes. Most of what she's lost is what happened in the weeks and months just before she was hurt. That was a bad time for us all, and it may be a mercy that she's lost it. But don't be surprised if you ask her about something and she doesn't remember. She can't help it."

  He thought about that for a while, then asked in almost a whisper, "Will she remember me?"

  "Absolutely. We've been in contact with all sorts of peo­ple trying to find out where you and the others were." Then I couldn't help myself. I had to ask a few questions for my­self. "Justin, were you with any of the other kids? Were you with Larkin?"

  He shook his head. "They took us all to Arcata to the church there. Then they made us all separate. They said we were going to have new Christian American families. They said... they said you were all dead. I believed them at first, and I didn't know what to do. But then I saw how they would lie whenever they felt like it. They would say things about us and about Acorn that were nothing but lies. Then I didn't know what to believe."

  "Do you know where they sent Larkin—or any of the others?"

  He shook his head again. "They made me go with some people who had a girl and a boy of their
own. I was almost the first one to go. I didn't get to see who got the other kids. I guess they went with other families. The people who got me, the man was a deacon. He said it was his duty to take me. I guess it was his duty to beat me up, too!"

  "Did he do this to your face?"

  Justin nodded. "He did and his son—Carl. Carl said my mother was a devil worshiper and a witch. He was always saying that. He's 12, and he thinks he knows everything. Then a few days ago, he said she was a... a whore. And I hit him. We got into a big fight and his father came out and called me an ungrateful little devil-worshiping bastard. Then they both beat the hell out of me. They locked up me in my room and I went out the window. Then I didn't know where to go, so I just went south, out of town, down toward Acorn. The deacon had said it wasn't there anymore, but I had to see for myself. Then a woman saw me on the road and she brought me here. She gave me some food and put some medicine on my face. She had a lot of kids, but she let me stay with her for a couple of days. I guess she would have let me live there. But I wanted to go home."

  I listened to all this, then sighed. "Acorn really is gone," I said. "When we finally broke free, we burned what was left of it"

  "You burned it?"

  "Yes. We couldn't stay there. We would have been caught and collared again or killed. So we took what we could carry, and we burned the rest. Why should they be able to steal it and use it? We burned it!"

  He drew back from me a little, and I was afraid I was scar­ing him. He's a tough little kid, but he had been through a lot. I felt ashamed of letting my feelings show more than I should have.