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 mat 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 we're renovating to help get people off the streets. I know—"
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!"
He had stopped looking at me and begun to look past me, looking over my right shoulder.
"They brought in street people and travelers and minor criminals and other mountain families, and they collared mem too," I said. "Marc! Do you hear me?'
"I don't believe you," he said at last. "I don't believe any of this!"
"Go and look at what's left of Acorn. Look for yourself. Go to one of the other so-called reeducation camps. I'll bet they're just as bad. Check them out."
He began to shake his head. “This is not true! I know these people! They wouldn't do what you're accusing them of."
"Maybe some of them wouldn't. But some of them did. All that we built they stole."
"I don't believe you," he said. But he did believe. "You're making some kind of mistake."
"Go and see for yourself," I repeated. "Be careful how you ask questions. I don't want you to get into trouble. These are dangerous, vicious people. Go and see."
He said nothing for a few seconds. It bothered me that he was frowning, and again, not looking at me. "You were collared?" he asked at last.
"For seventeen months. Forever."
"How did you get away? Was your sentence up?"
"What? What sentence?"
"I mean did they let you go?"
"They never let anyone go. They killed quite a few of us, but they never released anyone. I don't know what their long-range plans were for us, if they had any, but I don't see how they could have dared to let us go after what they'd done to us."
"How did you get free? You don't escape once someone's put a collar on you. There's no escape from a collar."
Unless someone deals with the devil and buys your freedom, I thought. But I didn't say it. "There was a landslide," I did say. "It smashed the cabin where the control unit was kept—my cabin. The control unit powered all the individual belt control units somehow. Maybe it even powered the collars themselves. I'm not sure. Anyway, once it was smashed and buried, the collars stopped working, and we went into our homes and killed our surviving guards—those who hadn't been killed by the landslide. Then we burned the cabins with their bodies inside. We burned them. They were ours! We built every one with our own hands."
"You killed people...?"
"Their names were Cougar, Marc. Every one of them was named Cougar!"
He turned—wrenched himself around as though he had to uproot himself to move:—and started back toward the corner.
"Marc!"
He kept walking.
"Marc!" I grabbed his arm, pulled him back around to face me. "I didn't tell you this to hurt you. I know I have hurt you, and I'm sorry, but these bastards have my child! I need your help to get her back. Please, Marc."
He hit me.
I never expected it, never saw it coming. Even when we were kids, he and I didn't hit each other.
I stumbled backward, more startled than hurt. And he was gone. By the time I got to the corner, he had already vanished into the CA Center.
I was afraid to go in after him. In his present frame of mind, he might turn me in. How will I get to see him again? Even if he decides to help me, how will I contact him? Surely he will decide to help me once he's had time to think. Surely he will.
sunday, june 3, 2035
I've left the Eureka-Arcata area.
I'm back at the message tree for the night. I brought a flashlight so that I could have light where I wanted it without taking risks with fire. Now, shielding my light, I'm reading what's been left here. Jorge and Di have left a number, and Jorge says he's found his brother Mateo. In fact, as with Justin, his brother found him. On the northern edge of Garberville where there are still big redwoods, Mateo found Jorge's group sleeping on the ground. He had been looking tor them for months. Like Justin, he had run away from abuse, although in his case, the abuse was sexual. Now he's wounded and bitter, but he's with his brother again.
There was no news from Harry. Too soon for him to have gotten back, I suppose. I phoned him several times, but there was no answer. I'm worried about him.
I wrote a note, warning the others to avoid the CA Center in Eureka. I wrote that Marc had been there, but that he wasn't to be trusted.
He isn't to be trusted.
I made myself go back to the CA Center on Wednesday of last week—went back as a sane, but shabby woman rather than as a dirty, crazy man. It took me too long to get up the courage to do that—to go. I worried that Marc might have warned his CA friends about me. I couldn't really believe he would do that, but he might, and I'd had nightmares about them grabbing me as soon as I showed up. I could feel them putting on the collar. I'd wake up soaking wet and scared to death.
At last, I went to a used-clothing store and bought an old black skirt and a blue blouse. From a cheap little shop, I bought some makeup and a scarf for my hair. I dressed, made up, then dirtied up a little, like maybe I'd been rolling around on the ground with someone.
At CA, I got in line with the other women and ate in the small, walled-off women's section. No one seemed to pay any attention to me, although my height was much more noticeable when I was among only women. I slumped a little and kept my head down when I was standing. I tried to look weary and bedraggled rather than furtive, but I discovered that furtive wasn't all that unusual. Most of the women, like most of the men, were stolid, indifferent, enduring. But a few were chattering crazies, whiners, or frightened little rabbits. There was also a fat woman with only one eye who prowled the room and tried to grab bread from your hands even while you were eating it. She was crazy, of course, but her particular craziness made her nasty and possibly dangerous. She let me alone, but harassed several of the smaller women until a tiny, feisty woman pulled a knife on her.
Then the servers called security, and security men came out of a back room and grabbed both women from behind.
It bothered me very much that they took both women away. The fat crazy woman had been permitted to go about her business until someone resisted. Then both victim and victimizer were treated as equally guilty.
It bothered me even more that the women were not thrown out. They were taken away. Where? They didn't come back. No one I spoke to knew what had happened to them.
Most troubling of all, I recognized one of the security men. He had been at Acorn. He had been one of our "teachers" there. I had seen him take Adela Ortiz away to rape her. I could shut my eyes and see him dragging her off to the cabin he used. There had to be many such men still alive and free—men
who were not at Camp Christian when we took back our freedom, then took our revenge. But this was the first one that I had seen.
My fear and my hate returned full force and all but choked me. It took all my self-control to sit still, eat my food, and go on being the lump I had to seem to be. Day Turner had been collared after a fight that he said he had had nothing to do with. Christian America officials made themselves judges, juries, and, when they chose to be, executioners. They didn't waste any effort trying to be fair. I had heard on one of my earlier visits that the all-male CA Center Security Force was made up of retired and off-duty cops. That, if it were true, was terrifying. It made me all the more certain that I was right not to go to the police with the true story of what had been done to me and to Acorn. Hell, I hadn't even been able to get my own brother to believe me. What chance would I have to convince the cops if some of them were working for CA?
After dinner, after the sermon, I managed to make myself go up to one of the servers—a blond woman with a long red scar on her forehead. She was one of the few who laughed and talked with us as she scooped stew into bowls and passed out bread. I asked her to give my note to lay minister Marcos Duran. As it happened, she knew him.
"He's not here anymore," she said. "He was transferred to Portland."
"Oregon?" I asked, and then felt stupid. Of course she meant Portland, Oregon.
"Yeah," the server said. "He left a few days ago. He was offered a chance to do more preaching at our new center in Portland, and he's always wanted that What a nice man. We were sorry to lose him. Did you ever hear him preach?"
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