Butler, Octavia - Parable of the Talents

"If you go," Kayce said, "don't come back. This is a decent, God-fearing house. You will not bring your trash and your sin back here!"

I had gotten a job caring for children in a household where the father had died. I had deliberately looked for a job that did not put me at the mercy of another man—a man who might be like Madison, or worse than Madison. The pay was room, board, and a tiny salary. I believed I had clothing and books enough to get me through a few years of working there, helping to raise another woman's children while she worked in public relations for a big agribusiness company. I had met the kids—two girls and a boy—and I liked them. I believed that I could do this work and save my salary so that when 1 left, 1 would have enough money to begin a small business—a small cafe, perhaps—of my own. I had no grand hopes. I only wanted to get away from the Alexanders who had become more and more intolerable.

There was no love in the Alexander house. There was only the habit of being together, and, 1 suppose, the fear of even greater loneliness. And there was the Church—the habit of Church with its Bible class, men's and women's missionary groups, charity work, and choir practice. I had joined the young people's choir to get away from Madison. As it hap­pened, the choir provided relief in three ways. First, I dis­covered that I really liked to sing. I was so shy at first that I could hardly open my mouth, but once I got into the songs, lost myself in them, I loved it. Second, choir practice was one more excuse that I could use to get out of the house. Third, singing in the choir was a way to avoid having to sit next to Madison in church, it was a way to avoid his nasty, moist little hands. He used to feel me up in church. He really did that. We would sit down with Kayce between us, then he would get up to go to the men's room and come back and sit next to me with his coat or his jacket on his lap to hide his touching me.

I believe Kayce realized what was happening. In the days before I left, we were enemies, she and I. Neither of us said anything about Madison. We just spent a lot of time hating one another. We didn't talk unless we had to. Any talk that we couldn't avoid might become a screaming fight. Then she'd call me a little whore, an ungrateful little bastard, a heathen witch……During my seventeenth year, I don't think she and I ever had anything like a conversation.

Anyway, I joined the choir. And I discovered that I had a big alto voice that people enjoyed hearing. I even discovered that church wasn't so bad if I didn't have to sit between the devil and the deep blue sea.

Because of my singing, I tried to stay with the church after I moved out of Kayce and Madison's house. I did try. But I couldn't do it.

The rumors began at once: I was having sex with any num­ber of men. I was pregnant. I had had an abortion. I had cursed God and joined my real mother in a heathen cult I was spreading lies about Madison People I had grown up with, people I had thought of as friends, stopped speak­ing to me. Men who had paid no attention to me while I was at home now began to edge up to me with whispered invi­tations and unwanted little touches, and then angry denun­ciations when I wouldn't give them what they now seemed to think they had a right to get from me.

I couldn't take it. A few months after I left home, I left the church. That was all right with my employer. She didn't go to church. She had been raised a Unitarian, but now seemed to have no religious interests. She liked to spend Sundays with her kids. Sunday was my day off. What I did with it was up to me.

But to my amazement, I missed my adoptive parents. I missed the church. I missed the life 1 had grown up with. I missed everything. And I was so lonely. I dragged myself through my days. Sometimes I barely wanted to be alive.

Then I heard that Reverend Marcos Duran was coming to town, that he would be preaching at the First Christian American Church of Seattle. That was the big church, not our little neighborhood thing. The moment I read that Reverend Duran was coming, I knew I would go to see him. I knew what a great preacher he was. I had disks of him preaching to thousands in great CA cathedrals on the Gulf Coast and in Washington, D.C. He had a big church of his own in New York. He was young to be so successful, and I had quite a crush on him. God, he was beautiful. And unlike every other preacher I knew of, he wasn't married. That must have been rough. Every woman would be after him. Other ministers would pressure him to get married, accept adult responsi­bilities, family responsibilities. Men would look at his hand­some face and think he was a homosexual. Was he? I had heard rumors. But then, I knew about rumors.

1 camped out all night outside the big church to make sure that I would be able to get in for services. As soon as I was off duty on Saturday night, I took a blanket roll, some sand­wiches, and a bottle of water, and went to get a place out­side the church. I wasn't the only one. Even though services would be broadcast free, there were dozens of people camped around the church when I got there. More kept com­ing. We were mostly women and girls sleeping out that night—not that anyone slept much. There were some men either trying to get close to the women or looking as though they hoped to get close to Reverend Duran. But there was nothing blatant. We sang and talked and laughed. I had a great time. These people were all strangers to me, and I had a great time with them. They liked my voice and got me to sing some solos. Doing that was still hard for me, but I had done it in church, so I just put myself back in church men­tally. Then I was into the singing, and the faces of the others told me they were into my songs.

And then a woman came out of the big, handsome house near the church and made straight for me. istopped singing because it occurred to me suddenly that I was disturbing people. It was late. We were having something very like a party in the street and on the steps of the church. None of us had even thought that we might be keeping people awake. I just stopped singing in the middle of a word and everyone stared at me, then at the woman striding toward me. She was a light-skinned Black woman with red hair and freckles—a plump, middle-aged woman, wearing a long green caftan. She came right up to me as though I were the only one there.

"Would your name be Asha Alexander?" she asked.

I nodded. "Yes, ma'am. I'm sorry if we disturbed you."

She put an envelope in my hand and smiled. "You didn't disturb me, dear, you have a lovely voice. Read the note. I think you'll want to answer it,"

The note said, "If your name is Asha Vere Alexander, I would like to speak with you. I believe I have information concerning your biological parents. Marcos Duran."

I stared at the red-haired woman's face in shock, and she smiled. "If you're interested, come with me," she said, and she turned and walked back toward her house.

I wasn't sure I should.

"What is it?" one of my new friends asked. She was sit­ting, wrapped in her blankets on the church steps, looking from me to the departing red-haired woman. They were all looking from me to the woman.

"1 don't know," 1 said. "Family stuff." And I ran after the woman.

And he was there, Marcos Duran, in that big house. The house was the home of the minister of the First Church. The red-haired woman was the minister's wife. God, Reverend Duran was even more beautiful in person than he was on the disks. He was an amazing-looking man.

"I've been watching you and your friends and listening to your singing," he said. "I thought I recognized you. Your adoptive parents are Kayce and Madison Alexander." It wasn't a question. He was looking at me as though he knew me, as though he were honestly glad to see me.