Butler, Octavia - Parable of the Talents

Uncle Marc, on the other hand, had said without ever quite saying it that he preferred men sexually, but his church taught that homosexuality was sin, and he chose to live by that doctrine. So he had no one. Or at least, I never knew him to have anyone. That looks bleak on the page, but we each chose our lives. And we had one another. We were a family. That seemed to be enough.

Meanwhile, my mother was giving her attention to her other child, her older and best beloved child, Earthseed.

Somehow we—or at least I —never paid much attention to the growing Earthseed movement. It was out there. In spite of the efforts of Christian America and other denominations, there were always cults out there. Granted, Earthseed was an unusual cult, ft financed scientific exploration and inquiry, and techno­logical creativity. It set up grade schools and eventually col­leges, and offered full scholarships to poor but gifted students. The students who accepted had to agree to spend seven years teaching, practicing medicine, or otherwise using their skills to improve life in the many Earthseed communities. Ultimately, the intent was to help the communities to launch themselves toward the stars and to live on the distant worlds they found circling those stars.

"Do you know anything about these people?" I asked Uncle Marc after reading and hearing a few news items about them. "Are they serious? Interstellar emigration? My god, why don't they just move to Antarctica if they want to rough it?" And he surprised me by making a straight line of his mouth and looking away. I had expected him to laugh.

"They're serious," he said. "They're sad, ridiculous, misled people who believe that the answer to all human problems is to fly off to Alpha Centauri."

I did laugh. "Is a flying saucer coming for them or what?"

He shrugged. "They're pathetic. Forget about them."

I didn't, of course. I left my usual haunts on the nets and began to research them. I wasn't serious. I didn't plan to do anything with what I learned, but I was curious—and I might get an idea for a Mask. I found that Earthseed was a wealthy sect that welcomed everyone and was willing to make use of everyone. It owned land, schools, farms, factories, stores, banks, several whole towns. And it seemed to own a lot of well-known people—lawyers, physicians, journalists, scien­tists, politicians, even members of Congress.

And were they all hoping to fly off to Alpha Centauri?

It wasn't that simple, of course. But to tell the truth, the more I read about Earthseed, the more I despised it. So much needed to be done here on earth—so many diseases, somuch hunger, so much poverty, such suffering, and here was a rich organization spending vast sums of money, time, and effort on nonsense. Just nonsense!

Then I found The Books of the Living and I accessed images and information concerning Lauren Oya Olamina.

Even after reading about my mother and seeing her I didn't notice anything. I never looked at her image and thought, "Oh, she looks like me." She did look like me, though—or rather, I looked like her. But I didn't notice. All I saw was a tall, middle-aged, dark-skinned woman with ar­resting eyes and a nice smile. She looked, somehow, like someone I would be inclined to like and trust—which scared me. It made me immediately dislike and distrust her. She was a cult leader, after all. She was supposed to be seductive. But she wasn't going to seduce me.

And all that was only my reaction to her image. No wonder she was so rich, no wonder she could draw followers even into such a ridiculous religion. She was dangerous.

from The Journals of Lauren Oya Olamina

sunday, july29, 2035 Portland.

I've gathered a few more people. They aren't people who will travel with me or come together in easily targetable vil­lages. They're people in stable homes—or people who need homes.

Isis Duarte Norman, for instance, lives in a park between the river and the burned, collapsed remains of an old hotel. She has a shack there—wood covered with plastic sheeting. Each evening she can be found there. During the day she works, cleaning other women's houses. This enables her to eat and keep herself and her secondhand clothing clean. She has a hard life, but it's as respectable as she can make it. She's 43. The man she married when she was 23 dumped her six years ago for a 14-year-old girl—the daughter of one of his servants.

"She was so beautiful," Isis said. "I knew he wouldn't be able to keep his hands off her. I couldn't protect her from him any more than I could protect myself, but I never thought that he would keep her and throw me out."

He did. And for six years, she's been homeless and all but hopeless. She said she had thought of killing herself. Only fear had stopped her—the fear of not quite dying, of maim­ing herself and dying a slow, lingering death of pain and starvation. That could happen. Portland is a vast, crowded city. It isn't Los Angeles or the Bay Area, but it is huge. Peo­ple ignore one another in self-defense. I find this both use­ful and frightening. When I met Isis, it was because I went to the door of a home where she was working. Otherwise, she would never have dared to talk to me. As it was, she was designated to assemble a meal and bring it to me when I had finished cleaning up the backyard.

She was wary when she brought the food. Then she looked at the backyard and told me I had done a good job. We talked for a while. I walked her to her shack—which made her nervous. I was a man again. I find it inconvenient and dangerous to be on the street as a homeless woman. Other people manage it well. I don't, somehow.

I left Isis without seeing the inside of her shack. Best not to push people. Best, as Len says, to seduce them. I've seen Isis several times since then. I've talked with her, read verses to her, captured her interest. She has two half-grown children who live with their father's mother, so she cares, in spite of herself, about what the future will bring. I intend to find a real home for her by getting her a live-in job looking after children. That might take time, but I intend to do it.

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

On the other hand, I've met and gathered in Joel and Irma Elford, who hired me when I first came to Portland to paint a garage and a fence and do some yard work. Len and I worked together, first cutting weeds, harvesting row crops, raking, cleaning the yard at the back of the property where awilderness had begun to grow. Then, when the dust settled, we painted the garage. We would have to get to the fence the next day. We were to get hard currency for this job, and that put us in a good mood. Len is a likable person to work with. She learns fast, complains endlessly, and does an excellent job, however long it takes. Most of the time, she enjoys her­self. The complaining was just one of her quirks.

Then Joel and Irma invited us in to eat with them at their table. I had done a quick sketch of Irma to catch her atten­tion, and added a verse that was intended to reach her through environmental interests that I had heard her express:

There is nothing alien

About nature.

Nature

Is all that exists.