Butler, Octavia - Parable of the Sower

We hear so much gunfire, day and night, single shots and odd bursts of automatic weapons fire, even occasional blasts from heavy artillery or explosions from grenades or bigger bombs. We worry most about those last things, but they’re rare.

It’s harder to steal big weapons, and not many people around here can afford to buy the illegal ones— or that’s what Dad says. The thing is, we hear gunfire so much that we don’t hear it. A couple of the Balter kids said they heard shooting, but as usual, they paid no attention to it. It was outside, beyond the wall, after all. Most of us heard nothing except the rain.

Amy was going to turn four in a couple of weeks. I had planned to give her a little party with my kindergartners.

God, I hate this place.

I mean, I love it. It’s home. These are my people. But I hate it. It’s like an island surrounded by sharks-except that sharks don’t bother you unless you go in the water. But our land sharks are on their way in.

It’s just a matter of how long it takes for them to get hungry enough.

WEDNESDAY, MARCH 5, 2025

I walked in the rain again this morning. It was cold, but good. Amy has already been cremated. I wonder if her mother is relieved. She doesn’t look relieved.

She never liked Amy, but now she cries. I don’t think she’s faking. The family has spent money it could not afford to get the police involved to try to find the killer. I suspect that the only good this will do will be to chase away the people who live on the sidewalks and streets nearest to our wall. Is that good? The street poor will be back, and they won’t love us for sicking the cops on them. It’s illegal to camp out on the street the way they do— the way they must— so the cops knock them around, rob them if they have anything worth stealing, then order them away or jail them. The miserable will be made even more miserable. None of that can help Amy. I suppose, though, that it will make the Dunns feel better about the way they treated her.

On Saturday, Dad will preach Amy’s funeral. I wish I didn’t have to be there. Funerals have never bothered me before, but this one does.

“You cared about Amy,” Joanne Garfield said to me when I complained to her. We had lunch together today. We ate in my bedroom because it’s still raining off and on, and the rest of the house was full of all the kids who hadn’t gone home to eat lunch.

But my room is still mine. It’s the one place in the world where I can go and not be followed by anyone I don’t invite in. I’m the only person I know who has a bedroom to herself. These days, even Dad and Cory knock before they open my door. That’s one of the best things about being the only daughter in the family. I have to kick my brothers out of here all the time, but at least I can kick them out. Joanne is an only child, but she shares a room with three younger girl cousins— whiny Lisa, always demanding and complaining, smart, giggly Robin with her near-genius I.Q., and invisible Jessica who whispers and stares at her feet and cries if you give her a dirty look. All three are Balters— Harry’s sisters and the children of Joanne’s mother’s sister. The two adult sisters, their husbands, their eight children, and their parents Mr. and Mrs. Dory are all squeezed into one five-bedroom house. It isn’t the most crowded house in the neighborhood, but I’m glad I don’t have to live like that.

“Almost no one cared about Amy,” Joanne said. “But you did.”

“After the fire, I did,” I said. “I got scared for her then.

Before that, I ignored her like everyone else.”

“So now you’re feeling guilty?”

“No.”

“Yes, you are.”

I looked at her, surprised. “I mean it. No. I hate that she’s dead, and I miss her, but I didn’t cause her death. I just can’t deny what all this says about us.”

“What?”

I felt on the verge of talking to her about things I hadn’t talked about before. I’d written about them.

Sometimes I write to keep from going crazy. There’s a world of things I don’t feel free to talk to anyone about.

But Joanne is a friend. She knows me better than most people, and she has a brain. Why not talk to her? Sooner or later, I have to talk to someone.

“What’s wrong?” she asked. She had opened a plastic container of bean salad. Now she put it down on my night table.

“Don’t you ever wonder if maybe Amy and Mrs. Sims are the lucky ones?” I asked. “I mean, don’t you ever wonder what’s going to happen to the rest of us.”

There was a clap of dull, muffled thunder, and a sudden heavy shower. Radio weather reports say today’s rain will be the last of the four-day series of storms. I hope not.

“Sure I think about it,” Joanne said. “With people shooting little kids, how can I not think about it?”

“People have been killing little kids since there’ve been people,” I said.

“Not in here, they haven’t. Not until now.”

“Yes, that’s it, isn’t it. We got a wake-up call. Another one.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Amy was the first of us to be killed like that. She won’t be the last.”

Joanne sighed, and there was a little shudder in the sigh. “So you think so, too.”

“I do. But I didn’t know you thought about it at all.”

“Rape, robbery, and now murder. Of course I think about it. Everyone thinks about it. Everyone worries.

I wish I could get out of here.”

“Where would you go?”

“That’s it, isn’t it? There’s nowhere to go.”

“There might be.”

“Not if you don’t have money. Not if all you know how to do is take care of babies and cook.”

I shook my head. “You know much more than that.”

“Maybe, but none of it matters. I won’t be able to afford college. I won’t be able to get a job or move out of my parents’ house because no job I could get would support me and there are no safe places to move. Hell, my parents are still living with their parents.”

“I know,” I said. “And as bad as that is, there’s

more.”

“Who needs more? That’s enough!” She began to eat the bean salad. It looked good, but I thought I might be about to ruin it for her.

“There’s cholera spreading in southern Mississippi and Louisiana,” I said. “I heard about it on the radio yesterday. There are too many poor people-illiterate, jobless, homeless, without decent

sanitation or clean water. They have plenty of water down there, but a lot of it is polluted. And you know that drug that makes people want to set fires?”

She nodded, chewing.

“It’s spreading again. It was on the east coast. Now it’s in Chicago. The reports say that it makes watching a fire better than sex. I don’t know whether the reporters are condemning it or advertising it.” I drew a deep breath. “Tornadoes are smashing hell out of Alabama, Kentucky, Tennessee, and two or three other states. Three hundred people dead so far. And there’s a blizzard freezing the northern midwest, killing even more people. In New York and New Jersey, a measles epidemic is killing people.

Measles!”

“I heard about the measles,” Joanne said. “Strange.

Even if people can’t afford immunizations, measles shouldn’t kill.”

“Those people are half dead already,” I told her.

“They’ve come through the winter cold, hungry, already sick with other diseases. And, no, of course they can’t afford immunizations. We’re lucky our parents found the money to pay for all our immunizations. If we have kids, I don’t see how we’ll be able to do even that for them.

“I know, I know.” She sounded almost bored.

“Things are bad. My mother is hoping this new guy, President Donner, will start to get us back to normal.”