Butler, Octavia - Parable of the Sower

She gave me a nervous smile. “You’ve been reading too many adventure stories,” she said.

I frowned. How could I reach her. “This isn’t a joke, Jo.”

“What is it then?” She ate the last section of her orange. “What do you want me to say?”

“I want you to be serious. I realize I don’t know very much. None of us knows very much. But we can all learn more. Then we can teach one another. We can stop denying reality or hoping it will go away by magic.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

I looked out for a moment at the rain, calming myself.

“Okay. Okay, what are you doing?”

She looked uncomfortable. “I’m still not sure we can really do anything.”

“Jo!”

“Tell me what I can do that won’t get me in trouble or make everyone think I’m crazy. Just tell me something.”

At last. “Have you read all your family’s books?”

“Some of them. Not all. They aren’t all worth reading.

Books aren’t going to save us.”

“Nothing is going to save us. If we don’t save ourselves, we’re dead. Now use your imagination. Is there anything on your family bookshelves that might help you if you were stuck outside?”

“No.”

“You answer too fast. Go home and look again. And like I said, use your imagination. Any kind of survival information from encyclopedias, biographies, anything that helps you learn to live off the land and defend ourselves. Even some fiction might be useful.”

She gave me a sidelong glance. “I’ll bet,” she said.

“Jo, if you never need this information, it won’t do

you any harm. You’ll just know a little more than you did before. So what? By the way, do you take notes when you read?”

Guarded look. “Sometimes.”

“Read this.” I handed her one of the plant books.

This one was about California Indians, the plants they used, and how they used them— an interesting, entertaining little book. She would be surprised.

There was nothing in it to scare her or threaten her or push her. I thought I had already done enough of that.

“Take notes,” I told her. “You’ll remember better if you do.”

“I still don’t believe you,” she said. “Things don’t have to be as bad as you say they are.”

I put the book into her hands. “Hang on to your notes,” I said. “Pay special attention to the plants that grow between here and the coast and between here and Oregon along the coast. I’ve marked them.”

“I said I don’t believe you.”

“I don’t care.”

She looked down at the book, ran her hands over the black cloth-and-cardboard binding. “So we learn to eat grass and live in the bushes,” she muttered.

“We learn to survive,” I said. “It’s a good book. Take care of it. You know how my father is about his books.”

THURSDAY, MARCH 6, 2025

The rain stopped. My windows are on the north side of the house, and I can see the clouds breaking up.

They’re being blown over the mountains toward the desert. Surprising how fast they can move. The wind is strong and cold now. It might cost us a few trees.

I wonder how many years it will be before we see rain again.

6

Drowning people

Sometimes die

Fighting their rescuers.

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

SATURDAY, MARCH 8, 2025

Joanne told.

She told her mother who told her father who told my father who had one of those serious talks with me.

Damn her. Damn her!

I saw her today at the service we had for Amy and yesterday at school. She didn’t say a word about what she had done. It turns out she told her mother on Thursday. Maybe it was supposed to be a secret between them or something. But, oh, Phillida Garfield was so concerned for me, so worried. And she didn’t like my scaring Joanne. Was Joanne scared? Not scared enough to use her brain, it seems. Joanne always seemed so sensible. Did she think getting me into trouble would make the danger go away? No, that’s not it. This is just more denial: A dumb little game of “If we don’t talk about bad things, maybe they won’t happen.” Idiot! I’ll never be able to tell her anything important again.

What if I’d been more open. What if I’d talked religion with her? I’d wanted to. How will I ever be able to talk to anyone about that?

What I did say worked its way back to me tonight.

Mr. Garfield talked to Dad after the funeral. It was like the whispering game that little kids play. The message went all the way from, “We’re in danger here and we’re going to have to work hard to save ourselves.” to “Lauren is talking about running away because she’s afraid that outsiders are going to riot and tear down the walls and kill us all.”

Well, I had said some of that, and Joanne had made it clear that she didn’t agree with me. But I hadn’t just let the bad predictions stand alone: “We’re going to die, boo-hoo.” What would be the point of that? Still, only the negative stuff came home to me.

“Lauren, what did you say to Joanne?” my father demanded. He came to my room after dinner when he should have been doing his final work on tomorrow’s sermon. He sat down on my one chair and stared at me in a way that meant, “Where is your mind, girl? What’s the matter with you?” That look plus Joanne’s name told me what had happened, what this was about. My friend Joanne.

Damn her!

I sat on my bed and looked back at him. “I told her we were in for some bad, dangerous times,” I said. “I warned her we ought to learn what we could now so we could survive.”

That was when he told me how upset Joanne’s mother was, how upset Joanne was, and how they both thought I needed to “talk to someone,” because I thought our world was coming to an end.

“Do you think our world is coming to an end?” Dad asked, and with no warning at all, I almost started crying. I had all I could do to hold it back. What I thought was, “No, I think your world is coming to an end, and maybe you with it.” That was terrible. I hadn’t thought about it in such a personal way before. I turned and looked out a window until I felt calmer. When I faced him again, I said. “Yes. Don’t you?”

He frowned. I don’t think he expected me to say that.

“You’re fifteen,” he said. “You don’t really understand what’s going on here. The problems we have now have been building since long before you were born.”

“I know.”

He was still frowning. I wondered what he wanted me to say. “What were you doing, then?” he asked.

“Why did you say those things to Joanne?”

I decided to go on telling the truth for as long as I could. I hate to lie to him. “What I said was true,” I insisted.

“You don’t have to say everything you think you know,” he said. “Haven’t you figured that out yet?”

“Joanne and I were friends,” I said. “I thought I could talk to her.”

He shook his head. “These things frighten people.

It’s best not to talk about them.”

“But, Dad, that’s like…like ignoring a fire in the living room because we’re all in the kitchen, and, besides, house fires are too scary to talk about.”

“Don’t warn Joanne or any of your other friends,” he said. “Not now. I know you think you’re right, but you’re not doing anyone any good. You’re just panicking people.”

I managed to suppress a surge of anger by shifting the subject a little. Sometimes the way to move Dad is to go at him from several directions.

“Did Mr. Garfield give you back your book?” I asked.

“What book?”

“I loaned Joanne a book about California plants and the way Indians used them. It was one of your books. I’m sorry I loaned it to her. It’s so neutral, I didn’t think it could cause trouble. But I guess it has.”