Butler, Octavia - Parable of the Sower

“But people do leave. People are always moving north.”

“They try. They’re desperate and they have nothing to lose. But I do. This is my home. Beyond taxes, I don’t owe a penny on it. You and your brothers have never known a hungry day here, and God willing, you never will.”

In my Earthseed notebook, I’ve written, A tree

Cannot grow

In its parents’ shadows.

Is it necessary to write things like that? Everyone knows them. What do they mean now, anyway?

What does this one mean if you live in a cul-de-sac with a wall around in? What does it mean if you’re damned lucky to live in a cul-de-sac with a wall around it?

SATURDAY, JULY 19, 2025

Tomorrow, I’ll be sixteen. Only sixteen. I feel older. I want to be older. I need to be older. I hate being a kid. Time drags!

Tracy Dunn has disappeared. She’s been depressed since Amy was killed. When she talked at all, it was about dying and wanting to die and deserving to die.

Everyone kept hoping she would get over her grief-or her guilt— and get on with her life. Maybe she couldn’t. Dad talked with her several times, and I know he was worried about her. Her crazy family hasn’t been any help. They treat her the way she treated Amy: They ignore her.

The rumor is that she went outside sometime yesterday. A group of Moss and Payne kids say they saw her go out of the gate just after they left school.

No one has seen her since.

SUNDAY, JULY 20, 2025

Here’s the birthday gift that came into my mind this morning as I woke up— just two lines: The Destiny of Earthseed

Is to take root among the stars.

This is what I was reaching for a few days ago when the story of the new planets being discovered caught my attention. It’s true, of course. It’s obvious.

Right now, it’s also impossible. The world is in horrible shape. Even rich countries aren’t doing as well as history says rich countries used to do.

President Donner isn’t the only one breaking up and selling off science and space projects. No one is expanding the kind of exploration that doesn’t earn an immediate profit, or at least promise big future profits. There’s no mood now for doing anything that could be considered unnecessary or wasteful. And yet,

The Destiny of Earthseed

Is to take root among the stars.

I don’t know how it will happen or when it will happen. There’s so much to do before it can even begin. I guess that’s to be expected. There’s always a lot to do before you get to go to heaven.

8

To get along with God,

Consider the consequences of your behavior.

EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

SATURDAY, JULY 26, 2025

Tracy Dunn has not come home and has not been found by the police. I don’t think she will be. She’s only been gone for a week, but a week outside must be like a week in hell. People vanish outside. They go through our gate like Mr. Yannis did, and everyone waits for them, but they never come back-or they come back in an urn. I think Tracy Dunn is dead.

Bianca Montoya is pregnant. It isn’t just gossip, it’s true, and it matters to me, somehow. Bianca is 17, unmarried, and out of her mind about Jorge Iturbe who lives at the Ibarra house and is Yolanda Ibarra’s brother.

Jorge admits to being the father. I don’t know why they didn’t just get married before everything got so public. Jorge is 23, and he, at least, ought to have some sense. Anyway, they’re going to get married now. The Ibarra and Iturbe families have been feuding with the Montoyas for a week over this. So stupid. You’d think they had nothing else to do. At least they’re both Latino. No interracial feud this time. Last year when Craig Dunn who’s white and one of the saner members of the Dunn family was caught making love to Siti Moss who’s black and Richard Moss’s oldest daughter to boot, I thought someone was going to get killed. Crazy.

But my point isn’t who’s sleeping with whom or who’s feuding. My point is— my question is— how in the world can anyone get married and make babies with things the way they are now.

I mean, I know people have always gotten married and had kids, but now… . Now there’s nowhere to go, nothing to do. A couple gets married, and if they’re lucky, they get a room or a garage to live in-with no hope of anything better and every reason to expect things to get worse.

Bianca’s chosen life is one of my options. It’s not one that I intend to exercise, but it is pretty much what the neighborhood expects of me— of anyone my age. Grow up a little more, get married, have babies.

Curtis Talcott says the new Iturbe family will get half-a-garage to live in after they marry. Jorge’s sister Celia Iturbe Cruz and her husband and baby have the other half. Two couples, and not one paying job among them. The best they could hope for would be to move into some rich people’s compound as domestic servants and work for room and board. There’s no way to save any money or ever do any better.

And what if they wanted to go north, try for a better life in Oregon or Washington or Canada? It would be much harder to travel with a baby or two, and much more dangerous to try to sneak past hostile guards and over state lines or international boarders with babies.

I don’t know whether Bianca is brave or stupid. She and her sister are busy altering their mother’s old wedding dress, and everyone’s cooking and getting ready for a party as though these were the good old days. How can they?

I like Curtis Talcott a lot. Maybe I love him.

Sometimes I think I do. He says he loves me. But if all I had to look forward to was marriage to him and babies and poverty that just keeps getting worse, I think I’d kill myself.

Back at home, my brother Keith slipped out of the neighborhood— out through the front gates and away. He stole Cory’s key and took off on his own.

Dad and I didn’t know until we got home. Keith was still gone, and by then Cory knew he must be outside. She had checked with others in the neighborhood and two of the Dunn kids, twins Allison and Marie, age six, said they saw him go out the gate. That was when Cory went home and discovered that her key was gone.

Dad, tired and angry and scared, was going to go right back out to look for him, but Keith got home just as Dad was leaving. Cory, Marcus, and I had gone to the front porch with Dad, all three of us speculating about where Keith had gone, and Marcus and I volunteering to go out with Dad to help search. It was almost dark.

“You get back in that house and stay there,” Dad said. “It’s bad enough to have one of you out there.”

He checked the submachine gun, made sure it was fully loaded.

“Dad, look,” I said. I had spotted something moving three houses down— quick, shadowy movement alongside the Garfield porch. I didn’t know it was Keith. I was attracted by its furtiveness. Someone was sneaking around, trying to hide.

Dad was quick enough to see the movement before it was hidden by the Garfield house. He got up at once, took the gun, and went to check. The rest of us watched and waited.

Moments later Cory said she heard an odd noise in the house. I was too focused on Dad and what was going on outside to hear what she heard, or to pay any attention to her. She went in. Marcus and I were still on the porch when she screamed.

Marcus and I glanced at each other, then at the front door. Marcus lunged for the door. I yelled for Dad.

Dad was out of sight, but I heard him answer my call.

“Come quick,” I shouted, then I ran into the house.

Cory, Marcus, Bennett, and Gregory were in the kitchen, clustered around Keith. Keith was sprawled, panting, on the floor, wearing only his underpants.

He was scraped and bruised, bleeding, and filthy.