Parable of the Talents - Octavia E Butler Page 0,160

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 a wilderness 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.

It’s the earth

And all that’s on it.

It’s the universe

And all that’s in it.

It’s God,

Never at rest.

It’s you,

Me,

Us,

Them,

Struggling upstream

Or drifting down.

Also, perhaps because her mother had died the year before, Irma also seemed touched by this fragment of funeral oration.

We give our dead

To the orchards

And the groves.

We give our dead

To life.

We were an unexpected novelty, and the Elfords were curious about us. They let us wash up in their back bathroom and change into cleaner clothing from our packs. Then they sat us down, fed us a huge meal, and began to ask us questions. Where were we going? Did we have homes? Families? No? Well, how long had we been homeless? What did we do for shelter in rough weather? Weren’t we afraid “out there”?

I answered for both of us at first, since Len did not seem inclined to talk, and I answered as often with Earthseed verses as with ordinary conversation. It didn’t take long for Irma to ask, “What is