Parable of the Talents - Octavia E Butler Page 0,93
were either arrested or snatched from their lives as squatters, drifters, or petty crooks.
Several of the new people are sharers. “Bad seed if there ever was bad seed,” our “teachers” say. “The heathen children of drug addicts.” They treat known sharers as objects of suspicion, contempt, and ugly amusement. They’re so easy to torment. No challenge at all.
We have not given ourselves away, yet, we sharers of Earthseed. We’ve worked hard at concealing ourselves, and, I admit, we’ve been lucky. None of us has been pushed beyond our limits at a time when our “teachers” might notice. All of us have had years of hiding in plain sight to help us. Even the Mora girls, only 14 and 15, have managed to hide what they are.
I kept up my search for someone who could tell me at least a little about the outside. In the end, I didn’t find my informant. He found me. He was a young Black man, bone thin, scarred, careful, but not beaten down. His name was David Turner.
“Day,” he said when we found ourselves digging side by side in the stupid, dangerous cesspit that was later abandoned. I think now that he only spoke to me because we weren’t supposed to speak.
I looked a question at him as I threw a shovelful of dirt out of the hole.
“Name of David,” he said. “Call me Day.”
“Olamina,” I said without thinking.
“Yeah?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Different kind of name.”
I sighed, glanced at him, liked the stubborn, unbeaten look of him, and said, “Lauren.”
He gave me a quick grin. “People call you Laurie?”
“Not if they expect me to answer,” I said.
I guess we were a little careless. Above, one of our “teachers” lashed me hard, and I convulsed and fell. I’ve noticed before that if a collared man and woman are talking together, it’s the woman who tends to be lashed. Women are temptresses, you see. We drag innocent men into trouble. From the time of Adam and Eve women have dragged innocent men into trouble. Anyway, I was lashed hard, but only once. After that, I was more careful.
Being lashed hard several times is enough to induce temporary coordination problems and memory loss. Day told me later that he’d seen a man lashed until the man didn’t know his own name. I believe him. I know that when I saw Bankole’s dead body, and I turned on my bearded guard, I had never in my life been more intent on killing another person. I was dropped where I stood with a hard shock, then lashed several more times, and Allie tells me that the way I jerked and flopped around the ground, she thought I’d break my bones. I woke up very sore, covered in bruises, sprains, abrasions, and bloody rock cuts, but that wasn’t the worst.
The worst was the way I felt afterward. I don’t mean the physical pain. This place is a university of pain. I mean what I wrote before. I was a zombie for several days after the lashing. At first I couldn’t even remember that Bankole was dead. Natividad and Allie had to tell me that all over again more than once. And I couldn’t remember what had happened to Acorn, why we were all shut up in one room of our own school, where the men were, where the children were…
I haven’t written about this until now. When I understood it, it scared me to death. It scared me into mewling in a corner like a terrorized three-year-old.
After surviving Robledo, I knew that strangers could appear and steal or destroy everything and everyone I loved. People and possessions could be snatched away. But somehow, it had not occurred to me that…that bits of my own mind could be snatched away too. I knew I could be killed. I’ve never had any illusions about that. I could be disabled. I knew that too. But I had not thought that another person, just by pushing a small button, then smiling and pushing it again and again…
He did smile, my bearded teacher. That came back to me later. All of it came back to me. When it did… Well, that’s when I retreated to my corner, whimpering and moaning. The son of a bitch smiled and pressed his button over and over as though he were fucking me, and he grinned while he watched me groaning and thrashing.
My brother said a collar makes you envy the dead. As bad as that sounds, it didn’t, couldn’t, convey to