Parable of the Talents - Octavia E Butler Page 0,126

memories, stories that I could hear about. And if several of our children had been sent there, then perhaps I could find one or two of them still there.

That last thought scared me a little. If I did find a couple of our kids, I couldn’t leave them in CA hands. One way or another, I would have to free them and try to reunite them with their families. That would draw such attention to me that I would have to leave the area, and, I suspect, leave my Larkin. This is assuming that I would be able to leave, that I didn’t wind up wearing another collar.

The food at the CA Center was edible—a couple of slices of bread and a rich stew of potatoes and vegetables flavored with beef, although I never found meat of any kind in it. People around me complained about the lack of meat, but I didn’t mind. Over the past several months, I’ve learned to eat whatever was put in front of me, and be glad of it. If I could keep it down, and there was enough of it to fill my stomach, I considered myself lucky. But it amazed me that I could keep anything down while sitting so close to my enemies at the CA Center.

My first visit was the worst. My memory of it isn’t as clear as it ought to be. I know I went there. I sat and I ate with several dozen other homeless men. I managed not to go crazy when someone began to preach at us. I know I did all that, and I know that afterward, I needed the long, long walk to the park to get my head back into working order. Walking, like writing, helps.

I did it all in blind terror. How I looked to others I don’t know. I think I must have seemed too mentally sick even to talk to. No one tried to make conversation with me, although some of the men talked to one another. I got in line and after that I moved automatically, did what others did. Once I sat down with my food, I found myself crouching over it, protecting it, gulping it like a hawk who’s caught a pigeon. I used to see people doing that at Camp Christian. You got so damned hungry there sometimes, it made you a little crazy. This time, though, it wasn’t the food that I cared about. I wasn’t that hungry. And if I’d wanted to, I could have changed my clothing, gone in to a decent restaurant, and bought a real meal. It’s just that somehow, if I focused on the food and filled my mind with it as well as my body, I could keep myself still and not get up and run, screaming, out of that place.

I have never, in freedom, been so afraid. People edged away from me. I mean crazies, junkies, whores, and thieves edged away from me. I didn’t think about it at the time. I didn’t think about anything. I’m surprised that I manage to remember any of it now. I moved through it in a cloud of blank terror and an absolute readiness to kill.

I had wrapped my gun in my spare clothes and put it at the bottom of my pack. I did this on purpose so that there would be no quick way for me to get at it. I didn’t want to be tempted to get at it. If I needed it inside the CA Center, I was already dead. I couldn’t leave it anywhere, but I could unload it. I took a lot of time earlier that evening, unloading it and wrapping it up, watching myself wrap it up so that even in the deepest panic I would know I couldn’t get at it.

It worked. It was necessary, and it worked.

Years ago, when my neighborhood in Robledo burned, when so much of my family burned, I had to go back. I got away in the night, and the next day, I had to go back. I had to retrieve what I could of that part of my life that was over, and I had to say goodbye. I had to. Up to that moment, and long afterward, going back to my Robledo neighborhood was the hardest thing I had ever done. This was worse.

When I went to the CA Center for the second time several days later, it wasn’t as bad. I could look and