Parable of the Talents - Octavia E Butler Page 0,132

light, I’m reading what’s been left here. Jorge and Di have left a number, and Jorge says he’s found his brother Mateo. In fact, as with Justin, his brother found him. On the northern edge of Garberville where there are still big redwoods, Mateo found Jorge’s group sleeping on the ground. He had been looking for them for months. Like Justin, he had run away from abuse, although in his case, the abuse was sexual. Now he’s wounded and bitter, but he’s with his brother again.

There was no news from Harry. Too soon for him to have gotten back, I suppose. I phoned him several times, but there was no answer. I’m worried about him.

I wrote a note, warning the others to avoid the CA Center in Eureka. I wrote that Marc had been there, but that he wasn’t to be trusted.

He isn’t to be trusted.

I made myself go back to the CA Center on Wednesday of last week—went back as a sane, but shabby woman rather than as a dirty, crazy man. It took me too long to get up the courage to do that—to go. I worried that Marc might have warned his CA friends about me. I couldn’t really believe he would do that, but he might, and I’d had nightmares about them grabbing me as soon as I showed up. I could feel them putting on the collar. I’d wake up soaking wet and scared to death.

At last, I went to a used-clothing store and bought an old black skirt and a blue blouse. From a cheap little shop, I bought some makeup and a scarf for my hair. I dressed, made up, then dirtied up a little, like maybe I’d been rolling around on the ground with someone.

At CA, I got in line with the other women and ate in the small, walled-off women’s section. No one seemed to pay any attention to me, although my height was much more noticeable when I was among only women. I slumped a little and kept my head down when I was standing. I tried to look weary and bedraggled rather than furtive, but I discovered that furtive wasn’t all that unusual. Most of the women, like most of the men, were stolid, indifferent, enduring. But a few were chattering crazies, whiners, or frightened little rabbits. There was also a fat woman with only one eye who prowled the room and tried to grab bread from your hands even while you were eating it. She was crazy, of course, but her particular craziness made her nasty and possibly dangerous. She let me alone, but harassed several of the smaller women until a tiny, feisty woman pulled a knife on her.

Then the servers called security, and security men came out of a back room and grabbed both women from behind.

It bothered me very much that they took both women away. The fat crazy woman had been permitted to go about her business until someone resisted. Then both victim and victimizer were treated as equally guilty.

It bothered me even more that the women were not thrown out. They were taken away. Where? They didn’t come back. No one I spoke to knew what had happened to them.

Most troubling of all, I recognized one of the security men. He had been at Acorn. He had been one of our “teachers” there. I had seen him take Adela Ortiz away to rape her. I could shut my eyes and see him dragging her off to the cabin he used. There had to be many such men still alive and free—men who were not at Camp Christian when we took back our freedom, then took our revenge. But this was the first one that I had seen.

My fear and my hate returned full force and all but choked me. It took all my self-control to sit still, eat my food, and go on being the lump I had to seem to be. Day Turner had been collared after a fight that he said he had had nothing to do with. Christian America officials made themselves judges, juries, and, when they chose to be, executioners. They didn’t waste any effort trying to be fair. I had heard on one of my earlier visits that the all-male CA Center Security Force was made up of retired and off-duty cops. That, if it were true, was terrifying. It made me all the more certain that I was right not to go to the police with the