Parable of the Talents - Octavia E Butler Page 0,156
in the name of God, of course.”
She sat down at the table with me. “Crusaders. I’ve heard of them, of course—that they rescue homeless orphans and…burn witches, for heaven’s sake. But I’ve never heard that they…just killed people and…stole their children.” But it seemed that what the Crusaders had done could not quite get her mind off what I had done. “But you…” she said. “I can’t get over it. I still feel… I still feel as though you were a man. I mean…”
“It’s all right.”
She sighed, put her head back and looked at me with a sad smile. “No, it isn’t.”
No, it wasn’t. But I went to her and hugged her and held her. Like Len, she needed to be hugged and held, needed to cry in someone’s arms. She’d been alone far too long. To my own surprise, I realized that under other circumstances, I might have taken her to bed. I had gone through 17 months at Camp Christian without wanting to be with anyone. I missed Bankole—missed him so much sometimes that it was an almost physical pain. And I had never been tempted to want to make love with a woman. Now, I found myself almost wanting to. And she almost wanted me to. But that wasn’t the relationship that I needed between us.
I mean to see her again, this kind, lonely woman in her large, empty, shabby house. I need people like her. Until I met her, I had not realized how much I needed such people. Len had been right about what I should be doing, although she had known no more than I about how it must be done. I still don’t know enough. But there’s no manual for this kind of thing. I suppose that I’ll be learning what to do and how to do it until the day I die.
The three of us talked about Earthseed again over dinner. Most often we talked of it from the point of view of education. By the time we parted for the night, I could speak of it as Earthseed without worrying that Nia would feel harassed or proselytized. We stayed one more day and I told her more about Acorn, and about the children of Acorn. I held her once more when she cried. I kissed her lonely mouth, then put her away from me.
I did two more sketches, each accompanied by verses, and I let her offer to look after any of the children of Acorn that I could find until their parents could be contacted. I never suggested it, but I did all I could to open ways for her to suggest it. She was afraid of the children of the road, light-fingered and often violent. But she was not, in theory at least, afraid of the children of Acorn. They were connected with me, and after three days, she had no fear at all of me. That was very compelling, somehow, that complete acceptance and trust. It was hard for me to leave her.
By the time we did leave, she was as much with me as Len was. The verses and the sketches and memories will keep her with me for a while. I’ll have to visit her again soon—say within the year—to hold on to her, and I intend to do that. I hope I’ll soon be bringing her a child or two to protect and teach—one of Acorn’s or not. She needs purpose as much as I need to give it to her.
“That was fascinating,” Len said to me this morning as we got under way again, “I enjoyed watching you work.”
I glanced at her. “Thank you for working with me.”
She smiled, then stopped smiling. “You seduce people. My God, you’re always at it, aren’t you?”
“People fascinate me,” I said. “I care about them. If I didn’t, Earthseed wouldn’t mean anything at all to me.”
“Are you really going to bring that poor woman children to look after?”
“I hope to.”
“She can barely look after herself. That house looks as though the next storm will knock it over.”
“Yes. I’ll have to see what I can do about that, too.”
“Do you have that kind of money?”
“No, of course not. But someone does. I don’t know how I’m going to do it, Len, but the world is full of needy people. They don’t all need the same things, but they all need purpose. Even some of the ones with plenty of money need purpose.”