Parable of the Talents - Octavia E Butler Page 0,158

would ever have told me the truth about my mother. I don’t believe he intended to. He never wavered from his story that she was dead, and I never suspected that he was lying. I loved him, believed in him, trusted him completely. When he found out how I was living, he invited me to live with him and continue my education. “You’re a bright girl,” he said, “and you’re family—the only family I have. I couldn’t help your mother. Let me help you.”

I said yes. I didn’t even have to think about it. I quit my job and went to live in one of his houses in New York. He hired a housekeeper and tutors and bought computer courses to see to it that I had the college education that Kayce and Madison wouldn’t have provided for me if they could have. Kayce used to say, “You’re a girl! If you know how to keep a clean, decent house and how to worship God, you know enough!”

I even went back to church because of Uncle Marc. I went back to the Church of Christian America, physically, at least. I lived at his second home in upstate New York, and I attended church on Sundays because he wanted me to, and because I was so used to doing it. I was comfortable doing it. I sang in the choir again and did regular charity work, helping to care for old people in one of the church nursing homes. Doing those things again was like slipping into a comfortable old pair of shoes.

But the truth was, I had lost whatever faith I once had. The church I grew up in had turned its back on me just because I moved out of the home of people who, somehow, never learned even to like me. Forget love. Fine behavior for good Christian Americans, trying to build a strong, united country.

Better, I decided after much thought and much reading of history, to live a decent life and behave well toward other people. Better not to worry about the Christian Americans, the Catholics, the Lutherans, or whatever. Each denomination seemed to think that it had the truth and the only truth and its people were going to bliss in heaven while everyone else went to eternal torment in hell.

But the Church wasn’t only a religion. It was a community—my community. I didn’t want to be free of it. That would have been—had been—impossibly lonely. Everyone needs to be part of something.

By the time I got my Master’s in history, I found that I couldn’t muster any belief in a literal heaven or hell, anyway. I thought the best we could all do was to look after one another and clean up the various hells we’ve made right here on earth. That seemed to me a big enough job for any person or group, and that was one of the good things that Christian America worked hard at.

I went on living in Uncle Marc’s upstate New York house. Once I had my Master’s, I began work on my Ph.D. Also, I began creating Dreamask scenarios. Dreamask International hired me on the strength of several scenarios I had done for them on speculation.

Now, thanks to Uncle Marc, I had the Dreamask scenario recorder I had longed for when I was little. Now I had the freedom to create pretty much anything I wanted to. I did my work under the name Asha Vere. I wanted no connection with the Alexanders, yet I felt uncomfortable about trading on my connection with Uncle Marc, and calling myself Duran. At the time, I believed Duran was my mother’s family name. My father’s surname, “Bankole,” meant nothing to me since Uncle Marc couldn’t tell me much about Taylor Franklin Bankole—only that he was a doctor and very old when I was born. Asha Vere was name enough for me. It dated me as a child born during the popularity of a particular early Mask, but that didn’t matter. And the Dreamask people kind of liked it.

I worked at home on my Masks and on my Ph.D., and was so casual about the degree that I was 32 before I completed it. I enjoyed the work, enjoyed Marc’s company when he came to me to get away from his public and enjoy some feeling of family. I was happy. I never found anyone I wanted to marry. In fact, I had never seen a marriage that I would have wanted to