Parable of the Talents - Octavia E Butler Page 0,19

17, 2032

We had a double funeral today for Danton Noyer, Senior and his wife Krista.

Under Bankole’s care, Dan Noyer is recovering. His legs and shoulder are healing, and he can walk a little. Bankole says he can thank the maggots for that. Not only did the disgusting little things keep his wounds clean by eating the dead tissue, but they did no harm. This particular kind have no appetite for healthy, living tissue. They eat the stuff that would putrefy and cause gangrene, then, unless they’re removed, they metamorphose and fly away.

The little girls, Kassia and Mercy, had, at first, to be kept inside so that they would not run away. They had nowhere to go, but they were so frightened and confused that they kept trying to escape. When they were allowed to visit their brother they had to be kept from hurting him. They ran to him and would have piled onto his bed for reassurance and comfort if May and Allie had not stopped them. May seems best able to reach them. They seem to be adopting both women—and vice versa—but they seem to have a special liking for May.

She’s something of a mystery, our May. I’m teaching her to write so that someday she’ll be able to tell us her story. She looks as though she might be a Latina, but she doesn’t understand Spanish. She does understand English, but doesn’t speak it well enough to be understood most of the time. That’s because sometime before she joined us, someone cut out her tongue.

We don’t know who did it. I’ve heard that in some of the more religious towns, repression of women has become more and more extreme. A woman who expresses her opinions, “nags,” disobeys her husband, or otherwise “tramples her womanhood” and “acts like a man,” might have her head shaved, her forehead branded, her tongue cut out, or, worst case, she might be stoned to death or burned. I’ve only heard about these things. May is the first example of it that I’ve ever seen—if she is an example. I’m glad to say her terrible wound had healed by the time she came to us. We don’t even know whether May is her real name. But she can say, “May,” and she’s let us know we’re to call her that. It’s always been clear that she loves kids and gets along well with them. Now, with the little Noyer girls, it seems that she has a family. She’s been sharing a cabin with Allie Gilchrist and Allie’s adopted son Justin for the better part of a year. Now I suppose we’ll have to either expand Allie’s cabin or begin work on a new one. In fact, we need to begin work on two or three new ones. The Scolari family will be getting the next one. They’ve been cooped up with the Figueroas long enough. Then the Dovetrees, then the Noyers and May.

Dan Noyer is staying with Harry and Zahra Balter and their kids now that he’s well enough to get around on his own a little. It seemed best to get him out of the clinic as soon as possible once his mother died. May is already sharing her one room with the two little girls, so Bankole looked for space for Dan elsewhere. The Balters volunteered. Also, May’s a sharer, and Dan still has bouts of pain. He doesn’t complain, but May would notice. I do when I’m around him. There’s no hyperempathy in the Balter family, so they can care for injured people without suffering themselves.

It’s been a busy few weeks. We’ve done several salvage runs with the truck and gathered things we’ve never been able to gather in quantity before: lumber, stone, bricks, mortar, cement, plumbing fixtures, furniture, and pipe from distant abandoned ruins and from the Dovetree place. We’ll need it all. We’re 67 people now with the Noyer children. We’re growing too fast.

And yet in another way, we’re only creeping along. We’re not only Acorn, we’re Earthseed, and we’re still only a single tiny hill community squeezed into too few cabins, and sharing an almost nineteenth-century existence. The truck will improve our comfort, but…it’s not enough. I mean, it may be enough for Acorn, but it’s not enough for Earthseed.

Not that I claim to know what would be enough. The thing that I want to build is so damned new and so vast! I not only don’t know how to build it, but I’m not even sure