Parable of the Talents - Octavia E Butler Page 0,36
drawing. I haven’t tried to draw anything since I was seven or eight. Now, all of a sudden, I find myself interested in learning to draw, learning to draw well—if I can. I want to learn something new and unrelated to any of our troubles.
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 14, 2032
I’m pregnant!
No surrogates, no computerized eggs, no drugs. Bankole and I did it the good old-fashioned way—at last!
It’s crazy that it should happen now, just when America has elected a wild man to lead it. Bankole and I began trying as soon as we could see that we were going to survive here at Acorn. Bankole’s first wife couldn’t have children. As a young woman back in the 1990s, she was in a serious car accident and wound up with a hysterectomy, among other things. Bankole claimed he never minded. He said the world was going to hell just as fast as it could, and it would be an act of cruelty to bring a child into it. They talked about adopting, but never did.
Now he’s going to be a father, and in spite of all his talk, he’s almost jumping up and down—that is, whenever he isn’t being scared to death. He’s talking about moving into an established town again. He hadn’t said anything about that since right after we got the truck, but now the subject is back, and he’s serious. He wants to protect me. I realize that. I suppose I should be glad he feels that way, but I wish he would show his protective feelings in another way.
“You’re a kid yourself,” he said to me. “You don’t have the sense to be afraid.”
I can’t seem to get angry with him for saying things like that. He says them, then he thinks for a moment, and if he doesn’t watch himself, he begins to grin like a boy. Then he remembers his fears and looks panicked. Poor man.
SIX
❏ ❏ ❏
From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
God is Change
And hidden within Change
Is surprise, delight,
Confusion, pain,
Discovery, loss,
Opportunity, and growth.
As always,
God exists
To shape
And to be shaped.
IT’S A GOOD THING, I suppose, that my mother’s God was Change. Her life had a way of changing in abrupt, important ways. I don’t suppose she was really any more prepared for sudden changes than anyone else, but her beliefs helped her cope with them, even take advantage of them when they came.
I enjoyed reading about the way she and my father reacted to my conception. Such mismatched people, yet such a normal reaction. She couldn’t know that she was in for other major changes even before she could get used to being pregnant.
FROM The Journals of Lauren Oya Olamina
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 5, 2032
Spokesmen for Christian America have announced that the Church will be opening homeless shelters and children’s homes—orphanages—in several states, including California, Oregon, and Washington. This is just a beginning, they say. They hope in time to “extend a helping hand to the people of every state in the union, including Alaska.” I heard this on a newsdisk that Mike Kardos bought at a Garberville street market yesterday. Time to begin to clean up the Christian America image, I suppose. I just hope the California shelters and orphanages will be put where they’re most needed—down around San Diego, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. I don’t want them up here. Christian America is made up of scary people, and I find it impossible to believe that they intend only to do good and to help others.
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 17, 2032
Today I found my brother Marcus.
This is impossible, I know, but I found him. He’s sick, fearful, confused, and angry—but he’s alive!
I found him in Eureka, California, although five years ago, down in Robledo, he died.
I don’t know what to say about this. I don’t know how to deal with it. Writing about it helps. Somehow, writing always helps.
Before dawn this morning, five of us drove into Eureka. Bankole needed medical supplies and we had a couple of deliveries of winter vegetables and fruit to make to small, independent stores who have already begun to buy our produce. After that, we had a special errand.
Bankole hadn’t wanted me to come. He worries about me more than ever now, and he’s always after me to move to an established town. We could have a nice little house and he could be town doctor. We could live nice empty little antique lives, and I could forget I’ve spent the past five years struggling to establish Acorn as the beginning of