Parable of the Talents - Octavia E Butler Page 0,54
was he now? No one could go through what he has gone through and not change somehow. No wonder the first of the Earthseed verses had reached him.
I took him to see Zahra and Harry, and they both hugged him, amazed. Zahra, in particular, who had seen him shot and thrown into the fire, kept staring at him and touching him. He stared back at them the way I’ve seen half-starved people stare at food that they couldn’t beg, buy, or steal.
SUNDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2032
“Call me Marcos,” my brother said to me as I showed him our school-library-Gathering Hall. He was about to attend his first Gathering, but I had brought him to the school early so that he could see more of what we had built. He seemed impressed with the building and with our collection of salvaged, purchased, and bartered books, but I had gotten the impression that there was something else on his mind. Now here it was.
“I’ve been Marcos Duran for more than five years now,” he said. “I don’t really know how to be Marcus Olamina anymore.”
I didn’t know what to make of that. After a while, I said, “Do you…? Is it that you don’t want people to think of me as your sister?”
He looked horrified. “No, Lauren. It’s not like that.” He paused, thought for a moment. “It’s more like Marcus Olamina was my childhood name. I’m not that kid anymore. I’ll never be him again.”
I nodded. “Okay.” And then, “Thanks to Bankole, just about everyone here calls me Olamina, so maybe it’s just as well. Less confusing.”
“Your husband calls you by your maiden name?”
“He doesn’t like my first name, so he ignores it. That’s fair. I didn’t like his first name either. It’s Taylor, by the way, and I ignore it.”
My brother shrugged. “Your business, I guess. Just call me Marcos.”
I shrugged too. “All right,” I said.
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 22, 2032
Bankole is home. He says the doctor in Halstead is dead, and the people there—the mayor and town council—have asked him to move there and become their doctor full time.
He wants to. For my sake and the baby’s as well as his own, he wants to more than anything. It’s a chance that may not come his way again, he says. He’s an old man, he says. He’s got to think of the future, and I’ve got to think of the baby, he says. I’ve got to be realistic, for god’s sake, and stop dreaming, he says.
I’m not conveying the full flavor of this. It’s the same old stuff. He’s said most of it before, and I’m damned tired of it. But it’s worse now. It’s scarier. Bankole means it more than he ever has before because he has an offer now—a real offer. And he means it because there is this small new life between us, growing inside me. I’ve had no morning sickness, none of the swellings and discomforts and moodiness that Zahra has when she’s pregnant. And yet, I don’t doubt for a moment that my daughter is within me. Bankole’s checked, and he says she’s a girl. In gentler moments, we bicker about her name—Beryl like his mother or, from my point of view, almost anything that isn’t Beryl. Such an old-fashioned name.
But sometimes all of the ease and the joy and the love that I feel because of our child growing and developing within me seems lost on Bankole. All he seems to see is what he calls my immaturity, my irrational, unrealistic faith in Earthseed, my selfishness, my shortsightedness.
2033
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From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
Partnership is giving, taking, learning, teaching, offering the greatest possible benefit while doing the least possible harm. Partnership is mutualistic symbiosis. Partnership is life.
Any entity, any process that cannot or should not be resisted or avoided must somehow be partnered. Partner one another. Partner diverse communities. Partner life. Partner any world that is your home. Partner God. Only in partnership can we thrive, grow, Change. Only in partnership can we live.
EIGHT
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From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING
Purpose
Unifies us:
It focuses our dreams,
Guides our plans,
Strengthens our efforts.
Purpose
Defines us,
Shapes us,
And offers us
Greatness.
I’M NOT ENTIRELY SURE why I’ve spent so much time looking at my mother’s life before I was born. Perhaps it’s because this seems the most human, normal time of her life. I wanted to know who she was when she was a young wife and soon-to-be mother, when she was a friend, a sister, and, incidentally, the local minister.