Parable of the Talents - Octavia E Butler Page 0,78

Someone gasped, choked, and began to cough. Someone said over and over again, “Ah shit!” and I recognized Allie Gilchrist’s voice.

“Allie?” I said. I slurred the word, sounded drunk to my own ears, but she heard me.

“Olamina?”

“Yeah.”

“Look, did you see Justin before they dragged you in here?”

“No. Sorry. Did you see Larkin?”

“No. Sorry.”

“They took my baby too,” Adela Ortiz said in a hoarse whisper. “They took him and I don’t know where he is.” She began to cry.

I wanted to cry myself. I wanted to just to lie there and cry because I hurt so much in so many ways. I felt too weak and uncoordinated to do anything but cry. Instead, I sat up, bumped someone, apologized, sat stupidly for a while, then found the sense to say, “Who else is here? One by one, say your names.”

“Noriko,” a voice said just to my left. “They took Deborah and Melissa,” she continued. “I had Melissa and Michael had Deborah. We were running. I thought we were going to make it. Then that damned gas. We fell down, and someone came and pulled both girls away from us. I couldn’t see anything but hands and arms taking them.”

“And my babies,” Emery Mora said. “My babies…” She was crying, almost incoherent, “My little boys. My sons. They took my sons again. Again!” She had had two young sons when she was a slave years ago, and they had been sold away from her. She had been a debt slave—a legally indentured person bound for her family’s unpaid debts. The debts were accumulated because she worked for an agribusiness corporation that underpaid its workers in company scrip instead of money, then overcharged them for food and shelter so that they could stay in ever-increasing debt. It was against the law for the company to break up families by selling minor children away from their parents or husbands from their wives. It was against both local and federal law, so it shouldn’t have happened. Just as what’s happened to us now shouldn’t have happened.

I thought about Emery’s older daughter and stepdaughter. “What about Tori and Doe?” I said. “Are they here? Tori? Doe?”

At first, there was no answer, and I thought of Nina and Paula Noyer. I didn’t want to think of them, but Doe and Tori Mora were 14 and 15—far from babyhood. If they weren’t here, where were they?

Then a very small voice said, “I’m here. Get off me.”

“I’m trying to get off you,” a stronger voice said. “There’s no room in here. I can hardly move.”

Tori and Doe, alive, and as well as the rest of us were. I shut my eyes and took a long, deep, grateful breath. “Nina Noyer?” I asked.

She began to answer, then coughed several times. “I’m here,” she said at last, “but my little sisters… I don’t know what happened to them.”

“Mercy?” I called. “Kassi?”

No answer.

“May?”

No answer. She couldn’t talk, but she would have made a noise to let us know she was there.

“She had Kassia and Mercy with her,” Allie said. “She’s strong and fast. Maybe she got them away. She loved them like she gave birth to them.”

I sighed. “Aubrey Dovetree?” I asked.

“I’m here,” she said. “But I can’t find Zoë or the kids… Zoë had all three of them with her.”

And Zoë had a heart condition, I thought. She might be dead, even if no one meant to kill her. Not knowing what else to do, I went on with my role call. “Marta Figueroa?”

“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, I’m here, all alone. My brother… My children… Gone.”

“Diamond Scott? Cristina Cho?”

“I’m here,” said two voices at once, one in English and the other in Spanish. Cristina’s English was good now, but under stress, she still reverted to Spanish.

“Beatrice Scolari? Catherine Scolari?”

“We’re here,” Catherine Scolari’s voice said. She sounded as though she had been crying. “Vincent is dead.” she said. “He fell against a rock, hit his head. I heard them say he was dead.” Vincent was her husband and Beatrice’s brother. He had only one arm because of an accident that happened before he joined us. He was, perhaps, more likely than most of us to be off balance when the gas collapsed him. But still…

“He might not be dead,” I said.

“He is. We saw him…” There were more sounds of crying. I didn’t know what to say to them. All I could think was that maybe Larkin was dead too. And what about Bankole? I didn’t want to think about death. I