Parable of the Talents - Octavia E Butler Page 0,82
feeling inadequate and stupid. I shouldn’t be giving these women this kind of advice. I, who had never been raped, had no right to tell them anything. I told them anyway. “Do put up with it!” I said. “Don’t throw your lives away. Don’t end up like Teresa. Learn everything you can from these people, and bring what you learn back to the rest of us. Even the stupid, ugly things that they say and do might be important. Their lying promises might hide a truth. If we collect what we see and hear, if we stay united, work together, support one another, then the time will come when we can win our freedom or kill them or both!”
There was a long silence. They just stared at me. Then someone—Nina Noyer—began to cry. “I was supposed to be free,” she said through her tears. “All this was supposed to be over. My brother died to bring me here.”
And all of a sudden, I felt such shame. All I wanted to do was lie down on the floor in a tight knot around my uselessness and my aching breasts and scream and scream. And I couldn’t. I couldn’t let myself fail my people in one more miserable way.
And these were my people—my people. They had trusted me, and now they were captives. And I could do nothing—nothing but give them galling advice and try to give them hope. “God is Change,” I heard myself saying. “Our captors are on top now, but if we do this right, we will beat them. It’s that or just…die.”
“I haven’t been able to take my medicine,” Beatrice Scolari said into the near silence. “Maybe I will die.” She had, in the past year, developed high blood pressure, and Bankole had put her on medication. Nina was still crying, now gathered against Allie, who rocked her a little as though she were much younger. Allie herself was crying, but in complete silence. Beatrice Scolari stared at me as though I could produce her medicine.
“Your medicine is one of the first things we’ve got to ask for when they start talking to us,” I told Beatrice. “The very first thing we need is help for Teresa—if it isn’t too late.” But they must have seen Teresa. They must have heard her screaming earlier. Maybe they just didn’t care. They knew she couldn’t get away. Maybe they wanted to use her to make sure we understood our position. “We ask about our kids and about your medicine, Beatrice.” I continued. “Then… Then maybe they’ll let us…take care of Zahra.”
We waited until afternoon, hungry, thirsty, scared, miserable, worried about our children, and wondering about our men. No one paid any attention to us. We saw the invaders going in and out of our homes, finishing their fence, eating our food, but we saw them only from a distance. Even Teresa, lying on the ground outside our window, was ignored.
The younger girls cried and quarreled and complained. The rest of us sat silent most of the time. We had all been through one kind of hell or another. We had all survived enough to know that crying, complaining, and quarreling did no good. We might forget that in time, but not yet.
Sometime around two or three o’clock, the door of our prison opened. A huge, bearded man filled the doorway, and we stared up at him. He wore the usual uniform—black tunic with white cross and black pants, and he was at least two meters tall. He stared down at us as though we smelled—which we did—and as though that were our fault.
“You and you,” he said, pointing to me and to Allie. “Get out here and pick up this corpse.”
By reflex, Allie got a stubborn look on her face, but we both stood up. “She’s dead, too,” I said, pointing to Zahra.
I never saw his hand move, but he must have done something. I screamed, convulsed, dropped to the floor from a jolt of agony that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere. I was on fire. Then I wasn’t. Searing agony. Then nothing.
The man waited until I was able to look up at him, until I did look up.
“You don’t speak unless you’re spoken to,” he said. “You do what you’re told when you’re told to do it, and you keep your mouths shut!”
I didn’t say anything. Somehow, I managed to nod. It occurred to me that I should do that.