Parable of the Talents (19 page)

Bankole sent him to me. "Don't go out of your way to make trouble," Bankole told him. "Your sister has been good to you. Tell her what you intend to do."

"She can't stop me!" my brother said.

"Do what's right," Bankole told him. "You have a con-science. Don't go behind your sister's back."

So later in the day, Marc found me sitting with Channa Ryan, sorting and cataloging books. We're always behind in that, and it needs to be done. All of our kids work on projects as part of their education. Each kid does at least one group project and one individual project per year. Most kids find the two unrelated projects influencing one another in unexpected ways. This helps the kids begin to learn how the world works, how all sorts of things interact and influence one another. The kids begin to teach themselves and one an-other. They begin to learn how to learn. With their mentors' help, they each choose some aspect of history, science, math, art, or whatever and learn it well enough to teach it. Then they do just that. They teach it. To do a good job, they need to be able to find out what information we have avail-able here and what they're going to have to go to the nets for. Since we aren't rich yet, the more we can offer them from our own library, the better.

Still, cataloging is tedious. I was almost glad when Marc came and interrupted my work. He and I went outside to talk.

"I want to get back to what I really care about," he said as we sat together on a handsome bench that Allie Gilchrist had made. Allie's discovered a real liking for building furniture, and she's worked as hard to learn to do it well as she has to learn to assist Bankole well.

"What?" I asked Marc, hoping that what he wanted was something that we could accommodate. No one wanted more than I did for him to find his own interests and get into work that he cared about.

"I want to start my church again," he said. "I want to preach. I'm not asking your permission. I'm just letting you know. With Jarret in office, you need someone like me any-way so that you'll be able to say you're not a Satanist cult."

I sighed. All of a sudden I could feel myself all but sagging with weariness and dread. But I only said, "If Jarret noticed us and wanted to call us a Satanic cult, your preach-ing wouldn't stop him. Would you be willing to speak
at

Gathering?"

That surprised him. "You mean while you're having your services?"

"Yes."

"I won't talk about Earthseed. I want to preach."

"Preach, then."

"What's the catch?"

"You should know. You've been to our services. You choose the topic. You say what you want. But afterward there will be questions and discussion."

"I'm not out to teach a class. I want to preach a sermon."

"That's not our way, Marc. If you speak, you have to face questions and discussion. You need to be ready for that.

Be-sides, no matter what you call it, a good sermon is just a les-son that you're trying to teach."

"But. . . you won't try to get in the way of my preaching at the Gathering if I take questions afterward?"

"That's right."

"Then I'll do it."

"It's no joke, Marc."

"I know. It's no joke to me either."

"I mean we're as serious about the discussion as you are about the sermon. Some of our people might probe and dis-sect in ways you won't like."

"Okay, I can handle it."

No, I didn't think he could. But an unpleasant thing should be done quickly if it must be done at all. My brother had a sermon ready. He'd been working on it in his spare moments.

Since I was scheduled to speak at the Gathering this morning, I was able to step aside for him, let him speak at once.

He didn't pull his punches. He confronted us, challenged us directly from the Bible—first from Isaiah again, "The grass withereth, the flower fadeth; but the word of our God will stand for ever." Then later from Malachi, "For I am the Lord.

I change not" And then from Hebrews, "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and today, and for ever. Be not carried about with diverse and strange doctrines."

Marc doesn't have our father's impressive voice, and he knows it. He uses what he has skillfully, and, of course, it helps that he's so good-looking. But once he had preached his sermon on the changelessness of God, Jorge Cho spoke up.

Jorge was next to Diamond Scott as usual. He has told me he intends to marry Di, but Di has been looking at my brother in a way that Jorge doesn't like at all. There's a ri-valry between Marc and Jorge anyway. They're both young and competitive.

"We believe that all things change," Jorge said, "even though all things don't necessarily change in all ways. Why do you believe God doesn't change?"

My brother smiled. "But even you believe that your God doesn't change. Your God promotes change, but he stays the same."

That surprised me. Marc shouldn't have made such avoid-able mistakes. He's had plenty of time to read, talk, and hear about Earthseed, but somehow, he's misunderstood.

Travis was the first to point out the error. "God
is
Change,"

he said. "God
promotes
nothing. Nothing at all."

And Zahra, of all people, said, "Our God isn't male.

Change has no sex. Marc, you don't know enough about us yet even to criticize us."

Jorge began repeating his question before Zahra had fin-ished. "Why do you think your God doesn't change? How can you prove it?"

"I
have faith that it's true," Marc said. "Belief must be based on faith as much as on proofs."

"But there must be some test," Jorge said. "You must have a way to know when your faith is sensible and when it makes no sense."

"The test is the Bible, of course. When the Bible tells us something—in this case, it tells us several times—we can believe it. We can have faith that it is true."

Antonio Cortez, Lucio's oldest nephew, jumped in. "Look,"

he said, "in the Bible, God does things. Things hap-pen and he reacts. He makes things. He gets angry. He de-stroys things...."

"But he, himself, doesn't change," my brother said.

"Oh, come on," Tori Mora shouted in open disgust. 'To take action is to change. It's to go from action to inaction.

And he goes from calmness to anger—he gets angry a lot And—"

"And in Genesis," her stepsister Doe said, "he lets some of his favorite men have children with their sisters or daugh-ters.

Then in Leviticus and Deuteronomy, he says anyone who does that should be killed."

"Right," Jorge said. "I was just reading that last week. It is no good to say that something is true because the Bible says it is true and then forget that a few pages later, the Bible says—or shows—something completely different."

"Every time any god is accepted by a new group of peo-ple, that god changes," Harry Balter said.

"I think," Marta Figueroa Castro said in her gentlest voice,

"that the verses you read, Marc, mean that God is al-ways God, always there for us, always dependable that way. And, of course, it means that God and God's word will never die."

"Yes, so much of the Bible is metaphor," Diamond Scott said. She, too, spoke very gently. "I remember that my mother used to try to take it absolutely literally, but it just meant she had to ignore some things and twist others."

Be-side her, Jorge smiled.

The discussion went on for a while longer. Then other people began to take pity on Marc. They let him end the dis-cussion. They had never been out to humiliate him. Well, maybe Jorge had, but even Jorge had been polite. Things would have gone better for Marc if he had done his home-work, and things would have been more interesting and in-volving for his audience. He might even have won over a Faircloth or a Peralta. I had worried about that The truth is, I let him speak today because I wanted him to speak before he was truly ready. I wish I hadn't had to do that I wish he had wanted to do something else—anything else—to get his self-respect back and begin to rebuild him-self. I have tried to interest him in the several kinds of work we do here. He isn't lazy. He pulls his weight. But he doesn't like fieldwork or working with animals or trading or teaching or salvaging or carpentry. He tried repairing sal-vaged tools, but it bothered him that he had so much to learn even about simple things. He all but ruined a pair of heavy-duty shears that he was supposed to be sharpening. He tried to grind their almost square edges to thin, sharp blades, and Travis gave him the chewing out he deserved.

"If you don't know,
ask,"
Travis had shouted. "Nobody expects you to know everything. Just ask! This shit is easy to do if you just take the trouble to learn a few basics. Work with me for a while. Don't try to go off on your own."

But my brother needed to "go off on his own," to have his own turf where he was the one who said yes or no, and where everyone respected him. He needed that more than he needed anything, and he meant to have it all at once.

But now, instead of feeling important and proud, he feels angry and embarrassed. I had to let him inflict those feelings on himself. I couldn't let him begin to divide Acorn. More important—much more important—I couldn't let him begin to divide Earthseed.

? ? ?

From EARTHSEED: THE BOOKS OF THE LIVING

To make peace with others,

Make peace with yourself:

Shape God

With generosity

And compassion.

Minimize harm. .

Shield the weak.

Treasure the innocent.

Be true to the Destiny.

Forgive your enemies.

Forgive yourself.

MY MOTHER WAS QUITE OPEN in her journal about

the fact that she didn't know what she was doing, and that this was a terrible frustration to her. She meant to make Earthseed a na-tionwide movement, but she had no idea how to do this. She seemed to have vague plans to someday send out Earthseed missionaries, to use Acorn as a kind of school for such mis-sionaries. Perhaps this is what she would have done if she'd had the chance. It might even have worked. It's worked for other cults. It might have gained her a larger following, more recognition.

But she didn't want simple recognition. She wanted people to
believe.
She had a truth that she wanted to teach and an outer-space Destiny that she wanted taken seriously and someday fulfilled. And it's obvious from her treatment of Uncle Marc that she was very territorial about the whole thing. I don't know whether Uncle Marc ever realized how she set him up to fail and to make a bad first impression with her people. Such a simple, subtle thing. He imagined that she had done something much more obvious and complicated.

She didn't fight people unless she was pretty sure she was going to win. When she wasn't sure, she found ways to avoid fighting or go along with her opponents until they tripped themselves up or put themselves in a position for her to trip them up. Smart, I suppose—or treacherous, depending on your point of view.

She learned from everyone and everything. I think if I had died at birth, she would have managed to learn something from my death that would be useful to Earthseed.

FROM
The
Journals of Lauren Oya Olamina
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 19, 2033

I feel more strongly man I ever have that there will soon be war.

President Jarret is still stirring up bad feelings over Alaska, or as he describes it, "our truant forty-ninth state." He paints Alaska's President Leontyev and the Alaskan legislature as the real enemies—as "mat gang of traitors and thieves who are trying to steal a vast, rich portion of these
United
States for themselves. These people want to treat all of Alaska as their own personal, private property. Can we let them get away with it? Can we let them cheat us, rob us, de-stroy our country, use our sacred constitution as waste paper? Can we forget that 'If a house be divided against it-self, that house cannot stand?' Jesus Christ spoke those words 2000 years ago. President Abraham Lincoln paraphrased them in 1858.

Was Lincoln wrong? Was—dare we ask it? Dare we imagine it? Was Christ wrong? Was our Lord, wrong?"

He's so good at asking nasty rhetorical questions—so good at encouraging young men—not young women, only men—to

"Do your duty, to your country and to yourselves. Prove yourselves men worthy to be called good Christian American soldiers. Serve your country, now that it has such great need of you." They're to do all this by joining the armed services.

I've never heard a president talk this way— although I have read about presidents and leaders of other nations who talked this way when they were preparing for war. Jarret said nothing about drafting people, but Bankole says that may be next. Bankole was down in Sacramento a couple of days ago, and he says a lot of people think it's "time we taught that bunch of traitors up in Alaska a lesson."

It shouldn't be so easy to nudge people toward what might be their own destruction.

"Who was doing the talking?" I asked him as he un-packed medical supplies. He keeps most of his supplies in our cabin until they're needed at the clinic. That way they're less likely to tempt children or thieves. "I mean, was it most of the people you talked to or just a few?"

"Mostly men," he said. "Some young and some old enough to know better. I think a lot of the younger ones would like a war. War is exciting. A boy can prove himself, become a man—if he lives. He'll be given a gun and trained to shoot people. He'll be a powerful part of a powerful team. Chances are, he won't think about the people who'll be shooting back at him, bombing him, or otherwise trying to kill him until he faces them."

I thought about the young single men of Acorn—Jorge Cho, Esteban Peralta, Antonio Figueroa, and even my brother Marc, and shook my head. "Did you ever want to go to war?"

I asked.

"Never," Bankole answered. "I wanted to be a healer. I was damned idealistic about it. Believe me, that was a daunting enough challenge for a young Black boy in the late twentieth century—much harder than learning to kill. It never occurred to me back in the 1990s when I was in med-ical school that in spite of my ideals, I would have to learn to do both."