No, I take that back. They weren't caught. They were betrayed. They were betrayed by Beth and Jessica Faircloth. That's the worst They were betrayed by people who were part of us, part of Earthseed. They were betrayed by people whom Allie and the rest of us had helped to rescue from starvation and slavery back when they had nothing. We took them in, and when their family decided to join Earth-seed, when they had done their probationary year, we Welcomed them.
I watched the betrayal. I couldn't stop it I couldn't do anything. I'm worthless these days, just worthless.
Last Sunday, we had the usual six hours of preaching, this time on the evils of sexual sinfulness. First we heard from Reverend Locke, who runs this place. Then we heard from Reverend Chandler Benton, a minister from Eureka who sometimes drives out to inflict himself on us. Benton preached a vicious and weirdly salacious sermon on the evil, depraved wickedness of bestiality, incest, pedophilia, homosexuality, lesbianism, pornography, masturbation, prostitution, and adultery. It went on and on—stories from current news, Bible stories, long quotations of Old Testament laws and punishments including death by stoning, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the life and death of Jezebel, disease, hellfire, on and on.
But there was nothing at all said about rape. The good Reverend Benton himself has, during earlier visits, made use of both Adela Ortiz and Cristina Cho. He goes to the cabin—once the Balter house—that is reserved now for visiting VIPs and has the woman of his choice brought to him.
We endure these sermons. They give us a chance to come in out of the rain. We are allowed to sit down and not work. We aren't cold because our "teachers" don't want to be cold. They build a big fire in the school's fireplace once a week. And so for a few hours on Sundays, we are warm, dry, and almost comfortable in our rows on the floor. We're hungry, but we know we'll soon be fed. We're in a drowsy, passive state. Without the rest we get on Sundays, several more of us would be dead. I'm sure of that. Nevertheless, we're being preached at while we're in that drowsy, passive state. I doze sometimes, though we're lashed if we're caught sleeping. I sit up, lean against a wall, and I let myself doze.
I didn't realize it, but the two female Faircloths, it seems, had begun to listen. Worse, they had begun to believe, to be frightened, to be converted. Or perhaps not. Perhaps they had other motives.
We're always being called upon to testify, to give public thanks for all the kindness and generosity that God has shown us in spite of our unworthiness. And we must confess that unworthiness and make a public repentance and a public appeal for God's mercy. We have each been required to do this many times. The more you yield, the more you are required to yield. Our teachers know we don't mean it, know we act out of fear of pain. We simply do as we are told. They hate us for this. They look at us with unmistakble hatred, disgust, and contempt, and they insist that it's love that they feel. Their God requires them to love us, after all. And it's only love that makes them try so hard to help us see the light. They say we're blinded by our own sinful stubbornness to the love and the help that they offer. Spare the rod and spoil the child," they tell us, and we are, at best, still children as far as morality is concerned. Right.
Anyway, Reverend Benton issued a call to testify. Three people had been ordered to testify. I was one of them. How I was selected, I don't know, but a scrawny "teacher" with bad teeth had put his hand on my shoulder before services began and ordered me to give testimony. The other two who had been ordered to testify were Ed Gama and a red-haired, one-armed woman, fresh from the highway. Her name was Teal, she had been with us for less than a week, and she was afraid of her shadow. Ed and I have done it before, so we went first to show the stranger what to do. This was the usual practice. I gave thanks for my many blessings, then I confessed to sinful thoughts, to anger, and to resistance to my teachers who were only trying to help me. I apologized to God and to all present again and again for my wickedness. I begged for forgiveness, begged for the strength and the wisdom to do God's will.
That's how you do it. That's how I've done it for over a year.
When I finished, Ed did pretty much the same thing. He had his own scripted list of sins and apologies. Teal was bright enough to do as we had done, but she was very frightened. Her voice trembled, and she all but whispered.
In his loud, nasty voice, Reverend Benton said, "Speak up, sister. Let the church hear your testimony."
Tears spilled from the woman's eyes, but she managed to raise her voice and repent and ask forgiveness for "all the things I have done wrong." She must have forgotten the kind of thing that the sermons had "suggested" she confess to. Then she collapsed to her knees and began to sob, out of control, terrified, begging, "Don't hurt me. Please don't hurt me. I'll do anything."
If I had tried to go to her, help her up, and take her back to her space on the floor, I would have been lashed. Human decency is a sin here. Ed and I looked at each other, but neither of us dared to touch her. I suspect that some "teacher" would have helped her back to her place. Lashing her back to her place wouldn't be quite the thing to do under the circumstances.
But there was an interruption. Beth and Jessica Faircloth had gotten up and were picking their way through the congregation, trying not to step on anyone, heading for the altar. When they reached the altar, they fell to their knees. People did this sometimes, gave voluntary testimony in hope of currying favor with the "teachers." It was harmless—or had always been harmless before. And it might buy you a piece of bread or an apple later. In fact, the Fair-cloths had done it several times. Some of us sneered at them for it, but it had never seemed important to me. Stupid me.
"We've sinned too," Beth cried. "We didn't mean to. We didn't know what to do. We knew it was wrong, but we were afraid."
They were not lashed. I saw Reverend Benton hold up his hand, no doubt telling the "teachers" to let them alone. "Speak, sisters," he said. "Confess your sin. God loves you. God will forgive."
They didn't follow the form this time. Instead they spoke the way they do when they're afraid, when they know they've done something other people might not like, when they're standing together against others. They're not twins. In fact, they're 18- and 19-year-old sisters, but under stress, they act much younger, and they act like twins, finishing one another's sentences, speaking in unison, or repeating one another's words. Their testimony was like that.
"We saw them doing it," Beth said.
"They've been doing it for a long time now," Jessica added. "We saw them."
"At night," Beth continued. "We knew it was wrong."
'It's dirty and filthy and perverted!" Jessica said.
"You can hear them kissing and making noises," Beth said, making a face, to show her disgust. "Perverted!"
"I never knew Allie was like that, but even before you came to teach us, she lived with another woman," Jessica said. '1 thought she was okay because she had a little boy, but now I know she wasn't."
"She must have been doing it with women all the time," Beth echoed.
"Now she does it with Mary Sullivan." Jessica had begun to cry. "It's wrong, but we were afraid to tell before."
"She's strong like a man, and she's mean," Beth said. "We're afraid of her."
And I thought, Oh no, damnit, no! Our "teachers" have mistreated us every day, humiliated us and harangued us. But the misery has gone on for so long, and the sermons have gone on for so long, and we've stood together against it all....
But I suppose something like this was bound to happen sooner or later. I only wish the traitors had been strangers from outside. That's happened before in lesser ways, but after a night or two, we've always managed to teach outsiders to keep their mouths shut about anything they've seen among their fellow inmates. No member of Earthseed has ever betrayed us in any way—until now.
As Allie was dragged to the front of the room to be punished, she shouted at Beth and Jessica, "They'll still rape you, and they'll still lash you and when they're done with you they'll still
kill you!"
And I screamed at them, "She gave you food when you were hungry!"
So the "teachers" lashed me too.
But what they did to Allie and to Mary Sullivan, that went on and on. Mary Sullivan's father Arthur begged them to stop, managed to hit one of them and knock him down. So, of course he was lashed. But he bought no mercy for his daughter. Mary was having terrible convulsions, and they went on lashing her. They lashed both women until neither could scream anymore. They made us watch. I didn't watch. To survive, I kept my head down, my eyes half shut. I've been lashed for this behavior from time to time, but not today. Today, all attention was on the two "sinners."
They lashed Allie and Mary until Mary died.
They lashed them until Allie was lost somewhere within herself. She hasn't spoken a full sentence since the lashing.
Because I spoke for Allie, I was made to dig Mary's grave. Better me than Mary's father. He isn't in his right mind either. He was forced to watch his child tortured to death. He just wanders around, staring. Our teachers lash him, and he screams from the pain, but when they finish, he's no different. They seem to think they can torture him into forgetting his terrible grief and his hate.
I can't stand this. I can't. I don't care if they kill me. I will break free of this or I will be dead.
The Faircloth girls have been given a room in what used to be the King house. They have a whole room to themselves now instead of a room shared with thirty other women. They still wear collars, but they're on permanent cooking duty now. They don't have to chop wood or do fieldwork or construction work or clear brush or dig wells or graves or do any of the other hard, heavy, dirty work that the rest of us must do. And they don't know how to cook. Somehow, they've never learned to put together a decent meal. So they don't cook for our "teachers." They just cook for us.
Of course, they're hated. No one talks to them, but no one does anything to them either. We've been warned to let them alone. And they have been given a certain power over us. They can season our food with spit or dirt or shit, and we know it. Maybe that's what they're doing, and that's why the food is so much worse than it was. I didn't think that was possible—for it to get worse. The Faircloths have managed to ruin garbage. The Sullivan brothers and sisters might kill both Faircloth girls if they get the chance. Old Arthur Sullivan has been sent away. We don't know where. He's out of his mind and our "teachers" weren't able to lash him back to sanity, so they got rid of him.
************************************
We've learned that the master unit, the unit that powers or controls all the collars in Camp Christian, is in my old cabin. For months it was kept in one of the maggots—or we heard that's where it was kept. We've had to put together hints, rumors, and overheard comments, any of which might be misinterpreted, or untrue. But at long last, I believe we have it right.
Reverend Locke's two assistants live in my cabin, and from time to time, some of us are taken there for the night. The next time that happens, we'll make our break.
The women who have been taken there most often are Noriko, Cristina Cho, and the Mora girls.
"They say they like small, ladylike women," Noriko says with terrible bitterness. "Those flabby, ugly men. They like us because it's easy for them to hurt us. They like to use their hands, leave bruises, make you beg them to stop."
She, Cristina, and the Moras all say they would rather risk death than go on with things as they are. Whichever of them is taken to my cabin next will cut their rapists' throats during the night. They can do that now. I don't believe they could have a few months ago. Then they will try to find and disable the master unit. Problem is, we don't know what the master unit looks like. None of us has ever seen it.
All we know—or think we know about it—we've learned from those among us who have been collared before. They say once you disable the master unit, the smaller units won't work. The only way I can understand this is to compare it to one of the phones in the Balter house down south in Robledo, so long ago. This was a big, old-fashioned dinosaur of a "cordless" phone. You had to plug the base unit into an electrical outlet and a phone jack. Then you could walk around the house and yard talking into the hand unit. But unplug the two cords of the base, and the hand unit didn't work anymore. I'm told that that's close to what happens with a network of collars.
I don't know anything for sure. I only half believe that we can do what we think we can and survive. Tampering with the master unit might kill the woman who does it. It might kill us all. But the truth is, we couldn't last much longer, no matter what. We're only just human now—most of us. I've said this to the people I trust—people who have helped me gather the fragments of information that we have. I've asked each of them if they're willing to take the risk.
They are. We all are.
wednesday, february 28, 2035
Day before yesterday, we had a terrible storm—truly terrible. And yet, it was a wonderful thing: wind and rain and cold... and a landslide. The hill where our cemetery once was with all its new and old trees, that hill has slumped down into our valley. Our teachers had made us cut down the older trees for firewood and lumber and God. I never found out how they came to believe we prayed to trees, but they went on believing it. We begged them to let the hill alone, told them it was our cemetery, and they lashed us. Because they forced us to do this, the hillside has broken away and come rumbling down to us. It has buried a maggot and three cabins, including the cabin that Bankole and I had built and then lived in for our six brief years together.
Also, it buried the men who slept alone in that cabin. I'm sorry to say that there were two women in each of the other cabins. They were from squatter camps. Natividad had been friendly with one of them, but I didn't know them at all. They are dead, however, buried and dead. Six "teachers," four captive women, and all of our collars were dead. Last Sunday, we resolved to free ourselves or die trying. Now, instead, the weather, and our "teachers'" own stupidity has freed us.
Here is what happened.
The storm began as a cold rain whipped by a brisk wind on Monday afternoon, and for a while, we were made to go on working in it. At last, though, our "teachers," who are much more willing to inflict suffering than to endure it, drove us back to our prison rooms to sit in the cold dimness while they went to our cabins, to warm fires, light, and food.
After a while, the lowest-ranking "teacher" brought Beth and Jessica Faircloth out with our disgusting dinner—a lot of half-boiled, half-spoiled cabbage with potatoes.
We had put Allie where the Faircloths could not avoid seeing her, being confronted by her when they came in. She is a little better. I've looked after her as best I could. She walks like a bent old woman, talks in monosyllables, and does not always seem to understand when we speak to her. I don't believe she even remembers what the Faircloths did to her, but she seems to trust me. I told her to watch them— watch them every second.
She did.
The Faircloths trembled and stumbled over one another, putting down pots of awful food and backing out. We all stared at them in silence, but I suspect they saw only Allie.
After dinner, we rested as best we could, feeling cold, stiff, miserable, and damp on the bare wood floor wrapped in our filthy blankets. Some of us slept, but the storm grew much worse, shaking the building and making it creak. Rain beat against the window and blew roofing off cabins, limbs off trees, and trash from the dump that the teachers had made us create. We had had no dump before. We had a salvage heap and a compost heap. Neither was trash. We could not afford to be wasteful. Our teachers have made trash of our entire community.
Sometimes there was lightning and thunder, sometimes only heavy rain. It went on all night, tearing the world apart outside. Then sometime this morning before dawn, not long after I had managed to get to sleep, I was awakened by a terrible noise. It wasn't like thunder—wasn't like anything I'd ever heard. It was just this incredible rumbling, breaking, cracking noise.
I
reacted without thinking. My place is near the window, and I jumped up and looked out. I leaned against the sill and peered out into the darkness. A moment later there was a flare of lightning, and I saw rock and dirt where my cabin should have been. Rock and dirt.
It took me a moment to understand this. Then I realized that I was leaning against the windowsill, leaning halfway out the window. And I had not convulsed and fallen to the floor. No pain. None of that filthy, twisting agony that made us all slaves.
I touched my collar. It was still there, still capable of delivering the agony. But for some reason, it no longer cared that I leaned against the windowsill. In the dark room, I reached for Natividad. She slept on one side of me and Allie slept on the other. Natividad trusts me, and she knows how to be quiet.
"Freedom!" I whispered. "The collars are dead! They're dead!"
She let me lead her to the door between our quarters and the men's. We managed to get there, each of us waking people as we went, whispering to them, but not stepping on anyone, feeling our way. At the door, Natividad pulled back a little, then she let me lead her through. The door's never been locked. Collars were always enough to keep everyone away from it. But not this time.
No pain.
We woke the men—those who were still asleep. We couldn't see well enough to wake only the men we trusted. We woke them all. We couldn't do this with silent stealth. We were quiet, but they awoke in confusion and chaos. Some were already awake and confused and grabbing me, and realizing that I was a woman. I hit one who wouldn't let me go—a stranger from the road.
"Freedom!" I whispered into his face. "The collars are dead! We can get away!"
He let me go, and scrambled for the door. I went back and gathered the women. When I got them into the men's room, the men were already pouring out of the building. We followed them through the big outside doors. Travis and Natividad, Mike and Noriko, others of Earthseed, the Gamas, and the Sullivans somehow found one another. We all clustered together, male and female members of families greeting one another, crying, hugging. They had not been able even to touch one another through the eternity of our captivity. Seventeen months. Eternity.
Parable of the Talents p-2 Page 24
