Octavia E. Butler by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781771482981
Publisher: ChiZine
Published: 2014-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

8.

It was in the ravine that the Children of the Earth was born, though it was not until six months later that I painted the name onto a small sign and hung it outside the rebuilt red brick house in the centre of Ulee.

The boy’s name was Lydon, though he did not tell me that until three nights later, when Sid and I had returned to the community with him. He spoke quietly and hesitantly and asked why I decided to return here to the ruins. I told him, simply, that there was nowhere else to go. “I wish I had a home to go back too,” he said, the fire we had built reflecting his narrow, sick face. “They hit me when Alrea touched me; hit me and threw stones at me and beat me. I don’t think they wanted to kill me, but they didn’t—they didn’t want me there.”

Home.

Was I really returning home? Was Ulee where I thought my place was? The idea was such a horrible one that I barely slept through the night.

Beneath the sun the next day I told myself that home had never been a sanctuary for me, so I lacked the sense of security and safety that others associated with it, and this was why I was able to view Ulee as a home. But a part of me had not been happy when the destroyed buildings, torn up fields, and gravesites appeared on our arrival. Destroyed were the things I worked for, the things I contributed to, and it saddened me as much as it angered me to know that I had been forced to do this. The contradiction was not one that I could come to terms with: I felt sadness for what had happened, I felt guilt for feeling my sadness and not anger, and the two were irreconcilable with each other. I think that if I could have left in the morning and gone elsewhere to make a life, I would have done it without a backward glance, much as Sid had before.

There was, however, nowhere else to go; nor were we safe in Ulee, either. Of the fifty-eight slaves that had been owned by Baker Thomas, only seven remained to greet us. Two of the seven were children, and one would not live the week out. “There were more,” Sid murmured as we made our way down to the dam, approaching the two men and three women. “At least two dozen! I would never have—I would have forced them to come with me if I had known that so few would be left. They’re just waiting here to be taken like that!”

Sally was there, nursing the child that would live. It was not her own, but the daughter of a Singaporean couple who had died in the attack. Still holding the girl, both of them wrapped in a dirty blanket, Sally, with dark, baggy eyes, and a sag to her skin that was a mix of fatigue and grief, took me to the graves of her husband and children after we arrived.

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