Parable of the Talents

Always again,

Forevermore.

THE CRUSADERS DELIBERATELY divided siblings because if they were together, they might support one another in secret heathen practices or beliefs. But if each child was isolated and dropped into a family of good Christian Americans, then each would be changed. Parent pressure, peer pressure, and time would remake them as good Christian Americans.

Sometimes it did, even among the older children of Acorn. Look at the Faircloth boys. One became a Christian American minister. The other rejected Christian America completely. And sometimes the division was utterly destruc­tive. Some of us died of it. Ramon Figueroa Castro commit­ted suicide because, according to one of his foster brothers, 'He was too stubborn to try to fit in and forget about his sin­ful past.' Christian America was, at first, much more a refuge for the ignorant and the intolerant than it should have been. Even people who would never beat or burn another person could treat suddenly orphaned or abducted children with cold, self-righteous cruelty.

'Give in,' my mother said to the adults of Acorn. 'Do as you're told and keep your own counsel. Don't give them ex­cuses to hurt you. Bide your time. Watch your captors. Lis­ten to them. Collect information, pool it, and use it against them.' But we kids never heard any of this. We were snatched away and given alone into the hands of people who believed that it was their duty to break us and remake us in the Christian American image. And, of course, breaking peo­ple is much easier than putting them together again.

So much agony caused, so much evil done in God's name.

And yet, Christian America had begun by trying to help and to heal as well as to convert. Long before Jarret was elected President, his church had begun to rescue children. But in those early days, they only rescued kids who really needed help. Along the Gulf Coast where Jarret began his work, there were several Christian American children's homes that were over a decade old by 2032. These homes collected street orphans, fed them, cared for them, and raised them to be 'the bulwark of Christian America.' Only later did the fanatics take over and begin stealing the chil­dren of 'heathens' and doing terrible harm.

In preparation for this book, I spoke with several people who were raised in 'CA' children's homes or were adopted from CA homes into CA families. What they told me re­minded me of my own life with the Alexanders. The homes and adoptive families were not meant to be cruel. Even in the homes, there were no collars except as punishment for the older children, and then only after warnings and lesser pun­ishments had failed. The homes weren't kept by sadists or perverts but by people who believed deeply in what they were doing—or at least by workers who wanted very much to please their employers and keep their jobs. The believers wanted 'their' children to believe absolutely in God, in Jarret and in being good Christian American soldiers ready to do battle with every sort of anti-American heathenism. The mer­cenaries were easier to please. They wanted no children in­jured or killed while they were on duty. They wanted the required lessons learned, the required tests passed. They wanted peace.

The Alexanders were like a combination of the believer and the mercenary. The Alexanders wanted me to believe, and if they did not love me, at least they took care of me. By the time 1 was old enough for school—Christian American school, of course—I had learned to be quiet and keep out of their way. When 1 succeeded at this, Kayce and Madison would reward me by letting me alone. Kayce took a break from telling me how much inferior I was to Kamaria. Madi­son took a break from trying to get his sweaty hands under my dress. I would take a book to a quiet corner of the house or yard and read. My earliest books were all either Bible sto­ries or stories of Christian American heroes who, like Asha Vere, did great deeds for the faith. These influenced me. How could they not? I dreamed of doing great deeds myself.  I dreamed of making Kayce so proud of me, making her love me the way she loved Kamaria. Both my biological parents were big, strong people. Thanks to them, I was always big for my age, and strong—one more strike against me, since Kamaria had been 'small and dainty.' i dreamed of doing great, heroic things, but all I really tried to do was hide, van­ish, make myself invisible.

It should have been hard for an oversized kid like me to hide that way, but it wasn't. If i did my chores and my home­work, I was encouraged to vanish—or rather, I wasn't en­couraged to do anything else. In my neighborhood there were only a few kids, and they were all older than I was. To them I was either a nuisance or a pawn. They ignored me or they got me into trouble. Kayce and her friends didn't appre­ciate any attempts I made to join in their adult conversation. Even when Kayce was alone, she wasn't really interested in anything I had to say. She either told me more than I wanted to know about Kamaria, or she punished me for asking ques­tions about anything else.

Quiet was good. Questioning was bad. Children should be seen and not heard. They should believe what their elders told them, and be content that it was all they needed to know. If there were any brutality in the way I was raised, that was it. Stupid faith was good. Thinking and questioning were bad. I was to be like a sheep in Christ's flock—or Jar­ret's flock. I was to be quiet and meek. Once I learned that, my childhood was at least physically comfortable.

from The Journals of Lauren Oya Olamina

sunday,