Parable of the Talents

biological mother hated, but couldn't help doing. I tried to feel what other people felt and know them—really know them.

It was all nonsense, of course. Harmless nonsense. But when I was caught at it, it was suddenly all but criminal.

There was a theft in my Christian American History class. Someone stole a small personal phone that the teacher had left on her desk. We were all searched and our belongings collected and thoroughly examined. Someone examined my notebook too thoroughly, in spite of my self-destruct codes, and found my scenario.

I had to attend special religion classes for delinquents and get counseling. I had to confess my sins before our local church. 1 had to memorize a dozen or so more chapters of the Bible. While I was working off my punishment, I began to hear whispers that I was, indeed, adopted, and that I was the daughter not of rich, important, beautiful people but of the worst heathen devils—murderers, thieves, and perverters of God's word. The kids started it. There were plenty of kids around who were known to be adopted, so it was com­monplace to ridicule them and make up lies about how evil their real parents were. And if you weren't adopted, and someone got mad at you, they might call you a heathen bas­tard whether you were or not.

So first the kids started in on me, then the adults, some of whom knew that I was adopted, began to talk. 'Well, after all, think about what kind of woman her real mother must be. That's got to leave a mark on her.' Or, 'You wait. That girl is no good. My grandmother used to say the fruit doesn't fall far from the tree!' Or, 'Well, what can you expect? 'Vere' means truth, doesn't it? And the truth is, there's bad blood in her if there ever was bad blood!'

I remember turning around in church to confront the nasty old woman who had stage-whispered this last bit of stupidity to her equally ancient friend. The two were sitting directly behind Kayce, Madison, and me during Sunday evening ser­vice. I looked at her, and she just stared back at me as though I were an animal who had somehow invaded the church.

''God is love,'' I quoted to her in as sweet a voice as I could manage. And then, ''Love is the fulfilling of the law.'' I tried to make sure that my words carried as well as her ugly stage whisper had carried. Bad blood, for heaven's sake. Kayce had told me people said things like that because they were ignorant, but that I had to respect even the ignorant be­cause they were older.

On that particular night, Kayce nudged me with a sharp elbow the moment I spoke, and I saw the ignorant old woman's mouth turn down in a grimace of dislike and disapproval.

I had just turned 13 when that happened. I remember after church, Kayce and I had a huge fight because she said I was rude to an older person, and I said I didn't care. 1 said I wanted to know whether 1 realty was adopted and if so, who were my real parents.

Kayce said she and Madison were the only parents I had to worry about, and I was an ungrateful little heathen not to ap­preciate what I had.

That was that.

When I was 15, an enemy at school told me my real mother was not only a heathen but a whore and a murderer. I hit her before 1 even thought about it—and I discovered that I didn't know my own strength. I broke her jaw. She was screaming and crying and bleeding, and I was horrified—scared to death. I got kicked out of school, and very nearly collared as a juvenile felon. Only Madison and our minister working to­gether managed to keep my neck out of a collar. This was the beginning of the worst part of my adolescence. I was grateful to Madison. I hadn't thought he would fight for me. i hadn't thought he would fight for anything. He had become even more of a shadow as I had grown. He repaired aging com­puters for poor working people. He had seemed closer to his tools than he did to me, except when he was feeling me up.

Then, on Saturday, after my troubles had been papered over, while Kayce was attending some women's-group thing at Church, Madison explained to me how grateful I should be to him. He had saved me from a collar. He read me an article about collars—how they hurt, how they can 'pacify' even the most violent criminal and still leave him able to do use­ful work, how the holder of a collar control unit is 'a virtual puppet master' as far as the convict is concerned. And al­though the pain that the collar can deliver is intense, it leaves no mark and does no permanent harm no matter how often it must be used.

Madison gave me some other articles to read. As I took them, he reached out with both sweaty little hands and felt my breasts.

'It wouldn't hurt you to show some gratitude,' he said to me when I pulled away. 'I saved you from something really brutal. I don't know. You're so ungrateful. Maybe I won't be able to save you next time.' He paused. 'You know, your mama wanted to let you go on and be collared. She thinks you hurt that girl on purpose.' Another pause. 'You need to be nice to me, Asha. I'm all you've got.'

He kept after me. There were times when I thought I should just sleep with him and be done with it. But I was back in school by then and I could stay away from home most of the time. He was such a godawful whiny man. My only good luck was that he was small, and after a while, I realized he was a little bit afraid of me. That was a shock. I had grown up