Even after reading about my mother and seeing her I didn't notice anything. I never looked at her image and thought, 'Oh, she looks like me.' She did look like me, though—or rather, I looked like her. But I didn't notice. All I saw was a tall, middle-aged, dark-skinned woman with arresting eyes and a nice smile. She looked, somehow, like someone I would be inclined to like and trust—which scared me. It made me immediately dislike and distrust her. She was a cult leader, after all. She was supposed to be seductive. But she wasn't going to seduce me.
And all that was only my reaction to her image. No wonder she was so rich, no wonder she could draw followers even into such a ridiculous religion. She was dangerous.
from
sunday, july 29, 2035 Portland.
I've gathered a few more people. They aren't people who will travel with me or come together in easily targetable villages. They're people in stable homes—or people who need homes.
Isis Duarte Norman, for instance, lives in a park between the river and the burned, collapsed remains of an old hotel. She has a shack there—wood covered with plastic sheeting. Each evening she can be found there. During the day she works, cleaning other women's houses. This enables her to eat and keep herself and her secondhand clothing clean. She has a hard life, but it's as respectable as she can make it. She's 43. The man she married when she was 23 dumped her six years ago for a 14-year-old girl—the daughter of one of his servants.
'She was so beautiful,' Isis said. 'I knew he wouldn't be able to keep his hands off her. I couldn't protect her from him any more than I could protect myself, but I never thought that he would keep her and throw me out.'
He did. And for six years, she's been homeless and all but hopeless. She said she had thought of killing herself. Only fear had stopped her—the fear of not quite dying, of maiming herself and dying a slow, lingering death of pain and starvation. That could happen. Portland is a vast, crowded city. It isn't Los Angeles or the Bay Area, but it is huge. People ignore one another in self-defense. I find this both useful and frightening. When I met Isis, it was because I went to the door of a home where she was working. Otherwise, she would never have dared to talk to me. As it was, she was designated to assemble a meal and bring it to me when I had finished cleaning up the backyard.
She was wary when she brought the food. Then she looked at the backyard and told me I had done a good job. We talked for a while. I walked her to her shack—which made her nervous. I was a man again.
