Parable of the Talents

in, but I don't think that ever occurred to him.

'What's the matter with you?' he demanded of me this morning just before Gathering. 'Why do you want to have a baby in this dump? Just think, you could live in a real house in a real town.'

And I got so angry so fast that my only choices were ei­ther to be very quiet or to scream at him. He, of all people should have known better than to say such a thing. We had reached out from our dump with money made at our dump. We had found him and freed him. But for us and our dump, he would still be a slave and a whore!

'Come to Gathering,' I said in almost a whisper. And I walked out of the house away from him.

He followed me to Gathering, but he never apologized. I don't think he ever realized that he had said something vile.

After Gathering, Gray Mora came up to me and said, 'I hear you're leaving.'

I was surprised. I don't suppose I should have been. Bankole and I don't scream at one another and broadcast our troubles the way the Figueroas and the Faircloths do, but no doubt it's clear to everyone that there's something wrong between us. And then there was Marc. He might tell people— just out of a need to be important. He does have a consum­ing need to be important, to reassert his manhood.

'I'm not leaving,' I told Gray.

He frowned. 'You sure? I heard you were moving to Hal­stead.'

'I'm not leaving.'

He drew in a long breath and let it out. 'Good. This place would probably go to hell without you.' And he turned and walked away. That was Gray. I thought back when he joined us that he might be trouble, or that he wouldn't stay. Instead, he turned out to be dependability itself—as long as you didn't want a lot of conversation or demonstrative friendli­ness. If you were loyal to Gray and his family, he was loyal to you.

Later, after dinner, Zahra Balter pulled me out of a set of dramatic readings that three of the older kids were giving of their own work or of published work that they liked. I was enjoying Gray's stepdaughter Tori Mora's reading of some comic poetry that she had written. The more laughter in Acorn, the better. And I was drawing Tori, tall and lean and angular, a handsome girl rather than a pretty one. I had dis­covered that drawing was so different from everything else I did that it relaxed me, and at the same time, it roused me to a new alertness—a new kind of alertness. I've begun to perceive color and texture, line and shape, light and shadow with new intensity. I go into these focused, trancelike states and draw really terrible stuff. My friends laugh at the draw­ings, but they tell me they're getting better, getting recog­nizable. Zahra told me a couple of weeks ago that a drawing I'd done of Harry looked almost human.

But this time Zahra hadn't come to talk about my draw­ing.

'So you're going to leave!' she hissed at me as soon as we were alone. She looked angry and bitter. Here and there around us, people found their own Gathering Day amuse­ments. May was teaching Mercy Noyer how to weave a small basket from tree bark. A few adults and older kids had gotten a soccer game going in spite of the cold. Marc and Jorge were out there on opposite sides, having a great time running up and down the field, getting filthy, and collecting more than their share of bruises. Travis, who also loves soc­cer, has said, 'I think those two would kill each other for a chance to score.'

If only Marc would confine himself to scoring in soccer.

Of course, I wasn't as surprised at Zahra's question as I had been at Gray's. 'Zee, I'm not leaving,' I said.

Like Gray, she didn't believe me at first 'I heard you were. Your brother said... Lauren, tell me the truth!'

'Bankole wants me to move to Halstead,' I said. 'You know mat I don't want to go. I think we've got something worthwhile going here, and it's ours.'

“I heard they offered you a house by the ocean?'

'Within sight of the ocean, but not that close. You don't want to be too close to the ocean in Halstead.'

'But a real house, I mean. A house like back in Robledo.'

'Yes.'

'And you turned them down?'

'Yes.'

'You're crazy as hell.'