Your life.
Consider consequences.
Minimize harm.
Ask questions.
Seek answers.
Learn.
Teach."
She had once been a teacher in a public school in San Francisco. The school had closed 15 years after she began teaching. That was during the early twenties when so many public school systems around the country gave up the ghost and closed their doors. Even the pretense of having an educated populace was ending. Politicians shook their heads and said sadly that universal education was a failed experiment Some companies began to educate the children of their workers at least well enough to enable them to become their next generation of workers. Company towns began then to come back into fashion. They offered security, employment, and education. That was all very well, but the company that educated you owned you until you paid off the debt you owed them. You were an indentured person, and if they couldn't use you themselves, they could trade you off to another division of the company—or another company. You, like your education, became a commodity to be bought or sold.
There were still a few public school systems in the country, limping along, doing what they could, but these had more in common with city jails than with even the most mediocre private, religious, or company schools. It was the business of responsible parents to see to the education of their children, somehow. Those who did not were bad parents. It was to be hoped that social, legal, and religious pressures would sooner or later force even bad parents to do their duty toward their offspring.
"So," Nia said, "poor, semiliterate, and illiterate people became financially responsible for their children's elementary education. If they were alcoholics or addicts or prostitutes or if they had all they could do just to feed their kids and maybe keep some sort of roof over their heads, that was just too bad! And no one thought about what kind of society we were building with such stupid decisions. People who could afford to educate their children in private schools were glad to see the government finally stop wasting their tax money, educating other people's children. They seemed to think they lived on Mars. They imagined that a country filled with poor, uneducated, unemployable people somehow wouldn't hurt them!"
Len sighed. "That sounds like the way my dad thinks. I'm his punishment, I guess—not that he cares!"
Nia gave her a look of chilly interest. "What? Your father?"
Len explained, and I watched as, almost against her will, Nia thawed. "I see." She sighed. "I suppose I could have wound up homeless myself, but my aunt and uncle owned this house and surrounding farmland outright. This is mother's family home. I came to live here and care for them when my job ended. They were old and not doing well anymore. Even then they were renting the farmland to neighboring farmers. They left the house, the land, and the rest of their possessions to me when they died. I keep a garden, some chickens, goats, rabbits. I rent the land. I survive."
I tried to ignore a sharp stab of envy and nostalgia.
Len said, "I like your garden." She stared out at the long, neat rows of vegetables, fruits, and herbs.
"Do you?" Nia asked. "I heard you complaining out there."
Len blushed, then looked at her hands. "I've never done that kind of thing before. I liked it, but it was hard work."
I smiled. "She's game, if nothing else. I've been doing work like that all my life."
"You were a gardener?" Nia asked.
"No, it was just a matter of eating or not eating. I've done a number of things, including teach—although I'm not academically qualified to teach. But I'm literate, and the idea of leaving children illiterate is criminal.''
As she smiled her delight at hearing such agreement with her own thoughts, I handed her the drawing. On the lower right side of it I had written the first verse of Earthseed, "All that you touch, /You Change "On the other I had written the "To shape God" verse that she liked.
She read the verses and looked at the picture for a long, long time. It was a detailed drawing, not just a sketch, and I felt almost pleased with it. Then she looked at me and said in a voice almost too soft to hear, "Thank you."
She asked us to stay the night, offered to let us sleep in her barn, proving that she hadn't altogether lost her fear of us. We stayed, and the next day I did a few odd repair jobs around the house for her. I could have stolen her blind if I'd wanted to, but what I had decided that I wanted from her, I couldn't steal. She had to give it.
I told her that evening that I was a woman. First, though, I told her about Larkin. We were in her kitchen. She was cooking. She'd told me to sit down and talk to her. I'd worked hard, she said. I'd earned a rest.
I never took my eyes off her as I told her. It was important that she not feel foolish, frightened, or angry when she understood. A little confusion and mild embarrassment was inevitable, but that should be all.
She looked as though she might cry when she heard about my Larkin. That was all right. Len was in the living room, delighting in reading real books made of paper. She would not see any tears Nia shed—in case Nia was sensitive about that kind of thing. You could never be altogether sure what another person might feel as a humiliation or an invasion of privacy.
"What happened to ... to the child's mother?" Nia asked.
I didn't answer until she turned to look at me. "It's dangerous on the road," I said. "You know that People vanish out there. I walked from the Los Angeles area to Humboldt County in '27, so I know it. Know it too well."
"She vanished on the road? She was killed?"
"She vanished on the road to avoid being killed." I paused. "She's me, Nia."
Silence. Confusion. "But. . ."
"You've trusted us. Now I'm trusting you. I'm a man on the road. I have to be. Two women out there would be everyone's target." There. I was not correcting her, not smiling at the joke I'd played on her. I was making myself vulnerable to her, and asking her to understand and keep my secret. Just right, I hoped. It felt right.
She blinked and then stared at me. She left her pots and came over to take a good look. "I can hardly believe you," she whispered.
And I smiled. "You can, though. I wanted you to know." I drew a deep breath. "Not that it's safe for a man out there either. The people who took my child also killed my husband and wiped out my community—all in the name of God, of course."
She sat down at the table with me. "Crusaders. I've heard of them, of course—that they rescue homeless orphans and... burn witches, for heaven's sake. But I've never heard that they ... just killed people and... stole their children." But it seemed that what the Crusaders had done could not quite get her mind off what I had done. "But you ...," she said. "I can't get over it. I still feel... I still feel as though you were a man. I mean ..."
"It's all right."
She sighed, put her head back and looked at me with a sad smile. "No, it isn't."
No, it wasn't. But I went to her and hugged her and held her. Like Len, she needed to be hugged and held, needed to cry in someone's arms. She'd been alone far too long. To my own surprise, I realized that under other circumstances, I might have taken her to bed. I had gone through 17 months at Camp Christian without wanting to be with anyone. I missed Bankole—missed him so much sometimes that it was an almost physical pain. And I had never been tempted to want to make love with a woman. Now, I found myself almost wanting to. And she almost wanted me to. But that wasn't the relationship that I needed between us.