Free Bloodchild by Octavia E. Butler Page A

the way some people looked at me. It was a little frightening to know that only she stood between us and that desperation that could so easily swallow us. My mother would look at her sometimes and say to me, "Take care of her." And I would remember that she too had been outside, had seen.
     
    Now T'Gatoi used four of her limbs to push me away from her onto the floor. "Go on, Gan," she said. "Sit down there with your sisters and enjoy not being sober. You had most of the egg. Lien, come warm me."
     
    My mother hesitated for no reason that I could see. One of my earliest memories is of my mother stretched alongside T'Gatoi, talking about things I could not understand, picking me up from the floor and laughing as she sat me on one of T'Gatoi's segments. She ate her share of eggs then. I wondered when she had stopped, and why.
     
    She lay down now against T'Gatoi, and the whole left row of T'Gatoi's limbs closed around her, holding her loosely, but securely. I had always found it comfortable to lie that way but, except for my older sister, no one else in the family liked it. They said it made them feel caged.
     
    T'Gatoi meant to cage my mother. Once she had, she moved her tail slightly, then spoke. "Not enough egg, Lien. You should have taken it when it was passed to you. You need it badly now."
     
    T'Gatoi's tail moved once more, its whip motion so swift I wouldn't have seen it if I hadn't been watching for it. Her sting drew only a single drop of blood from my mother's bare leg.
     
    My mother cried out-probably in surprise. Being stung doesn't hurt. Then she sighed and I could see her body relax. She moved languidly into a more comfortable position within the cage of T'Gatoi's limbs. "Why did you do that?" she asked, sounding half asleep.
     
    "I could not watch you sitting and suffering any longer."
     
    My mother managed to move her shoulders in a small shrug. "Tomorrow," she said.
     
    "Yes. Tomorrow you will resume your suffering--if you must. But for now, just for now, lie here and warm me and let me ease your way a little."
     
    "He's still mine, you know," my mother said suddenly.
     
    "Nothing can buy him from me." Sober, she would not have permitted herself to refer to such things.
     
    "Nothing," T'Gatoi agreed, humoring her.
     
    "Did you think I would sell him for eggs? For long life? My son?"
     
    "Not for anything," T'Gatoi said, stroking my mother's shoulders, toying with her long, graying hair.
     
    I would like to have touched my mother, shared that moment with her. She would take my hand if I touched her now. Freed by the egg and the sting, she would smile and perhaps say things long held in. But tomorrow, she would remember all this as a humiliation. I did not want to be part of a remembered humiliation. Best just to be still and know she loved me under all the duty and pride and pain.
     
    "Xuan Hoa, take off her shoes," T'Gatoi said. "In a little while I'll sting her again and she can sleep."
     
    My older sister obeyed, swaying drunkenly as she stood up. When she had finished, she sat down beside me and took my hand. We had always been a unit, she and I.
     
    My mother put the back of her head against T'Gatoi's underside and tried from that impossible angle to look up into the broad, round face. "You're going to sting me again?"
     
    "Yes, Lien."
     
    "I'll sleep until tomorrow noon."
     
    "Good. You need it. When did you sleep last?"
     
    My mother made a wordless sound of annoyance. "I should have stepped on you when you were small enough," she muttered.
     
    It was an old joke between them. They had grown up together, sort of, though T'Gatoi had not, in my mother's lifetime, been small enough for any Terran to step on. She was nearly three times my mother's present age, yet would still be young when my mother died of age. But T'Gatoi and my mother had met as T'Gatoi was coming into a period of rapid development-a kind of Tlic adolescence. My mother was only a child, but for a while they developed