Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [346]

But, oh, Phillida Garfield was so concerned for me, so worried. And she didn’t like my scaring Joanne. Was Joanne scared? Not scared enough to use her brain, it seems. Joanne always seemed so sensible. Did she think getting me into trouble would make the danger go away? No, that’s not it. This is just more denial: A dumb little game of “If we don’t talk about bad things, maybe they won’t happen.” Idiot! I’ll never be able to tell her anything important again. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 346

Note

Butler renders the betrayed narrator’s internal argument as a rapid-fire interrogation — a run of rhetorical questions each knocked down or amended by the next, ending in self-correction (‘No, that’s not it’). The paragraph’s anger is earned by its rhythm: it speeds up, then diagnoses the friend in a single cold aphorism before the exclamation snaps back to teenage fury.