Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [407]

People go to bed soon after dark to save electricity, but between dinner and darkness they spend time on their porches or in their yards where it isn’t so hot. Some listen to their radio on front or back porches. Now and then people get together to play music, sing, play board games, talk, or get out on the paved part of the street for volleyball, touch football, basketball, or tennis. People used to play baseball, but we just can’t afford what that costs in windows. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 407

Note

The worldbuilding is smuggled into an inventory of ordinary leisure. The list builds a warm, communal dusk — porches, radios, board games, street sports — and then the baseball sentence retroactively darkens it: what keeps them off the diamond is the price of broken glass, so poverty and violence are measured in units of windows. The “used to” tense turns one nostalgic detail into a whole history of reduced life.