Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [474]

I found an old canteen and a plastic bottle both for water, and I resolved to keep them clean and full. I packed matches, a full change of clothing, including shoes in case I have to get up at night and run, comb, soap, toothbrush and toothpaste, tampons, toilet paper, bandages, pins, needles and thread, alcohol, aspirin, a couple of spoons and forks, a can opener, my pocket knife, packets of acorn flour, dried fruit, roasted nuts and edible seeds, dried milk, a little sugar and salt, my survival notes, several plastic storage bags, large and small, a lot of plantable raw seed, my journal, my Earthseed notebook, and lengths of clothesline. I stowed all this in a pair of old pillow cases, one inside the other for strength. I rolled the pillowcases into a blanket pack and tied it with some of the clothesline so that I could grab it and run without losing things, but I made it easy to open at the top so that I could get my journal in and out, change the water to keep it fresh, and less often, change the food and check on the seed. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 474

Note

The catalogue does the work here: the list’s rhythm is deliberately unliterary — an inventory, not a lyric — and the items narrate Lauren’s whole world (tampons beside acorn flour, plantable seed beside a pocket knife) without a single adjective of dread. The pack’s construction details (pillowcase inside pillowcase, tied but openable) make her methodical competence a character trait, and the closing worry about ‘a load of bugs and worms’ punctures the solemnity just enough to sound like a real fifteen-year-old planning for her own death.