Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [539]

I cleaned up the blood so no one would slip in it or track it around. Then I fixed dinner, ate, fed the three younger boys, and put the rest aside for Dad, Cory, and Keith. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 539

Note

The flatness of the verbs — cleaned, fixed, ate, fed, put aside — is the point: Lauren processes a beating into housework with forensic calm, and ‘so no one would slip in it or track it around’ reduces a family’s blood to a household hazard. The paragraph’s only emotion is logistical, which makes the earlier admission (‘it was hard for me to endure sharing it’) do all the feeling.