Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [684]

Cory cried all day, most of the time without making a sound. She’s been crying off and on since Wednesday. Marcus and Dad tried to comfort her. Even I tried, though the way she looked at me…as though I had had something to do with Keith’s death, as though she almost hated me. I keep reaching out to her. I don’t know what else to do. Maybe in time, she’ll be able to forgive me for not being her daughter, for being alive when her son is dead, for being Dad’s daughter by someone else…? I don’t know. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 684

Note

Grief rendered through the survivor’s guilt of the wrong person: the narrator inventories her own uncommittable crimes in a rising tricolon (“for not being her daughter, for being alive when her son is dead, for being Dad’s daughter by someone else”), each clause less forgivable than the last, the unanswerable question mark and repeated “I don’t know” registering that she understands the resentment she can’t defend against.