Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [742]

We had gotten together to pick a few early lemons and navel oranges and some persimmons, almost ripe and brilliant orange. We picked at my house, and then at hers, enjoying the work. The weather was cool. It was good to be outside. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 742

Note

An almost pastoral paragraph dropped into a conversation about fleeing a dying neighborhood. The list of fruit is precise and unglamorous — early lemons, navel oranges, persimmons ‘almost ripe and brilliant orange’ — and the color word does the emotional work the narrator won’t state. The closings (‘The weather was cool. It was good to be outside.’) are deliberately flat, as if the narrator is holding the moment still on purpose.