Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -… [979]

Bodies passed under my eyes: Jeremy Baiter, one of Robin’s brothers, Philip Moss, George Hsu, his wife and his oldest son, Juana Montoya, Rubin Quintanilla, Lidia Cruz… Lidia was only eight years old. She had been raped, too. — , Octavia E. Butler - Earthseed, Book 1 -…, 979

Note

A list that reads like a ledger and refuses to be one: family units are compressed into a phrase (‘his wife and his oldest son’), the ellipsis marks where the naming gives out, and then the whole roll-call swerves into a single specific fact about the last name. The child is not the last item in a list; she is what the list was for. Restraint here does more than any adjective.