Blood Test by Kellerman, Jonathan

greenhouse and read your father’s notebooks.” She

gave a start. It was the first she!d heard of the

journals. But she suppressed the surprise and pretended

to ignore me.

I continued to talk softly. “I know what you’ve

been through. It star, ted after the death of the

cherimoyas. He was probably Unbalanced all along,

but-failure and helplessness drove him over the

edge. He tried to get back in control by playing

God. By creating his own world.”

BLOOD TEST 301

She stiffened, withdrew from the bo, put his .

head down on the pillow tenderly, and walked out

of the room. I followed her into the kitchen, keeping

an eye on the knife in the sink. Stretching, she

took a bottle of Southern Comfort from a high cupboard

shelf, poured a coffee cup half ‘full, and,

leaning rangily against the counter, swallowed. Unaccustomed

to hard drinking, she grimaced and went

into a paroxysm of oughing as it hit bottom.

I patted her back and eased her to a chair. She

took the bottle with her. I sat opposite her, waited

until she’d stopped hacking to continue.

“It started out as a series of Experiments. Weird

stuff using inbreeding and complex grafts. And that’s

all it was for a while–weird. Nothing criminal

happened until he noticed you’d grown up.”

She filled the cup again, threw her head back,

and tossed the liquor down her throat, a caricature

of toughness.

Once upon a time she’d been anything but tough.

A pretty little red-haired girl, Maimon had recalled,

smiling and friendly. The problems hadn’t started

until she was twelve years old or so. He hadn’t

known why.

But I did.

She’d completed puberty three months before her

twelfth birthday. Swope had recorded the day he’d

discovered it: (“Eureka! Annona has blossomed.

She lacks intellectual depth, but what physical perfection!

First rate stock…”).

He’d been fascinated with. the transformation of

her body, describing it in botanic terms. And as he

observed her development, a hideous plan had taken

shape in the ‘wreckage of his mind.

One part of him was still organized, disciplined.

302

Jonathan Kellerman

As analytical as Me. ngele. The seduction was Undertaken

with the precision of a scienfific experi-

ment.

The first step was dehumanization of the victim.

In order to justify the violation, he reclassified her:

the-girl was no longer his daughter, or even a per°

son. Merely a specimen of a new exotic Species.

Annona zingiber. The ginger annona. A pistil to be

pollinated.

Next came semantic distortion of the outrage itself:

the daily excursions into the forest behind the

greenhouse weren’t incest, simply a new, intriguing

project. The ultimate investigation of inbreeding.

He’d wait eagerly each day for her return from

school to take her by the hand, and lead her into

darkness. Then the spreading of the blanket on

ground softed by. pine needles, casual dismissal

of her protests. There had been a full half yearof

rehearsal–an intensive seminar in fellatio–then

finally, entry into the young body, the spilling of

seed on the ground.

Evenings were devoted to the recording of ‘data:

climbing into the attic, he’d log each union in his

notebook, sparing no details. Just like any other

research.

According to the journals, he’d kept his wife informed

about the progress of the experiments. Initially,

she’d offered faint protest, then stood by,

passively acquiescent. Follmeing orders.

Impregnating the girl hadn’t been an accident.

On the con .txary, it had been Swope’s ultimate goal,

calibrated and calculated. He’d been patient and

methodical, waiting until she was a bit older–fourteen–to

fertilize her so that the health of the

fetus Wou/d be optimized. Charting her menstrual

BLOOD TEST 30-3

cycle pinpoint ovulation. Refraining from intercourse

for several days to increase the sperm count

· It had taken on the first try. He’d rejoiced at the

cessation of her menses, the swe]llng of her belly. A

new cu/t/var had been created.

I told her what I knew, wording it gently and

hoping the empathy came through. She listened

with a blank look on her face, drank Southern Comfort

until her eyelids drooped.

“He victimized you, Nona. Used you and discarded

you when it was over,”

Her head gave an almost imperceptible nod.

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