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.”
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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
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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.