[Fic - Hunger Games] "A Fraction of the Light that Remains" (2/?)
Since last time we talked, I've gained employment, a summer school assignment on 3 days notice, and an unprecedented amount of stress.
I also got to see Glen Hansard. That was rocking.
Oh, and more fic.
Spoilers through Mockingjay. This takes place after the epilogue.
Disclaimer: I don't own The Hunger Games. I could be witty about not owning it, but that seems awfully clichéd by now.
Beta'd by the lovely yatsuka and dearest BookstoreCat. :)
A Fraction of the Light that Remains
sciathan file
Part 2
Even on Bad Days, there's rarely a lack of people that take care of her. She's almost never alone. Her parents, her brother, and Uncle Haymitch are always there in some way, and sometimes even people from Before arrive to give her glimpses of the world outside of District 12.
Uncle Haymitch is usually dependable in the sense that she usually knows where to find him and that he is usually vaguely coherent (unless a train has just come). As long as he is awake, she can go over to his house when she likes. If he is asleep when she gets there, however, she is supposed to go get Daddy to wake him up. She only has to disobey this rule once before she realizes why (she dodges the knife and both her parents get angry at her. Her father even raises his voice.).
So the next time she tries to wake Uncle Haymitch up, she drags in a big stick from the woods and pokes him with it from a safe distance. He bolts straight up and mutters and curses at her-a strange way to speak to a child-but it's better than the alternative, she supposes. Over time, waking him up becomes a kind of game: When she discovers the beneficial effects of throwing a cold bucket of water at him, she decides she's the winner.
She somehow knows not to ask why he sleeps with a knife. It's not because she isn't curious, but because she can't quite frame what seems like the right question. And if it isn't the right question, she knows that Uncle Haymitch isn't going to be serious at all. She knows this like she knows that if she wrinkles her nose at the stench of his house he will make fun of her. He'll make sure that it is vaguely presentable the next time she comes over, though.
He calls her "kid" until the day she tells him she doesn't like it because she's basically a grown up. In response he grins at her and, despite continued protests, pins the name "sweet cheeks" on her.
In hindsight, she thinks she should have stuck with "kid." That name, however, has already been passed onto her brother, who gets upgraded from "snot-nose."
Her father seems to think the whole thing is very funny, but that's probably because in all of the years they have known one another, he's never had the misfortune to acquire his own Uncle Haymitch nickname (at least not that she knows of…).
Surprisingly, her uncle is also a fine storyteller who, as long as she promises not to say anything her parents, tells her all sorts of stories from Before about her mother and father that no other adults tell her. She learns about how her mother made someone topple into a punch bowl with her bow and arrow and how she used to have a "sinfully ugly" cat that she both loved and threatened to drown. There are also stories about her father: how he can frost himself into anything, how maybe he's so nice because Grandmother Mellark was legendarily not so nice, and how he can make almost anyone believe absolutely anything he says. In Uncle Haymitch's stories, her parents are like the characters from legends in her storybooks. They are the protagonists in comedies, dramas, fantasies, but never tragedies.
(Much later in her life Uncle Haymitch admits-while drunk, of course-that he had wanted her to have an antidote ready for what she would eventually find out about her parents from people outside of her family and in history books.)
The best game they play with Uncle Haymitch though is, hands down, the Goose Game. When her brother is three and she is seven, they meet in the field behind the Village to play for the first time. Before they play, however, Uncle Haymitch swears them both to secrecy, saying she must never, never, never, ever tell her parents what they are about to do. Especially her mother.
Her brother nods, simply and solemnly, while she giggles through her fingers. Neither of them questions the necessity of this and Uncle Haymitch pointedly pretends not to notice her disruption of his solemn oath. Once they have both crossed their hearts, he shows them how to play.
Uncle Haymitch begins by flinging his arms wide, like a ridiculous bird taking off in flight, and yelling at the top of his lungs before charging off into the middle of his small clutch of geese. Just seeing this spectacle makes her understand the purpose of the oath: her parents would die of laughter to see Uncle Haymitch like this. She follows suit as soon as the flock settles down again and the geese take off and honk in terror while Uncle Haymitch is laughing like she has never heard him laugh before. In fact, her brother is so scared of the combined noise of the geese and Uncle Haymitch that he begins to cry. Shushing him doesn't work immediately, so they decide to try distraction instead.
Uncle Haymitch hefts him up onto his shoulder saying "Okay, little man, you're going to be my wing man."
Her brother tearfully puts out his little arm exactly like Haymitch shows him and they all make the last charge of the day together.
It's inevitable, but one day her father hears the ruckus and stands at the end of the field, quietly watching Uncle Haymitch laughing like a mad man and chasing down his geese. Her father manages to stay quiet for about two minutes before he doubles over in laughter. In response, Uncle Haymitch merely changes direction and charges him instead.
Her little brother, oblivious to what is going on, cries out, "You too, Daddy! Play Goose Game!" No one can refuse her brother anything, so Uncle Haymitch grinds to a stop and waves for her father to join them. Suddenly all of them are waiting impatiently for the flock to settle again.
The members of her family return home with feathers sticking up haphazardly in their hair and dirt smeared over clothes and limbs, grinning like idiots. Her father re-enacts Haymitch's charge for her mother's benefit around the kitchen table, all the while making silly facial expressions that aren't even close to the real thing. Her mother laughs all the same until there are tears at the corners of her eyes. It is a very Good Day all around for her family.
Greasy Sae, too, is nominally a part of her family. She totters over, bringing stews and always leaves with a bag of pelts and a dozen or so freshly baked rolls. She is something of a legend in District 12 because in the times Before few people lived to any sort of advanced age in District 12. One day her brother innocently asks her, "Why are you so old?"
Her wrinkled face breaks out into a gap-toothed smile and she whispers "The secret is to eat as many squirrels as possible. And dog when you can get it."
Her brother and her both try not to make faces at the stew she has brought over.
Of course, other people come in and out of her life, too. They aren't really part of her family or her district, but they're people that Uncle Haymitch says are from Before.
Effie Trinket has clothes so bright that they almost blind her the moment Effie gets off the train. But the most interaction that they have is Effie patting her on the head and looking at her as if she doesn't know what to do with her. It's fine by her, as she's not quite certain what to do with Effie either, aside from being on very, very good manners like her mother's told her to be.
Aside from Effie, another old friend of her mother's comes to visit a few times. He looks so much like her mother that, at first, she thinks he's part of their family. But after watching him, she knows he isn't. She can't really figure out where he fits, though. Sometimes when her mother talks to him, she catches that unmistakable high tone in her voice that tells her that her mother is not telling the entire truth. And sometimes, when he doesn't think anyone is watching, her father follows their visitor with a strange look in his eyes.
Out in the woods their visitor tells her that she and her brother should call him Uncle Gale, like they do Uncle Haymitch, but after everything she has observed she just calls him Mr. Hawthorne.
"You don't have to be so formal, you know."
His voice is warm and encouraging. She almost feels bad that she can't explain everything to him, but at the last moment she remembers what her mother always says about manners.
"I don't want to be rude, Mr. Hawthorne. My mother says I should try not to end up like Uncle Haymitch. Manners-wise, at least."
He looks puzzled and she senses there is an adult thing going on somewhere. Avoiding it, she runs back into the meadow, and, as an afterthought, waves for him to follow. If he's running he probably won't talk. The gesture seems to be enough for him because he doesn't bring it up again.
The second time he visits, he brings with him a woman that she recognizes from the pages of her schoolbooks. When she is introduced to this new and scary woman she says, "Hello, Miss Mason" and gets a little distracted by the fact that her mother is obviously rolling her eyes behind the guests. Uncle Haymitch, too.
"Johanna," the woman says suddenly, kneeling down in front of her. "Call me Johanna."
The visitor smiles a not-so-nice smile. Johanna Mason looks her straight in the eyes and she stares back at her with all the intensity she can muster at such a young age. She's never seen an adult act like this woman before so she wonders if her behavior is some District 7 thing she doesn't know about.
"Sorry, Miss Mason," she replies, her tone not altogether apologetic.
Johanna Mason's palm comes to rest of the top of her head and she can see her mother tense up. But then Johanna Mason merely musses her hair and says with what even she can tell is false sweetness, "You may call me Miss Mason if you can beat me in a game of arm wrestling."
She doesn't quite know what to do, but she doesn't really want to back down. But then again, it is pretty unlikely that a eight-year-old is going to win against a full grown adult…Let alone an adult that thinks it is fine to challenge a little kid to an arm wrestling match in the first place. But in the end, it's really the principle of the whole matter.
Her father probably sees that she is seriously considering taking the older woman up on her offer and rescues her. He puts his arm around her shoulder and gently guides her away while telling Johanna Mason, "I think I'm a bit more your speed."
She laughs at him and asks, "How many flour bales do you throw around nowadays?"
His answer is whip-quick and delivered with a smile: "More than you."
Later, as they are showing Mr. Hawthorne and Johanna Mason the new parts of Town (she doesn't want to give in and call her Johanna, so instead she compromises and calls her nothing out loud), she asks her father if this is one of Johanna's Bad Days.
He frowns and scratches his head before saying seriously, "I actually think this is one of her better ones."
And he's always like this, knowing exactly what to say or do. In fact, she thinks that her father is the sunshine of all of their lives. He is bright and cheerful and light and good. When she is young and everyone knows who he is, it doesn't surprise her because why shouldn't everyone know her father? His smile is always ready when someone comes into their home to place an order and his cakes and orange rolls are the best. It's the fact that they all know her mother, who rarely talks to any of them or goes into Town at all that clues her into the fact that something else is going on.
From an early stage she understands that her mother's place is within the family, at its heart, someone they only rarely share. By contrast, her father is the family's connection to the world outside of the Village. He's usually the one to talk to teachers, groups of curious people who sometimes drift outside of their house, and any visitors outside of the small group of old friends from Before.
He is also the one that bakes the birthday cakes. And it is her expert opinion that no one will ever be able to replicate what her father does with sugar, frosting, and fondant.
Her mother's birthday when she is four is the first real memory she has of baking with her father. Then, she is still an only child (but her mother's rounded belly and an electric tension that runs through their house as the months go by announces a swift end to her right to use that label), and she neither knows nor cares that her family differs from anyone else's in District 12.
It turns out, however, that she is not what anyone would call a "natural" at baking. Or maybe it is just because she is four and has the unrealistic expectation that she will immediately be a baker like her father. ("Practice" he tells her in a secretive whisper, "You'll get there.") Her father just laughs and likes to say that she starts by dropping the flour bag and coating herself in it. Then he tells her how she stands on her tiptoes on a chair and dumps the flour and sugar into a bowl, raising a small snowstorm in their kitchen. A cloud hits her face and she ends up in a coughing fit.
When all the ingredients make their haphazard way into the bowl, she is so thickly coated with flour that her dark hair is hidden under a layer of white. The way she remembers it, her mother leans against the doorframe and is laughing at the two of them.
"You're not supposed to be here!" she legendarily tells her. "It's your birthday so it's a surprise!"
Her mother pats her on the head, raising white clouds, "And you're not supposed to be blonde."
She picks up one of her braids and looks at it questioningly, looking not-so-furtively over at her father's hair to see if her mother is right. Probably because his hair has also received the same dusting, she finds that the color matches.
"Nothing wrong with blondes," her father says from where he is leaning over the bowl, fixing her shoddy attempt at baking. "Now she just looks more like me."
(This the moment he captures later in the Plant Book, a small sketch on a page filled with her face: she has a suspicious look on her face, glaring at one long braid as her mother's smile glows in the background. It becomes a record of many, many Good Days.)
She doesn't do much of the frosting on her first cake, only a few inexpert swipes between layers. She sits on her father's lap with his big inverted frosting knife clasped unsteadily in her shaky hands. One of her father's rough, strong hands is wrapped securely around her own, the other expertly turning the cake on its plate. Her father's handmade, cream-colored frosting-rich and smooth-coats the cake evenly under her carefully guided movements.
Then, with her still on his lap, he begins to do the real work. He pipes on branches and leaves and yellow daisies and dandelions and the woods that extend beyond the old District boundaries; woods her mother is not supposed to go to until her sibling is born. Her father, of course, knows this like he knows everything else about her mother and so gives the woods to her for her birthday. She gets to squeeze the pastry bag once, to help, but the green frosting comes out in an ugly glop and her father just smiles and makes it beautiful, because that is what he does.
It's probably the fact that he turns all the messes into something better that his Bad Days are so much worse. It's like the sun has gone away.
In her early life she only sees her father like this once or twice, but she is used to listening and ever after can tell by silences and tones what goes on in her house. This day, she hears nothing and there is nothing waiting for breakfast in the morning. Even though her mother's absence is announced by her hunting jacket's vacant hook, her father is not where he is supposed to be. She waits for a few minutes, knowing that she should not go to school without one of her parents with her. But neither one seems to be there at all. In fact, the door to their room is closed and the only noise that she hears beyond it is a small shuffling.
She rationalizes that her father is just not up. He is sleeping in like Uncle Haymitch does, so she has to go wake him.
Only he's not sleeping. He's curled on the bed and his fists are balled in his eyes and suddenly she is scared and doesn't know why because this is her daddy who bakes the best cakes and orange rolls and smiles.
She calls him softly and asks him if he is not feeling well and, after a moment, he looks up. The look in his eyes is the thing she can't forget, even if from then on her parents are very careful not to let her seem him like this. His stare is cloudy and vacant and, worst of all, he stares at her like he has no idea who she is.
Her father is not her father right now. He's gone. That's the only way she can explain it.
"Katniss?"
He is looking at her, but she can only shake her head because that's her mother's name. It's not her he's asking for. Suddenly, she feels a real flutter of fear.
The next thing she knows is that her mother is picking her up and carrying her down the stairs to the sitting room. Her mother is shushing her and smoothing out her hair and only dimly does she realize that they are both crying. Her mother is murmuring "He's sick, sweetie, and I know you're scared, but you need to sit here for a moment while I go make him better."
She listens then and from upstairs hears the magic incantation of "Real or not real" repeated many times for the first time. She understands nothing of it for many years. She simply takes from the experience a certain terrible knowledge of an expression that lurks just behind her father's eyes and the clear conviction that her parents need each other very, very much.
Her mother, she knows now from experience, needs her and her brother almost as much as she needs her father.
Her mother has never been as easy to understand as her father is and many times she is prone to worrying and hard to coax a smile from. Much of her mother's joy is private, so she has to work for her songs and smiles, which is almost never the case with her father.
However, never for one day in her life has she ever doubted her mother's love for her.
Her mother's Bad Days take a much different form than her father's and are much more predictable. Either her mother wants to be alone in the woods-her hunting jacket and her bow and arrow her only companions-or she needs someone around her. In her sight. Or, even better, clasping her hand or curled up next to her.
Certain days of the year her mother is always like this. And as the years pass, she's smart enough to notice that some of the Bad Days are the same day every year. When she asks her father about one of them, he says very simply, "Your Aunt Prim died today." However, the explanation never seems enough to explain her mother's darkness.
(Years later, on one of Uncle Haymitch's Bad Days when he has an abundance of alcohol and no dearth of memories, she finally learns that story. She compounds it by reading about the day the Capitol fell in a book that she keeps hidden under her bed. It's there she learns the phrase "pyrrhic victory," even though for years she thinks it has to do with fire and academic descriptions of human torches. That night she cries for an aunt she has never known and cries for what her mother must always know.).
One of the lessons she learns is that she is absolutely not allowed to disappear like other kids can. It is one of the worst things she can do to her mother. She only goes to the meadow one day, but doesn't tell either of her parents or Uncle Haymitch. She just wants to feel the sunshine and the grass.
Two hours later, the quiet is rent by her mother screaming her name. The whole of the Town talks about it for the next week when she thinks she's not listening: how Katniss Everdeen ran frantically screaming after her daughter through the whole of the district. Her mother holds her for five whole minutes when she finds her, until she thinks she might not be able to breathe because her grip is so tight.
Later, her father stretches out his hands and explains in shorthand way: "We're all she has."
She's heard about a grandmother somewhere-another Everdeen-who is mostly a faint voice on the phone from another time. She vaguely remembers meeting her once, but she doesn't ask and her father doesn't say anything.
She sees the worry in her father's eyes, too, and he doesn't have to tell her that they're all he has, as well. (She does know about the bombing, knows no one from the original Town survived, and she knows her father is from the Town. It doesn't take much to understand why there are no Mellarks besides her little family).
But some days with her family are golden. There's no other way of describing them. On these mornings her father loads up freshly baked rolls and jam-orange for her, cheese buns for her mother, berry muffins for him and her brother-and they make a slow trek out past the old district boundary fence, out past the meadow, to a lake deep in the middle of the forest.
They arrive there tired and sweaty. Her brother swings happily between her parents and once, because she is just so happy to be there, she jumps into the lake still wearing her sundress. It pools around her, a burst of yellow in the cool water. Her mother attempts to scold her for about thirty seconds, but then they all give way to a storm of laughter.
They eat and swim and talk and, best of all, her mother sings. Her mother sings and the whole forest falls silent so it can listen to her. She can feel her mother's love in every word, feels the melody swirl around them and bind their family together. On these days her mother tells them all about her grandfather, about Aunt Prim and her goat, about a girl who can leap through the tree tops like a bird, a man with sea green eyes who tied knots just like this…
And on these days it is okay to remember. Okay to speak. Okay to share. And everything shines.
Because not all her family's days are Bad Days. The truth is that the Good Days are far better than most people's good days because the adults in her life realize so much more acutely what they mean and how much they really do matter. She learns later that most of the adults in her life have, at multiple times, seen their lives as hourglasses and had to count the grains of sand that flow out until there is nothing but a handful left.
And later she will know that they have sacrificed so much to make sure that all of the simple joys in her life are never juxtaposed against a gaping emptiness where good things used to be.
Fin, Part 2
Okay life, stop going nuts on me.
I also got to see Glen Hansard. That was rocking.
Oh, and more fic.
Spoilers through Mockingjay. This takes place after the epilogue.
Disclaimer: I don't own The Hunger Games. I could be witty about not owning it, but that seems awfully clichéd by now.
Beta'd by the lovely yatsuka and dearest BookstoreCat. :)
A Fraction of the Light that Remains
sciathan file
Part 2
Even on Bad Days, there's rarely a lack of people that take care of her. She's almost never alone. Her parents, her brother, and Uncle Haymitch are always there in some way, and sometimes even people from Before arrive to give her glimpses of the world outside of District 12.
Uncle Haymitch is usually dependable in the sense that she usually knows where to find him and that he is usually vaguely coherent (unless a train has just come). As long as he is awake, she can go over to his house when she likes. If he is asleep when she gets there, however, she is supposed to go get Daddy to wake him up. She only has to disobey this rule once before she realizes why (she dodges the knife and both her parents get angry at her. Her father even raises his voice.).
So the next time she tries to wake Uncle Haymitch up, she drags in a big stick from the woods and pokes him with it from a safe distance. He bolts straight up and mutters and curses at her-a strange way to speak to a child-but it's better than the alternative, she supposes. Over time, waking him up becomes a kind of game: When she discovers the beneficial effects of throwing a cold bucket of water at him, she decides she's the winner.
She somehow knows not to ask why he sleeps with a knife. It's not because she isn't curious, but because she can't quite frame what seems like the right question. And if it isn't the right question, she knows that Uncle Haymitch isn't going to be serious at all. She knows this like she knows that if she wrinkles her nose at the stench of his house he will make fun of her. He'll make sure that it is vaguely presentable the next time she comes over, though.
He calls her "kid" until the day she tells him she doesn't like it because she's basically a grown up. In response he grins at her and, despite continued protests, pins the name "sweet cheeks" on her.
In hindsight, she thinks she should have stuck with "kid." That name, however, has already been passed onto her brother, who gets upgraded from "snot-nose."
Her father seems to think the whole thing is very funny, but that's probably because in all of the years they have known one another, he's never had the misfortune to acquire his own Uncle Haymitch nickname (at least not that she knows of…).
Surprisingly, her uncle is also a fine storyteller who, as long as she promises not to say anything her parents, tells her all sorts of stories from Before about her mother and father that no other adults tell her. She learns about how her mother made someone topple into a punch bowl with her bow and arrow and how she used to have a "sinfully ugly" cat that she both loved and threatened to drown. There are also stories about her father: how he can frost himself into anything, how maybe he's so nice because Grandmother Mellark was legendarily not so nice, and how he can make almost anyone believe absolutely anything he says. In Uncle Haymitch's stories, her parents are like the characters from legends in her storybooks. They are the protagonists in comedies, dramas, fantasies, but never tragedies.
(Much later in her life Uncle Haymitch admits-while drunk, of course-that he had wanted her to have an antidote ready for what she would eventually find out about her parents from people outside of her family and in history books.)
The best game they play with Uncle Haymitch though is, hands down, the Goose Game. When her brother is three and she is seven, they meet in the field behind the Village to play for the first time. Before they play, however, Uncle Haymitch swears them both to secrecy, saying she must never, never, never, ever tell her parents what they are about to do. Especially her mother.
Her brother nods, simply and solemnly, while she giggles through her fingers. Neither of them questions the necessity of this and Uncle Haymitch pointedly pretends not to notice her disruption of his solemn oath. Once they have both crossed their hearts, he shows them how to play.
Uncle Haymitch begins by flinging his arms wide, like a ridiculous bird taking off in flight, and yelling at the top of his lungs before charging off into the middle of his small clutch of geese. Just seeing this spectacle makes her understand the purpose of the oath: her parents would die of laughter to see Uncle Haymitch like this. She follows suit as soon as the flock settles down again and the geese take off and honk in terror while Uncle Haymitch is laughing like she has never heard him laugh before. In fact, her brother is so scared of the combined noise of the geese and Uncle Haymitch that he begins to cry. Shushing him doesn't work immediately, so they decide to try distraction instead.
Uncle Haymitch hefts him up onto his shoulder saying "Okay, little man, you're going to be my wing man."
Her brother tearfully puts out his little arm exactly like Haymitch shows him and they all make the last charge of the day together.
It's inevitable, but one day her father hears the ruckus and stands at the end of the field, quietly watching Uncle Haymitch laughing like a mad man and chasing down his geese. Her father manages to stay quiet for about two minutes before he doubles over in laughter. In response, Uncle Haymitch merely changes direction and charges him instead.
Her little brother, oblivious to what is going on, cries out, "You too, Daddy! Play Goose Game!" No one can refuse her brother anything, so Uncle Haymitch grinds to a stop and waves for her father to join them. Suddenly all of them are waiting impatiently for the flock to settle again.
The members of her family return home with feathers sticking up haphazardly in their hair and dirt smeared over clothes and limbs, grinning like idiots. Her father re-enacts Haymitch's charge for her mother's benefit around the kitchen table, all the while making silly facial expressions that aren't even close to the real thing. Her mother laughs all the same until there are tears at the corners of her eyes. It is a very Good Day all around for her family.
Greasy Sae, too, is nominally a part of her family. She totters over, bringing stews and always leaves with a bag of pelts and a dozen or so freshly baked rolls. She is something of a legend in District 12 because in the times Before few people lived to any sort of advanced age in District 12. One day her brother innocently asks her, "Why are you so old?"
Her wrinkled face breaks out into a gap-toothed smile and she whispers "The secret is to eat as many squirrels as possible. And dog when you can get it."
Her brother and her both try not to make faces at the stew she has brought over.
Of course, other people come in and out of her life, too. They aren't really part of her family or her district, but they're people that Uncle Haymitch says are from Before.
Effie Trinket has clothes so bright that they almost blind her the moment Effie gets off the train. But the most interaction that they have is Effie patting her on the head and looking at her as if she doesn't know what to do with her. It's fine by her, as she's not quite certain what to do with Effie either, aside from being on very, very good manners like her mother's told her to be.
Aside from Effie, another old friend of her mother's comes to visit a few times. He looks so much like her mother that, at first, she thinks he's part of their family. But after watching him, she knows he isn't. She can't really figure out where he fits, though. Sometimes when her mother talks to him, she catches that unmistakable high tone in her voice that tells her that her mother is not telling the entire truth. And sometimes, when he doesn't think anyone is watching, her father follows their visitor with a strange look in his eyes.
Out in the woods their visitor tells her that she and her brother should call him Uncle Gale, like they do Uncle Haymitch, but after everything she has observed she just calls him Mr. Hawthorne.
"You don't have to be so formal, you know."
His voice is warm and encouraging. She almost feels bad that she can't explain everything to him, but at the last moment she remembers what her mother always says about manners.
"I don't want to be rude, Mr. Hawthorne. My mother says I should try not to end up like Uncle Haymitch. Manners-wise, at least."
He looks puzzled and she senses there is an adult thing going on somewhere. Avoiding it, she runs back into the meadow, and, as an afterthought, waves for him to follow. If he's running he probably won't talk. The gesture seems to be enough for him because he doesn't bring it up again.
The second time he visits, he brings with him a woman that she recognizes from the pages of her schoolbooks. When she is introduced to this new and scary woman she says, "Hello, Miss Mason" and gets a little distracted by the fact that her mother is obviously rolling her eyes behind the guests. Uncle Haymitch, too.
"Johanna," the woman says suddenly, kneeling down in front of her. "Call me Johanna."
The visitor smiles a not-so-nice smile. Johanna Mason looks her straight in the eyes and she stares back at her with all the intensity she can muster at such a young age. She's never seen an adult act like this woman before so she wonders if her behavior is some District 7 thing she doesn't know about.
"Sorry, Miss Mason," she replies, her tone not altogether apologetic.
Johanna Mason's palm comes to rest of the top of her head and she can see her mother tense up. But then Johanna Mason merely musses her hair and says with what even she can tell is false sweetness, "You may call me Miss Mason if you can beat me in a game of arm wrestling."
She doesn't quite know what to do, but she doesn't really want to back down. But then again, it is pretty unlikely that a eight-year-old is going to win against a full grown adult…Let alone an adult that thinks it is fine to challenge a little kid to an arm wrestling match in the first place. But in the end, it's really the principle of the whole matter.
Her father probably sees that she is seriously considering taking the older woman up on her offer and rescues her. He puts his arm around her shoulder and gently guides her away while telling Johanna Mason, "I think I'm a bit more your speed."
She laughs at him and asks, "How many flour bales do you throw around nowadays?"
His answer is whip-quick and delivered with a smile: "More than you."
Later, as they are showing Mr. Hawthorne and Johanna Mason the new parts of Town (she doesn't want to give in and call her Johanna, so instead she compromises and calls her nothing out loud), she asks her father if this is one of Johanna's Bad Days.
He frowns and scratches his head before saying seriously, "I actually think this is one of her better ones."
And he's always like this, knowing exactly what to say or do. In fact, she thinks that her father is the sunshine of all of their lives. He is bright and cheerful and light and good. When she is young and everyone knows who he is, it doesn't surprise her because why shouldn't everyone know her father? His smile is always ready when someone comes into their home to place an order and his cakes and orange rolls are the best. It's the fact that they all know her mother, who rarely talks to any of them or goes into Town at all that clues her into the fact that something else is going on.
From an early stage she understands that her mother's place is within the family, at its heart, someone they only rarely share. By contrast, her father is the family's connection to the world outside of the Village. He's usually the one to talk to teachers, groups of curious people who sometimes drift outside of their house, and any visitors outside of the small group of old friends from Before.
He is also the one that bakes the birthday cakes. And it is her expert opinion that no one will ever be able to replicate what her father does with sugar, frosting, and fondant.
Her mother's birthday when she is four is the first real memory she has of baking with her father. Then, she is still an only child (but her mother's rounded belly and an electric tension that runs through their house as the months go by announces a swift end to her right to use that label), and she neither knows nor cares that her family differs from anyone else's in District 12.
It turns out, however, that she is not what anyone would call a "natural" at baking. Or maybe it is just because she is four and has the unrealistic expectation that she will immediately be a baker like her father. ("Practice" he tells her in a secretive whisper, "You'll get there.") Her father just laughs and likes to say that she starts by dropping the flour bag and coating herself in it. Then he tells her how she stands on her tiptoes on a chair and dumps the flour and sugar into a bowl, raising a small snowstorm in their kitchen. A cloud hits her face and she ends up in a coughing fit.
When all the ingredients make their haphazard way into the bowl, she is so thickly coated with flour that her dark hair is hidden under a layer of white. The way she remembers it, her mother leans against the doorframe and is laughing at the two of them.
"You're not supposed to be here!" she legendarily tells her. "It's your birthday so it's a surprise!"
Her mother pats her on the head, raising white clouds, "And you're not supposed to be blonde."
She picks up one of her braids and looks at it questioningly, looking not-so-furtively over at her father's hair to see if her mother is right. Probably because his hair has also received the same dusting, she finds that the color matches.
"Nothing wrong with blondes," her father says from where he is leaning over the bowl, fixing her shoddy attempt at baking. "Now she just looks more like me."
(This the moment he captures later in the Plant Book, a small sketch on a page filled with her face: she has a suspicious look on her face, glaring at one long braid as her mother's smile glows in the background. It becomes a record of many, many Good Days.)
She doesn't do much of the frosting on her first cake, only a few inexpert swipes between layers. She sits on her father's lap with his big inverted frosting knife clasped unsteadily in her shaky hands. One of her father's rough, strong hands is wrapped securely around her own, the other expertly turning the cake on its plate. Her father's handmade, cream-colored frosting-rich and smooth-coats the cake evenly under her carefully guided movements.
Then, with her still on his lap, he begins to do the real work. He pipes on branches and leaves and yellow daisies and dandelions and the woods that extend beyond the old District boundaries; woods her mother is not supposed to go to until her sibling is born. Her father, of course, knows this like he knows everything else about her mother and so gives the woods to her for her birthday. She gets to squeeze the pastry bag once, to help, but the green frosting comes out in an ugly glop and her father just smiles and makes it beautiful, because that is what he does.
It's probably the fact that he turns all the messes into something better that his Bad Days are so much worse. It's like the sun has gone away.
In her early life she only sees her father like this once or twice, but she is used to listening and ever after can tell by silences and tones what goes on in her house. This day, she hears nothing and there is nothing waiting for breakfast in the morning. Even though her mother's absence is announced by her hunting jacket's vacant hook, her father is not where he is supposed to be. She waits for a few minutes, knowing that she should not go to school without one of her parents with her. But neither one seems to be there at all. In fact, the door to their room is closed and the only noise that she hears beyond it is a small shuffling.
She rationalizes that her father is just not up. He is sleeping in like Uncle Haymitch does, so she has to go wake him.
Only he's not sleeping. He's curled on the bed and his fists are balled in his eyes and suddenly she is scared and doesn't know why because this is her daddy who bakes the best cakes and orange rolls and smiles.
She calls him softly and asks him if he is not feeling well and, after a moment, he looks up. The look in his eyes is the thing she can't forget, even if from then on her parents are very careful not to let her seem him like this. His stare is cloudy and vacant and, worst of all, he stares at her like he has no idea who she is.
Her father is not her father right now. He's gone. That's the only way she can explain it.
"Katniss?"
He is looking at her, but she can only shake her head because that's her mother's name. It's not her he's asking for. Suddenly, she feels a real flutter of fear.
The next thing she knows is that her mother is picking her up and carrying her down the stairs to the sitting room. Her mother is shushing her and smoothing out her hair and only dimly does she realize that they are both crying. Her mother is murmuring "He's sick, sweetie, and I know you're scared, but you need to sit here for a moment while I go make him better."
She listens then and from upstairs hears the magic incantation of "Real or not real" repeated many times for the first time. She understands nothing of it for many years. She simply takes from the experience a certain terrible knowledge of an expression that lurks just behind her father's eyes and the clear conviction that her parents need each other very, very much.
Her mother, she knows now from experience, needs her and her brother almost as much as she needs her father.
Her mother has never been as easy to understand as her father is and many times she is prone to worrying and hard to coax a smile from. Much of her mother's joy is private, so she has to work for her songs and smiles, which is almost never the case with her father.
However, never for one day in her life has she ever doubted her mother's love for her.
Her mother's Bad Days take a much different form than her father's and are much more predictable. Either her mother wants to be alone in the woods-her hunting jacket and her bow and arrow her only companions-or she needs someone around her. In her sight. Or, even better, clasping her hand or curled up next to her.
Certain days of the year her mother is always like this. And as the years pass, she's smart enough to notice that some of the Bad Days are the same day every year. When she asks her father about one of them, he says very simply, "Your Aunt Prim died today." However, the explanation never seems enough to explain her mother's darkness.
(Years later, on one of Uncle Haymitch's Bad Days when he has an abundance of alcohol and no dearth of memories, she finally learns that story. She compounds it by reading about the day the Capitol fell in a book that she keeps hidden under her bed. It's there she learns the phrase "pyrrhic victory," even though for years she thinks it has to do with fire and academic descriptions of human torches. That night she cries for an aunt she has never known and cries for what her mother must always know.).
One of the lessons she learns is that she is absolutely not allowed to disappear like other kids can. It is one of the worst things she can do to her mother. She only goes to the meadow one day, but doesn't tell either of her parents or Uncle Haymitch. She just wants to feel the sunshine and the grass.
Two hours later, the quiet is rent by her mother screaming her name. The whole of the Town talks about it for the next week when she thinks she's not listening: how Katniss Everdeen ran frantically screaming after her daughter through the whole of the district. Her mother holds her for five whole minutes when she finds her, until she thinks she might not be able to breathe because her grip is so tight.
Later, her father stretches out his hands and explains in shorthand way: "We're all she has."
She's heard about a grandmother somewhere-another Everdeen-who is mostly a faint voice on the phone from another time. She vaguely remembers meeting her once, but she doesn't ask and her father doesn't say anything.
She sees the worry in her father's eyes, too, and he doesn't have to tell her that they're all he has, as well. (She does know about the bombing, knows no one from the original Town survived, and she knows her father is from the Town. It doesn't take much to understand why there are no Mellarks besides her little family).
But some days with her family are golden. There's no other way of describing them. On these mornings her father loads up freshly baked rolls and jam-orange for her, cheese buns for her mother, berry muffins for him and her brother-and they make a slow trek out past the old district boundary fence, out past the meadow, to a lake deep in the middle of the forest.
They arrive there tired and sweaty. Her brother swings happily between her parents and once, because she is just so happy to be there, she jumps into the lake still wearing her sundress. It pools around her, a burst of yellow in the cool water. Her mother attempts to scold her for about thirty seconds, but then they all give way to a storm of laughter.
They eat and swim and talk and, best of all, her mother sings. Her mother sings and the whole forest falls silent so it can listen to her. She can feel her mother's love in every word, feels the melody swirl around them and bind their family together. On these days her mother tells them all about her grandfather, about Aunt Prim and her goat, about a girl who can leap through the tree tops like a bird, a man with sea green eyes who tied knots just like this…
And on these days it is okay to remember. Okay to speak. Okay to share. And everything shines.
Because not all her family's days are Bad Days. The truth is that the Good Days are far better than most people's good days because the adults in her life realize so much more acutely what they mean and how much they really do matter. She learns later that most of the adults in her life have, at multiple times, seen their lives as hourglasses and had to count the grains of sand that flow out until there is nothing but a handful left.
And later she will know that they have sacrificed so much to make sure that all of the simple joys in her life are never juxtaposed against a gaping emptiness where good things used to be.
Fin, Part 2
Okay life, stop going nuts on me.