Kisaan Til, District 11 [Edited/Done]
Aug 24, 2012 20:37:57 GMT -5
Post by cyrus on Aug 24, 2012 20:37:57 GMT -5
[/color]Kisaan Til::17::District 11::“It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live an imitation of somebody else's life with perfection.”
::Appearance::
My mother always said that I never wanted to wait to grow. I sprouted like a beanstalk, pressing upward toward the sky. Hands, rough with callous, and arms strong from the fields, I'm a product of my district if there ever was one. Only when I started to become man did I fill out—nearly six feet now, with some heft to my bones—and the girls would give me sideways glances in the fields. I don’t think I’m unhandsome, but I have too much else to focus on to be concerned by how I look. There’s never been enough to go around to even pay attention what I was wearing, either. But I like colors—I like bright, shiny things that I can pin to my drab clothes to add something special. I need something that will lighten up what I am wearing and maybe draw a few more eyes toward me. My skin turn a dark brown in the sun, and a bright red or orange would shine against me.
My hair curls no matter what I do. Sometimes during the summer, when the nights are hot and the air humid, the curls pull tight around my head, and my little brother will giggle and play with it to annoy me. I’ve come close to shaving it off a few times rather than having to take care of it, but Chana stops me each time, telling me that I blend in enough with everyone in the district for me to get rid of something so glorious. I listen to Chana—she’s likely the most beautiful girl in the district—and so I leave my curly hair in a ragged mess atop my head. A few stray strands of hair will dot my face when I haven’t shaven. It grows in fast now, and sometimes I don’t pay attention to keeping it kempt.
I suppose that there have been moments when I look at Chana and wonder if maybe I too should take more care of myself. It’s hard enough to get them to talk to me and to understand. I hide behind the drabness and my focus on my brother and sisters, sometimes. And yet I look to the colors that she wears, to the way she wraps herself up and it brings a smile to my face. Even with my plain brown eyes and squat nose, she says that the girls will whisper little things into my ears when I'm not looking, since I can't hear it. It would be nice to feel handsome, too.
::Personality::
Oh, you protect them. You make them strong. You are my little one, you do all that I cannot do. He says it to me as though it’s something I should be, not something that was foisted upon me. My father leaves me with the burden to take care of the others and I do it—not because I have other choices—but I take it and I am strong for them. I give up what I have of my childhood, something that was in its own twilight, anyway. But I give it up because I know that I have a duty to them, more than to myself, so that we all may grow up strong and happy.
It makes me long for solitary spaces. I am at my most peaceful in the fields when I’m picking corn or threshing wheat out of the field. I can be lost to my thoughts and no one will bother me. Hours upon hours can be spent thinking or not thinking. No worries, only thoughts. It is amazing in the silence—if one could call it that—how much one can be lost in his own mind. I see it as a chance of escape, even when my body is tired and the heat burning down on my back, to get away from all that weighs upon me.
Chana tells me that I cannot hide… that all of this must one day change and that I will not always be there for them. They have to be self-reliant and independent; they have to be on their own. But I coddle them and let them be children because they must have that chance. So few of us get to play and run around, to be happy for just a little while. I just want them to be happy even when things are so difficult. It is more important to me that they are hidden from what is really happening, from the terrors and what is unfair in this world, than for them to know the truth. The truth can come in time, but now, let them be free.
::History::
Oh, settle now. I whisper to my little brother Achar, just shy of eight. My words are soft but my voice is firm. He can understand me, he’s heard my voice and the way that I speak, there is little confusion now. I stand tall above him at the stove, preparing some mixture of careb, onion, juices, and other vittles we’ve managed to scrape together. At nearly six feet I have grown tall and firm, like the oak trees that dot along the paths to the fields. He says something but I do not see it[/color] and continue to stir a long tong into the mixture. Two sisters sit at the table, Haldi and Kaddu, playing a game with their hands. They are twelve and thirteen, and still young. Both unsure of themselves, both of them look to me to be strong for all of us. The fact is that we are a tightly wound family; a mother that chides them for not standing straight enough, for the way their hair is laid, for the danger they take in being out at night; a father that is rarely seen and when he is, says few words. He is in the fields with me yet disappears long into the night before coming back to us.
And so it is that I take on the duty of cooking, of cleaning, of mending clothes; my mother is the queen of our little house. She sits on her throne in her feather bed with a shawl wrapped around her body. She takes food in her room and rarely does more than walk around outside of the house. She cleans everything—twice—before it is acceptable to sit. And then she begins to invent things that aren’t clean, I’ve seen her do it before. She will shake her fist and wag her finger at all of them. Her fist has come across the little ones more lately—I move to stop her but she’s fast, her small frame seems so fragile and yet—there they freeze and let out a cry. I know it’s more to do with my father than it is with them, and I say nothing.
We have always lived from the land, taking in what we need as though there was always enough to go around. But the tough winters and dry summers have made us hungry. It was hard enough to feed me, and then my sister. The other two came and it seemed as though everything was stretched. We added more flour to the broth, we pinched in more salt, we sliced up the meat painfully thin. And still the youngest one would grumble about his stomach, and I’d let little Achar take some of mine. I was big enough, I was never hungry. I could drown out the gnaw of the hunger. I already could drown out everyone else.
When I was four years old, I spent an afternoon with my father down by the river that stretches west of here. It was a bright day, sun shining, the bugs buzzing along. The world seemed to hum with its sweetness all wrapped up in the green along the water. He had me follow him, wading deeper and deeper, splashing me in the face. He dove into the deeper water and laughed as I tried to follow. But I didn’t listen to his shouts of saying no—that this water was too fast, the water too deep—and was swept past him in the current. I cried out as I was taken away downstream. His voice carried out to me, and the last thing that I heard from him was to keep my head above water.
I was lucky enough then to wake in my bed, with my family standing all around. I’d been saved by a passing stranger—I never got to know his name—and they’d dug me out of the bottom of the river just before the rocks had started to collect. I don’t remember what happened, other than the rush of water taking me deep, deep down and everything going black. But when I woke up I couldn’t hear a thing—not a sound from my parents, not from the healer, not anyone. My eardrums had burst on the way down—and from that day on I couldn’t hear a single thing. It’s not as though I can’t feel the vibrations, though—sometimes I can still understand when something is buzzing around my ear, or there’s a loud bang from a thresher.
I could still say some things, from what I remembered, and what I could see people say. I would try and copy them and their speech, I’d put my hands to my father’s lips and try to speak. But his face would get screwed up and I would let out a little gasp. I’d done it wrong—I always did it wrong—and after a while I stopped trying. My mother thought that I was… as she put it… a burden. That I should be sent away to work with the other children because life would be too hard. She thought it would be too dangerous for me to till the fields if I didn’t hear the machines coming, or if someone snuck up on me late at night. She worried, still worries, that I’ll won’t outlive her because of some unfortunate accident. She likes to claim that in her dreams she has seen the future, that it is dark and terrifying… a dismal place.
But these dreams—the ones that come to her at night—they didn’t start until after my father stopped coming around. My little brother was three at the time—it was about five summers ago—to when he started ducking out. It was something that unraveled, like so many families do around here, without much of a fuss. He’d found another woman, one that made him happy, one that didn’t lock herself up in a room. One that didn’t hit her children, one that smelled of heather and had a smile brighter and younger than she. It was too much for her, it broke her into piece. There was a great fight when he told her—a smashing of bottles and plates. Of him bringing her to the house—of him explaining what needed to be said. And part of me wanted to be angry and shout, but he was so reasonable, he was so clear that he loved all of us… but he couldn’t take us anymore.
And so it falls to me to take care of them now, him with his new life and family. It still burns inside, this thought that he chose her over us. But I cannot stop him from being happy… I don’t believe anyone should do such a thing. I just wish that I could make the rest of us happy as we struggle to live and stretch what we have for one another. Each year it seems to get worse, and my mother more and more frail. I work so long out in the fields, I’m exhausted when I come home to see my siblings groaning about an uncooked meal. But I never raise a fist to them—they are too young, too unknowing of the real world.
I get great strength from my cousin, Chana. She’s takes care of the little ones for me sometimes. The two of us have been inseparable since she offered to share an apple with me when I was six years old. I remember it—sitting on a long in front of our little house, and her big brown eyes looking at mine and muttering I should take a piece. I didn’t hear her—she didn’t know just then what was wrong with me—but then she stood in front of my face and waved the thing at me. And she said it again, and again until finally I could understand that she wanted to give it to me. She tries so hard to make sure that I understand, she’s even created motions—signs, we call them—for certain things. She’s the only one that has taken the time to learn them, and to make sure that I have heard what I need.
And she is funny too—much happier than all the rest of us. Her mother and father are still together, two squat little people. They have one other daughter, but she is older, and married, now. They look to Chana with pride because she is so beautiful—I hope that she finds someone to make her happy. I always joke that if there was a girl like her I would be lost forever, because I would never know what to say. She just laughs at me—because the two of us are like brother and sister, in that way. She’s the only one that I speak to, my voice soft and the words garbled… but she understands. We pick roots and berries together and will stare at the stars. She helps remind me just where I’m going, and how far I have left.
codeword: Odair
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