VIN GALLEON, DISTRICT FOUR

My mother gave my father a quickie once at a party and then three weeks after that they got engaged. People said they were rushing into things but apparently my father told them that was because he knew for a fact that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. Evidently, people can decide whether they are suited for each other based on a drunken blowjob in a bathroom stall smelling of various bodily fluids. However, my father got his wish, two weeks after they were married he was diagnosed with terminal cancer and four weeks after that he was dead.

Thirty-four weeks after that, I was born to a sad young woman that didn't want a baby; she just wanted her husband back.

So I was mostly raised by my grandparents and my mother was diagnosed with post-partem depression and a whole slew of other things. Still, every day she would visit me and she would hold me and she'd whisper her love to me. (I knew she loved me despite the fact that I've been told that one time my grandmother walked into her own living room and watched as her daughter tried to smack her baby girl over the head with a candlestick.) My mother loves me, she's just a little mad. I suppose we all are though.

They regulated her visits, cutting them down to Sunday and Wednesday afternoons for two hours at a time. I wasn't allowed to be alone with her anymore either, someone always had to be there to watch and make sure that she wasn't going to try and kill me again. I still don't think she was really going to that first time. My grandmother must have gotten it wrong. I used to stand at my bedroom window for the hour before her visits, waiting to see her turn around the corner and make her way down the sidewalk towards my front door.

My mother was deranged then but still beautiful. I shared some of her features, but I was too much a mixture of my father and sometimes she'd get sad on me for it. I have the same hair as her though. Long and so thick that it snaps hair bands and when it gets too hot I have to lift it all up and away from my neck just to cool down a bit. It's so dark that it leaves an absence of colour that truly is black, not a very dark brown but black in full. We share it her and I, or at least we did before she went grey.

Grandmother would plait my hair back every time my mother came for her visit because it used to curb some of the anxiety I would feel those mornings at her coming. I liked the steady, rhythmic pattern to her hands and used reach back to count each knot in my hair in times of stress.

She never missed a visit, not even once. No matter how sad she was, she came with devotion, always precisely on time because my mother was never a weakling. She was the strongest woman I know. Once upon a time my Grandmother said that she was deadly too, a career. That's another reason why she was so sad. She'd spent her entire life training to kill and be killed and when she passed the reaping age, suddenly she was routeless. It was like having a set plan for your entire life and then it suddenly all disappearing. She was aimless. Especially after dad. I wasn't enough to give her an aim at the time, but I was something she could work towards.

When I was ten years old my grandmother had a heart attack and she died. She was only in her fifties but maybe I was too much for her. Maybe in the time of her life that she was meant to rest it was too much to raise a ten year old girl. I often speculate on this, wondering if I could have made her life easier somehow, if I could have done more to make sure she stayed healthy. My teacher in school said that cigarettes can lead to diseases but I never thought they would apply to my grandmother.

After that my grandfather didn't want to take care of me anymore because he was too old and I guess he was dying too. Mom said it was a different sort of heart disease but I never really knew what she meant by that until I was older and I'd experience my first heartbreak.

I was put in a home because my mother wasn't cleared yet to have me back and for two very long years of my life I couldn't see her. Sometimes I'd see her come by the orphanage and I'd wave at her from my window and she'd wave back. I'd strain my eyes, trying to see if she was looking alright, if she was eating, if she was staying healthy but she was so far away from me that all I could ever make out was the red of her lips and the black of her hair.

I spent my time in the orphanage with little mishap. In fact, I was a star orphan while I was there. My sleeping space was always neat and tidy, the bed always made and my shoes and shirts tucked carefully underneath my bed because my drawers held an untouched copy of the bible as was custom for state orphanages and my sewing needles and threads. It was the matron's ideology that one should always keep herself busy and so when I was not doing homework or helping with the chores I would sit at the window and sew up the holes in the uniform orphanage shirts and socks.

The matron would praise me for being such a big help but truthfully I sewed for selfish reasons. I enjoyed the uniformity of the stitches. They soothed me, and I adored knowing that I controlled the fabric set in front of me. I could make of it what I willed and it was my choice. I was a god to the needle and thread before me and in one area of my life, I was in complete control.

I began making designs in the stitching, clever little things that would go unnoticed because they were on the inside. It felt like I was leaving my mark upon the fabric, like if I could just make something that was permanent, I might be permanent as well. Soon enough I began to stitch patterns into things that did not need fixing, like the quilt on my bed, bringing lovely, colorful flowers to life on the underside of the crisp white fabric, unaware that I was committing vandalism on government property. I just wanted to do something with the frustration and fear that was building up inside of me, day by bleak day.

They found the flowers on the next wash day, every Tuesday we'd strip our sheets in the morning and make our beds fresh at night to prevent lice and other bugs from building up. They made me tear each one out, stitch by stitch and I pricked my hands with the needle too many times to count because my hands shook so badly. I'd never gotten in such trouble before and the pile of torn thread on the tabletop in front of me made me so violently sad that I began to cry.

Good thread was not a cheap thing in the orphanage and I had used up such an amount that my afternoon tea privileges were taken away for one month. When I finished with the blanket it was back to the casual white it had been before and a rainbow of broken thread sat in front of me. It was all too broken, too short for good stitching. I wasn't allowed to stitch anything I wanted on fabric. After some careful thought, I decided to stitch myself instead.

I began small, sitting idle at my window, my pocket full of colourful strings as I watched to see if my mother would walk by. Selecting an ice blue from my pocket, I strung it skillfully, without licking the end of the thread so it didn't ruin the needle I had disinfected with vinegar earlier. I didn't hesitate as I brought it to my skin and stuck it through the first layer of my skin in such a way that it did not penetrate the next. It didn't hurt. I was expecting it to hurt but it didn't, not if I was careful and stuck to that first layer.

That day I sewed a daisy into my thigh.

The colour against my pale skin was somehow beautiful and the image of beauty upon myself was somehow soothing. I could not control my life nor the duvet colour I slept under but my own body was still mine.

The most wonderful part of the art form was that the thread would tend to come out after a few weeks as my skin cells regenerated and the dead skin came off. I could stitch in the same places over and over and never have to worry about running our of space. When the thread came out, the area would seem weird for a while, like a pattern missing it's colour but eventually my skin would heal itself and once again my skin would be clear. Still, there are some moments when I shove put the needle in too far and I go far deeper than I meant to, resulting in scarring.

I became more obsessive about my things while in the orphanage. I'd never had to share my space with so many people before. Before I went to bed each night I'd count every little item I owned, every needle and thread and the one book I had other than the bible to make sure that I hadn't lost anything. Everything had it's spot and if it wasn't in that spot, if Suzy had borrowed a pen from my drawer and forgotten to put it back, if Jake needed to borrow a hair tie for his carefully groomed mane and never told me, I'd freak out that night when I couldn't find it.

They called me unstable but I blame it on the instability around me and all the while I stitched flowers into my wrists and thighs, to just where my cuffs came to and my skirt fell. I put galaxies on my abdomen and sunlight on my chest. Music notes danced around my rib cage and everything was grey in that place but there was colour under my skin.

When I was twelve I was called out of breakfast and handed a suitcase of every little thing I owned, as I tugged at my shirt to hide the green ivy that had crept too far down my wrist that month.

That day, I walked out of the orphanage and my hand was holding onto my mother's because she was taking me home to her stable house and the stable job that she could prove to having worked in for four months. i didn't know what to say to her as we went into our house and she showed me the room that she had carefully decorated for me, my grandmother's beautiful vanity sitting against one wall and my bed made so neatly and with such care that it would make my matron cry with pride.

So instead I turned into her and I buried my head in her stomach and I didn't let her go for a long while because for once we didn't have only two hours or no time at all, we had days and days and days and it was all I ever wanted, to be with my mother.

She made grilled cheese for dinner that first night and we sat in front of the fire and she read me stories from the book my Grandmother used to read to me from. I didn't tell her that I knew every word off by heart and that I'd grown out of fairytales a long time ago now because her voice whispered in the darkness and it was all I ever wanted.

It is hard to describe the feeling of waking up in a quiet room with all my belongings where they should be and the knowledge that no one had touched my things. It was strange at first to go downstairs and see my mother in her business attire, cooking eggs at the stove as she did her make-up by staring into the metal of the steam hood. She reminded me of Superwoman. (She still does.)

My mother decided that even though I was a bit late, she wanted me trained as a career. She said it would give me confidence like her's and she'd feel better about me walking around the District alone if I was trained. I started going to the training center for two hours everyday after school. My mother would pick me up from there after she got off work and we would walk home together. She always asked me about what I learned that day and I'd often bore her with the latest equation we were working on in my advanced Maths class. Numbers were easy for me. They were orderly and made sense.

In turn, I preferred the knives station at training. I liked the equation of it. The math was simple and easy to do in my head. Calculating my angles was an easy task, figuring out the strength I needed to throw at was a bit more difficult but I grew used to it in time. It became my best station. It was the only weapons station I really preferred, otherwise I often spent my time in the plants and first aid station. I enjoyed the technical aspects and memorization that needed to be done for those stations. Plants reminded me of numbers. Everything had it's purpose and use.

When I was sixteen years old, I received my first kiss from a boy who later became a sailor and was swept out to sea during a storm. I haven't bothered with love since. It's silly and flippant. It leads to heartbreak and insanity, my mother being a prime example. Love is nonsense, I won't have it.

I graduated highschool with high honours when I was seventeen because of my diligent work. By that time, my life had settled down and I had been living with my mother for five years already. My life had never been more stable. I still liked to sew into my skin but I no longer tried so hard to keep it hidden. My mother had caught me at it once a while back and she'd shrugged then, saying that we all had our different aspects and if it helped me deal with my life then she would not judge me. I'm still shy about it, only having just begun to embroider my hands in full this year.

My passion then was still maths. I looked for firms to hire me as an accountant, expected to be hired fast because of my rumored skill with numbers but I was a seventeen year old girl, rather small in appearance, something to be overlooked. I was unable to get a job because no one wanted to hire a 'brat' to do their books. My mother told me that it was alright, that I should focus on my training just in case. Eighteen year olds have a higher chance of being reaped.

So I began working with the bow and arrow, it seemed like the obvious next step in my fascination with knives. However, I did not enjoy it as much as the tiny blades that I could keep concealed on my body, slipping them out from my sleeves and boots like a pirate from the high seas in my books. My mother gifted me with a set on my eighteenth birthday despite being past reaping age. She said that I would need it on the streets of our own District, it wasn't safe for a young girl like me.

It made her feel better for me to keep them on my person, therefore I did.

I was eighteen years old and still jobless on the day my mother came home and told me that she had been told to retire. She was getting oddly forgetful even though she was only in her fourties. She had misplaced a few important files and messed up two major cases but because she had served the company so well for seven years she was not fired.

My mother cried that night, we did not own the house we lived in, the mortgage on it still pretty high. The Capitol was not polite about outstanding debts. I needed a job and fast.

I was desperate then. I was too young to be taken seriously, having exhausted all my options in accounting I began to go to clubs and bars, asking if they needed a new waitress. They took one look at me and they'd shake their heads. I was too small, too quiet looking, too frumpy, too smart, too ugly, too something. It didn't matter, no one was willing to hire me until one day I came across a bar that was just off the docks, parallel to a canal.

I was interviewed by a boy younger than me, going by the name of Styx. He wanted to know my skills and I gave them to him in perfect order of what I believed to be the most relevant to a job in a place such as his seedy establishment. However, my pride could not stop me from putting my skill with math at least in the middle of the list. I am still glad I did so because he was intrigued.

That night I was able to go home to my mother and tell her not to worry. I had been hired as an accountant and given my first month's pay in advance. We weren't going to be homeless. I was going to take care of her.

It has been two years of working for Bastille Styx and every day my mother's health deteriorates at an alarming pace. Sometimes she calls me by different names, as if she has forgotten that she is the one who named me. Other times she forgets that I am twenty years old now and treats me like I'm twelve years old again and it's our first day together. Sometimes she is lucid and we sit at the kitchen table over a cup of tea and we talk about anything and everything. I call in sick to work sometimes because she freaks out a lot over my dad and how she doesn't know where he is.

I take care of my mother like how she took care of me.

Bastille understands. I don't know how he knows about my mother but I suppose secrets are difficult when your boss pretty much rules Four's underworld. I don't know why he's so kind to me, why he asks after my mother, why he hires people like Uma with his Parkinsons and me with all my issues. I don't know why he seems intent on taking in the unfortunate but I'm glad for it. My mother and I would be living on the streets without his generosity.

I keep his books for him neat and tidy and he gives me bonuses that I never asked for for never saying a word of what I know to anyone. As an integral part of his business, naturally I know every transaction that is made in the club as well as without it. Drugs and sex are only the tip of the iceberg in Bastille's club. There are darker things too like gambles and murders that go on but it isn't my job to question, it is only to keep account of the money earned and spent.

Nothing more, nothing less.

B e c a u s e when
morning c o m e s ,
I c a n meet
that p e r s o n