Olan Lahoh [District 9, finished]

There used to be a dozen baker’s in district nine. Families that had recipes for fresh breads, sweet rolls, toutons, all the things that would have your mouth watering. The dark days changed all of that; they brought the factories here, the trade slowed down, things were harder to come by. If you couldn’t bake what people wanted (and by people, it was more than likely that the peacekeepers were giving you coin), your doors closed. Twelve changed to ten, to four, and so on until there was just one family left. One family that clung to a life of baking because we didn’t know anything else—or rather, we refused to give up what had been a piece of us.

You can tell the truth in what you make, Grandma Nela would say. She had curly hair that stretched out toward the sun, and always smelled like almonds. She’s the reason why any of us are in here, doing work that doesn’t break our backs, rather than out in some factory to get mangled. She kept all the recipes her mother had ever taught her, all the knowledge that she could’ve thrown away, and put her heart and soul into that oven. There may have been eleven other families setting out pies or putting out bread, but it was Nela that caught the attention of a young peacekeeper so many years ago.

She says that he tasted a rosemary and olive oil bread that reminded him of a memory—some time on a shore, late at night, underneath a set of stars. A good food will have you imagining things, and a great one will have you reinvent them. He was named Marvin, I think. They spent a whole summer together, and he wanted to work out a way to take her back with him to district two, away from all of this. Except he said she’d have to give it up—baking, that is—if she left everyone behind. She tried, at least, she tried to think about what it would mean if she never set foot in that kitchen again.

He was cute, but love’s not the same if you have to give up everything you are. She told me. No man or woman on this earth can change you that much. Not without losing your heart. She didn’t go with him, she didn’t have a new life, and she didn’t give up baking. But he didn’t begrudge her for what she’d done. Funny that life was different then; he loved her more for sticking to her guns. She’s always been strong, and I hope a bit of that runs through me. He brought the peacekeepers here to eat her breads, her cakes, pies, whatever she’d made. No one ever did as much business with them as she did, and before long she was just about the only one that was.

My mother says that those were good days, when we could count on them and not worry about the stores. There was still better trade then, and extra income. Less worry about putting their names in a bowl and more about where they were getting flour, salt, sugar, and all that. She was one of three sisters, and all of them helped Nela—she was the one that started teaching me, before her hands started to shake too much. We were called Nela’s back then, because we could have a name to distinguish us from the others.

But when the last door closed and we were all that was left in this part of the district, they didn’t let us keep the name. The men that had come through the doors when Nela was young were long since retired, and the new peacekeepers didn’t stop to chat with my mother or her sisters. They were a place to get a good just as much as the shoemaker or tailor. They were an extension of the capitol and nothing more, and they were lucky that they got to spend their time making food for others. Except they never got so much extra to make a difference; inventory in a bakery is strict.

So we took pride in what we could do. Making sponge cakes, or pies, or any manner of thing was like creating a work of art. It’s different to feel the flour between your fingernails, and to see the bread rise. It’s something that takes patience and memory, a good eye, and a sense of humor for when things don’t turn out. My sister Leela doesn’t take after it—she would rather be boiling soap, or working up the hill in one of the mills. She thinks it’s boring, or stuffy. It gets too hot in the kitchens, she says, and I tell her it’s a lot better than the laundry where she could be working.

You see, my mother, and her mother, and now me—we put every ounce of ourselves into this. The old oven, the black and white tiles on the floor, the little shop front that hasn’t changed in almost a hundred years, we know it means something for all of us. It means that much more to be proud of what you put out, even if we’ll never taste most of it.
The districters get breads, and then there’s the special orders. You know, for the folk that mean something to the capitol. As long as we keep them happy, they’ll give us higher rations, above what we need. That’s what helps us make what we can make, or else we’d have shut out doors, too.

Would I ever want to do anything else?

I guess you wouldn’t imagine a kid like me turning over dough in his hands, or thinking about the best way to layer something together. Dark skin, thin, wide smile. I can’t help but smile here, with an apron across my front and my hands deep in warm dough. It’s a different world, and my friends say man you should be out here with us, you’re big enough, tall enough, strong enough to be in this factory. Isn’t it better money, they say. Isn’t it better for you to be with us, leave that for your sister and your aunts and your mother?

My father never understood, either. He went off to the mills and never came back—said he couldn’t stand the work, not even after all the years they tried to teach him. He couldn’t handle having to translate it all into work that could be put out for others to see; sometimes it’s hard to think about how something could be different even if you follow a recipe just as it’s written. You have to learn how to be happy with what you’ve put it, that it’s a piece of you for the world to see. And sometimes it’s better than you expect. But better never lasts forever, I suppose.