shiloh quesinberry / d12 / fin

Your mother never wanted to be a mother. You never wanted to be one either, but life is not fair, and it was going to give you whatever it decided to.

You miss the days of running carelessly through the district, bare feet sinking into the mud. The sun would kiss your dark skin and dot freckles over your shoulders. Your brown eyes scanned over the streets and buildings of the Seam, trying to decide where you and your friends should go next. There was your mother’s house, where she’d always have bread and cheese for you to devour with your rounded teeth. There were small shops closer to the center of town where you would dig through bins of bronze jewelry or leather-bound books with your scarred fingers. You and your friends would escape from the heat under the shade of a random home’s porch (nobody ever minded— one person’s child was everyone’s child) and compare sunburns. You could never escape a summer day without your nose red and peeling.

When the heat got too much, you would tie your light brown hair half back into a bun and keep going. Loose curls would always escape and stick to your sweat-slicked forehead. Your underarms and legs would be covered in prickly little hairs, because who had time to shave when there were so many other things to do? You flaunted them proudly, going around in your shorts and tank tops, anything you could do to lessen the feel of the sun’s rays on your body. One time a kid collapsed from heat stroke in front of you and nobody knew what to do, so while one of your friends ran to get a doctor you and the others splashed water on her face until she woke up and vomited.

Your kind nature is something that hasn’t changed. Nothing that has happened could take that away from you. You greet every person on your street as if they’re a family member, talk to the kids when they want to tell you about what happened at school that day. You cook extra dinner whenever you can and bring it to the older residents who have trouble cooking for themselves. Your aunt warns you about stretching yourself too thin, but you never do anything you don’t want to. You have a lot of kindness in your heart and it costs nothing to share.

Still, you are not always kind. You refuse to let people take advantage of you. When you need to be tough with somebody, you’ll be tough. It confuses people who think they can walk all over you. Your aunt taught you that there is a difference between kindness and being passive. She worries, still, that you don’t understand that, but you assure her that there’s no need to underestimate you.

Sometimes, you lay down at night after putting your daughter to bed and think about how tired you are. It feels unfair for you to be so young and so tired. You feel guilty, because you know there are people in the District who have it worse than you. While you are still poor, you and your daughter always have one meal a day, and you haven’t worn holes in your shoes yet, and there is a small jar of money under your bed holding your savings to fix the broken window in the kitchen. This is more than so many people have.

Your mother was young when she had you. Her and your father were already separated by the time you were born and he didn’t want to be involved in your raising. Your mother didn’t either, so she handed you off to her sister. Your aunt, who already had a few children of her own, was tough, but fair. She was hard on you growing up but you never doubted once that she loved you. She taught you to look life in the eye and say, fuck you, you will not take my kindness away from me.

You never resented your mother for giving you up. You still saw her, and you were still family, she just didn’t want to be your mother and that was fine. You grew up among a large group of neighbors and friends. There were boys, of course. Many boys. You knew what some of the other kids said about you but you paid no mind to it. As long as your aunt didn’t find out what you were up to, you were going to do what you wanted. You were young and free and you thought you had all the time in the world.

Of course, you know now that men are not to be trusted, and there were some who heard of your reputation and thought they could do whatever they wanted with you. You didn’t have the confidence to say no like you do now, didn’t think saying no was even an option. The last boy you ever slept with, a person you considered to be something like your boyfriend at the time, didn’t care about what you wanted, and no amount of kindness was going to change that.

You didn’t want anyone to know something was wrong. You needed to be the happy, carefree girl that everyone expected. Finally, you broke down to your aunt with a bruise on your cheek and the news that you thought you were pregnant. She helped you get out of the situation and coached you through your pregnancy until the day Sienna Quesinberry was born. Just like that, your childhood was over at sixteen. You had to be a mother instead.

You understood then why your mother didn’t want to raise you. She was young. She wanted a life. You couldn’t blame her for that. Still, you couldn’t bring yourself to give up Sienna. You couldn’t continue the cycle of young mothers and unwanted daughters. It was going to end with you. If you had to be a mother, you were going to do your best, and do your best you have.