What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Love? [open]
Jun 16, 2019 0:46:46 GMT -5
Post by marguerite harvard d2a (zori) on Jun 16, 2019 0:46:46 GMT -5
Vasco Izar
What do we talk about when we talk about love?1
It feels like another lifetime since I was a boy.
Memories have faded since then, but I still know what it meant to feel to be crawling out of your skin. To not know what it meant to be in love. We talk about it now like it’s easy because once you’ve found it, you can’t imagine yourself another way. And if you lose it, you don’t know if you’ll ever be the same person again. Even if you find another, you’ll have that doubt – it’s only human – that this love is real love.
But that’s what kids think about, at least, what I thought about. Loving another person with my heart, and not the other kinds of love. Family love, which wraps you up like a blanket all warm even when the night is dark or the rain is falling. Sometimes this love goes missing because we can’t choose who our family is. It doesn’t exist because your not all families want to share this love, or have the strength for it. We’re lucky to have known this love, the Izars, that is.
Friend’s love, which binds you to others and scours out loneliness. It shows you who you are and reminds you that who the world needs you to be is often a reflection of what you are to others. This love is easier to break. Sometimes it wears down like a file on nails, or gets misplaced like one half a pair of old socks. But the love that really binds up never fades; you know the friendships that shape into something beautiful, no matter how far away or long it’s been since you’ve seen them.
But today, in the high heat, standing in front of the floor length mirror, letting Yani choose the face paint (white, for whatever reason – she said it suited me best), I think about love in my heart, that romantic, passionate love. The kind that brought me to my better half (she hates when I say it, because it’s not even true enough how much better she is). The same I want for all my children, to feel so valued by another soul they can only imagine a life with them.
I steady on a white shirt, and pants, and a cardboard sign that’s painted to say:
Love is Our Answer
We’d come to the decision for the parade not long after I’d started back as Mayor.
We spent some time in what I affectionately call the Room deciding on something that could lift folks spirits. Bakar had wanted to call it the War Room but Emma thought it too machismo, and I agreed.
Emma sits at my right. She’s the Vice Mayor, my most trusted advisor, and the one that’s spent the last two months making sure that the world didn’t tear itself apart. The run up to the games is full of all sorts of calls from the capitol, of dealing with citizens that need to set-up for the arrival of the capitolites and eventual reaping demonstration. It’s dirty work; one that makes your stomach turn with every passing day. Because it’s a lot of little things to plan for – the stages, the screens, the records of each citizen, the appeals of those that are too sick to attend (most often denied).
I look at her then, the sun soft and yellow across her skin. I love the way she looks, serious, and determined.
Bakar is at my left. My other brothers questioned why I would make him the deputy vice mayor, and advisor. He’s never once cared much about politics, and was hard on his own family. He’d gone and stepped out of tradition time and time again, and said we needed to be more like the people of district eleven, less like the old world we clung to. It’s the reason I keep him close, to have the counter balance to the way that I see.
Aresti and Druso, of course, along with Lordes. Magdalena sits outside the room to prevent any interruptions. It’s the one job that she seems to enjoy: getting to tell anyone, big or small, that they have to leave and they can’t interrupt me right now.
‘You sure you’re well enough for this?’ Emma had said to me that morning, buttoning my shirt. We’d sipped on our coffee and nibbled at some oatmeal (still no sugar, per doctors orders). It was still hard for me to walk to the Mayor’s house. I did so before the sun came up. Part of it was stubborn pride, another because I didn’t want to have the district worrying about their ailing mayor. The last thing anyone needed to be doing was worrying about who would be running the district when the games were beginning. Emma walked with me, arm around mine, reminding me of all the pressing meetings of the day.
I look now, surrounded by my family, and wonder if each of them thought I was well enough to sit here, in the thick of it all. Not that I thought they’d ever doubted me. But as the sun casts shadows along the wall, I can’t help but think as to what they believed or knew. Was Vasco well enough? Would he ever be well enough? The doctors had said it was an infection followed by a stroke; they did as much as they could and my body was left to sort the rest. Which meant they were left to wait, and see.
Emma said they came right away – helping with the cooking, and cleaning, all sorts of things to lift her spirits. I don’t remember those early days, much more than faces along the bedside. This is the love of my family; no matter how we’ve been bruised or battered, we come together for one another. Ours is a love that seems wound tight enough to catch us, should we ever fall.
‘We should do something that would bring people together. To celebrate.’ I said, leaning back in one of the old wooden chairs. The room is decorated in old portraits of folks long since gone, little placards under their names. Someday I suppose I’ll have one hanging for the years I spend in the office. I wonder if whoever’s in my chair will look and see my face, and wonder what sort of man I’d been.
‘Spending more money on something that folks will forget?’ Bakar chimes in. He drums his fingers along the hardwood. ‘Could spend that money on more rations for the folks here.’
‘Not everything is about money, Bakar. Sometimes you need to build the community up. To help them remember we’re here for one another.’ I look at my brothers and cousins, and listen to the silence that stills in the room. Bakar often played the foil, sometimes for the sake of it.
‘With what? More speeches? To tell people that they need to love one another? In case you haven’t noticed, that hasn’t stopped much of anything, lately.’ He seemed particularly happy to goad me.
‘You know, you do have the right idea. When’s the last time we celebrated how much folks care for one another. How much pride they’ve taken in love?
‘I don’t think we’ve ever taken much pride in anything,’ Bakar sneered back. ‘Not in ten years, has it been? Or do I have to remind you?’
We looked each other in the eyes, then, and I see Bakar. I could see Benat in them for a moment. I wondered if he saw Raquel in mine?
‘If you don’t like the idea, you don’t have to come, Bakar,’ I answer. ‘But I think it could start something. Getting everyone together, to march. To the town square. To talk about love. To talk about how you can love as you wish, even in this world.’
The summer months were always harder, with the high heat and the rationing (and now a games to pull us apart). We needed something.
I kept coming back to Katelyn in my mind. I don’t want to feel sorry for her – she’s a grown woman who doesn’t need another to be valid, or live her life – but it struck me how much the absence of genuine affection, and friendship had hurt her.
Panem was supposed to be a place for all citizens, but old wounds had never healed. We did not teach our sons enough that they still carried less weight than our daughters; they could be bold, and strong, and brave but they never had to be lovely, kind, or graceful. We warned women especially of how dangerous it was to be alone, instead of how our boys should know better, and be better. The veneer of this egalitarian world stripped right off if you thought hard enough, and looked close enough. When we cheered a young woman in the games, did we still talk about how amazed we were she could take on a giant career boy, instead of how remarkable it was that he could keep up with her?
That femininity carried over to our boys, too. Fathers that still didn’t value those that loved and loved deeply. District Eleven was harsh heat or blistering cold, it was picking cotton until your fingers bled or walking through brambles and cutting up your thighs. We didn’t talk about love or hope because we were conditioned to be strong. No matter this equality we said we’d found, ask a man if he wanted his son (or daughter) to be strong, or mild and caring instead. You’d find your answer soon enough.
But there is no real strength without knowing your vulnerability. There’s no power in someone that can’t feel and understand another’s pain.
Love, however, was stronger. And not because of how it made you feel. It was what we did for one another with love and because of love that changed the world. Better than fear, which was fragile and could be melted down to nothing. Or anger, which could be swept away after the fire and ash.
It settled then, and I knew I talked about it enough that it would not escape my brain. We needed to do something was at once a celebration of our people, and this district. But also it was subversive and subtle. Love was an antidote to the rage and pain that the capitol brought. We could be bigger and bolder through this celebration of love; we could show unity and support no matter who you loved. We could take pride in the celebration of how we were different, but still loved.
We’ll march, I said, because I knew the decision would ultimately be my own. A peaceful demonstration. A holiday. For district eleven. To celebrate Panem. To celebrate us. I want to celebrate all the ways we love one another, I knew the words were clever by half, but I didn’t care. If it meant that I could show young girls and boys, and old men and women, all the people in between that they had value, and purpose, that was a power thing (and a dangerous thing, too).
I was fifteen the first time I fell in love.
It was early in summer when the fields were turning over. High heat that made the horizon in the distance blur. Thick cracks would develop along the dry earth from the temperature, and folks were starting to call it a drought. I spent most of my time with my brothers, tagging behind them in the fields, singing songs and carrying on. It was the first summer I got invited to a botellón.
We would gather out in empty corn fields, and sit among the cleared stalks. Aresti and Druso were the ones that brought the moonshine – it was almost always moonshine, unless Bakar was gracious enough to share whiskey he’d pilfered (and this only ever happened at holidays) – and would say a solemn prayer before we started the festivities. Not to any god, because we were heathens. But to one another, to share a night where we could forget about all the shit we shoveled, or worlds we would be walking back to in the morning.
‘When are you going to find someone, eh?’ Bakar had taken a long drink from the plastic bottle holding the blueberry moonshine, and passed it to Druso. He looked over at me with curious brown eyes. They were kinder back then.
‘When he’s ready, Bakar,’ Jurgi muttered. He was the shortest of all of us, but walked as though he could knock over a man twice his size. Hands in the pockets of his jeans, he stood along the far end of the circle. He didn’t much like drinking, but he liked even less being left out. ‘We can’t all have a son before we get out of the reaping like you.’
There was whooping as we stood there, laughing at the way Jurgi so handily dealt with his cousin. All of us boys teased one another more back that – rougher than we should have – and loved every second of it (unless you were on the receiving end). We were just boys being boys, or so we said to one another. Giving one another a hard time to get stronger, to be better. Laughing about how we felt about the girls that would come to the bonfires or drink with us.
‘Fuck off, Jurgi.’ Bakar shot back.
‘His balls have barely dropped yet, give the boy some space,’ Elias chided. He was too fat by half (we called him Jolly Eli, which he would curse us for).
‘Have you even kissed someone yet?’ Bakar pressed before taking another swig.
‘I saw him make out with the girl with the little tits, the one with the blond hair…’ Balsam, one of the other cousins (the one that had the intelligence of a brick but looked like a bull) spoke.
‘A girl, eh?’ Bakar let out a snort.
‘Blond? Really, Vasco?’ It may have been Druso that muttered this; he didn’t much like the girls with fair skin or lighter complexions.
‘Vale, it’s more than you get,’ I shot back, face red and eyes staring down at the ground. I could feel Aresti’s hand on my shoulder.
The conversation idled and someone started to talk about how nice a night it was.
Shadows danced behind us from the little fire, and we talked about all the sorts of things that are forgotten now. The hours in the schoolhouse that went on too long, or the asshole overseers that worked with peacekeepers that pushed us to work harder and faster no matter how blistered our hands could get. Things that seem so small now I’d tell the boys around the fire that these hours would be some of the few you wouldn’t be burdened with all the things that threatened to tear us apart (our children dying, the poverty that would come and go, sickness and sadness).
I was quieter, then. Hard to believe, eh? But I hadn’t quite found my tongue, shadowed by four other brothers, and a sister, along with scores of cousins. I remember taking in the smell of the fire, and the gasp of smoke. I swallowed down moonshine and thought it made me disappear, or that I was going to burn up. But the warmth faded to euphoria, a strange space that made me nod along, and chatter. I laughed a little louder at jokes that shouldn’t have been as funny, and jumped in to tear apart Jurgi for being a shit (we all already knew he was the worst of us).
Before long, the ones we’d invited would arrive. Through the stalks of corn and out toward the edge of the field where they could find the little bonfire and blankets set along the ground. The guests were friends from school, but mostly those that would partner off at the end of the night. From neighboring farms, or pretty things from class. A girl with thick-rimmed glasses and an underbite for Jurgi; girls who could barely spell their names for Druso; Aresti shared in the ones who barely said anything at all; Bakar already was with Ara; and me?
There’d been a passing fancy in a girl from school. Rae Ann, or something particularly eleven, who’d walked home with me. We’d gotten in trouble for something in class – most likely not turning in something, or talking back – and so we’d stayed late. I remember still that we laughed as we walked along and spoke of little things; my mother and father and their obsession with teaching me about the world before the war, her with learning all the different types of flour and oats. We stopped to watch the sunset, and I remember her putting an arm around me. I liked it, I remember thinking, about how warm we were together, and looking at her eyes how easy it was to lean against her. We kissed, warm and clumsy. I think I leaned forward and kissed the top of her lip, and fumbled, hands not sure what to hold onto.
We didn’t speak after that.
Bakar had pushed to know why it hadn’t worked. He liked to poke and prod to see who I liked and who I didn’t. He said I stayed too much in the crowd. I needed to be my own man and find someone, a good woman to settle down with. And I wondered, too, what that would’ve looked like. He had Ara – they’d been married even before his last reaping – and little Benat, too. He’d push about the different girls on the farms nearby, or even those that lived in town. Still, I would shrug and say that they didn’t have much interest (I was short, and goofy, a top lip kisser and surrounded by handsome brothers).
‘You’re too sensitive,’ I remember him saying. He would always tell me that as though it were a bad thing. ‘You have to learn how to be more of a man,’ He said.
But I didn’t think I needed to change; Bakar was enough of a man for me to know that I didn’t want to wind up like that.
Izars, though, were not ones to be patient. At least, not my brothers or cousins. And no matter how he pressed, or Druso or Aresti, I kept mum on who I liked. They started to joke that I was a starfish, that I didn’t have feelings for anyone or anything.
Bakar had set this all aside and decided that evening to bring someone different.
Arnold was from a farm about an hour’s walk from us. He was taller than me, and stockier, too. He was pale, with dark brown hair and eyes to match. He had a set of freckles around his nose and cheeks, and spoke with all the twang of district eleven.
I remember shaking his hand when he came through the set of stalks of corn and ambled over to the fire. I had already had a bit of moonshine, and remember smiling and staring. He looked back at me a little too long, even as Druso tried to talk to him about something unimportant. He would nod along before taking a sip of moonshine, and then coughing about how strong it was.
Warm, I think was. Not from the alcohol but from the sight of him.
’Arnold, what do you think of the Izar farm? Bakar edged closer to the boy with brown hair and pale skin (already red from the hours in the sun, the poor guy never stood much a chance in summer).
‘It looks a lot better after a few drinks, yeah,’ He replied, big, toothy grin spreading across his face.
’Have you met Vasco? Bakar drew in close, arm around my back, pulling me in tight. He was bigger than me (he always would be), but then, he had years on me, and I had time to grow. ‘I heard from your brother Edward that you two might have some things in common. You know, Vasco here plays the fiddle and the guitar? I heard that you played the piano…’
I remember looking from the ground up to him, and finding a smile. The sort of thing that has a young boy’s heart pound a bit faster. One that has you stagger out a word, if you’ve not learned to put one foot in front of another. He shook his head and I shook my own, because he was a year or two older, and we’d not so much as spoken.
This is the part where you wonder, me with a wife, and child, how such a thing came to pass. To which I’ll say in love, some of us find beauty in people, woman, or man. And you’ll laugh, because you never knew this about me. But did you ever think to know this about me, other than what I’ve shown you? Perhaps there’s more to someone than what you’ve ever seen? A single story that weaves another thread, far and away from who he is now.
‘My brother was pretty insistent that I come tonight,’ Arnold and I walked out toward where the fence was, with the bonfire in the distance behind us. ‘He said you all were a good bunch to get to know.
‘We’re the best,’ I said with a smile. I looked out at the moon, all full and silver. The fireflies were in full bloom then, circling around us.
‘Yeah, I’ve heard the reviews. You know, you folk seem to have your own way of doing things.’ He paused, and I could see him searching for the words. ’Different.’
We spent the night talking about all the things that we wanted to do. We kept walking along the corn stalks to get space between us and the others. He pushed me to think about the things that I wanted to do. Don’t you ever think about being more than a farmer? He asked, and when I told him I never thought about, he scoffed and told me that was thinking small. But then we argued; that he could come in and tell me how life was supposed to be lived when he didn’t know my family, or how much we all needed one another. How we lived had given us a good life, one that we were proud of. Full of love and rich in a history, a story that few other people would ever have.
‘I like how much you care about them,’ He said. He turned to face me with a lingering smile. He leaned in to take my hand. He told me, all quiet as a mouse, how sorry he was that he hadn’t understood who I was. Or what I wanted. He said his family was small, and he didn’t have what I did. He didn’t understand it but it didn’t mean he couldn’t see the beauty of it.
It’s that feeling, with his hand atop my own, that had me wonder just what it meant to feel so strongly for another person. I’d kissed a Rae Anne, and I’d felt the way the heat went between the both of us; she’d not talked to me again after, but somehow it hadn’t mattered so much to me. The moment would stay with me, but she could disappear.
I hoped he wouldn’t run from me, even before he leaned in to kiss me.
I leaned up to kiss him, he taller than me, his strong arms around my back, mine around his waist. He moved his mouth along my neck, and I remember hissing, not because it was painful but because I’d never felt so excited before. We were two fireflies that lit up our little shadows, all golden light for one another.
He moved slowly, hand up behind my head, guiding along. I closed my eyes and pressed in close, hands trailing along the back pockets of his jeans.
When we wandered back to the dying fire, it was just Bakar and Ara, she in his lap, and he staring up in the stars. My face flushed red when I realized that the grin on his face was there to go along with how smug he’d been to know that what he’d done had worked. And yet I couldn’t hate him, then. Not even a little bit. Not at all.
The days following were spent walking home together. We’d disappear up along the Rhodes farm and find a patch of grass to lie in and watch the clouds. Now, teenage boys want few things, having been one. Whole afternoons were spent disappearing into the arms of one another, of kissing deeply. Of waiting until the moon was overhead to meet out along the corner of the farm so that we could strip off each other’s clothes and roll around together.
‘You have too many brothers,’ He said to me, one night, the two of us watching the stars overhead. He stretched his hands behind his head. ‘Did you really all sleep in the same bed together?’
‘Well,’ I said with a smile. ‘It was better than sleeping on the floor, I guess.’ We didn’t know anything different. It didn’t seem so bad to me.
’When we’re old, I’ll buy us a house where we’ll have our own beds. One for each of us, and then one for both of us together.’ Arnold had an air of confidence that was unmatched.
I sat up then, and brought my knees to my chest. I looked back at Arnold, stretched out beside me. But I like the idea of waking up next to you, I remember thinking.
I worked up the courage to have him over on a Sunday afternoon. It was a special day, one where our father had planned on a slab of meats on the old stone barbecue. The rest of the Izars would be there, forty strong or more. We’d play old records (contraband, especially the ones in the old language), and dance. The older folks would sit along a flat folding table and play dominos and chatter. Bakar would be sure to pass around some whiskey to a choice few.
They were curious of Arnold – eyes on the boy who I spent so much time with – and had all number of questions. What was his family like? Where did he come from? We laughed when we heard it was just him and his brother and mother and father. That seemed quaint, altogether too small for us. I remember he flushed at their laughter, and went quiet all through dinner.
‘You all sure are something,’ He said when I walked him home that evening.
‘I know they can be a little much,’ I held my hand in his with a grin.
‘Everything was so… spicy?’ He was looking forward, as though he was searching for something. ‘It was good. I mean, it’s not like what we eat. My parents are… plain. Simple. You all are… colorful.’
Quiet descends and I nod along to what he has to say.
‘I’d like to meet them, too.’ I’d only ever seen flashes, when I walked him home at night. They didn’t work the fields. His father had a job in the granary doing inventory work, and his mother helped as a mechanic to fix the machines.
‘Oh. Yeah.’ He was thinking, then, still looking forward. ‘I don’t know if they would want to come over to meet your family though. It would be… a lot for them.’
I laughed and shook my head. ‘No, I could just come for dinner some time. Right?’
He seemed like he was putting together a puzzle in his head. ‘It’s a wonder you ever survived around all of your brothers, you know? And how many of there are you?’
When we reached the steps of his house, he let go of my hand and gave me a kiss on the cheek.
Somehow it felt more like a goodbye than I could have imagined, standing in the pale light of his front porch. He gave me a hug and seemed altogether distant and far away.
Where did we go?
From kissing between the stalks to afternoons swimming by the watering hole, to a night where we spent it on our backs staring up at the stars. And we talked about all those little things you think about during the summer (why did my father insist on wearing his pants so high, and why did his attempt to make anything to eat at all, even when he couldn’t cook). I taught him how to speak in old tongues, he taught me how to hold him, to face him and be unafraid (unless that’s what I’d wanted).
But love isn’t always forever.
It’s sunsets that fade, and mornings that come too soon. It’s that he saw too much of my family, too quickly – the noise, the crowd, the way we teased one another – a boy that had been all talk with me became sheepish, and withdrawn. And so he told me how he preferred when it was just us, and that one day, when we were old enough, we could go off on our own.
‘Your family is fine, they just aren’t like the rest of district eleven.’ He’d said to me.
Because he thought that what he wanted, was what I wanted. Because I wanted him, and so that was to be enough.
We’ve all learned from love, I think. Especially when we know that it has disappeared, or ended.
My daydream fades just as soon as Yani finishes spreading white paint across her face. (Estás listo?). She looks at me with a grin and I nod. (Por supuesto, mija).
It was my first step, but not my last step, in learning who I was. A memory of when I saw a glimpse of what love could be, for me.
We gather at the edge of our farm and I think how far we’ve come, almost thirty years since. All that’s changed around us, all that has to change. Yani is on my shoulders as I stand, facing a growing crowd. I think about what love is – to know love, to live the little moments that draw us together – and I’m thankful to celebrate. And not just to celebrate love, but what love meant, and who we were.
“I don’t have a speech to give,” I say, Yani now grasping at my hair and shifting in her seat. “I think in times like these, we look to one another to light the way. To draw closer to one another because we can know what it means – to love – and share that, powerful as it is. Today is about that, the simple fact that loving, and living, can bring us to change. That this is what unity looks like; supporting one another, and who we love. So I ask you to walk with me, to care for one another, and share your stories.”
I take Emma’s hand and we start, beginning to traipse our way toward the town center. I look to her, then, and smile. Slowly and surely, with her support along the graveled road, leading the procession. We had no message to challenge the capitol, but let it be an antidote toward their hatred of us. That no matter how much they could take, we would still support one another. And that was one step I was willing to take.
[So initially I wrote this as a post for people in PAT but I think that’s almost over (also be kind because I literally haven’t reviewed this because I was :furioustyping:; but feel free to write your own stories about love or about marching about love, etc – honestly I didn’t intend this to be a oneshot haha]
1Raymond Carver
It feels like another lifetime since I was a boy.
Memories have faded since then, but I still know what it meant to feel to be crawling out of your skin. To not know what it meant to be in love. We talk about it now like it’s easy because once you’ve found it, you can’t imagine yourself another way. And if you lose it, you don’t know if you’ll ever be the same person again. Even if you find another, you’ll have that doubt – it’s only human – that this love is real love.
But that’s what kids think about, at least, what I thought about. Loving another person with my heart, and not the other kinds of love. Family love, which wraps you up like a blanket all warm even when the night is dark or the rain is falling. Sometimes this love goes missing because we can’t choose who our family is. It doesn’t exist because your not all families want to share this love, or have the strength for it. We’re lucky to have known this love, the Izars, that is.
Friend’s love, which binds you to others and scours out loneliness. It shows you who you are and reminds you that who the world needs you to be is often a reflection of what you are to others. This love is easier to break. Sometimes it wears down like a file on nails, or gets misplaced like one half a pair of old socks. But the love that really binds up never fades; you know the friendships that shape into something beautiful, no matter how far away or long it’s been since you’ve seen them.
But today, in the high heat, standing in front of the floor length mirror, letting Yani choose the face paint (white, for whatever reason – she said it suited me best), I think about love in my heart, that romantic, passionate love. The kind that brought me to my better half (she hates when I say it, because it’s not even true enough how much better she is). The same I want for all my children, to feel so valued by another soul they can only imagine a life with them.
I steady on a white shirt, and pants, and a cardboard sign that’s painted to say:
Love is Our Answer
We’d come to the decision for the parade not long after I’d started back as Mayor.
We spent some time in what I affectionately call the Room deciding on something that could lift folks spirits. Bakar had wanted to call it the War Room but Emma thought it too machismo, and I agreed.
Emma sits at my right. She’s the Vice Mayor, my most trusted advisor, and the one that’s spent the last two months making sure that the world didn’t tear itself apart. The run up to the games is full of all sorts of calls from the capitol, of dealing with citizens that need to set-up for the arrival of the capitolites and eventual reaping demonstration. It’s dirty work; one that makes your stomach turn with every passing day. Because it’s a lot of little things to plan for – the stages, the screens, the records of each citizen, the appeals of those that are too sick to attend (most often denied).
I look at her then, the sun soft and yellow across her skin. I love the way she looks, serious, and determined.
Bakar is at my left. My other brothers questioned why I would make him the deputy vice mayor, and advisor. He’s never once cared much about politics, and was hard on his own family. He’d gone and stepped out of tradition time and time again, and said we needed to be more like the people of district eleven, less like the old world we clung to. It’s the reason I keep him close, to have the counter balance to the way that I see.
Aresti and Druso, of course, along with Lordes. Magdalena sits outside the room to prevent any interruptions. It’s the one job that she seems to enjoy: getting to tell anyone, big or small, that they have to leave and they can’t interrupt me right now.
‘You sure you’re well enough for this?’ Emma had said to me that morning, buttoning my shirt. We’d sipped on our coffee and nibbled at some oatmeal (still no sugar, per doctors orders). It was still hard for me to walk to the Mayor’s house. I did so before the sun came up. Part of it was stubborn pride, another because I didn’t want to have the district worrying about their ailing mayor. The last thing anyone needed to be doing was worrying about who would be running the district when the games were beginning. Emma walked with me, arm around mine, reminding me of all the pressing meetings of the day.
I look now, surrounded by my family, and wonder if each of them thought I was well enough to sit here, in the thick of it all. Not that I thought they’d ever doubted me. But as the sun casts shadows along the wall, I can’t help but think as to what they believed or knew. Was Vasco well enough? Would he ever be well enough? The doctors had said it was an infection followed by a stroke; they did as much as they could and my body was left to sort the rest. Which meant they were left to wait, and see.
Emma said they came right away – helping with the cooking, and cleaning, all sorts of things to lift her spirits. I don’t remember those early days, much more than faces along the bedside. This is the love of my family; no matter how we’ve been bruised or battered, we come together for one another. Ours is a love that seems wound tight enough to catch us, should we ever fall.
‘We should do something that would bring people together. To celebrate.’ I said, leaning back in one of the old wooden chairs. The room is decorated in old portraits of folks long since gone, little placards under their names. Someday I suppose I’ll have one hanging for the years I spend in the office. I wonder if whoever’s in my chair will look and see my face, and wonder what sort of man I’d been.
‘Spending more money on something that folks will forget?’ Bakar chimes in. He drums his fingers along the hardwood. ‘Could spend that money on more rations for the folks here.’
‘Not everything is about money, Bakar. Sometimes you need to build the community up. To help them remember we’re here for one another.’ I look at my brothers and cousins, and listen to the silence that stills in the room. Bakar often played the foil, sometimes for the sake of it.
‘With what? More speeches? To tell people that they need to love one another? In case you haven’t noticed, that hasn’t stopped much of anything, lately.’ He seemed particularly happy to goad me.
‘You know, you do have the right idea. When’s the last time we celebrated how much folks care for one another. How much pride they’ve taken in love?
‘I don’t think we’ve ever taken much pride in anything,’ Bakar sneered back. ‘Not in ten years, has it been? Or do I have to remind you?’
We looked each other in the eyes, then, and I see Bakar. I could see Benat in them for a moment. I wondered if he saw Raquel in mine?
‘If you don’t like the idea, you don’t have to come, Bakar,’ I answer. ‘But I think it could start something. Getting everyone together, to march. To the town square. To talk about love. To talk about how you can love as you wish, even in this world.’
The summer months were always harder, with the high heat and the rationing (and now a games to pull us apart). We needed something.
I kept coming back to Katelyn in my mind. I don’t want to feel sorry for her – she’s a grown woman who doesn’t need another to be valid, or live her life – but it struck me how much the absence of genuine affection, and friendship had hurt her.
Panem was supposed to be a place for all citizens, but old wounds had never healed. We did not teach our sons enough that they still carried less weight than our daughters; they could be bold, and strong, and brave but they never had to be lovely, kind, or graceful. We warned women especially of how dangerous it was to be alone, instead of how our boys should know better, and be better. The veneer of this egalitarian world stripped right off if you thought hard enough, and looked close enough. When we cheered a young woman in the games, did we still talk about how amazed we were she could take on a giant career boy, instead of how remarkable it was that he could keep up with her?
That femininity carried over to our boys, too. Fathers that still didn’t value those that loved and loved deeply. District Eleven was harsh heat or blistering cold, it was picking cotton until your fingers bled or walking through brambles and cutting up your thighs. We didn’t talk about love or hope because we were conditioned to be strong. No matter this equality we said we’d found, ask a man if he wanted his son (or daughter) to be strong, or mild and caring instead. You’d find your answer soon enough.
But there is no real strength without knowing your vulnerability. There’s no power in someone that can’t feel and understand another’s pain.
Love, however, was stronger. And not because of how it made you feel. It was what we did for one another with love and because of love that changed the world. Better than fear, which was fragile and could be melted down to nothing. Or anger, which could be swept away after the fire and ash.
It settled then, and I knew I talked about it enough that it would not escape my brain. We needed to do something was at once a celebration of our people, and this district. But also it was subversive and subtle. Love was an antidote to the rage and pain that the capitol brought. We could be bigger and bolder through this celebration of love; we could show unity and support no matter who you loved. We could take pride in the celebration of how we were different, but still loved.
We’ll march, I said, because I knew the decision would ultimately be my own. A peaceful demonstration. A holiday. For district eleven. To celebrate Panem. To celebrate us. I want to celebrate all the ways we love one another, I knew the words were clever by half, but I didn’t care. If it meant that I could show young girls and boys, and old men and women, all the people in between that they had value, and purpose, that was a power thing (and a dangerous thing, too).
I was fifteen the first time I fell in love.
It was early in summer when the fields were turning over. High heat that made the horizon in the distance blur. Thick cracks would develop along the dry earth from the temperature, and folks were starting to call it a drought. I spent most of my time with my brothers, tagging behind them in the fields, singing songs and carrying on. It was the first summer I got invited to a botellón.
We would gather out in empty corn fields, and sit among the cleared stalks. Aresti and Druso were the ones that brought the moonshine – it was almost always moonshine, unless Bakar was gracious enough to share whiskey he’d pilfered (and this only ever happened at holidays) – and would say a solemn prayer before we started the festivities. Not to any god, because we were heathens. But to one another, to share a night where we could forget about all the shit we shoveled, or worlds we would be walking back to in the morning.
‘When are you going to find someone, eh?’ Bakar had taken a long drink from the plastic bottle holding the blueberry moonshine, and passed it to Druso. He looked over at me with curious brown eyes. They were kinder back then.
‘When he’s ready, Bakar,’ Jurgi muttered. He was the shortest of all of us, but walked as though he could knock over a man twice his size. Hands in the pockets of his jeans, he stood along the far end of the circle. He didn’t much like drinking, but he liked even less being left out. ‘We can’t all have a son before we get out of the reaping like you.’
There was whooping as we stood there, laughing at the way Jurgi so handily dealt with his cousin. All of us boys teased one another more back that – rougher than we should have – and loved every second of it (unless you were on the receiving end). We were just boys being boys, or so we said to one another. Giving one another a hard time to get stronger, to be better. Laughing about how we felt about the girls that would come to the bonfires or drink with us.
‘Fuck off, Jurgi.’ Bakar shot back.
‘His balls have barely dropped yet, give the boy some space,’ Elias chided. He was too fat by half (we called him Jolly Eli, which he would curse us for).
‘Have you even kissed someone yet?’ Bakar pressed before taking another swig.
‘I saw him make out with the girl with the little tits, the one with the blond hair…’ Balsam, one of the other cousins (the one that had the intelligence of a brick but looked like a bull) spoke.
‘A girl, eh?’ Bakar let out a snort.
‘Blond? Really, Vasco?’ It may have been Druso that muttered this; he didn’t much like the girls with fair skin or lighter complexions.
‘Vale, it’s more than you get,’ I shot back, face red and eyes staring down at the ground. I could feel Aresti’s hand on my shoulder.
The conversation idled and someone started to talk about how nice a night it was.
Shadows danced behind us from the little fire, and we talked about all the sorts of things that are forgotten now. The hours in the schoolhouse that went on too long, or the asshole overseers that worked with peacekeepers that pushed us to work harder and faster no matter how blistered our hands could get. Things that seem so small now I’d tell the boys around the fire that these hours would be some of the few you wouldn’t be burdened with all the things that threatened to tear us apart (our children dying, the poverty that would come and go, sickness and sadness).
I was quieter, then. Hard to believe, eh? But I hadn’t quite found my tongue, shadowed by four other brothers, and a sister, along with scores of cousins. I remember taking in the smell of the fire, and the gasp of smoke. I swallowed down moonshine and thought it made me disappear, or that I was going to burn up. But the warmth faded to euphoria, a strange space that made me nod along, and chatter. I laughed a little louder at jokes that shouldn’t have been as funny, and jumped in to tear apart Jurgi for being a shit (we all already knew he was the worst of us).
Before long, the ones we’d invited would arrive. Through the stalks of corn and out toward the edge of the field where they could find the little bonfire and blankets set along the ground. The guests were friends from school, but mostly those that would partner off at the end of the night. From neighboring farms, or pretty things from class. A girl with thick-rimmed glasses and an underbite for Jurgi; girls who could barely spell their names for Druso; Aresti shared in the ones who barely said anything at all; Bakar already was with Ara; and me?
There’d been a passing fancy in a girl from school. Rae Ann, or something particularly eleven, who’d walked home with me. We’d gotten in trouble for something in class – most likely not turning in something, or talking back – and so we’d stayed late. I remember still that we laughed as we walked along and spoke of little things; my mother and father and their obsession with teaching me about the world before the war, her with learning all the different types of flour and oats. We stopped to watch the sunset, and I remember her putting an arm around me. I liked it, I remember thinking, about how warm we were together, and looking at her eyes how easy it was to lean against her. We kissed, warm and clumsy. I think I leaned forward and kissed the top of her lip, and fumbled, hands not sure what to hold onto.
We didn’t speak after that.
Bakar had pushed to know why it hadn’t worked. He liked to poke and prod to see who I liked and who I didn’t. He said I stayed too much in the crowd. I needed to be my own man and find someone, a good woman to settle down with. And I wondered, too, what that would’ve looked like. He had Ara – they’d been married even before his last reaping – and little Benat, too. He’d push about the different girls on the farms nearby, or even those that lived in town. Still, I would shrug and say that they didn’t have much interest (I was short, and goofy, a top lip kisser and surrounded by handsome brothers).
‘You’re too sensitive,’ I remember him saying. He would always tell me that as though it were a bad thing. ‘You have to learn how to be more of a man,’ He said.
But I didn’t think I needed to change; Bakar was enough of a man for me to know that I didn’t want to wind up like that.
Izars, though, were not ones to be patient. At least, not my brothers or cousins. And no matter how he pressed, or Druso or Aresti, I kept mum on who I liked. They started to joke that I was a starfish, that I didn’t have feelings for anyone or anything.
Bakar had set this all aside and decided that evening to bring someone different.
Arnold was from a farm about an hour’s walk from us. He was taller than me, and stockier, too. He was pale, with dark brown hair and eyes to match. He had a set of freckles around his nose and cheeks, and spoke with all the twang of district eleven.
I remember shaking his hand when he came through the set of stalks of corn and ambled over to the fire. I had already had a bit of moonshine, and remember smiling and staring. He looked back at me a little too long, even as Druso tried to talk to him about something unimportant. He would nod along before taking a sip of moonshine, and then coughing about how strong it was.
Warm, I think was. Not from the alcohol but from the sight of him.
’Arnold, what do you think of the Izar farm? Bakar edged closer to the boy with brown hair and pale skin (already red from the hours in the sun, the poor guy never stood much a chance in summer).
‘It looks a lot better after a few drinks, yeah,’ He replied, big, toothy grin spreading across his face.
’Have you met Vasco? Bakar drew in close, arm around my back, pulling me in tight. He was bigger than me (he always would be), but then, he had years on me, and I had time to grow. ‘I heard from your brother Edward that you two might have some things in common. You know, Vasco here plays the fiddle and the guitar? I heard that you played the piano…’
I remember looking from the ground up to him, and finding a smile. The sort of thing that has a young boy’s heart pound a bit faster. One that has you stagger out a word, if you’ve not learned to put one foot in front of another. He shook his head and I shook my own, because he was a year or two older, and we’d not so much as spoken.
This is the part where you wonder, me with a wife, and child, how such a thing came to pass. To which I’ll say in love, some of us find beauty in people, woman, or man. And you’ll laugh, because you never knew this about me. But did you ever think to know this about me, other than what I’ve shown you? Perhaps there’s more to someone than what you’ve ever seen? A single story that weaves another thread, far and away from who he is now.
‘My brother was pretty insistent that I come tonight,’ Arnold and I walked out toward where the fence was, with the bonfire in the distance behind us. ‘He said you all were a good bunch to get to know.
‘We’re the best,’ I said with a smile. I looked out at the moon, all full and silver. The fireflies were in full bloom then, circling around us.
‘Yeah, I’ve heard the reviews. You know, you folk seem to have your own way of doing things.’ He paused, and I could see him searching for the words. ’Different.’
We spent the night talking about all the things that we wanted to do. We kept walking along the corn stalks to get space between us and the others. He pushed me to think about the things that I wanted to do. Don’t you ever think about being more than a farmer? He asked, and when I told him I never thought about, he scoffed and told me that was thinking small. But then we argued; that he could come in and tell me how life was supposed to be lived when he didn’t know my family, or how much we all needed one another. How we lived had given us a good life, one that we were proud of. Full of love and rich in a history, a story that few other people would ever have.
‘I like how much you care about them,’ He said. He turned to face me with a lingering smile. He leaned in to take my hand. He told me, all quiet as a mouse, how sorry he was that he hadn’t understood who I was. Or what I wanted. He said his family was small, and he didn’t have what I did. He didn’t understand it but it didn’t mean he couldn’t see the beauty of it.
It’s that feeling, with his hand atop my own, that had me wonder just what it meant to feel so strongly for another person. I’d kissed a Rae Anne, and I’d felt the way the heat went between the both of us; she’d not talked to me again after, but somehow it hadn’t mattered so much to me. The moment would stay with me, but she could disappear.
I hoped he wouldn’t run from me, even before he leaned in to kiss me.
I leaned up to kiss him, he taller than me, his strong arms around my back, mine around his waist. He moved his mouth along my neck, and I remember hissing, not because it was painful but because I’d never felt so excited before. We were two fireflies that lit up our little shadows, all golden light for one another.
He moved slowly, hand up behind my head, guiding along. I closed my eyes and pressed in close, hands trailing along the back pockets of his jeans.
When we wandered back to the dying fire, it was just Bakar and Ara, she in his lap, and he staring up in the stars. My face flushed red when I realized that the grin on his face was there to go along with how smug he’d been to know that what he’d done had worked. And yet I couldn’t hate him, then. Not even a little bit. Not at all.
The days following were spent walking home together. We’d disappear up along the Rhodes farm and find a patch of grass to lie in and watch the clouds. Now, teenage boys want few things, having been one. Whole afternoons were spent disappearing into the arms of one another, of kissing deeply. Of waiting until the moon was overhead to meet out along the corner of the farm so that we could strip off each other’s clothes and roll around together.
‘You have too many brothers,’ He said to me, one night, the two of us watching the stars overhead. He stretched his hands behind his head. ‘Did you really all sleep in the same bed together?’
‘Well,’ I said with a smile. ‘It was better than sleeping on the floor, I guess.’ We didn’t know anything different. It didn’t seem so bad to me.
’When we’re old, I’ll buy us a house where we’ll have our own beds. One for each of us, and then one for both of us together.’ Arnold had an air of confidence that was unmatched.
I sat up then, and brought my knees to my chest. I looked back at Arnold, stretched out beside me. But I like the idea of waking up next to you, I remember thinking.
I worked up the courage to have him over on a Sunday afternoon. It was a special day, one where our father had planned on a slab of meats on the old stone barbecue. The rest of the Izars would be there, forty strong or more. We’d play old records (contraband, especially the ones in the old language), and dance. The older folks would sit along a flat folding table and play dominos and chatter. Bakar would be sure to pass around some whiskey to a choice few.
They were curious of Arnold – eyes on the boy who I spent so much time with – and had all number of questions. What was his family like? Where did he come from? We laughed when we heard it was just him and his brother and mother and father. That seemed quaint, altogether too small for us. I remember he flushed at their laughter, and went quiet all through dinner.
‘You all sure are something,’ He said when I walked him home that evening.
‘I know they can be a little much,’ I held my hand in his with a grin.
‘Everything was so… spicy?’ He was looking forward, as though he was searching for something. ‘It was good. I mean, it’s not like what we eat. My parents are… plain. Simple. You all are… colorful.’
Quiet descends and I nod along to what he has to say.
‘I’d like to meet them, too.’ I’d only ever seen flashes, when I walked him home at night. They didn’t work the fields. His father had a job in the granary doing inventory work, and his mother helped as a mechanic to fix the machines.
‘Oh. Yeah.’ He was thinking, then, still looking forward. ‘I don’t know if they would want to come over to meet your family though. It would be… a lot for them.’
I laughed and shook my head. ‘No, I could just come for dinner some time. Right?’
He seemed like he was putting together a puzzle in his head. ‘It’s a wonder you ever survived around all of your brothers, you know? And how many of there are you?’
When we reached the steps of his house, he let go of my hand and gave me a kiss on the cheek.
Somehow it felt more like a goodbye than I could have imagined, standing in the pale light of his front porch. He gave me a hug and seemed altogether distant and far away.
Where did we go?
From kissing between the stalks to afternoons swimming by the watering hole, to a night where we spent it on our backs staring up at the stars. And we talked about all those little things you think about during the summer (why did my father insist on wearing his pants so high, and why did his attempt to make anything to eat at all, even when he couldn’t cook). I taught him how to speak in old tongues, he taught me how to hold him, to face him and be unafraid (unless that’s what I’d wanted).
But love isn’t always forever.
It’s sunsets that fade, and mornings that come too soon. It’s that he saw too much of my family, too quickly – the noise, the crowd, the way we teased one another – a boy that had been all talk with me became sheepish, and withdrawn. And so he told me how he preferred when it was just us, and that one day, when we were old enough, we could go off on our own.
‘Your family is fine, they just aren’t like the rest of district eleven.’ He’d said to me.
Because he thought that what he wanted, was what I wanted. Because I wanted him, and so that was to be enough.
We’ve all learned from love, I think. Especially when we know that it has disappeared, or ended.
My daydream fades just as soon as Yani finishes spreading white paint across her face. (Estás listo?). She looks at me with a grin and I nod. (Por supuesto, mija).
It was my first step, but not my last step, in learning who I was. A memory of when I saw a glimpse of what love could be, for me.
We gather at the edge of our farm and I think how far we’ve come, almost thirty years since. All that’s changed around us, all that has to change. Yani is on my shoulders as I stand, facing a growing crowd. I think about what love is – to know love, to live the little moments that draw us together – and I’m thankful to celebrate. And not just to celebrate love, but what love meant, and who we were.
“I don’t have a speech to give,” I say, Yani now grasping at my hair and shifting in her seat. “I think in times like these, we look to one another to light the way. To draw closer to one another because we can know what it means – to love – and share that, powerful as it is. Today is about that, the simple fact that loving, and living, can bring us to change. That this is what unity looks like; supporting one another, and who we love. So I ask you to walk with me, to care for one another, and share your stories.”
I take Emma’s hand and we start, beginning to traipse our way toward the town center. I look to her, then, and smile. Slowly and surely, with her support along the graveled road, leading the procession. We had no message to challenge the capitol, but let it be an antidote toward their hatred of us. That no matter how much they could take, we would still support one another. And that was one step I was willing to take.
[So initially I wrote this as a post for people in PAT but I think that’s almost over (also be kind because I literally haven’t reviewed this because I was :furioustyping:; but feel free to write your own stories about love or about marching about love, etc – honestly I didn’t intend this to be a oneshot haha]
1Raymond Carver
