Cheri Hillock - District 11 - Finished

Considering Cheri is from District 11, she is fairly unremarkable in her general frame, standing about 4 and a half feet tall and only weighing 60 lbs. Like many in this district, the effects of the lack of food and related nutritional imbalance are evident from the girl’s structure. She is relatively bony throughout and has slightly knocked knees. Her face is pretty gaunt with well defined cheekbones from the lack of bodyfat. The most distinguishing factor (and it is likely a big one) is the fact that it is pretty apparent that she is bi-racial. Her skin is a pinkish brown color and is pretty even throughout her body. Her hair is an odd and disjointed mixture of both of both races. As a toddler, her mother tried to tame it but to no success and so, the hair is kept almost as short as a boy’s hair would be.

Her clothing is old and threadbare. They are the hand me downs from her older brothers. Luckily, they fit her pretty well though sometimes she needs to use a piece of baling twine as a belt. The garb is pretty standard, dark colored cargo pants that are discolored at the knees from wear and constant grinding into the dirt as her brother and now her dig in the fields for onions and other root vegetation. Her shirt is a sleeveless t-shirt, usually a dark color as to hide dirt. During cooler months she will wear a plaid flannel overshirt like a jacket. If it gets really cold out, she wraps a woolen blanket over her body. Luckily, while cold snaps are not uncommon in the district, they are usually pretty short and are often forgotten by midday. On her hair she wears the only cheerful color in her attire, a simple yellow bandana that protects her hair from the dirt that it would otherwise collect. The bandana itself though is pretty dirty from years of wear. On her feet, she wears simple handsewn leather soled shoes. The shoes were made from burlap sacks and a worn out messenger bag. Her mother was pretty thrifty and constantly repurposing items for another life out of them.

Physically, Cheri is pretty typical of what you’d expect a child who has worked all of her life in the fields to be. For instance, while she is not overly strong, she is strong enough to carry a basket full of whatever produce they happened to harvest that day and transport it to the side of the road where the drivers would load them onto their carts to haul off to the train depot. She has good speed though when she runs and she is very limber. She is good at tumbling and ground gymnastics but has a fear of heights. She is pretty handy with small tools such as spades and knives, though has never used anything in a really combative manner. She cannot swim, but is not afraid to go into moving water as long as she can still touch the ground.

Cheri has an easy going personality and most people who are around her don’t mind working with her. She is a hard working young woman, putting in as many hours during non school days as adults do and has done so for several years. She is meticulous about her work, sorting quality of the produce as she goes knowing some of it will end up on the tables of the President while others will be turned into slop for the farmers of District 10 to feed their pigs with. She’d wager the pigs of District 10 are better housed and fed than the humans of District 11, though she wouldn’t say it out loud. While she works, she’ll join into the chorus of the workers, though she has no talent for singing; it is merely a way to pass time until the day is done.

Cheri works equally as hard at school as she does in the fields, but the results are usually fairly average in graded performance. Her biggest advantage is resourcefulness (something she learned from her mother). She often picks up stray bits of scrap that has been discarded and combines it with other materials to create something useful, be it a spade for working in the fields or even a solar oven which comes in handy when coal is scarce. She is rather proud of that particular creation (as is her mother who now uses it on a regular basis when baking bread from the family’s rations).

The main shortfall in Cheri’s personality would be that she isn’t very trusting, especially of Peacekeepers. It is well known that her father was a Peacekeeper, though his identity is unknown and no one has ever stepped forward to claim her as their child. She knows that perhaps her life could be a bit easier. She doesn’t generally let this stop her, she works even more determined to prove to them that she didn’t need him anyway. In general, she abides by the laws of her District and avoids Peacekeepers like the plague. She is also tends to be a little reserved when she is working hard on something, not always sure of another’s motives or skill she will often dismiss offers to help.

To understand who Cheri is, one must look at where she came from. Who were her parents and what was their life like? Cheri’s mother, Molly, was married to your average man of District 11, Abram. The family worked under a taskmaster who oversaw several fields of various root vegetables. Mostly they dealt in onions, but they also worked radishes, carrots, and potatoes as well. The family was doing well, they had 3 children. The oldest was named Samuel and the youngest were twins named Vidalia and Scally. Sadly, when the oldest had just turned 11 and the youngest were 5, Abram was seriously injured in an accident involving a plow. The cut became badly infected and eventually, Abram lost his life in early September. The month of wages following his death helped some, but life quickly became a struggle as Molly worked hard to keep food on the table.

As luck would have it, Vidalia became ill in December. The child fought hard and in a last ditch effort, Molly sold the use of her body to several Peacekeepers to be able to buy medicine for sweet little Vidalia. Needless to say, that’s when Cheri was conceived in January and despite all of Molly’s efforts, Vidalia past away in February. When Samuel turned 12, he knew he had to become the man of the family. To ease his mother’s burden he took tessera for each member of the family and every year crossed his fingers at the Reaping that he would not be called. Luckily, the odds were in his favor and he never had to take the train to the Capital and almost certain death.

As Skally grew into Reaping age, he took two tessera (one for him and one for Cheri) to supplement what his mother and older brother worked hard to earn. He is in his final year for Reaping this year and the number of times his name is in the ball has everyone a little nervous.

Cheri is now of age to accept her own tessera, but since Skally has already done so, she enters her first Reaping with her name in there only once. The odds are so slim, she doesn’t worry; but she is worried a little for Skally. Then again, a lot of District 11 children take tessera, so does it really change anything? Of course, Cheri has just enough intelligence to realize this and it does help keep everyone relaxed with the approaching Reaping for the 61st Hunger Games.

In general, Cheri’s life has not been too spectacular. She was raised by Molly, a single mother, who worked every day. Molly was back at work a week after Cheri was born, but the overseer assigned her to a warehouse where the work wouldn’t be as strenuous as she recovered. Cheri hung in a sling at her mother’s chest as Molly sorted produce by its quality before it would be shipped. About 6 weeks later, Molly was sent back to the fields as Cheri slept away her infant days in a basket with a makeshift umbrella on top to block out the shade. As Cheri got older, Molly would tether her ankle to a nearby tree so the child could explore the ground around her and practice her walking skills. She had a small doll made from an old burlap sack and a few rocks to keep her entertained as her mother worked. By the time she was 3, Cheri helped her mother by brushing dirt off the produce before it was carted to the road. At age 5, she started school and joined her brothers after school to work the fields.