Nelissa Brey D12 [FINISHED]

4'9"
85 lb

I look like you, Mother. They all say I look like you. Dark hair, dark eyes, muted-olive tones in both our skins. We all look like you in the Seam. I wish I you were more distinctive. You deserved a face lovely enough to make men stop in the streets on their way home from the mines. You deserved hair blond as the honey we can't afford to buy that I see sometimes in shop windows. You deserved beauty. I don't deserve beauty, but I'd stand a sharp-boned, humdrum face much better if I knew you had not shared it.

I haven't got your nose, Emily insists, but Wiggam thinks I do. Was your nose snubbed like mine? Or was it long and curved and elegant like Emily's? And where did I get my thin, straight hair, dull-brown as the bark of the trees over the fence? Did you, or Father, or some long-dead relative I've never known give that to me? My eyes are small and smoky-black; were yours as well? Oh, Mother! I don't deserve to know you, but I want to, I do, I do, I do!

Claira remembers you could never stand a mess. I try to make you proud in the ways we can afford. Dust the powdered coal off my shoes, wash it out of my hair, shake it from the folds of my clothing. I work at staying clean, though in the end it's useless. Coal is everywhere, Mother. How did you keep yourself free of it? What miraculous tricks did you know that I don't?

I keep myself neat in other ways too. Coal is inescapable, but I can smooth out the wrinkles that form so often at the bottom of my blouse. I can make sure my shoelaces are tied firmly, and even when Claira hasn't had time to wash my clothes I wear the cleanest ones I have. I can't pick and choose the colors of my clothing, but we were too poor for that even when you were with us, weren't we? But if I am truly clean enough, then why is my skin so dry? Why does it peel so often, as if I've been sunburnt? I worry I'm not doing enough, Mother, but I'm glad at least I can keep up a semblance of meeting your standards. It is a small amount of payment for my wrongs.

The body wearing those clean, clean clothes was strong. It was stronger by far than my own body, Mother. You were strong enough to care for three children alone, strong enough to work in the mines and still come home every night but not strong enough to live through my coming. Emily especially remembers your muscular arms wrapping around her when she cried, while my arms - my arms are thin and scrawny. They are short and stubby, and not muscled at all. I cannot hold our heaviest cooking pot for more than ten seconds without dropping it on my toes. My legs are no better than my arms; I tremble with exhaustion within a minute whenever I try to move faster than a walk. I am weak, Mother, both in body and in mind.

I miss you, Mother. I don't deserve to miss you, but I do. You are my life, and I want to hold your every fiber in the pattern of my soul. But I can't, because I never truly knew you. I was not yet two days old when you were put into your coffin, and it's my own fault. Don't think I don't know it was my fault, please don't think that! Your other children - Claira, Wiggam, Emily -have explained to me what I have done, and I'm grateful to them because now I know to pay back at least a fraction of what I owe.

I sometimes think I'm insane. Emily thinks I'm insane, you know. She's told me so, and she's told me she regrets it. She's told me I should have a mind that's crystal clear, so that I have to live with exactly what I've done. She's right. I hope I'm sane. A clouded mind would be too much of a mercy.

I don't dare to kill myself, Mother. I've thought of it. Volunteering for the Hunger Games, perhaps, or simply sliding one of our kitchen knives smoothly into my throat. But there's too much owed, too much taken, too much to give back to the world before it's too late. When I'm old enough I'll work in the mines. Hope I lose a leg an arm an ear a toe a head, hope that I die down there in the suffocating darkness. Hope I go slowly. It's what I deserve but death frightens me, Mother.

I don't like it, Mother, when people glare at the Capitolite pulling the names from the reaping ball. I don't like it when the daring ones whisper at school and I catch the word 'Capitol' spoken with venom in the voice. You didn't like it either. I know you didn't. You were intelligent enough to know that it was wrong. I know about owing, Mother, and I know about betrayal. I know about pain deserved. I am like the rebels. It is my duty to make my life like a never-ending Hunger Games, and to send our children to those terrible Games is what we all of us deserve.

Mother. I'm sorry, Mother, for what you did to me I did to you. You know I'm sorry, don't you? Sorry for shoving you screaming out of this world as I entered it, just as if there were no room for one more life? You know don't know must know can't know have to know how much I wish I was dead in your place! The births of my siblings went well. It was only when I came that you lost your hold on life and went sliding off the surface into death! It was my fault - it had to be - and for what fraction of nothingness it's worth, I'm sorry.

Claira got me through my early years. It was a measure of mercy that she did so, and I wish she had left me to die. It would have been hard enough for her without me, caring for a four - and a ten - year - old at the age of nineteen - Father, dead half a year before my birth, had no support to give. Wiggam, as the only child old enough to help, had to find work running errands for one of the merchant families. Claira worked the mines, but even with the money both their jobs brought in there was never enough food or clothing or firewood.

I drank goat's milk for my first eight months, then ate soft foods after that when the small amount you'd set by gave out and we could no longer afford the rich liquid. Malnutrition is a common lot in Twelve, but usually mother's milk provides for babies. I didn't have that luxury. I brought it on myself by killing you, Mother, and if my diet as a newborn is the cause of my weakness now then so much the better. It is right that I pay for what I did.

- As soon as I was old enough, my siblings let me know what I had done. Claira - Wiggam - Emily - all of them told me who I had destroyed, what I had done to our family. I was about three when I first found out that I had killed you, Mother. When I found out what I owed. I've been memorizing you and trying to pay for my crime ever since. How close am I, Mother? How - close?

I started school at five, and I've tried my best to learn. I am not top of my class by any means, but I've stayed at a high enough level to understand the lessons. Long division is cold and hard, never comforting, though. The only thing I've learned that comforts me - and I know I don't deserve to be comforted - was taught at the start of my schooling and is reviewed every week. The Capitol's goodness, the districts' traitorous acts, the annual Hunger Games. I learned at five that I was not alone in wrong. I have always held it on my shoulders more heavily than the others, but I am not alone.

By the time I was twelve Wiggam was working in the mines and Emily was the one doing odd jobs for the merchants. We had enough money to pay for food by that point, or I would have taken out tesserae. I might have done so anyway, to increase the chances of my reaping, but I knew if I went to the Games I would die with debts unpaid. Still, even with enough to eat money was more than welcome, so I went to work cleaning the school after hours. It pays a little, and I'm still there now.

My siblings and I still live together. Claira can't leave until I'm grown and the responsibility of my care is shifted from her to me, but the others could go. I'm not certain why they don't. Wiggam is twenty-seven and Emily twenty-one, old enough to either marry or to live alone. It's not for my sake that they stay, but perhaps they are fond enough of Claira that they don't want to leave my care solely to her.

Next year I will be no one's burden. At eighteen, I can work in the mines. At eighteen, I can live on my own. At eighteen, I will no longer be a child. My family will no longer have to care for me. I won't last long in the mines. Perhaps I will continue cleaning the school - paying off the debt of guilt I owe - before I die in the mine-shafts. If I am careful, I think I could support myself at a subsistence level. And Mother, Mother, Mother, I don't want to go too young..