Christina DeBoe | District One | DONE!

Christina Deboe

How could she show a distaste for her own family? The circus had raised her, taught her, fed her. And there she sits like the queen of squalor.
She doesn't talk much. It's as if conversation with people is beneath her. As a child she was a literal ankle-biter. Those pearly whites left stinging red marks on more than one person's skin. She hid behind her mother's skirts and sucker her dirty thumb. With her grungy hair hanging limp about her face she sat by herself painting designs on pottery most of the time.
Delila, the older spinster, was like a mother to the child. She would sit with the child and teach her old songs. Ever the patient parental figure, coaching her over each note and lifting the child chin so her voice could reach the heavens. The child had lights in her eyes like and angel and a voice like one, too. Yet Christina got older. Her thin frame stretch toward the sky like a tree when she danced. It was as if she grew an inch every day. But every day she got colder and more distant. She started playing around with prostitutes and sitting by herself. Delila would try to convince her to pull her weight. She would listen, Delila insisted, it was only a childish phase. Delila's hair streaked more with grey every day as Christina's grew longer. The old woman hobbled around, gnarled hands working to pick up Christina's slack.
"Listen to me, baby girl, you've got to be kinder. Watch the words that come out of your mouth. Now, come help you're old friend Delila," the sweet old woman's eyes shined with the kind of motherly forgiveness not even a pair of rose-colored glasses could counter.
But the lights were gone from Christina's eyes. The angel voice said something cruel, something so unkind that the old woman's face lost it's smile. Those pearly teeth held bitterness between them and the words spilled out tike poison. Those teeth were stained from the alcohol that had ruined her Daddy. That voice so seldom used grew old and sharp.
Christina and Delila never spoke again. One of the last lights in the child's life went out. She was no longer a child. So no longer had her baby face and painted pots to hide behind. The world stared her in the face every day and bared it's fangs. She always stared bitterly back, into nothingness.

They call me the flower child.

I dance barefoot under the stars. Twinkle, twinkle they call to be far above. I grip the green grass with my toes and harshly laugh, collapsing on my heavenly carpet.

At night I dance like a soaring bird. I lightly beat the tent ground with my feet and stoop low to the ground, my patchwork skirt swirling around me like a blur of dirty rainbow. I spring to touch the tent-tops, stretching my golden, sweaty body and feeling the air run in between my thin fingers with nails painted blush pink. My arms are like thin branches whipped across the expanse by a hurricane. I slow down and reach one hand towards the audience as if wanting to pull them to the stage with me, the other behind me for balance. I spin on one rag-bound toe then stretch with one leg and wrap it around the tent pole. I am exposing almost my entire leg, my other leg still draped artfully with my full skirt. The bangles on my wrist jangle and so do the pendants hanging around my waist as I stretch my arms back over my head reaching for the audience and stretch my glowing leg up the poll, as if I am doing a kick too high or a split off the ground. Gasps as flip over my head. My breath catches in my throat and chokes me . My stomach drops before my feet hit the ground again and I stand erect in front of the Capitol creatures.

My parents are gypsy people. We are the poor of District One. There aren't many of us. Out of the deprivation the comes from poverty started a show of sorts. A circus, they called it. They invited the artists and the pickpockets to come and preform tricks in front of people who were willing to pay for a cheap ticket. The prostitutes taught me how to dance and their was an old lady who taught my how to sing. At age three I was taught to fingerprint, to pickpocket, to create an illusion. I am Miss Jack-of-All-Trades and Princess of Sins. At least, that is my stage name. We starved. I would cough up blood and was painfully thin. Slowly our circus become an attraction to the sickeningly rich of our District. We bribed the Peacekeepers and appealed to the attraction of the Games. We reenacted deaths and held betting sessions.
Father insisted the circus would become successful. By a miracle it did.

Soon our dirty, colorful collection of crooks became a source of entertainment. We sold thing is our tents lit by sunlight by day and performed at night. I painted the pots my mother made with my fingers and soon we could afford brushes. They sold for more. I made wind chimes from hollowed wood and strung garlands of flowers around. There was always a flower in my copper hair.

Rich, fat, painted women and men came to see our shows. With wigs and elaborate eye make, altered skin-colors and bows, ribbons, plastic and shiny jewels the sat to watch us perform. We upgraded our tents to huge, ornate things large enough to hold elephants. The rich a had nothing better to do with our money then to buy us out. They bought us elephants, camels, wood from other districts to build shacks of houses. We painted them orange and maroon and striking green.

My shows always sold out. I wear my signature colors. Orange, pink, watermelon, yellow. Always baring my midriff or shoulder or back. Just a hint of skin to keep people interested but little enough to keep me apart from the prostitutes. My Ringleader Father, drunken as he is, does not like his Princess disrespected.

Always flower prints and diamond patterns. I let my skin tan by the outside sun but I cover it with white powder to appeal to the Capitolite ebony creatures. A flower in my hair and light-colored jewels and golden bands from admirers. I dye the tips of my hair pink sometimes.

Don't let me fool you, I am not always beautiful. My feet are huge and my hands are tiny, like a child's. I'm about 5' 4" last I checked. My strawberry colored hair is choppy and oily. I cannot keep the grease and sweat out of my hair no matter how hard I try. It's split and then ends and only wants to part in the middle. Years of poverty have ruined my figure. I am skinny, lumpy in the shoulders. My legs are very long and my torso is extremely short, making me look dispreportioned. I'm hollow and all angles. I cover up my odd figure with extreme clothes. My narrow, almost squinty, eyes I surrounded with crazy colors and loud, layered golden plates and glitter. I covered my fat lips grotesquely with red lipstick for the night shows. My giraffe neck I cover up with patterned scarves and high necklines and necklaces. Hopefully no one will notice what a freak I really am.

You know what makes me a freak, really? The ugly, ruined, distaste I can't help but show every day. I am jaded. I am cold. I am hungry for more from this Godforsaken life that what it gives. What do I do about it? I dance. All I can do, pathetic, used, animalistic, me. Pretty little creature with a sneer in her eyes. Freak.

The prostitutes are nice and they always have money, which is helpful. But to me the are just wasted people whining and breaking slowly. One day they will be old and ugly and starving because no one wants them anymore. So will I, come to think of it. I don't like to think off it, though. I try to forget what a freak I am, how hungry I am for more, by dancing. It is the only thing that will bring me joy. One day I will be old and broken and will no longer be able to dance. The universe hates me. It's okay, I hate it more.
The circus had raised me, taught me, fed me. But they had also ruined me. I hate them because they ruined me. I used to be a child. A quiet child but an innocent one. Sure, everyone says I was a pain in the rear. Whatever. I loved life. I played in the grass and painted my mother's pottery. One day, though, I made the stupid mistake of peering out from behind my mother's skirts. I realized what life is. Life is hell.
Every night my father would come home to our little shack house dead drunk. Those brightly painted walls seemed more like prison bars every day. I watched my mother become nothing more than a old woman with the clay dripping between her hands and bags under her eyes.
I saw trainer whip animals, pickpockets steal from even children, women sell themselves just to eat.
They say if you can't beat them join them . I did more than that. I became them. Or maybe I was one of them all along.
I don't talk much anymore. Every time I do it's like my words are rusted. But they are sharp. They are cold. The warm first blaze at night and the jesters dance around them. I dance, too, like I still have the light. A fire that burns. But I lie to myself. I am as jaded as the oldest women. My dancing is a fire to itself. I am just the freak.
I don't like people because I believe they could never love me.

I am jaded. I am a freak. I am the flower child.

Odair
Faceclaim: Laura Mira