Jenny Elfrett [District 5]

    
    My name is Jenny Mine Elfrett, which I think it a pretty name. Most people don't like their names, but I like mine. I especially love to write it down. I was born about fourteen years ago in this district, District 5. I was a surprise but my parents were happy to have me, anyway. I have two older and one younger brother, as well as a sister who is twenty something, but I don't know her and she moved out a long time ago. My dad owns the bookstore, and my mom is a writer. I don't like writing as much as my siblings do, but I love to read, and I've probably read the whole book store. I get along okay with my brothers, but we don't communicate much and the oldest one, Arrow doesn't usually pester me at all. 

    I sort of work at the book store. We are comfortable, and we always have enough to eat. I have pretty normal clothes, though. Nothing fancy. I'm not into girly things, so I normally wear jeans and a regular solid colored shirt. I love scarves, gloves, sweaters, and anything related to cold weather wear. A matter of fact, I just prefer cold weather. My allergies go a little nuts in warmer months. I have a bad allergy to pollen, and a few kinds of bugs like bees and mosquitoes. 

I have often dreamed
Of a far off place

    I don't know if I'm particularly pretty or not. I am about five foot three, and slim but not scrawny. I get to rejoice in writing with both my hands, but of course, I'm writing things down all the time. I'm deaf, and not everyone understands sign language. I have long legs, and an okay shape, though my chest isn't very big. I think it would be my facial features I don't like as much. My face is a little wide, and my eyes are almost cartoonishly round. I have lips that curve slightly downwards. I do like my hair. Its curly and frizzy, and very long. It is a pretty shade of brown, the exact color of all my siblings and both my parents.

    I don't talk, period. I have tried in the past but my mother said it sounded like a mouse getting killed when I tried. I can read lips well, but sometimes when someone talks too fast I have difficulty and can't rely on it.

    I have a few really odd habits. I sleep on top of blankets, prefer to snuggle myself around them when they are clumped up in some places. If you came in my room while I was sleeping, you would probably assume I was a messy sleeper, but I actually move my blankets around to suit my body. My pillow goes wherever I feel like putting it, be it at the head, foot, or edge of the bed. Sometime I prop it against the wall and instead of putting my head on the pillow, I rest one of my shoulders on it.

And a voice keeps saying
This is where I'm meant to be

   Growing up was difficult. My brothers didn't seem to care that I couldn't hear them, and if they did care, they didn't want to acknowledge it. They still don't full acknowledge it. They tried to sneak up on me constantly, and I remember my father sending them out of the room on multiple occasions. I was usually engrossed in a book regardless what they were doing, and eventually they figured out they couldn't bother me when I was invested in something. Now they leave me alone. I sort of miss the laughs and the funny faces, though. Only when I'm not reading. 

    My earliest memory is finger painting with Enoch, who was only about two years older than me. We had all the paint spread around our little area in the kitchen, and I was about four years old. We started out only painting on the paper, and eventually we were rubbing different colors on each other's faces, then we stripped to our underwear and covered our bodies. When my father came in and found us, he was angry at first, then smiled and picked us up to take us outside, where he sprayed us clean with a hose. Enoch is still the one I'm closest to, despite not talking to him very often.

    One of the things I regret most is not going to school. My parents tried to send me at first, but the teacher didn't understand me and the other young children thought it was weird that I couldn't hear them, and after constant teasing they finally pulled me out and my mother decided to teach me on her own. She taught me to read, and basic math, but about the time I was eight I took learning into my own hands with books from my father's store. Sometimes Enoch or Arrow would lend me one of their school books to look over, but I usually didn't get to keep it for too long. I worked in the book store a lot more than my brothers, because I was there more often and I could find anything someone asked for.

I will find my way
I can go the distance

    When I was eight, Zaire was born. I wasn't interested in him, actually, I did what my dad did. I avoided him. I didn't want to take care of a baby, so I let my mother and my brothers take care of him. To this day Zaire and I aren't close. He is probably the only one that still pays me a little attention, so he can stare me as if he's angry when he is bored. He changes all the time, never deciding who he wants to be, but I've pretty much always been the same. An extreme loner, and more than extremely uninvolved in the world. My life is lived through stories and sitting on one of the deeper top shelves in my father's store watching customers for signs of neediness.

    Being uninvolved makes me good at knowing people before I've communicated with them, but it makes it harder to have friends. I don't have anyone I'm close to, except perhaps my father. No one knows me from school because I don't go, and the girl that my father hired to work at the bookstore rushes out as fast as she can every evening. I don't leave the store or the house unless I really need to. I don't mind, because I'd rather be by myself with fictional friends.

    What really separated me from my siblings happened when I was twelve. My older sister, Neda was visiting. We were at dinner, and everyone was talking to each other and I was beginning to get frustrated because none of them were facing me or indicating what was going on. They would laugh and forget to explain the joke to me. Finally, I interrupted them to mention what they were doing, and not one of them understood. They told me to shut up. I may have never stood up for myself before, but for some reason being told to shut myself out of the conversation hit me hard. I left the table. When my siblings came to my room, I told them things I shouldn't have. Things you don't tell siblings, or friends, or anyone. I let them know I was tired of tricks. I said something I didn't mean. I asked them to die.

    I told them the next day I didn't mean it, that I was just angry. They didn't want to hear it. I thought they were overreacting, and perhaps they were, but either way they use it as a reason to ignore me now. I don't ask them anymore, because they only refer to my ears and never the night. I get the feeling they have a different reason for ignoring me.

I know every mile
Will be worth my while

    I'm usually an optimistic thinker, which is why I always get so disappointed with sad stories. Despite that, I usually get a pretty strong feeling when I think something is about to go wrong. Maybe its the ability I seem to have to figure people out. Watch them for half an hour and I start guessing crazy things about them. I think of imaginary histories, fictional personalities for their probably boring lives. I think of adventures they've been on, then they leave, and I've moved onto someone else.

    When I communicate with people, I try to be polite. Instead of telling them I'm deaf and letting them stumble around, I try to get things across the best way I can, even if its on paper, written down words. I don't like to talk about myself, and rather I get the conversation over with as quickly as I can without being rude. I help customers, but I don't chat with them. Too much trouble.  I'm no leader, I'm a follower by nature.

    I've mentioned before I love to read, and I love to nap. I also like to hide. I love to get into a nook and stay there, folded up or ducking my head. I'm good at finding random places to hide, places no one ever finds me in. I don't like the dark very much, though, because it makes me feel too lost. I rely on my vision for most things, and when it goes away I am confused. I love colors like baby blues and greens. Then, my favorite books are all over the place, but I do like thrillers.

    I like that I'm neat. I don't make messes, quite simply. I'm just not a messy person, though I'm bad about tidying up. If someone were to come in my room and wreck it it would stay that way for a while before I got around to cleaning it, so I just keep everything organized. I've always been comfortable with myself, except for the usual awkwardness that comes when I try to be social.

Like a shooting star
I will go the distance

        oDair