Richard Wolfe // District 8

Richard Wolfe
14 years old
District 8

My mother never smiles anymore.

I don’t remember if her smile began to fade after my father went or after Bran’s fall or after Bran and Aria were reaped. I was too young to remember my father going, but I do remember my siblings. The way there were here one moment and gone the next and with them, my mother vanished. Like smoke. Her smile and all, behind closed doors, and under the musty blankets of her bed while my brother, Rajas, shouted through keyholes. I had to raise myself.

They say I look like my father which is better than looking like my dead brother, I think. Children are supposed to look like their parents; not their siblings who died in a pool of their own blood on television. We have the same thick eyebrows, set low above our eyes and the same crooked smile, scrawled across thin, pink lips. Someone told me, at my siblings’ funeral, that he smiled a lot at my mother with that cracked smile, glints of white teeth, every time she as much as flicked her hair to the side and he caught a glimpse of the bright brown eyes we all share. I fear one day my nose will grow into Rajas’s strong one. Like the rest of my family, I have that same mess of brown hair.

I have a chin that’s all my own, prominent, shooting down out from my face, still doughy with childhood fat. And my teeth are yellow, unlike my sister, Sarita’s, perfect ones. But Sarita’s seen a lot more care than I have. That’s when Mother reminded us to brush our teeth and guided the bristles gently across my mouth, into the back of my mouth, a sweep across my tongue. My legs are strong, unlike Bran’s ever were. They’re not long, but they’re muscled from all the times I’ve had to run home from school to avoid the boys in the school yard, admonishing my family’s bad luck. Unlike Bran, I am never barefoot. Though, if there’s anything I remember about it—and I don’t remember much, the most I remember of him is that I’ve seen in Games re-runs—is his feet and how much they look like mine. Small, chubby, but so subtly curved inward, perfect for climbing. Like little hands.

My teachers tell my mother that I’m intelligent and she accepts their praise of me with dead eyes, numbly pinning my perfect grade report to the fridge and walking away. I could be (and I am) smarter than the rest of the household combined, but I’ll never fill the gap left behind by her dead children. I like school. It’s my zone. I’ve always been a reader and since my home has grown tired and quiet, I’ve had more room to read. My teachers have always been impressed, bringing me up in front of the others, but I’m not one to brag. All I can do is blush and look away. Anything to draw less attention to myself.

I’ve never been very talkative especially not to people outside of my family. According to Rajas, there was a time when I was younger, where I’d babble to Bran for hours, following him around the house. God only knows what I found to talk endlessly about. That was when I was forgiving. Sarita once got into a fight with Aria, chasing her all around the house and Aria, in her haste to escape Sarita, accidentally knocked me back—down the stairs. I was unhurt, but Aria was horrified, crying and apologizing profusely. I hugged her. That’s one thing I can remember about her. How she felt in my arms.

I house a sort of bitterness now. I haven’t spoken more than few words to my mother in years and I’d like to keep it that way. Rajas sees the way my eyes harden when I look at her and he advises me that hate is wrong. I feel nothing towards her, however; my chest is hollow when I look upon my mother. The kids at school, the ones who make the snide comments, know, too, I am no easy target. My tongue is quick with my own comments about their parentage and their clothing and their grades and everything else in between. I never raise my eyes to deliver these insults, though. I am not like my brothers who would stare their tormenters in the eyes and deliver the final blow; I am always looking at my feet.

I don’t remember my father at all. I hear he was kind and loving and made my family very happy. I have some recollection of my siblings, but I was six when they were taken from this world. I know the aftermath. I was sitting on the floor in the hall when Bran was lost. I heard something in the next room clatter. I heard a scream that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand straight up. The next thing I knew I was being pressed into Sarita’s arms. I’ll never forget my mother’s eyes as Sarita hustled me up the stairs. They were wide, wild, bloodshot and not her own. She stared at me, but she could not truly see me. She was seeing right through me.

I was too young to understand. I asked my sister, confused, when my siblings would return. Bran would let me sit on his lap in his wheelchair and race down the halls with him. Aria would play soldier with me and let me hold a stick. Now, Sarita played with me, but her movements were mechanical and tense and she darted to the living room every chance she got. In the coming years, I’d come to understand that Aria had killed Bran before perishing herself. There had been a flicker of hope that one could survive, especially Aria, Aria was made for this, but then, a dash of horror at what ultimately occurred, and finally, a numbness set over the Cold House. Even wild, strong, clever Aria couldn’t make it.

My house has grown colder in their absence, in the many years in between. Mother retreats farther and my siblings sleep later. I wander around late at night and feel their snores reverberate inside of me. An old doctor’s book calls this insomnia. I call it familiarity. At nights, I tip toe along in socks, listening to Rajas’s loud, shuddering snores, Sarita’s soft breath, and Johann’s deep inhales. Sometimes I can hear Jeyne groaning softly in her sleep in Rajas’s room. My legs work their way to the end of the hall, my foot moving silently. I am a ghost in the night. My head cocks to the side, to my mother’s door. Silence. Then, broken a soft whimper. Then she is quiet once more. It is familiar. It is the closest I will ever become to my mother, awake in the night, on either side of an unyielding door, knowing she can see my feet obstructing the hall light from seeping underneath the door and knowing that I hear her cries. Neither of us move for several moments and then I move off, back towards my siblings’ rooms. I am not the only ghost in the Cold House.

odair