Phthalo Whateley (District Eleven) Finished.

The first thing you notice about Phthalo Whateley is his hands.  They are strong and gnarled like the farmers of District Eleven, but unlike anyone else you’ve ever seen, Phthalo’s hands are blue.  You try to be polite and refrain from staring, but there is something grotesquely captivating about his unnatural flesh. The discoloration goes about halfway up both of his forearms.  The smoother parts of his skin are a dark navy that fades into a pale sky blue in the calluses on his palms and fingers. You can see his natural pinkish skin peeking out of the folds in his knuckles, but his hands are overwhelmingly blue.  You hesitate to offer a handshake, concerned that he might leave a handprint should he touch you.

Mr. Whateley chuckles to himself and rolls his watery grey eyes before maintaining laser-like eye contact with your own fingers.  “You know it’s rude to stare, right?” he teases. He’s soft spoken, but his words drip with sarcasm. He runs a finger across his off-white cotton shirt to demonstrate that his hands aren’t going to leave a mark before defiantly extending one of his eerie blue appendages, daring you to give him a handshake.  You oblige and don’t try to hide the fact that you wipe your hands on your pants afterward. You drag your eyes away his azure palms to look your new business partner in the eye. If he just had the courtesy to wear gloves, he’d be thoroughly unremarkable. A few loose strands of his short light brown hair peek out from under his straw hat that protects his face and neck from the scorching District Eleven sun.  Phthalo’s clean shaven and square jawed. He’s a little shorter than most young men in the District, but not by much. And he doesn’t appear to be more muscled than he needs to be to work in the fields. He keeps some chewed leaves in his bottom lip that make his breath smell almost like licorice. He isn’t interested in chatter and redirects small talk to negotiations of dye prices. While he speaks, his hands twitch and he picks at his cracked, nearly black fingernails.  He catches you staring and once again mirrors you with an unblinking glare at your hands.

You try to talk down his prices, but Phthalo stubbornly continues to drive a hard bargain. You look a little closer at that white shirt and start to realize that Mr. Whateley isn’t as poor as his accent and deformity may suggest. His clothes fit well.  The lightweight cotton getup has been tailored specifically for him. And the seams of his shirt are sewn with a dark purple thread that couldn’t have been cheap. He knows the value of the rich dyes that have discolored his own flesh. You begrudgingly agree to his prices and for the first time all day he gives you a polite smile, showing off his pearly white, anise-scented teeth.  He reaches out that hand again. This time, you’re less reluctant to shake it. After all, you can make even more money off of his gloopy blue paste than he can.

Personality:

I live my life for the color blue.  I work long, hot days in my father’s indigo fields. I spend humid evenings hunkered over clay vats of pungent fermenting dye, stirring in precise amounts of ash and sugar like a witch over her cauldron.  From the time I wake up until I go to bed, I turn emerald leaves into deep sapphire dyes that are used all over panem. I’m the reason weavers in Eight can make clothes of blue wool, printers in Seven can make blue stationary, refiners in Nine can make blue ink, and artists in One have blue paints.  For three generations, the Whateley family has grown more indigo than anyone in Panem. And for the last four months, every drop of dye my family sold has been the work of my indigo stained hands.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember that blue is just a means to an end.  I like to think of myself as an artist or an alchemist, creating something beautiful for beauty’s sake.  But we grow indigo because Panem wants blue things and is willing to pay good money for someone else to do the laborious work of growing and extracting dye.  I make dye because it sells and I can use the money for medicine for pop, food for the children, and clothes for me. The money lets us stay in the same house where my great-grandfather was born and we get to work the farmland that has been part of our family for as long as anyone alive today can remember.  Blue is money. And money is a livelihood. I would love to pursue something simply because it is beautiful, and I’m often tempted to use some of that precious dye to color a sketch in my notebook. But I must remember the dye is how we afford to live and it cannot go to waste. District Eleven’s middle class is minuscule and shrinking and now that I am the patriarch of this family, it’s my job to protect the little wealth my father grandfathers have accumulated for us.

Indigo is one of the most labor intensive crops you can grow.  I essentially do three different jobs. And I do them very well. Growing indigo is about irrigation.  I have to know when to move my plants from float beds to the field and I have to move a back breaking amount of water to keep my plants happy it’s physically exhausting, but for the most part the drudgery of our field work is mindless enough my brother can help with it.  Dye making is an entirely different animal. The blue pigment has to be extracted from the green leaves, beaten to the right consistency, and fermented before being strained. It is an exacting process that takes a keen instinct and understanding of the plant. It’s easy to kill your vat and lose your valuable pigment.  I learned from the best and improved on my father’s technique. So the dyes I sell are the best money can buy. That brings me to the last part of my job--selling. Unlike many farmers in District Eleven, I am also a merchant. Artisans throughout Panem are interested in indigo dye and no matter how great my product is, if I cannot convince them to pay top dollar, the Whateleys will soon be the newest residents of the overpopulated District Eleven Poorhouse.  Selling is the hardest part of what I do. I have to read people and keep them from reading me while we haggle over what a fair price is for indigo. It gets even harder when people want to barter and I have to also evaluate the value of their goat or pottery or whatever they want to use instead of money. It’s a pain. My hands betray me too. I constantly fidget when I’m nervous. I bet if the dye ever fades from my hands, they’ll be covered in scars from old hangnails that I’ve incessantly picked.

I think I’m a pretty decent person.  I work hard. I love my family. Or at least I suppose I must love my family.  I don’t actually see them all that much. My mom and sister take care of the children.  Pop mostly stays home and sleeps nowadays. One of my brothers helps me in the field, but we mostly work too hard to talk much.  Everything I do, I do for them. But if I’m being honest, I don’t really know any of them but Pop, and even he isn’t the same person I knew before he got sick.  If I had to pinpoint a character defect in myself, it would probably be my vanity. I love wearing nice clothes. An expensive shirt or tailored pants shows everyone that I work hard enough to afford the very best.  A lot of my indigo goes to District Eight and dad used to take an annual trip there to sell his wares. He would always bring me back clothes because he knew I liked them. This year, I made the trip. That was pretty bittersweet.  I know gloves exist. My hands don’t have to be blue or they at least don’t have to be this blue. But I guess that plays into my vanity too. All it takes is one look and someone can see my profession dyed into my skin. They can see that I work hard to do something difficult and important.  I am proud of what I do and what my family has done to get us where we are. And I don’t have a problem flaunting the fact that I am literally up to my elbows in the finest dye in Panem.

History:

”There goes that Whateley boy, poor thing. He’s in over his head you know.  Hiram got sick a few months ago, left the kid in charge of the whole estate. It’s a downright shame. It took Hiram thirty years to convince his father to put him in charge and now the farm’s being run by a child.  If they weren’t so prideful they’d have hired out the work to adults who know what they’re doing, but that boy insisted he could do everything Hiram could. I hope for the children’s sake things turn out, but if you ask me, it’s only a matter of time until the whole family’s out on the street.  Hiram should have known better. All that indigo money made him spoil his son. I could have told him that his greed wasn’t doing his family any good. Now the boy has no idea how much work running a whole operation is and with all that pressure of providing for a family. He never had a chance. Bless his heart.”

”I never thought all that blue sludge was good for a person.  I’d bet that’s what got Hiram sick. And he let his son play in it since he was knee high to a grasshopper.  I don’t think I’ve ever seen that child when he wasn’t a sickly shade of blue. The Capitol has us all working hard for next to nothing, but those Whateleys have the worst lot of all.  That boy, ‘Fallow’ I think they call him, is probably giving himself all sorts of cancer to fuel their decadence. I never see him with anybody. I don’t think he’s got friends and there’s no line of young women looking to be the next Mrs. Whately.  With his head in the clouds and those twitchy blue fingers, I’d bet good money he’s going to be a bachelor for forever. I can’t tell you for the life of me what they plan to do once something happens to him. I guess his best case scenario is that he miraculously manages to hold that farm together just to die alone and pass it on to...nobody.  Hmmm. Things like that make you thankful for what you have.”

”That boy stood in my shop the other day and argued with me for next to forty minutes about the cost of a gram of blue mush.  Honestly, I might as well have been doing business with mule. He just stands there fuming, picking at his hands. And disrespectful. He came into my store and got snarky with me like I was one of his buddies from school.  I’m old enough to be his Father. You know before she got knocked up and married Hiram, Regina and I used to date. She was gorgeous. I sure dodged a bullet. She coddled those kids until they didn’t have a clue what authority even was.  I don’t think she even let Hiram beat sense into them. She just read them stories and other pansy-ass nonsense. Maybe it’s because I’m so charitable, but I eventually decided haggling with him just wasn’t worth the fuss and gave him what he wanted.  Regina needs all the help she can get feeding those rugrats. But you better believe that if one of those kids comes in here acting all high and mighty like his brother, I’ll show him the discipline Regina was too weak to give. But between you, me, and the lamppost, that dye is wonderful.  I’m already sold out of blue ink and it goes for twice as much as red or black. He’s a pain in the ass for sure, but I’ll be buying more dye.”

”Yep.  That’s Phthalo. He’s a pretty cool brother.  He knows everything about the blue stuff in the jars.  He’s really touchy about those jars. Once, he said that if I ever mess with them, he’d dip me in one and I’d be blue all over.  I think he was kidding. It’s hard to tell with Phthalo. I think he kids a lot. He and mom make a pretty good team. Sometimes she’ll take a turn with the jars and he’ll take care of us.  He can’t cook as well as mom, but he lets us stay up later, so it’s a fair trade I think. One day, I want to be just like Phthalo. I’ll wear cool clothes and tell people what to do. And I’ll be important like he is.  That’s why he spends so much time with the jars. So someday we can become important. Hey Phthalo! Do you want to come show my friend how tall I can be when you put me on your shoulders? Oh… Ok. Maybe next time, when you aren’t so busy.  I love you.”

Other:  Face claim is Luke O'Sullivan
Hand claim? is a photograph from the indigo hands installation by Coal Drops Yard