Quiet II Lethe II

-- Lethe Turner, District 5 Victor, mother to Phelix and Eden

At some point, I’m alone.

It happens slowly, but then all at once. Jasper slips away, first hardly ever in the house and then never at all. Phelix has a girlfriend and she and his other friends keep him out late at night. My mother dies.

In the mornings, I awake in my too-large bed, where I once snuggled besides my husband or brought my feverish children into to soothe in the night. Now, it’s empty. I pad down the stairs that creak and echo throughout the house.

When my mother died, from a combination of age and the under-diagnosed cancers that often take our people prematurely, I thought about moving back into our old place where she raised us and where at least one of my siblings returns to every week to water half-dead plants and sweep cobwebs off the ceiling. Climb the stairs to my attic room and nestle onto the mattress on the floor, pushing the straw that pokes through the mattress back inside. It wouldn’t be becoming of a victor to move back into her childhood home and to leave the beautiful house she has in the victor’s village. But, then again, I’ve never done much of anything becoming a victor and it appears to be in everyone’s best interest, not just my own, to let it be.

But, I didn’t go. For once, I felt a certain amount of longing to stay put. For once in my life, I did not want flee and hide and push and shove until I found silence. This time, I let it come to me.

When I make my tea, I listen for the pot myself. Jasper no longer dangles a tea bag over the edges of a mug, absentmindedly flicking the string back and forth. I don’t hate him. I never will. He is Phelix’s father. But when I first smelled her on him, and then her again, and the one after that, I did what I did best. I hemmed and hawed quietly and then suddenly pushed him and then quickly pulled him back. After months of stewing over it quietly, I screamed. Tore at my hair. I cried. I begged. He cried. We cried. And then I had to go back to the Capitol. Or a televised gala or announcement and let my stylists fluff my thin hair, wipe pasty makeup over the finger streaks on my cheeks, and teach me again how to smile dispassionately for the crowd. At some point, we decided it was no longer worth it. I pulled free and let him go.

At night, I keep my hands busy. If my hands are busy, they cannot find my face. They don’t go searching for the key to the locked bedroom upstairs. Instead, they pick up my mother’s embroidery left half-finished. And for the first time, I finish something cleanly. I do something with intention behind it.

At first, I took up the embroidery because Phelix was staying out so late. I knew if I didn’t, I’d soon find the front door and run into the night desperately looking for him. What kind of mother lets her last child out of her sight? But soon, I realized someone else had him in their line of vision. When I first met her, she embraced me warmly. I stiffened. No one did that unless they wanted something — they were coming to beg for some of my rations, they wanted me to be a good girl for the camera and raise my beautiful green eyes to the screen, they were a 16-year-old begging me to give them a chance of life they knew I couldn’t give. But she wasn’t like that. She must’ve heard the stories about me. The months of quiet pain stewing beneath the surface, then the yowling outbursts, and then, worst of all, the stunning indifference when their children were sentenced to death. But she wanted to know me, not just because I was the mother of the boy she was courting, but because she saw me as a protector. I later learned her own mother was long gone. She had raised her younger siblings. She was fierce. When she looked at Phelix, who had inherited my soft looks and surely someone else’s will to not just live but to thrive, I knew that look. It was the one I had etched into my forehead wrinkles and seared into my jaw from the moment he turned 12 up. No matter what, you will come home to me every night. Even if I have to lay my head onto the chopping block before you. I trusted her. Maybe it'll last. Maybe it won't. But I knew I had to let it be.

They often come home late. Sometimes when I think it’s too late for her to walk home, I let her sleep on the couch and he in his bedroom. I periodically peek into his room to make sure that’s the case. I was a young mother, but Phelix should not be. He needs to learn to live for himself before someone else. I never got the chance to after my Games.

But during the day, they’re gone. At school, in the playing fields, behind a stable, who knows. They’re young and I envy them.

There is, of course, one person I see more regularly. The flaming hair is hard to miss when it whips over her shoulders as she hurries down my garden path after taking cuttings of my plants. I’ve grown to admire her garden, even though it’s partially made up plants that have mysteriously vanished from mine. But I know she takes care in it. I know she grew the maple for Eden.

She hadn’t tugged at me since Eden died. When it’s time to leave District Five, I kiss Phelix, tell him I’ll know if he and the girl are sneaking around in the empty house (I won’t) and then I drift along in the Capitol as she becomes the mentor I couldn't be, so headstrong, honest and determined. She watched me slide into the background with little to say for it and scared off anyone who came too close to me when Eden died.

In return, I watched her descend into — something? I wasn’t sure. My grip on her slipped, but I saw her eyes unfocus, something lurking behind them. Then, I watched her claw her way back to reality in a way only Patricia could — with ferocity, stymied with pain, a cigarette in hand. I didn’t push and I didn’t pull. There are no amount of words in the world to make up for how I abandoned her. So, in my silence, I try to wrap her close. At night, on my porch, when she comes to present me with flowers and produce from her garden, I wrap my hand around her wrist. I squeeze tight and try to say 17 years worth of words with my fingernails, trying to convey something in my embrace — is it guilt? Is it love? Do I even want her to tell me what is going on? I’m not sure because neither of us ever say a word.

Usually when the teapot whistles, I pour the steaming water into my mug. I wander around, taking sips here and there. I think of what to do next but I don’t push, I try not to worry. I just take in the silence, embroider, clean, wait for Phelix to return home so I can mop up his muddy footprints. These are my days now.

On the morning of the 85th reaping, I checked all the locks as I shouldered my bag for the journey. Phelix wasn’t yet awake — or maybe he was, lying in bed with a sense of dread. He was 15. The same age I was once.

Buried deep inside the bowl of sugar next to the tea bags is a key wrapped in a wooden box. I jammed my hand in, rooted around and pulled it free.

I always do it on the reaping day, several hours before the drawing. I open Eden’s door and I stand in the doorway and I breathe in deeply, swallowing her scent that has long left the room. Every year, I coax myself into one chore. It’s something my Capitol therapist suggested. Moving on is about acceptance.

There’s no point in leaving a room she will never return to. Pick up the clothing. Make the bed. Dust the bookshelf. It might take another ten years, but I will soon erase her entirely from the room. So, I have resisted the chores in recent years as the room becomes emptier. On that morning, my body convulsed and nearly expelled its breakfast as I spotted a pair of shoes strewn across the room. One was barely peeking out from under the bed and, standing in the doorway in my terror, I told myself I’d only put away one of the shoes. I’d leave the other one, with the heel just poking out from under the bed, until next year. I’d draw out the process as long as possible until I died without fully expunging Eden of the place. She’d forever kick her feet and fling her school shoes across this room.

But it was also my first morning doing it alone. Normally Jasper has hovered nearby, ready to swoop in to the rescue when things became too much and I found myself tearing my hair out in chunks. But he was living in town. I heard he also had a girlfriend and sometimes they had Phelix over for dinner. Not that I cared.

Without Jasper with me in Eden’s bedroom, I felt oddly exposed. Eden was standing in the bedroom as she often did in her teens, arms crossed, eyes rolled to the ceiling. It was a challenge. Could I free her after all?

Walking so slowly my feet dragged across the floor, I finally made my way to the shoes. I gripped one firmly in one hand and stretched my arm across the room to the other one to extract it from under the bed. As soon as I touched it, I realized it wasn’t going to burn me. I pulled the shoes close to my chest, breathed in and out twice, and deposited them into the closet. Eden’s arms slackened and her gaze softened.

I carried her approval with me to the stage in the town square as two names were called. As always, when our escort’s hand began rooting around in the boys' jar of names, my body seized up. Before me, two days converge: my own reaping and Eden’s with our names screeching together into one long syllable. I search desperately for Phelix in the crowd, spot him with his eyes firmly planted on mine, and then his name isn’t called and we both relax.

To the Justice Building, to the train station, onto the train ride and finally the Capitol. My room is next to Patricia’s and, as usual, we have an unlocked door between our rooms. Upon our arrival, it is firmly shut. We leave it that way for now.

And like years past, no one expects much of me. I wonder if there is a sort of jealousy in there as other victors rush to be mentors, attend extravagant parties with Gamemakers and socialites, and sometimes, worryingly, disappear for days on-end. I’ve heard whispers about where they might be, but nothing confirmed. No one from the Capitol has ever asked much of me, not the poor, grieving mother from District Five as long as I put on a happy face in public. All they ask, really, is that I talk to my Capitol therapist who, no doubt, reports everything back to my handlers.

He’s the first person I go to see once I’m back. I tell him about putting Eden’s shoes away and he nods approvingly. We chat about Phelix’s girlfriend. I gloss over my relief that he wasn’t picked by laughing nonchalantly that I’m glad he has another year of school because he needs to learn algebra. I give him a flower I brought from Patricia’s garden. I tell him Jasper and I parted ways and it’s like a weight has lifted off my chest.

“Are you happy?” He asks. I shake my head. That’s not the right word.

“It’s finally quiet,” I tell him. He writes that down.

“Then, perhaps, maybe now is a good time to start to attend to more of your victor duties? Two new tributes? I’m sure Patricia would welcome the help. There will be parties for the Quell. You should be there.”

I nod, numbly, secretly making note to tell Patricia that, whoever asks, I’ve been a model mentor. And sure, I’ll go to the parties. No one talks to me anyway, other than to ask how big Phelix has gotten and to ignore the fact that I ever had a daughter to begin with.

I return to my room. My TV is turned off. I’m not sure if Patricia is back yet because I can’t hear anything on the other side of the wall. Instead, I head to the balcony between our two rooms and breathe in the sunset.

Are you happy?

It’s finally quiet.

Quiet. It’s what I’ve been hoping for since my name was first drawn and I was launched into the Arena. Since I returned and became pregnant. Since I finally married and gave birth again. Since Eden died. Since Jasper left. All those years words, images and cries meshed together in my head. There’s Razor when he died slowly besides me and our eyes met once last moment and I only felt relief. The moment I first felt Eden kick and my head exploded with questions. Jasper grasping my hands at our wedding and suddenly feeling warm. Phelix’s tiny feet kicking in the area and Eden peeking her blonde head into his cradle. Eden Turner. Her face in the sky. A scream that was surely my own. The smell of the girls Jasper was seeing filling my nose. The gentle clatter of my wedding ring when I placed it on the ground between us and told him it was time. My mother grasping my hands in her final moments, a tiny whimper coming from her lips. Phelix crying late at night from his bedroom. They used to speak all at once in shrieks and cries and whispers and if I covered my ears they only got worse.

But when Jasper closed the door and when the girl from District Five first made Phelix smile, it became quieter. When I buried my mother and truly felt she was no longer in pain, some of the screams faded. When I first saw the maple on a fall day full of color, the whispers died down. Inside Eden’s room on reaping day, it was nearly silent.

No, I wasn’t happy. An Avox brings me a cup of tea out on the balcony and then leaves. I sip it and watch how the sunset turns the candy-colored Capitol rooftops into blazing, shining sweets. But it was finally quiet.

*It's been a long time since I wrote a post, so thank you for reading and indulging my sudden burst of inspiration. I'm not sure what the picture policy is anymore, so I did not include one*