Patience Wisdom | District 12 | WIP

PATIENCE WISDOM | 79 YEARS OLD | DISTRICT TWELVE
“Turning, turning, turning through the years
Minutes into hours and the hours into years…”
Patience Wisdom. What a name, eh? But I’ve grown too used to the silly thing to change it now. Besides, who ever heard of an old woman doing a thing like that? Changing her name as suits her fancy. “Reinventing yourself,” that’s what they call it. Hah. I never invented myself even once – I just had the misfortune to be born. I wouldn’t invent anything as pathetic as this old bag of bones, you can be sure of that.

Not that I was always old. Always pathetic – well. I didn’t used to think so.



After that I was scared, really scared, and that kept on for a good few years. But see, here’s what I’m saying about things being different back then: folk didn’t stay scared the way they do now. This was a matter of, oh, twenty years or so after the uprising. Kids didn’t remember it, but most of the grown folks did. There were still rebels kicking around, even – ones who’d kept a low profile during the war, been smart enough to keep their names off everything. Back then the rebellion still felt like something that had happened. That could maybe happen again.

So people didn’t just go on being scared until their memory went or they stopped breathing. They got scared, and then sooner or later they got angry.

I got angry. And oh, was I a dumb kid. So I threw some rocks, and Peacekeepers gave me a bad beating for it, I can tell you. Then they left me lying in the square. But half a minute later, wouldn’t you know it, along comes the doctor’s wife on an evening stroll. And she gets me up off the ground and she takes me home with her.

Now when I say doctor, I don’t mean doctor. Not a real one, with all the machines and needles and things. No, this was just an ordinary fellow with a knack for bonesetting and an apothecary shop he and his wife ran out of their front room. Still, even that kind of doctor costs money to see. So all the way there I was trying to tell his wife my ma and pa couldn’t pay, and I just needed to rest a bit, that was all – only I was pretty breathless, on account of what I later learned was two broken ribs, and I don’t know how much I actually managed to say. Anyway she ignored me, and when she’d gotten me inside she laid me out on her kitchen table and called for her husband. But her son came in before his father did.

Now I’d seen this boy at a distance before – you know, at school and suchlike – but I don’t know, I must’ve had sand in my eyes till the Peacekeepers knocked it out of ‘em, because when this boy walked into his kitchen the breath clean left my body. No, I mean it! And I hadn’t come in with much breath to spare. So there I lay on his kitchen table suffocating I didn’t know why, I guessed because the Peacekeepers’d messed up something important, and I thought, I’m going to die. And then I thought – and well you may laugh at this, but you never saw him – I thought, At least the last thing I see will be his face.

Now his family were merchant stock. You know – blue eyes, yellow hair. And his ma had little pale wisps of curls, and his da’s hair was close to brownish, but he – I’ve never seen real gold, not in person, but I will swear to this, I’ll swear, if that boy’s hair wasn’t just exactly the color of gold under sunlight it was because gold couldn’t match it for beauty. And it was thick as thick, and it stuck out every which way, all around his head, like tongues of fire.

He was like fire. His face – he shone. I swear he shone.

Well you may laugh.

His eyes were gray. Pale gray.

Anyway there I was, staring like a fool and not breathing, when his da came in. And the boy asked could he help with anything, and his da said no and shooed him out, and then he and his wife went to work fixing me up. But the whole time they were about their business, I couldn’t think of anything but that boy’s face.

I think the doctor’s wife drove me home in a cart. I don’t remember that part so well, but I know she didn’t charge my parents a cent, and after she left there was a lot of shouting. Must’ve woken half the Seam, loud as I recall it being. Anyway I healed up, and the minute I got done being in hot water, I ran straight off to the doctor’s house to see that boy. And he answered the door, and he said yes of course I remember you, and  he said do you want any lemonade. And we sat on his front steps together and talked and talked and talked, and just before I went home for supper I asked him if he wanted to go steady with me.

He looked as surprised as anything – remember how I taught the boys at school their manners? – and said he'd thought I wasn’t interested in dating.

And I said, “I’m not interested in dating. I’m interested in dating you.”

So that was that. And if we hadn’t been such a pair of little fools, maybe we'd've been happy together even now.

As it was, we had seven years.

Now the thing you have to understand about this boy is it wasn’t just his looks that were fiery, his whole self was full to bursting with anger and passion and hope. And we two were peas in a pod when it came to that – more so, much more so, now that I knew him. He set me ablaze, which you wouldn’t wonder at if you’d known him yourself. The way he talked, you or anyone would’ve been at least half-convinced all it’d take to bring down the Capitol was a good dose of grit. And I was angry already, and I didn’t want to use my head if it meant I might decide that he was wrong.

But I didn’t go throwing any more rocks. I’d learned that lesson at least. No, the two of us decided we were going to get clever.