Luke's Stories

[cyrus]

Hello all. I'm (my name is Luke, btw) a big muser/like fleshing out the background to characters in different ways, so this posting will be a collection of stories I decide to write about them.

They'll be in different viewpoints, from different times, etc. Everything here is just my thoughts running free and a chance for me to explain myself better than my posts probably can. They're mainly rough drafts, so I'll post them very soon after being written.

Also, I'm a big fan of Third-person (I've always found it easier), so here is a chance for me to practice my first person skills!

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This first story is a fanfiction written from the viewpoint of Eloise, the mother of Cyrus Malloc. It is also an homage to "I stand here ironing", a famous story written by Tillie Olsen. I hope you all enjoy it.

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I Stand Here Ironing

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I stand here ironing, pressing and folding. They ask me what I am to do when he is old enough. Do I so much as ask him to leave and find his own way? I wrap the collars in cardboard and prepare them to be hung up in the closet. They want to speak to me about his talents. His talents, they say, are in math and science. He has a mind that is clear and able to spot what is needed. He could be of great use to creating, building, and making. He could be of use to them. To them.

I fold another pair of crisp jeans and place them in a pile. A pair of overalls is next. They are his favorite. In the three years he has had them, no other piece of clothing has ever been worn so. I can count the number of times on my hand he has worn his other pairs of pants. I have stitched. I have mended. I have sewn. I have seen the stains and worked tirelessly to remove them. And still he returns to wearing them, a comfort to him. He says they are the only things that fit his body just so, the way that he likes them. He says that nothing else is the way they should be.

They want me to talk to him. What could I do that they cannot? He is a fortress that only now recently could I enter. Even I have not seen the multitude of rooms inside. I fear that there are some doors that will never be opened. Some places are not meant to be open in this castle. He has talents. He is useful to them. They need him. More than for the rote tasks he is doing now. He is a gem that needs refinement. If I could only talk to him, he could be persuaded for other things.

I place my iron down on the board and wipe a few stray strands of graying hair out of my eyes. I know he will be home soon, trudging through the darkness of the night back to us. I think that he has never been persuaded to much of anything.

He was three weeks late when he was born. The doctors had worried about him from the day he entered the world. He cried little. He had big, brown eyes that stared at me while I held him. I called him my little watcher because he did little else in those days. He would grasp me tightly and stare.

He would watch the doctors move back and forth to tend to me. He would watch his father as he sat at the side of the bed playing with his little feet. He would make whispering noises when he was hungry, the only sound I knew to mean anything from him.

Devon was excited to have a boy. He was going to make him into his little man. He was going to show him everything he knew. He was going to grow up to build things. He was going to be handsome. He was going to have a good life. He was going to bring promise to our little apartment. He would be all things—perfect beyond measure. Devon liked to dream, while I sat ironing.

The first few months it was I that sat home with him in our tired little apartment. We sat in our grey walled hole, with a room for Devon, Cyrus, and I, and not much else. He would sit in my arms and quietly stare up at me. I would stare back. I would wish that there was an answer to making him into the man that he was destined to be.

In those days I longed to know the secrets of motherhood. I had received advice from those around me—that he needed to be raised naturally, that he should be left to cry, that he was to be talked to with the same words over and over—all of it a swirling mass of what I should be doing. What was right for him. What was right for us.

He did not cry in those first six months. My friends would laugh and say that this was impossible, that I exaggerated. It was the first sign I knew that there was something about Cyrus. He was not fussy, but would only stare at me while I held him. In those first six months I felt myself growing more and more tired. Every moment with him felt like it lasted a little longer. I would spend hours wishing that Devon would come home, or that one of the neighbors would knock at the door. All the while he would watch me.

And then, as if a light switch had been flipped, he began his terrible, anxious crying. Nothing seemed to soothe him. Not the bottle, not holding him close, not letting him have me. He would fidget in his crib. He would cry out at night at nothing at all. He would shriek and cry in my arms, as though I was some terrible creature come to take him. I struggled against him, holding him for some time until the fits would stop. He would agonize on and on, as though there was some invisible force taunting him. He could never sit still, never be happy, never smile.

They said that he was overly anxious. That he needed to be sent away. That he needed to learn how to be with others. I had a job to go back to, money to earn, machines and materials to make for the capitol. He would learn from the daycare provided. He would be put with the other children and taught to respect order. I handed him over like a bushel of flour to a baker. I thought they could do more for him than I ever could.

He would come home with bruises on his hands. He would wail in his own way, making up words that I could only translate as cries to be understood. “He is learning to control himself.” I would learn soon that he was a “troublemaker” at school. He was not speaking. He was behind. He was different. “Slow” they would say, “that is how he does everything.” And I would look at him, a fidgeting mess of understandable garbling.

I press the iron into the pants, letting the steam escape into the air. It is one of the few things that does not make me tired these days. The gentle reward for cleaning clothes and putting them into order soothes me. I know that soon he will be home, back from work. He will not expect me up, but then he never does.

Progress was made, they said finally, when Cyrus was able to speak. It was their measure of attainment. He could function in the eyes of the capitol. He was still thought of as “slow” and “simple”, but he could communicate. He could tell me that he “wanted” something. He would tell me that he “needed” something. This subtle change from the weeping and wailing of before moved me, made me hold him close that day that he could say “momma.” That day he could tell me he didn’t “want” to go to school. That he didn’t “want” to be teased. That he didn’t “want” to be different.

He was better at numbers. He was always counting at that age. He marveled at the height of things, and wanted to know how many there was of everything. And so we would count together. The number of tiles on the floor. The number of houses on our street. The number of steps from here to his school. He was amazing, in his little world of numbers he could be anything.

He did not know of what to do with people. They were foreign to him. Boys were too rough, too demanding, too harsh. Girls were an enigma. They were too quiet, too silly, too different. Our door never opened to reveal a friend or playmate. He was more content in counting and watching than needing company. My little watcher began to fade into the background, and stayed there for some time.

Devon saw him as an obstruction. He had reached his potential. This was his thought on Cyrus. He was to be raised and released. He was to be taken as he was. There was no more, and no less. It was a very hard time for both of us. I would plead that Cyrus needed more time. They needed one another.

That he needed a chance to bloom. My little watcher could contribute. Devon took the mindset of taking more time at work. He liked the silence. He liked the distance.

He had been heartbroken that little Cyrus couldn’t be made into a little Devon. He had dreamed of taking him to play games in the park. He had dreamed of raising him to be the best and the brightest of his class. But Cyrus could not focus on sports. He was too clumsy with his feet or hands to be of much good. And his teachers all saw the potential, but remarked on the pity that was his social skills. And so, my little watcher faded behind the curtains.

Naif came along when Cyrus had been forgotten. It made me sick, and tired all the time. Cyrus would sit and watch me in bed as I pulled the covers up to my head, not wanting anyone to see. I would be so tired those days, eating was a chore for me. I wondered where it came from—the chemicals I worked with, a disease brought from an outsider, my own sadness—but still the heaviness remained. I was all but surprised when Naif came into the world as a bouncing, healthy baby boy. Cyrus watched, watched the family gather around the new one. Watched as we held our breaths to see if Naif was at all like his brother.

He cooed and curled up gingerly. There was no fits of crying beyond the usual unhappiness. He was quick, alert, and always wanting attention. He made me smile even through my tiredness. My heaviness remained after his birth. I retired to the home to take care of him. Those days I could spend hours happily bouncing him on my knee, teaching him numbers, colors, and letters. He took it all in like a little sponge. Cyrus would watch him wide eyed and amazed. He would put his hands with Naif’s and measure the difference in size.

Devon would take him from me and laugh at “his boy.” He would hold him for some time, amazed at his smile, his little hands, his quickness. And Cyrus would sit in his chair at the table, watching Devon watching Naif.
We moved because of Naif. We needed extra room, and extra space for all of us together. We were able to get a little house of black bricks and a flat roof. Two bedrooms, two bathrooms. A simple kitchen and living room. It was plain, but homey. It was enough for us.

Cyrus had hated the change. He was disoriented by the new space. A few times he wandered home from school to the old apartment. Devon would angrily fetch him when this happened, and after the second time, it never happened again. Cyrus came home with bruises and the knowledge of how to get to our new home on his own.

I hear the sound of footsteps along the street and know that he will be here soon. I fold his overalls and place them on top of the pile.

When he would miss school those days, I sat with him in the living room on the couch. He would watch Naif with his eyes wide again. He never raised a hand at his brother. He saw him as a marvel. He was everything—he knew that he was the favored son, the answer to Cyrus—and thus wanted to help. He would do whatever he could for his brother. Fetching him his clothes. Fetching him the bottle. Watching all the while as we showered him in a way that he never was.

When I got worse, and it was harder to leave the house, he would stay home from school to be with me. Naif was old enough that he was in school himself, making all the friends and playing all the sports a boy his age should be. Cyrus would sit with me, in my room as I lay on my bed. I would show him my old books on plants and birds. I would read to him, and we would talk about what they must have been like. He would reason they must exist in the wilderness outside of District 6, or perhaps in the Capitol. He would learn the names of each, memorizing them at a speed unlike I’d ever seen.

He is talented, they told me. He is smarter beyond measure. He is to help them build things and discover things. But he must be convinced of his talents. He must be made to realize it, they say. I am to do this? I am the one to tell him he cannot watch anymore?

My little watcher enters with a drip of sweat on his brow, in another pair of overalls. He is home from his welding job. His father gave him something to earn us the money. He is good at this. He can sit for long periods of time without talking to everyone. He can repeat himself, measure, cut, and count.
He is happy, happy as Cyrus can be. He stops when he sees me ironing.

“You are still awake.” He says as he looks at me with the iron. He knows that it is strange for me to be awake at all. Naif and Devon have long since gone to bed.

“I’ve been readying clothes for tomorrow.” I say as he watches me.

“Are you tired, Mama?” He says in his monotone.

“I am fine.” I say as I move to get a closer look at him. He is tall now, with a good solid frame. Handsome features. Hair parted, his face clear, and his eyes gentle. He is handsome, not unpleasant to look at. He stands there watching. “Will you go to school tomorrow Cyrus?”

He looks at me for some time and nods his head. “I will go to school tomorrow, Mama. I have won a prize in my calculus class. I am to be awarded. I will not miss it.”

“You will listen to them, tomorrow?” I say as he looks down at the ground. He always followed the rules, there was no reason to ask. But he hated going back to school. The thought of staying there made him uneasy.

“Yes, mama. I will not miss my award. I have earned it.” He says softly. “Good night, Mama.” He moves to go to his bedroom. The door closes slowly behind him.

What am I to do with a child as this? With missed chances and understanding in a world of little? With a world that sees him as number, and he seeing the world much the same? I regret talking to the school and the encouragement. He grew up without the understanding, and was put into the background because of his difference. Now they see his talent and want to use it. I am to tell him that he may finally shine?

No. I shake my head in disagreement. My duty is to him, to let him be and discover himself. I will let him see there is more to him than these overalls, and that he is not made to be perfected and starched and made one of theirs. I unplug my iron, and at last head to my bed, weary for sleep.

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