Uxue Izar, D11f, 1st hunger games [fin]

[marguerite harvard d2a (zori)]

Uxue Izar

Seventeen

District Eleven

I wish to leave the world

By its natural door;

In my tomb of green leaves

They are to carry me to die.

Do not put me in the dark

To die like a traitor;

I am good, and like a good thing

I will die with my face to the sun.

José Martí, I Wish to Leave The World

‘No quiero que te vayas,’, Xuxa says. Her tangle of curls rests against Uxue’s thigh, and the older girl brushes a hand through the six-year-old’s locks.

They have taken a break from the picking of strawberries, sweat dripping from their brows and backs sheen with sweat. Hard work, but while the field hands wander rows away from them, they sneak bites of overripe bits of fruit. This is Uxue’s favorite, the sweetness with a touch of tart on her tongue. She savors the moment as a cloud blots out the sun, and she can feel the cool rush of the air push back her hair.

“Ya no me voy”, Uxue says with a smile. She wipes away the juice beneath her lips and shakes her head. “Y cuando es tiempo, puedes visitarnos cuando quieras. Yo te prometo a tí.”

Mamá had spent too many afternoons hissing at her in the kitchen, thimble over an index finger, thread and needle finding their marks. Uxue’s smile reflected in the soft light caught in the copper pots. She floats on the wings of her engagement to Taylor Wickersham. White fabric curls at her feet, tulle hiding her ankles.

He was not the boy who, when she was thirteen, had seen take off his shirt and made an audible oh with her mouth. Nor was he the one that joined the botellón, got so drunk he kissed her, and immediately vomited all over her jeans.

Taylor had been the one when, in the cold of a winter’s afternoon in the fields out by the fences, took off his jacket it and placed it over her shoulders. ‘You looked cold,’ He would tell their friends, ‘And I didn’t like seeing you shiver.’ He always thought of others before himself.

It would be the same sort of thought that earned him a bullet through his chest on the battlefield just a few weeks before – pinned down under heavy fire from the capitol forces outside district eight – he’d come up from the trench to race toward the barbed wire across the breach. It gave the few men left enough time to slip away, while he bled out on a field of smoke and ash.

When the day in the fields finishes, Uxue takes Xuxa by the hand and leads her along the winding gravel road. She listens to the young girl ramble her stream of consciousness, singing made-up songs, and proposing a magic carriage that could carry them to the moon. They head off the road to the hills that overlook the river, and strip down to their skivvies. The sun still burns amber in the sky, and the heat of day carries through.

Uxue floats on her back across the water, and feels the sand and dirt between her toes when she dips far enough under. Xuxa swims in circles and splashes, and screams that she’s a mermaid. The older sister thinks of how someday she’ll have a little farm. A house with a metal tin roof, and a porch with a swing. Taylor and she will sit out at night under the stars, and look out at the lights in the distance. She’ll watch for Xuxa’s window (and wait until the light has gone out – and be sure to tell her mother when she’s up too late).

She thinks for a moment of the whispers drifting from the front, that the world far away threatens to break in two.

“You don’t have to go,” She said to him the night he’d told her he was leaving. So many else had already gone. Their names were on lists in the town square, in the few papers that still printed. “There’s plenty others that would take your place.”

‘I’ve got to do this. For us. Don’t you want to be free?’ He has no brothers or sisters. His father has worked taking inventory and his mother teaches at the school. Their house has a machine that turns out cold air during the summer, and a set of radiators for the winter.

“That’s not fair,” She said, “What would they do if I wasn’t here to mind Xuxa? Or work the field?” She has grown up with paper dolls and shadow puppets, with mustard sandwiches and a pair of shoes that are a half-size too small for her feet. She cannot choose to put on a pin and march with the rest as though this is her answer.

‘I have to,’ He had been electric then, underneath the waving limbs of the old oak trees. ‘I can’t live otherwise.’

“We have too much else to live for,” She replied, hands snaking around his waist. He was no more a man than the fuzz on his chin.

‘How do you have hope in anything? After all they’ve done to us…’

“Because we keep going, hard as it is. Because I’ve got you, and Xuxa, my mama y papa… my abuela and cousins, and…” She grew quiet under the light of the morning stars. “We got to hope we can keep going, after all of it… because I can imagine it because of all of you, at least…”

They carved their names into the bark of the tree that night. He said that he would marry her when he came home, that the world would either be the way they wanted, or that they’d be together. One way or another it would all be different, so they had to make a memory of a time when it was just as they could remember.

Days hang on longer as their numbers dwindle. Shadows cast further on the stretch of road. Her walks with Xuxa didn’t take detours to the watering hole. She yelled at her father to stop listening to the radio when they speak of the rebels getting slaughtered, when a whole battalion is gunned down to make a point.

Still – her mother plucks threads into her wedding dress. They talk about having it in early September, after the real summer heat had broken. She’d make a cake with real buttercream (even though rationing had been going on for months, and sugar was nowhere to be found). They spoke of all the wine they would drink, and of the toasts they’d make. How her father would dance with her to the soft sounds of fiddle playing.

Darker, and darker still – comes the news, the treaty – but they were there to hold on, to believe that the clouds would break. No worse could their lot have been than to be poor and to exist, if only that they could exist for one another.

When the morning comes, her name is one of the last to be read. She had minutes before the soldiers were at her door.

“Me voy, Xuxa,” She would remember holding her sister in her arms, among heavy knocking that rung out through the house.

‘No quiero que te vayas,’ Her sister screams. ‘No quiero que te vayas!”

She hoped that this would not be her only story.

Maybe, someday, among the albums collecting dust, with dog eared and yellowed photos, someone would see her face and wonder just what had happened to her. Oh, Tía Uxue. She loved strawberries. They'd say.

She could imagine it, and that was enough.

FC: Jenna Ortega

[L△LIA]

You write the loveliest family connections and this is no exception! Small moments are my favorite and there are so many wonderful ones here <3

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