Chapter Text
Katniss huddles, tucked in the back of the wardrobe, knees pulled up to her chest, her busy thoughts stilled by the close darkness.
Long dresses brush her head and shoulders. They are pale, watery colours and smell old. Only one is Katniss’s—a pale blue dress kept carefully for Sundays. It still smells like home.
Her aunt's muffled voice interrupts her thoughts. "For heaven's sake—where are you girl?"
Her stomach drops. She's forgotten and is late for dinner again. She would prefer to stay where she is, but Katniss knows her aunt's tone means increasing punishment the longer she waits.
"Here," calls Katniss, emerging from the wardrobe in her bedroom and hurrying out into the hall.
Her aunt stands at the top of the stairs. Grey hair pulled into a severe knot, pinned at the back of her head. Black taffeta dress. Face pinched into a scowl. Hands on hips.
"Wayward girl," she snaps. She closes her eyes and lifts her hands to rub her temples. "How will I ever arrange a decent marriage for you?"
Katniss looks down at the hardwood floorboards. "Forgive me, aunt," she mumbles.
Her aunt clicks her tongue and stalks in her direction. Katniss hears the brisk rustling of her dress.
She grabs Katniss by the shoulder and shoves her toward the stairs. Katniss stumbles a few steps but manages to catch herself before she falls. Her aunt gets angry when she does.
She treads down—her aunt following close behind—through the small sitting room and into the kitchen. A small plate of hard bread and cheese waits on the smooth, wooden table. A glazed clay pitcher filled with boiled water. A pot of tea. Two plates, two small tumblers, two teacups. Everything arranged atop intricately sewn white lace doilies.
Katniss stands behind her chair, waiting to sit until her aunt does. She tucks her hands in her lap and bows her head as her aunt says Grace. She waits as her aunt helps herself to the bread and cheese. There is not much left on the plate afterward—there was not much to start with. Katniss would like more to eat but she does not dare to ask.
Her aunt permits tea only on weekends, with their midday meal. Otherwise she allows only boiled water. It is calming to the spirits, she says. Tea is an indulgence that must be strictly rationed.
Katniss pours a cup for herself. It comes out pale amber, nearly clear. Her aunt uses tea over and over again. She keeps the fresh leaves locked away in her bedroom. She keeps nothing sweet in the house. On their farm, Katniss and her family enjoyed strong tea, with plenty of honey that her father gathered from bees he kept.
Katniss sips, taking the small moment of warmth as it is.
After dinner, it is Katniss's duty to clear and tidy up. She must go to the street to fetch water at the standpipe shared by ten other houses in the street, this house being the furthest from it. She opens the front door, pokes her head out and sees with relief that no one else is at the pipe. She takes up the empty water jug and hurries down the narrow street, carefully stepping over rotting scraps in the gutter.
She passes houses identical to her aunt's, all stuck together in a row. Sparse gardens. No fences. Her aunt does not attempt to grow anything in the little patch of dirt near her house, as some do. Katniss passes scraggly tomatoes and runner beans and feels a pang for her mother's lovingly tended kitchen garden on the farm.
The afternoon sun is hidden behind clouds. The air is still and close, thick with dirty fog.
A few children about Katniss's age laugh and yell while playing some game she does not recognise. They run toward one another, touch hand to shoulder, then quickly run away. She cannot hear their words.
Katniss recalls Prim insisting a particularly knotty, gnarled tree near their farmhouse was where the fairies lived. They would play fairies together, flitting through the tall grass that hid Katniss up to her chest and Prim to her shoulders.
Of course Katniss was already much too old to believe in fairies anymore, but she had not the heart to tell Prim. Seeing Prim's earnest little face in her mind fosters a sudden tightness in Katniss's chest.
She yearns for the open sky. Prim’s golden hair reflecting the sun. The clean, earthy smells.
She sets the jug down under the spigot and turns the tap. The water comes out at a slow trickle.
As she waits for the jug to fill, she looks to the cross street at the end of the lane. Large, wooden wheels rattle on cobblestone. A speckled grey horse lifts its tail high and drops a pile as it pulls its carriage past.
When the jug is full, Katniss closes the tap to stop the water. She chides herself as she splashes her skirts while hefting it.
Last winter, not long after her arrival here, on a particularly frigid morning, Katniss's stiff hands gave way and the previous earthenware jug fell and smashed to bits on the pavement. The sound echoes in her mind with the memory. She was soaked and half frozen by the time she made it back to the house. Her steps were hurried due to the cold, but she hesitated on the doorstep.
Her aunt opened the door as Katniss stood trembling, saw her empty hands and pursed her lips. Her hand flew fast across Katniss's face before she could speak. No explanation would have altered the outcome.
Her aunt pointedly added the cost of the new jug to the ledger she keeps of what Katniss owes for her room and board. Since then, Katniss always hefts the jug carefully and walks back with slow, deliberate steps.
Her entire body relaxes when she makes it back to the house, jug intact and still full.
She sets the jug down in its place on the small table by the door and stokes the fire in the range, then fills the kettle to heat water for the dishes.
The cast iron range, as tall as her and wide enough to span the inside wall of the tiny kitchen, is the only source of heat in the house. Katniss appreciates that most of her chores require her to be in the kitchen which is nearly always warm—save for the chill mornings when she rises early to clear the ash pan while the range is cold, and stoke up the fire with coal afterward.
She did not pull the ash pan this morning.
Her aunt emerged from her room unusually early. Katniss knows better than to drag soot across the floor when her aunt is watching. The job will be doubly messy tomorrow, but her aunt's patience tends to stretch further on Sundays.
Katniss can tell by the sound it makes that the kettle has warmed enough for dish water. She sets the stopper and fills the sink enough to cover the plates, then returns the kettle to the range to keep warm. She will use it again later for their supper dishes, and the remainder for drinking water once it cools. She tops the kettle from the jug, then returns to the sink. She scrubs with the hard, smelly soap bar and leaves the dishes in the rack to dry.
She examines the backs of her hands, frowning at the black lines across her knuckles, and in the beds of her fingernails. At home on the farm, they cut trees and burned them. Her father split the wood with his axe. Wood ash did not leave gritty black dust in the creases of her skin, nor had it made her family cough up black, or wheeze. Coal ash clings everywhere it settles and does not shift easily. She gives her hands a diligent scrub and dries them on the towel.
She makes sure to put the dishes away in the cupboard and scrub the sink. Her aunt's hands fly free if Katniss forgets.
Kitchen tasks completed, Katniss makes her way to her room, eager to return to the wardrobe. She hears her aunt bustling across the hall, behind the closed door of her own room.
Katniss's room is small, square, spare. Unadorned walls, no patterns or pictures, only a small looking glass on the wall opposite the narrow bed in the corner—topped with a too-thin, grey blanket. A tall dresser, heavy, dark wood, five drawers. She keeps her spare chemise and stockings in the bottom drawer. The rest are filled with old clothing of her aunt's. Katniss does not dare to open the other drawers—her aunt has instructed her not to touch her things.
A stiff-backed, wooden chair sits next to her bed. There is no rug, only the same bare, wooden floorboards as the rest of the house. A little window, grimy on the outside with coal dust, offers a dim view of the alley and the row of identical stuck-together houses across the way.
She crawls in under her aunt's old dresses and sighs. Her heart squeezes as her thoughts turn to her departed family.
They were suddenly taken by fever last winter. Mother, father, younger sister—all gone within a few weeks. Katniss herself was gravely ill. She arose from her sickbed to find her life changed utterly.
Her aunt has told her time and again that she should be grateful she had any family to land with. She avoided the children's home. The workhouse. She is grateful, only she has not yet found her footing. Some days she feels as though she never will. She sighs again and lets her head fall forward to rest on her knees.
At home, she milked cows. She collected eggs from the chickens every morning, even in the cold. She didn't mind. She loved the chickens. They recognised her and greeted her when she came into the chicken house. She knew each by its nature and called them by names she invented, though she tried not to get too attached because her family ate them when they got too old to lay anymore.
She remembers how she learned to cook on the finicky wood stove alongside her mother and father, when she was barely tall enough to see the top of it. Her mother stood her up on a chair and watched her closely. Katniss's throat tightens as she remembers her mother's encouraging smile.
She felt useful then. She was wanted.
Her parents were unabashedly affectionate with one another, and with herself and her younger sister, Primrose. Her heart aches as she remembers her mother's gentle hands. Her father's easy laugh. Prim's endless kindness.
After a time in the wardrobe, the tightness in her chest eases. She ventures out, knowing her aunt expects her help with supper.
She steals a glance at the small looking glass on the wall. A grey-faced girl with a dour expression stares back at her. Dark hair scraped back into a plait hanging down her back. Her mother used to do her hair, and Prim's, into two tight plaits. Katniss's own hands have grown accustomed to fashioning her hair into a single plait on her own now.
She sighs, turns from the mirror and heads downstairs to the kitchen. Her aunt is in there already, humming as she stirs a pot of thick, brownish liquid on the hob.
“Katniss!" her aunt intones. She leaves the wooden spoon in the pot and bends to grasp Katniss's hand. She lifts it high, says, "May I have this dance?” and laughs softly.
Her breath smells sweet and sharp at once.
Katniss’s spine stiffens. She stares silently at her aunt's heaving chest as she moves them both about the kitchen, humming a tune Katniss remembers hearing her father sing.
“Your dear departed uncle and I used to dance," she sighs. "He was so handsome.” Her face looks almost young. Almost happy. A stark contrast with her severe grey hair and black dress.
Katniss is afraid to speak. She has never seen her aunt so—not precisely happy, but definitely not angry. The stiffness in Katniss's spine begins to ease.
“Not a bad dance partner, if taciturn," her aunt says. She huffs a laugh. "Very like your uncle. You resemble him, around the eyes. Everdeen eyes. Your father's daughter I suppose.”
Her aunt's voice has a reedy, airy quality which Katniss cannot place, but she relishes the lightness of it after the harshness earlier today. Katniss lets herself be spun around the kitchen. The corners of her mouth begin to twitch up.
“There it is!" exclaims her aunt. “The girl knows how to smile!"
Katniss feels warmth in her cheeks. She laughs softly and looks at her shoes, terrified she'll trip over her own feet and anger her aunt. She has no wish for what is happening now to stop.
And then it does.
Her aunt suddenly stills and drops Katniss's hands, silent tears coursing down her face. “See to the stew, would you?” she asks. “I must retire to my room."
Katniss nods and her aunt leaves. She dishes herself a bowl and sits on the floor to eat, tucking herself under the wooden worktable with her back to the wall. She basks in the warmth from the range. The stew contains mainly potatoes and has very little flavour, but it is hot and contains some type of meat. Rashers, Katniss thinks.
She chews and swallows until her bowl is empty and then dishes herself another. She eats until she is so full her belly feels swollen and heavy. Her eyes widen when she remembers to check that she left enough for tomorrow's breakfast. She settles when she sees that the pot remains more than half full.
Katniss prays that her aunt will not be cross with her tomorrow for eating so much. She did not intend to be greedy. She covers the pot and moves it off the hob.
She walks the kettle over to the sink and pours warm water to wash her bowl and spoon. She wipes them with a towel and puts everything away in its place.
She banks the fire, extinguishes the lamp and tiptoes upstairs. She undresses down to her chemise, hangs her dress up on the hook on the door, leaves her boots tidily under the chair next to her bed, then slides in under the thin blanket.
Katniss is nearly asleep when the door creaks open.
She keeps her breathing slow and even, the way she's taught herself to do.
Her aunt's footsteps land differently from how they did in the kitchen when she skipped lightly across the floor. Less precise now. The floorboards groan unevenly under her shuffling weight.
Something heavy and soft lands at the foot of the bed. Katniss keeps still.
Her aunt stands over her for a long moment. Katniss hears her uneven breathing. Then the bed squeaks as she sits and a hand clumsily touches the top of Katniss's head and rests there. Katniss keeps her eyes firmly shut.
"Poor thing," her aunt says. Her voice sounds strange now. Thick and loose at the edges.
The sweet-sharp breath Katniss noticed in the kitchen is stronger, puffing out like an invisible, fragrant cloud.
Katniss hears a heavy sigh. The hand withdraws. Her aunt shuffles out, leaving the door ajar.
Katniss waits until she hears her aunt's bedroom door click shut. She slips out of bed and—careful not to make a sound—closes the door. She turns and feels for what was dropped at the foot of the bed. A folded quilt. Heavy. It smells of cedar and old things, like the dresses in the wardrobe.
She spreads the quilt over the bed and gets under it, grateful for the extra warmth.
Despite the comfort of the additional blanket, she lies there, afraid in a way she cannot understand.
She tosses fitfully in the hard little bed until sleep eventually takes her.