Perspectives

Her Best Friend's Mother

As I look around at the spotless state in which I leave Haymitch Abernathy's house I get the increasingly familiar satisfaction of a job well done. This man is a mess, a state of fact which is reflected all too clearly in the condition in which I find the house during my weekly cleaning visit. The first time May had proposed the idea of having me clean his house, Haymitch had just laughed in her face and told her that the Everdeens should just stick to being neighbours without coming up with initiatives that would concern him. It only took two days for him to change his mind, but it took me twice that time to actually clean his house from twenty-five years of filth and neglect. Rory, Vick and Posy had to pitch in to help with cloths, goodwill and cleaning products, and Haymitch had at least the grace to look embarrassed. He paid me well, more than I could have ever dared to ask, and every week has now been easier to handle. After Posy had once cut her foot on a piece of glass on his floor, I even stopped finding broken bottles strewn around. He never apologised for Posy's little accident, but the money he carelessly leaves for me on the table every week can actually pay for more bottles of salve than my daughter could possibly need.

The air is damp and cloudy this afternoon, and before leaving to go back to our house at the Seam, I peak at the training room which Peeta has set up in Haymitch's house a few days following the announcement of the Quarter Quell. District 12's old mentor hardly had the opportunity to protest before Peeta ordered to him to shut up and clear his basement, and to not even dare to say anything about it. The clearing up task had fallen onto me of course, and as soon as the young Mellark found out, he rushed down to apologise and help. He explained to me that the idea of setting up the equipment there was to make sure that the older man would have no excuse to miss out on the training programme that he set up for them and Katniss. At his own insistence, Peeta ended up doing most of the hauling of boxes himself, and I got paid far too much to wash after him. Had I not had a family of four kids to feed, I would have perhaps hesitated about taking the money. But the situation is what it is, and I am not going to miss out on providing for them.

The Quarter Quell had come as a shock to all of us, and it was a shock that caused a great chasm in the District, for once not between Merchant and Seam, but between the Mellarks and the Everdeens against everyone else. Following President Snow's announcement, most of the eighteen year olds of Twelve flocked to the streets, blonde and dark, joyfully embracing each other and walking around with dazed expressions, incredulous to the fact that they had survived the Reaping a year in advance. The Justice Building was swarmed with impromptu marriage registrations the following morning, and from many windows one could smell toasted bread and hear muted sounds of happiness. Concurrently, twelve year old children played and sang and celebrated an extra year of assured existence and childhood. The bakery, however, remained closed for three days, leaving us all hungry and bewildered. Wheaton and Leila Mellark never closed their bakery, not even following last year's Reaping, and the rumour that travelled around was that the announcement was finally too much for them to handle. I can easily believe that, especially since I saw the second son, Barley, rushing to the apothecary numerous times in the past weeks while their mother all but disappeared. Actually, I like to think that Wheaton Mellark had decided to punish us all for being spared from the Reaping and from rejoicing about it. I want to believe that our kind district Baker has a mean streak in him that he has kept hidden all through his life, because otherwise I cannot even start to fathom why someone so kind, inherently good and totally devoted to his sons would have to give up his youngest, twice, to be butchered for sport by the Capitol.

I'm surprised at the way in which Peeta is handling the upcoming Quell. While I was cleaning Haymitch's windows on one of the mornings in which the Bakery was closed, I saw the Baker and his two sons leaving Peeta's house in tears. The boy's eyes, on the other hand, were dry and hard. According to Rory, he had marched straight to the school that same morning and demanded the transfer of the training equipment to the Victor's village. I can imagine that the Principal's hesitation lasted only until Peeta named the amount of coin he was offering, a sum that was far larger than the worth of the worn equipment that all the district's schoolchildren had had to use for the past decade.