All for Him

Mother

I'm doing it again. Thinking about her. My mother. I'm supposed to have one, but mine isn't here. She's in the backyard. She's been in the backyard my whole life. I look around and see all the other children getting picked up by their mothers. I wonder if I had a mother what I would call her. Mommy or mama? Mom or Suzy, her name?

I see my brother coming to take me home. He gets let out of work early to do so. "What did you learn in school today," he asks. He asks this every day. He never got to go to school, so I tell him what I know.

"Well, you know those big brown and green things in the middle of town, and near the rich people's houses?" I ask.

"Trees. What about them?"

"Well, it turns out there are places where there are a bunch of trees all together called forest. And there are different types of forest depending on the trees that grow there. There are ones where the ground is a watery mush, ones where the trees are so dense you can barely see the sun, and others where there are just trees." I say. I really like trees. I used to climb the big one in the center of town. Then the peacekeepers yelled at me so I'm not allowed to anymore

"Hey, Noah? What was mom like?" I don't normally ask about my mother. But unlike dad and my other brothers, Noah doesn't blame me for mom's death. She died while giving birth to me.

"She was a very pretty woman and everyone respected her. She was kind and caring but wasn't afraid to be strict. You have her eyes."

"I wonder if she liked forests?" I say quietly as Noah drops me off at B-19 to go to work. I know I'm going to have to relay what I learned in school to Camila, too. She doesn't go to school either. Most of the older kids haven't gotten to go to school, since it is a fairly recent development in our district. It has only been here for 3 years, and most people don't see the point in sending their children there. The only reason I go is because Noah convinced dad I should be allowed to.

Forest. I try to remember how this train of thought started. Forests are made of trees. And they have animals in them. I guess I am in a forest, only I am the animal.