Birth of Primrose
Disclaimer: I do not own "The Hunger Games", "Catching Fire", or "Mockingjay". Those are the intellectual property of Suzanne Collins and Scholastic. I am not making any money from this story. Please do not sue.
Author's note: I don't have a specific time for when this story takes place. It could be anywhere from before "The Hunger Games" to right before Prim dies in "Mockingjay".
I scarcely remember the details of my sister's birth, but my father would tell the story so often it became fixed in my memory. Sometimes, I think I remember Prim's red face or her bald head. The blanket my mother wrapped her in after her first bath. My father's laughter as he announced that the Everdeen family had received its newest member.
I know I remember Prim's first giggles and her seemingly incessant cries. Her laughter because it is much the same now and her cries because, to my four year old mind, she did that more than anything else. I also remember that I initially started wearing my hair in a braid down my back because Prim kept pulling it. She's just a baby, my mother would say as she'd braid my hair, so she doesn't know any better.
I was the only one unhappy about Prim's addition to the family. I suppose that, in my defense, I was only four years old and used to being in the center of attention. The Seam of District 12 did not specialize in play groups, I was too young for school, and my mother did not work outside of the home. I suppose my father's work in the mines and his hunting kept us well fed, since I don't recall being hungry before his death. During the day, it was just my mother and I. She would read and talk to me in between housework. My father would come home after a long day of work in the mines, though not as long as the shifts became after his death. I expect miners made a bit more money back then as well. He would eat dinner with us, sing, and play with me before I went to bed. I would go to sleep hearing him and my mother talking.
Primrose interrupted this order. Her birth took a long time, and had been very hard on my mother. So hard, in fact, that my father worried about her health until she promised not to have any more babies. District 12 makes no regulations about the number of children families can produce, but few families from the Seam have more than four healthy ones. We have no access to the sophisticated birth control so widely available in the Capitol. There are herbal remedies, and if you know where to look, it's not difficult to find them. Nor is it costly if you can't be bothered to forage the meadow for the right root. My mother always kept a ready supply in case a family requested them, and she never charged a coin.
In school, we learned that there had been countries in the past who tried to limit their population. As the number of people increased, the fear of "overpopulation" grew exponentially. Some places placed restrictions regarding the number of children a family could have. Disobey these rules, we were told, and penalties varied from a fine to forced sterilization on the part of the mother. Unwanted children, usually girls, were left abandoned to starve or killed more directly with poison. One of the most patriotic things a couple could do back then was to refuse to have children. This sacrifice, the government assured these couples, would ensure the continued existence of the human race.
It's much different now. Disease and disasters wiped out a large portion of humanity. With the emergence of the Capitol, one of the largest problems faced was humanity becoming extinct. I suppose that even tesserae can be seen as an incentive for poor families to give birth to more children. Every child between the ages of twelve and eighteen can submit their name for tesserae for each member of their family. With scarce other food available for most, it may appear wise to secure that steady source of food.
The Capitol would be crazy to put a limit on family size when few people grow old. Large families mean more variety in the Hunger Games and later, more workers to provide the citizens with the luxuries they demand. I suppose a rebellion consisting of all district families vowing not to produce offspring would be more successful than the last one. We might become extinct, but so would the Hunger Games. So would the Capitol. They would feel the loss acutely with the decrease of goods and candidates for the annual entertainment. There's no law stating that all district members must marry and the females must give birth to children. But there's no need for it. The results might be long lasting, but it would also take years, decades even, to see results. We aren't that patient.
I remember that Primrose was an ugly baby with a red face, sunken cheeks, and no hair whatsoever. Her blue eyes, which she got from my mother, were her only redeeming feature. She smelled horrible despite frequent baths by my mother. In District 12, we rarely bathe more than once a week because the water needs to be boiled in order to heat. Prim received daily baths for the first several weeks of her life. Looking back, I suppose that I must have smelled that bad when I was a baby, but how can I remember that?
The crying, my mother explained, was from colic. I supposed that meant she was extra fussy. That she took even more of my parents' already divided attention away from me.
As the months wore on, I still disliked her, but I realized that she wasn't going away. I also understood that I needed to help my parents with her if I wanted any of their remaining attention. By the age of five, I became quite adept at changing diapers. Her crying also diminished as Prim reached the end of her first year. Her hair was starting to grow in, and I became transfixed with those tiny golden curls. I helped my mother make clothes for Prim as she grew larger and larger. This made me see that I was still an important member of the Everdeen family because not only was I Primrose's big sister, but I was helping to strengthen our family.
Primrose became Prim during her first days with us because her full name was too hard for me to say. It stuck as she grew older, partly out of habit and partly because she never gobbled down her food the way I did. I suppose I started loving her before she turned two. After my father abandoned us by dying in the mines and my mother abandoned us by failing to be a parent, it became clear that Prim was my only real family left. She would not abandon me, but I could not let her down by giving up. Her livelihood and her happiness became my two largest reasons for living. She is still the only person I know that I truly love.