"Mom? I don't want to go. I don't want to die."
I didn't answer. I stared at the floor. My baby, my little girl, was going to die. I was going to lose another. My littlest. The only one I had left. She was going to die.
I had already accepted this. She was dead to me. I wasn't going to make this harder; I wasn't going to give her false hope. She was going to die.
I couldn't bring myself to say goodbye. I was selfish.
She wrapped her arms around me, scrawny arms that barely made it around. She was searching for reassurance. I felt her tears fall onto my shoulder as her face pressed into my hair. And, even though I thought there was nothing left to break, my heart broke even more. My little girl was going to die, and I couldn't even tell her I loved her. I didn't want to face the hurt again. Weariness clouded me, and, for an entire hour, all I felt was emptiness and her tears. Her tears were warm, yet they did nothing to heat the cold emptiness inside me.
"I'm really scared, Mom." She said, as the hour was drawing to a close. I didn't move. I wanted to. I wanted to so, so much. I wanted to hug her, give her comfort. But I didn't. I was self centered. Selfish. The worst mother in the world.
Even though she hugged me tighter, my gaze never shifted from the floor, not even when I heard a door open. Not when my daughter, my own daughter, only twelve years old, clutched me closer still. Not when she screamed, not when she was ripped away from me.
"MOM! MOMMY! NO! DON'T LET THEM TAKE ME!" she was hysterical, panicked, and I still didn't move. I heard the door shut. Her screams were cut off. My shoulder was still wet from her tears. And my heart was gone.
She died within the first three minutes of the Game. Another girl's sword pierced her frail little body as she was picking up a backpack. As she fell to the ground, the backpack opened. An apple rolled out. That was it. She died for an apple.
I didn't cry then, either. There were no tears.
A week later, I was ready. I crouched in the tree, rope tied around my neck and connected to the branch above. I looked at my watch, and when it read 9:12:32, I let my body fall off the branch. I wanted to die at the same time she did. I died at 9:22:34. I wasn't heavy enough; didn't jerk the rope enough. My neck didn't break. I suffocated. And I was happy. I deserved to die like that.
I was the mother who went away to another world after her first daughter died in the Games. I was the mother who neglected her youngest daughter for three years. I was the mother who didn't look her daughter in the eye when her name was called, and she was looking to me for support. I was the mother who didn't hug her daughter as she was taken to her death. I was the most selfish mother in the world. And as I exited the world, I had another selfish wish. I wanted to see my daughters up in Heaven. I didn't deserve it. Yet my wish came true anyway.