Disclaimer: The Hunger Games does not belong to me.
Madge Undersee plays piano.
This is a fact. It seems simple enough.
She has learned to ignore the commentary from her peers that become privy to this information. It is a sign, they whisper, of just how much of a snob she is. After all, what kind of person has time to sit down and play a musical instrument when there is work to do and a family to keep fed and warm and wearing clothes that are not completely threadbare. As Madge has time for such a frivolous pursuit, it must be a sign that she does not have any worries or work to do or anything useful with which to occupy her time.
She notes that no one ever seems to make comments in a similar vein in reference to the people from the Seam who play fiddles or tin flute to relax on their front steps after a day in the mines. That, it would seem, is an acceptable use of ones' time. She wonders if there was a piano available somewhere to the general public and someone from the Seam took up the practice in their evenings and Sunday afternoons whether the piano would still be a frivolous pursuit or whether it would prove out that it was just Madge that was the problem.
Okay, so she does not actually wonder. She knows the answer to that. She just likes to pretend sometimes that an entire District full of people does not dislike her for no apparent reason other than the fact that she shares a last name with a government official.
Sixteen year old her is much different than seven and even eleven year old her in that she no longer believes that there is anything she can or cannot do that will change the perception of the people who maintain enough distance to ensure that they never actually know anything real about her. The stories and gossip are better (when people even trouble themselves to pay her enough mind to bother with gossip about her). Sixteen year old her has also learned to accept that silence is her lot in life.
She used to think differently. She used to revel in discussing topics that she wanted to understand (topics that her mother would prefer that she did not understand) with a grandmother who listened and taught and let her say things that were not always safe to be said. Her grandmother has been gone for years now, and she knows the difference between safe to say and not safe to say now. She can censor herself when necessary (and, thus, she does not bother with speaking much at all when she has to be within the walls of her home). Their house, after all, is a glorified hotel whenever the need arises and she has no delusions about the fact that they can never be sure whether someone is listening or not.
It is not a coincidence that she became much more devoted to her piano practice at the same point in her life as when she first realized this truth. Her entire world is quiet (because she cannot speak freely in her home and to whom would she speak to outside of it when no one in her entire world outside of the walls of her home does more than tolerate her - and that is the best case scenario)). The piano does not have to be quiet. The piano does not have to bite its tongue. The piano can say whatever it wants to say whenever it wants to say it. She can pour out every word that she strangles off and every thought that she knows is not allowed and coax it out of the keys until it is something beautiful and dangerous and untouchable all at the same time.
Haymitch catches her in the midst of one of her more vehement pieces once when he wanders in to the sitting room. Who knows why he is there in the middle of an afternoon when her mother is out cold and her father is in his office, but who knows why Haymitch does anything that he does? (Why would anyone ever make himself throw up on people's shoes for his own personal amusement? She knows that he has a persona that he likes them to see when they look at him, but the man is genuinely pleased by the activity. Either boys are even stranger than she already thought that they were or Haymitch has more damage than it first appears.)
"Maybe not so aggressive with those keys," he tells her before making a production of groaning and pushing a hand against his forehead as if keeping something from escaping from between his fingers. "People don't care much for things that give them headaches. Makes them want them to disappear."
She recognizes the warning for what it is. She does not remember a time when she did not find little pieces of advice and not readily available information tucked in to the man's rambling. She launches back into the piece she was just playing and pushes the keys harder while smiling at him over her shoulder. He leaves the room after leveling a glare at her. She is not being antagonistic just to be antagonistic and the man knows that - they had that row between the two of them long enough ago that it is now just established fact.
Haymitch does not get to gripe about other people's rebellions. Just as she does not really complain about his - he has earned his rebellions. She knows enough of the details to know that the details are dangerous, and she knows enough of the danger to keep her balanced from tipping over the edge. To put it succinctly, she has this. She is not being unduly reckless (or anymore reckless than it is just for her to be a Donner descendant in the household of the Mayor). She knows the odds in a way that three quarters of her District can never dream of comprehending, and they will never do anything other than right her off as some sort of a pampered, useless accessory standing in the square for the purpose of modeling an outfit they can never hope to own.
She does her best to not be bitter over that (knows that she is miles and miles away from the little girl who used to come home after being in the presence of Gert Lewis and cry into her pillow to make sure that no one could hear the sound), and she thinks that she is, on most days, a pretty content being who is managing her lot in life the best she knows how. She misses the concept of friends in an abstract sort of a way - feels the tinges of jealousy pinch her from time to time when she watches other people actually speak at their lunch tables or walk home with other people in the afternoons. She has never had friends though - so she cannot miss them in the same way that she would if they were something that she really understood.
What does she know about sharing secrets (other than every day of her life)? What does she know of letting people be dependent on her (other than the care that she takes of her invalid mother)? What does she know of anything that is of any interest to any of the teenagers in her school (except the knowledge of the reality that nothing of their lives is the way that it has always been or has to be)? She is solitary. She is aloof because they choose her to be aloof (maybe even need it of her so that they have something closer to other than the Capital within their reach that they can touch). She is the scapegoat - in the old, old sense of the world. They can place all of their frustrations on her (because she is safe). They can blame her (because she is safe). She is safe (and she does not have it in her to deny them the only outlet that they believe that they have because they are young and ignorant of many things and she has her own habits that do not bear out in the details that are laid out in the sunlight for perusal).
It is the adults that are the ones that she has more difficulty dealing with when they let their whispers reach her ears and their glares catch her eye. They are adults - can they not display enough self-control to wait until after she walks by to have a go at her? They should have learned discretion if they learned nothing else by the time they reach the age to be out of the Reaping.
It's a pity that the people of Twelve (the people of Panem) are so adept at not learning.