The weather was amazing, sunny and warm. It was with reluctance that Donna got up from the potato patch and headed inside the prison, flanked by a warden. Theodosius waved slightly as he listened to Drape brag about her children's accomplishments with half an ear. Donna had a visit to prepare for.
"How old is your daughter?" the warden asked.
"She turns sixteen soon."
"That's nice. Mine's ten." Donna was temporarily saved from having to continue the conversation by the door slamming behind her. She put on clean clothes and washed her face and hands. The dirty clothes, she left on the cot. She'd put them on again after the visit was over. Looking down at herself, Donna realized that her shirt was fraying at the seams, especially under the arms. To cover up the shabbiness, she put on her sweater.
Donna combed her hair, though it was so short at the moment, it hardly needed to be combed. When the warden opened the door, she was checking her shoes for dirt. "Let's go, Female Nine."
Donna obeyed, stepping out of the cell. She wondered if she should ask for a new shirt now, or wait until after the visit. As they walked down the corridor and through the cell block gate, Donna decided to hold off for now. With every step, she felt more and more anxious, until she was afraid that if she opened her mouth, she'd throw up. The door loomed ahead. The warden walked in with her and took a seat against the wall, together with another wardenand the director from Three. Donna sat down and waved slightly at her daughter. "Hello."
"Hi," her daughter said hesitantly. "How are you?"
"Fine," Donna replied. "You?"
Donna shrugged. "Fine, I guess. I met up with some friends a few days ago. That was fun." Looking at her, it was hard to believe that her daughter was already nearly sixteen, but it was so. And she did look like Donna herself up close. She had wavy hair and darker skin, but looking at her daughter still made Donna feel as if she was looking into a mirror to the past. Though her hair was slightly longer, it didn't conceal the fact that they had very similar faces.
"That's nice," Donna said, trying to shrug off her gloom. "What did you do?" Her daughter launched into a brief description of how they had met up in a park and then gone to a friend's house to watch movies until the morning.
"So, yeah," she finished uncertainly. "Dad kept on texting me until three in the morning. Would have been easier for him to just go sleep."
"Well, that sounds like him. And how is school?"
Oddly enough, her daughter relaxed at hearing that question. "I think I'll get my diploma and then go to trade school."
At least she wasn't planning on dropping out, though Donna doubted her transcript would be anything to be proud of. "And what do you want to study?"
"I want to become a carpenter."
Donna racked her mind for anything to do with the topic. "I think a few of the guardshere used to be carpenters," she said. "What made you decide on that?" She would have been more upset if not for Dr. Chu's warning. Her daughter was doing this on purpose to distance herself from her. And after all, people in the skilled trades did earn decent money, even if it didn't come close to what Donna could have earned had she decided to become an engineer instead.
"It just seemed like something I'd be interested in." Had the fact that carpentry was heavily associated with a District influenced her?
"And what does your dad say?"
Donna shrugged. "He doesn't care, as long as I'm doing something productive. Uncle Alex borrowed money from him again, by the way."
"What? How much?" Did Dem even have money to throw away on Alex and whatever it was he spent it on?
"Not much," her daughter rushed to assuage her, "but he's too busy being annoyed by that to care about me." That didn't make her feel any better.
Donna was at a loss for words. "I'm seriously missing out," she tried to joke. "Sounds like you've got a whole drama going on in there." Her daughter giggled. "You didn't answer my question, though. How is school?"
"I'm passing everything." Donna should have expected that.
"How is math?" she asked, pressing for details.
"I'm passing it." Her daughter was slightly hunched over, as if she was trying to hide into herself, and Donna was reminded of how anxious she had been at that age when the report cards arrived.
"But what are you studying?"
"Equations."
This was completely pointless. "What sort of courses are you taking next year?"
Her daughter shrugged, even though Donna knew full well that courses for the next year were picked around February. She decided to give it up as a loss. "And how are your siblings?" she asked.
"Doing well in school. Lars got eighty-nine percent on his science test and moped for days." Donna winced in sympathy, though her daughter rolled her eyes slightly, like any other underachiever confronted with someone complaining about a grade of eighty-nine. It was a shame that even in the little things, they were so far apart.
"How did your grandma and grandpa react?" Donna asked. Hopefully, her parents had mellowed since her own middle-school days.
"What, you think they're going to be upset about eighty-nine when they've got me?" her daugher replied with a tinge of pride.
Donna raised her eyebrows. "Nothing I ever did could save your uncle Alex from parental wrath." Her daughter shrugged. "How is everyone else?"
"Aulus and Laelia are doing alright, I guess." Since they were only in grades four and two respectively, Donna wasn't too worried about them.
"That's nice," Donna said. "Good luck on your exams."
Her daughter snorted. "I'll need a lot of it to pass."
"Don't say that," Donna chided her daughter gently, raising her hand to touch the barrier. "Even a little bit of studying should help you immensely. It's only grade ten, after all."
"Whatever. I know I'm no good at any of that."
Donna sighed. "Why, though? I remember it took me almost no effort to do well in highschool up until grade twelve. I'm sure you're not nearly as incompetent as you think. Maybe if you just talked to someone-"
"I already did!" She stared at the floor. "That's not the problem. I'm just bad at this."
"Come on, Donna, I know you're not naturally bad at school-"
"Whatever. Maybe I'll move to an outer District. Nobody has highschool diplomas there."
Donna had absolutely no idea how to react to that. She glanced at the wardens and the director, who all looked away. One of the wardens was either engrossed in a book, or pretending to be doing so.
"Do you have any plans for the summer?" she asked, changing the topic.
Seizing the opportunity, her daughter started talking about Cynthia's cottage and the current plans for it. "Grandma and Grandpa are going there every weekend to plant and weed and whatever. There's even a little meadow, just like yours but smaller. What is yours made of?"
Donna glanced at the wardens and director. They did not respond. So garden contents weren't a state secret anymore, then. "Local herbs and grasses, mostly," she said. "One of the guards said it was good for the bees, so that's what we did. We've stopped cutting it, and it's very nice to lie on. Lots of effort goes into watering it, though."
"I can imagine. Grandpa said our cucumbers are self-pollinating, so we can grow them in a greenhouse and not worry about bees not being able to get in."
"Are you growing the same stuff as last year?" Donna asked.
"No," said her daughter. "Grandpa's planting a bunch of flowers because Charlotte begged him to." Theodosius' youngest daughter was eight.
Flowers sounded nice. "You'll have to send me a photo of you holding the flowers, then," Donna said. "And tell Cynthia to send a photo of Charlotte to, uh, Coll." She still had no idea how to refer to Theodosius to others.
"Of course."
Now that was a thought. Would the administration let them plant flowers? "And are you planning to do anything during the summer?" Donna asked.
"Not really. Grandma and Grandpa are threatening to send me to summer school, but Dad won't let them. At least I hope so." Donna shrugged. "They're more upset by the fact that I'm not going to go to uni than I am. Why can't they just accept it and stop stressing themselves out?"
"You know, your uncle still says the same thing." While Alex was securely hidden in Twelve now, Donna was fairly sure that even his absence couldn't stop their parents from complaining about him.
Her daughter rolled her eyes. "Yes, but that's Uncle Alex. He always manages to spend just a little bit more than he earns. How did you refrain from punching him before?" she asked. "Now that I think about it, I can't believe he mooched off you for so long."
"We were just used to it," Donna said with a shrug. "When we were teenagers, our parents were mostly focused on me because they knew I was the only one who could live up to their expectations. They didn't particularly care about Alex. They thought that he'd learn a trade or something, or at least get a permanent though unskilled job. He did get graduate highschool and get a job as a cashier, so there was that. But then he lost his job, and got a new one. Eventually, the gaps between employment became longer and longer. Did I ever tell you that one of the reasons I moved in with your dad was to get away from Alex and our parents shouting at each other?"
"No, I thought it was because Dad needed to get away from his family."
"There was that, too, but if not for the shouting, I would have offered to have him live in our house. Cheaper that way." It would have been infinitely preferable to stay at home and chip in for the utility bills and mortgage than pay most of what she had earned back then for that abomination of an apartment. "In any case, he also moved out eventually, but since he couldn't hold down a job for any reasonable length of time, I had to pay his rent half the time. He did pay me back occasionally, but by the time Lars was born, your dad and I knew full well that spending money on Alex was like setting it on fire."
"Huh," her daughter said. "He didn't tell me that. He just complains about how you weren't there to help take care of Grandpa when he got sick."
"That wasn't my fault," Donna said irritably, "and if he thinks he can be a good boy for half a year and then go back to borrowing thousands of dollars from your Dad with no consequences, he is very mistaken. Is he even still employed?"
"He's still working in that medicine plant, as far as I know." How did Mom and Dad even justify leaving everything to him in their will? "He got a promotion a while back."
"At least there's that," Donna conceded with a sigh. "I suppose he has really changed, if he's getting promoted."
"I get that. Things have been topsy-turvy recently."
Donna laughed humourlessly, feeling at the paint on her knee. "I noticed."
"Everything's just as bad as before," Donna complained to Theodosius as soon as she got back to the yard. "She told me point-blank that she isn't interested in further education. At least she's willing to get a highschool diploma."
Theodosius pulled out a weed and tossed it into a bucket. "Not very aptly named, then, is she?" He chuckled at his own joke.
"Actually," Donna said, "I was struck by how much she looks like me. She wears her hair slightly longer, but otherwise, her face is just like mine." She crouched down next to him and began to weed. It was by now rather warm, and Donna rolled up her sleeves and trouser legs. Theodosius took off his cap and used it to fan himself. Without it, he looked his age, and when he put it back on, he was back to looking slightly adolescent. "You should take off your cap less," she joked. "It makes you look two decades older."
"You're the other way around," Theodosius said lightly. "In that cap, it looks like your hair is fully white." Donna reached up to touch her temples, which were indeed fully white. She had last looked in the mirror the previous week, and had been shocked to see that. "She didn't mention your hair, surely."
"No, she didn't, but I guess seeing her just made me think about how time is passing." Donna sat down in the small ditch between the vegetable beds, stretching out her legs. "In just a few years, she'll be an adult. It's hard to believe."
Theodosius fiddled with a thin plant. "I've had this thought recently," he said gloomily. "Our children are growing away from us. At this rate, if we aren't released early, we might as well never come home. What are they going to do with sixty-year-old strangers?"
"Ask Dr. Chu," Donna said with a blend of sarcasm and sincerity. "I'm sure she'll think of something." Theodosius sighed. "Do you want to hear about the rest of the visit?"
"Of course!" he exclaimed, snapping to alertness. "Alright, so she wants to finish highschool, and then what?"
Donna moved one of the buckets closer to her. "Says she wants to become a carpenter. Joked about moving to an outer District. I told her about my brother, but I don't think she got the hint." She tore out a small weed and tossed it into the half-full bucket.
"You still think she should go to university?" Theodosius moved handfuls of dirt to make the mound around one of the plants taller.
"University, college, I really don't care. I'm worried she's locking herself into a path too early."
Shaking off his hands, Theodosius nodded contemplatively. "That makes sense. Do you think there's still a chance?"
Donna dug her fingers into the ground to dig out a stinging nettle. "Of course there is. All she needs to do is put in a little bit of effort." The problem was that she wasn't willing to. The psychologist's words echoed around her brain. There was nothing wrong with her daughter, she wasn't lazy or suffering from a disorder. She attended class, occasionally did her homework, never studied, and put zero effort into assignments, usually not doing them at all. This was a deliberate attempt to have as little in common as possible with Donna herself while avoiding driving the family completely into a white-hot rage. Trying to chase away that tearing, crushing feeling within her chest, Donna continued speaking. "After all, if she's doing her homework from time to time, why not at least do the assignments? It's so arbitrary. And how can you fail a test if you showed up to every class? I can't imagine her just staring out the window the entire time."
"Donna is in a class of her own," Theodosius said, shaking his head.
"I think that's precisely the point. The more she plays up certain aspects of herself, the more she draws attention to things that are specifically her, the more she feels like she's more than just Donna Blues 2.0." Donna tore out a clump of small plants and shook the dirt from their roots before tossing them into the bucket. "Dr. Chu told me that."
Theodosius looked like he had just been hit over the head. "I thought you told me nobody bothers her about you."
"That's what I thought too, but according to Dr. Chu, she still struggles with those feelings. It's purely internal."
"Huh." Theodosius stopped weeding, wrapping his knees with his arms. "Well, it's a good thing I didn't name my eldest son after myself." He cracked a weak smile, which Donna returned.
"If it was really bad, she'd have changed her name by now, so at least there's that." Not much of a comfort, but at least there was that. "Everyone else is doing fine, though. Lars got eighty-nine percent on a test and was very upset about it."
"Now that sounds more like you!"
Reaching over to pull out a weed, Donna smiled slightly. "Ah, but you forget that my parents would have died of horror if I had failed to get ninety. I'm beginning to think that the real reason Alex moved to Twelve is because if he had stayed, my parents would have spent every other evening accusing him of corrupting Donna with his malignant influence."
"And how is your brother?" Theodosius moved over slightly to reach a small clump of weeds better.
"Got a promotion recently."
Theodosius ran his hands through his hair. "You know, I don't understand him at all. On one hand, he's a lazy moocher, but on the other hand, he gets a promotion and everything in the will."
Donna shrugged. "He's both. It's complicated."
A small breeze blew, and Donna held up her face to feel it. Theodosius rolled up his sleeves, took out his sunscreen, and began to cover his arms with it. "Isn't it always. How are your parents?"
"At the cottage. They're planting flowers, at Charlotte's insistence. I asked Donna to ask Cynthia to send you a photo."
"Thanks," Theodosius said with a soft smile. "I need to update my photos more regularly. I barely recognize the little ones when the newest photo arrives. But they're not so little anymore, are they?" His youngest was four, soon to be five. "Wait, the wardens didn't flip out when you said that?" he suddenly asked, hand frozen halfway to a weed.
"Progress," Donna said with a shrug. "After all, there are no state secrets in a flower bed. Unless it was in here, of course."
"Some flowers would be lovely," Theodosius said. "I just need something nice-looking in my life."
"What about the potatoes?" Donna asked, gesturing to the plants that were currently flowering. The blooms were very small, and had a nice light-purple colour.
Theodosius reached out to touch a little flower. "You know what I mean," he said. "We only grow edible plants here. It would be nice to have some variety."
"I agree," Grass said from several metres away. "They can't just tell us what to grow and not grow. There's no famine in the country, after all, it's absurd that they can prohibit flowers." Donna and Theodosius nodded.
When Grass explain that reasoning to a guard, though, he was not as impressed with the reasoning. "Plants that are grown solely for their flowers are not allowed," the man from Eight explained. "I'll take your request to the directors, but I doubt they'll be willing to change the rules. Oh, and Male Fifteen, the request is approved. After dinner, you can go sit with Male Twenty-four." Rodriguez had just been transferred to the infirmary, and a few of the inmates hat gotten together to request permission to provide him company.
The guard left, and Theodosius turned to Donna and Grass. "Well, that's good," he said. "At least Rodriguez won't be lonely."
"They're getting softer," Grass said, tapping her chin with a finger. "They didn't let anyone sit with Townsend."
"Not so soft, though, if they won't even allow flowers," Donna pointed out. Grass shook her head.
"They're willing to soften up on major though insignificant matters, but not on minor ones," she explained. "In the grand scheme of things it doesn't matter if Rodriguez gets to spend time with us or not, but it looks like a great, humane gesture. If it got out that the administration didn't allow it, that could potentially cause complaints in the population." Donna doubted the population actually cared enough to complain. "When it comes to little things, though, nobody's going to kick up a fuss unless it's spun right, and since we can't communicate properly, that's not going to happen. It's completely absurd, but that's how it is."
Donna crouched back down and resumed weeding, stretching out to reach the plants farther away from her. "You think the average person cares about us?" she asked.
Sitting down next to her, Grass picked up a clump of dirt and crumbled it between her fingers. "I am certain that there is a certain degree of awareness, and if there is awareness, the media can harness it. At the very least, the municipal government will not stand for continuing to pay for all of this. If this is a national endeavour, shouldn't the country pay for it, or at least the Capitol due to its position of leadership, not the municipality?"
While Grass was right, Donna was certain that the administration saw it differently. Theodosius echoed her thoughts, saying, "I don't think they're willing to be logical about it. If they had been, the sixty-three of us wouldn't be held in a prison that had once held nearly a thousand."
"And remember," Donna continued, "people have short memories. My younger children's classmates have no idea who I am."
"That's because they're so young, though," Grass pointed out. "They'll learn when they become a little bit older."
Theodosius looked sceptical. "From what the guards say, the country is trying very hard to forget us. Even if the federal government continues to argue about the Supermax, even if the depuration processes continue for another four decades, the average person won't know more about us than the fact that we exist."
"Personally, I'm worried they might be telling us inaccurate information."
There it was again. Even if they weren't lying on purpose, they would still be biased. What did Donna actually know about what was going on outside? She wished they had access to newspapers.
"What motivation would they have for deliberately misleading us?" Theodosius asked. "They're not sadistic, after all. And even if they are biased, the facts they tell us will be correct, even if the way they phrase things will lead us to interpret them incorrectly."
"That's exactly the problem," Grass pointed out. "If we have access to only one viewpoint, how are we supposed to tell it's not true?"
Donna shrugged. "It's possible."
"Forgive me for saying so, but you are not exactly an expert in critical thinking either."
Donna shrugged again. The conversation had drifted off somewhere she didn't want, so she said, "In any case, do you think they'll allow flowers?"
"I doubt it," Grass said. "They'll spin it as being unnecessary. Why this entire garden is considered necessary, I do not know. Nobody's living off it. If it's just to give us something to do, why not allow flowers? Flowers are productive, after all, they can be sold." Donna imagined one of the guards, dressed in civilian clothes, squatting in a subway entrance and selling flowers. She laughed.
"What are you laughing about?" Theodosius asked.
"Who'd sell the flowers, then, the guards?" she explained. "Can you imagine them squatting in the subway and peddling bouquets?" Theodosius and Grass chuckled. "That would be one argument in favour of closing the prison out of practical considerations, if the guards needed to sell flowers to pay for the electricity."
"I still think they might be able to spin the flowers as unproductive," Grass said. "They've got a very twisted logic to all of this. By all rights, we should be able to grow what we want! They'll claim, though, that flowers are not directly useful." She paused for a second, tapping her finger on her chin. "We should ask for sunflowers," she suddenly said. "It's a flower, and it's productive."
Donna now had a mental image of the guards walking around eating sunflower seeds and throwing the shells everywhere, like the idle youths who hung out on porches and playgrounds. "That could work, but it all depends on how Thirteen views it. What sort of nutrients do sunflower seeds even have?" she asked. The three of them tried to remember back to first-year gen-ed courses.
"Uh, fats, mostly?" Theodosius said hesitantly. "After all, they're used for oil." Donna mentally kicked herself for not realizing that.
"That probably won't work, then," Grass said sadly. "They're not going to give us something that's calorie-dense but doesn't have much in the way of nutrients."
At that moment, Oldsmith chose to join the conversation. He had been working alone a few metres to them and following the conversation. "Flowers would be lovely," he said. "I used to grow flowers in my backyard. Snow once gifted me some of his special roses, they had the most beautiful colours."
"I never knew that," Grass said.
"It never came up." Oldsmith tended to stay quiet when crocheting, unlike the majority of them, who had already gone over every conceivable topic twice and were now in the process of doing so for a third time. During the trial he had been one of the biggest firebrands, but now he seldom spoke.
Eager to listen to something new, Donna asked him about the flowers.
"It's just something I picked up when I became the President's secretary. His greenhouses were truly something. When we walked through them, I would stare and stare at all the colours. You know, that's something Cotillion did right. Some of them were obviously genetically modified, but it didn't stop them from being beautiful." Donna remembered how Dancer had told her a rumour of how Cotillion had allegedly once created a rose for Snow that you only had to smell once to die of natural causes the next week. While the veracity of the rumour was doubtful, the sentiment expressed was not. "I picked it up around then, though I grew different flowers, not just roses. My sibling teased me mercilessly for that, joked that I was becoming more and more like Snow every day." He smiled slightly. "They were right, in a way, but do we not all become more like the people we spend so much time with?"
"I had walked with Snow in his gardens and greenhouses a few times," Donna said. Every time, she had walked away unsure if he had threatened or reassured her. "I remember how one of the times, I was pregnant and the smell nearly made me throw up, but I forced myself to keep on going because I needed his support in an argument I was having with the Head Gamemaker. By the end, I was so tense, I was afraid to even open my mouth."
Grass winced. "I'm glad my wife and I decided to adopt." The two men cracked slight grins.
"It wasn't that big of a deal," Donna said with a shrug. "I was responsible for the children for only nine months, after all, and only one at a time. My husband's stuck with all five of them right now." After all, the process had been long and unpleasant, but that was the worst that could be said for it. Donna had been horrified to find out that in the Districts, even the inner ones, pregnancy and childbirth had often been life-threatening.
Theodosius looked sceptical at her words. "Out of everyone I've ever worked with, few of the women admitted that having children was an ordeal, and when they complained about something, they underplayed their issues. My wife, however, was open about all of the difficulties, and when I was at gatherings where spouses were invited, so were the wives. Does having a spouse to offload the kids on to somehow make women minimize their own experiences?"
Donna had never thought about that. Judging by their facial expressions, neither had Grass or Oldsmith. "That sounds like something that would be interesting to read about," Oldsmith said. "The experiences of working women with stay-at-home spouses as opposed to households where both spouses work. Maybe I'll ask for a book from HQ this week." That was the section on family and marriage. Donna wondered what the censor would think of the sudden interest in a completely unrelated topic. Oldsmith tended to read biographies of modern-day individuals and books about how different governments across the globe functioned. "In any case, have either of you ever been invited to Snow's greenhouses?"
Theodosius and Grass both nodded. "That's how I was persuaded to accept my promotion," Theodosius said. "I was worried that this was all a set-up, but Snow convinced me that as long as I did my job properly, I had nothing to fear. He was right, in the end. When a rival tried to attack me, I went to Snow, and he dealt with it. The flowers, though, were terrible. The smell was cloying and overpowering."
"Really?" Oldsmith asked. "I liked it." Grass agreed.
"Except for that one time, it was overpowering in the end, but I got used to it," Donna said.
"You were stronger than me, then," Theodosius said. "If we are allowed to plant flowers, I will personally throttle anyone who tries to plant roses. I swear I can still smell the stench sometimes."
The debate over flowers was solved in an unexpected way. Several days later, a warden from One handed Oldsmith a tray of fern seedlings, or whatever the equivalent was for a plant that did not grow from seeds.
"I don't understand the problem," she told the director from Thirteen, who was very unimpressed. "Ferns don't even flower!"
As Donna and Theodosius watched from their potato patch, the director from One was called in. "The decision was that plants cultivated only for their flowers will not be allowed," he said, leaning against a tree. "Ferns do not flower. Seems clear enough to me."
"Are you seriously quibbling over the letter of the law?" the director from Thirteen exclaimed. "It's obvious that the wording referred to plants that do not produce edible, uh, anything."
"The statement clearly referred to flowers. Where do you see flowers here?" The director from One pointed at the ferns.
Leaning towards Theodosius, Donna whispered, "I can't believe Thirteen is trying to ignore the letter of the rules."
"This independent-mindedness will be discussed at our next meeting!" The director from Thirteen remained unimpressed. "Was I supposed to have read an encyclopedia on non-flowering plants before assuming my post?" he added in an irritated tone.
This was getting nasty. The director from Thirteen had never worked on one of their farms, and as far as Donna knew, his formal education had been military in nature. Not like the director from One, who had worked in a greenhouse cultivating rare flowers.
"No," parried the director from One, "but it would be reasonable to expect that rules are followed."
The director from Thirteen went incandescent. "I never expected such a situation and neither could I have been expected to do so," he said with icy calmness. "Now that I am aware of a gap in the rules, I say that we need to get together and close it."
"Fine," snapped the director from One. "Let the inmates plant the ferns, though. If we decide otherwise, they can always dig them up."
The director from Thirteen calmly agreed to that proposition, but Donna could tell that he had lost. So could Theodosius. "If we plant them, then they'll all be in favour of maintaining the status quo." he pointed out. "Looks like we've gotten our ferns, then."
Oldsmith was already on his knees, planting the ferns.
