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“when can i say your name —”
Katara of the Southern Water Tribe is born to Chief Hakoda and his wife Kya on a wild winter’s night.
Kya likes to retell the birthing story, so Katara grows up knowing the cadence of her mother’s voice as she recites it. Her voice is like rushing water, smooth and comforting and exciting all at once, and it never fails to make her daughter’s heart soar.
The night was dark as pitch, and the only light came from the full moon. Outside our igloo, the wind was bitter and cold, and beyond the ice, the ocean was raging, Kya would say with a twinkle in her eye. Your father and your grandmother were worried, but I was not. And when you came into the world, Katara, that’s when I knew. You let out your first cries; the outside world fell silent. The sea stilled, the wind ceased. And that’s when I knew you would be strong, and brave, and special. For who else could cry, and calm the storms of the ocean? Who else could that voice belong to?
Is that why I’m a waterbender, mama? Katara would always ask after each retelling, and Kya would always smile, and pinch her daughter’s sides until she was shrieking with laughter. Then she’d say, Only the spirits know the answer to that. But she would say it with a twinkle in her eye, and Katara would beam under the light of her mother’s love, steady and strong and sure.
Katara loves her father, and her brother, and her Gran-gran, and her tribe. Of course she does, how could she not? But her mother is her best friend. Her mother brushes her hair and tucks her into bed at night and tells her stories. Her mother takes her berry picking and brings her down to the ocean’s edge to pick through smooth rocks and seashells. Her mother shows her how to cook and clean and sew- it’s women’s work, and they do it with pride, the way the women of their tribe have always done. Her mother tells her to be proud of her bending. Her mother laughs when she moves the snow and lets it go splat on top of Sokka’s head.
Katara loves her mother with all she has, and that’s why, on the day when the snow falls down dark and ashy from the sky, the first thing she does is run back to the family igloo.
She wonders for years, afterwards, if there was something she could have done. If she did something differently, would her mother still be alive? She could have run faster. She could have been stronger. She could have screamed louder, done something, anything.
But she didn’t. And so it’s all her fault.
The guilt eats Katara alive, most days, so she throws herself into becoming anything and everything else. She fills the void that Kya leaves behind. She steps up for Sokka, for her whole tribe.
It’s not a choice, it just happens. Kya is gone, and she isn’t coming back. Katara hangs onto her ghost, lets it fill her up inside, and pretends that it makes everything better.
Everywhere she turns, there is a memory of something, half-formed, aching, empty. The specter of her mother sits in front of the firepit, laughing as she mends Sokka’s pants or Katara’s parka. The blurry outline of her father paces the area where the ice meets the sea, only to sail away on a ship, unable to be seen for years to come. The spirits of the Southern waterbenders- because there used to be so many, but now Katara is the last one, and she feels it so acutely everytime she tries to move the water with her hands, or strengthen the walls of their igloo, only to fail miserably every time- they roam the village at night, sad and discontented, and they cry out for a past that will never return.
It’s not all bad, of course. Katara has Sokka, and she has Gran-gran, and she has the rest of her tribe. She loves them all so much she thinks she might burst with it, some days. She would do anything for her people. She is theirs, the last waterbender, daughter of the chief, the one who keeps them all together.
But sometimes she wishes. Sometimes she wants. Sometimes she dreams of a world where she’s not the only one, where she’s not so lonely, where there is no war and she can say her mother’s name and look at her own bending and not think about what could’ve been, only what is.
A world where she gets to choose.
Katara turns fourteen, and her mother has been dead for six years.
Two more years, and Kya will be gone for just as long as she was here. Three more years, and Kya then will have been gone for longer. Time will go on, but Kya will still be gone, and Katara will eventually reach an age her mother did not get to. And what will she do then?
It does not bode well for her to think about this.
But when Katara turns fourteen, something else happens, too. She finds a little boy in an iceberg and shifts the world of its axis, alters the course of history, splits open the fate of the world.
Alongside Aang, her and Sokka leave home for the first time, and Katara learns. For the first time, Katara learns, and Katara gets to choose. She battles Pakku to master waterbending in the North Pole- because after fourteen years being denied what should be hers by rights, a sour old man is not going to take her heritage away from her. She masters her element, makes it her own, embodies the changing spirits of Tui and La as she fights and heals in equal measure.
She sees the world, meets new people, finds that she quite likes starting revolutions and mending rifts. Bleeding heart Katara, never turns her back on people who needs her, always strives to do the right thing.
The months crawl forward, and with Aang and Toph and Sokka by her side, Katara remembers how it feels to have fun, and be young. She had to grow up too fast- they all did, really, and they still do. Aang has to face the Fire Lord and they have to end the war that’s been raging for a century and it’s a lot, really, for four children and a flying bison and a lemur to handle. They forge a new family all the same.
A whole year of learning, of growing, of choices.
A whole year of change.
But when Katara stands over Yon Rha in the pouring rain, she feels like she’s eight years old again. And she feels like she doesn’t have a choice.
Jet dies with crushed insides and Aang falls from the sky lit up blue by lightning he felt so light when she gathered him into her arms and Hama reaches inside her body and twists until Katara cannot control her own limbs and her mother’s body is lying in the snow it smells like burnt meat and I was too late but why I can’t see her face why can’t I see her face what am I going to do
What am I going to do?
What am I going to do?
What
am
I
going
to do?
This monster has haunted her dreams for so long.
What am I going to do?
Aang said she should forgive. That she should let her anger out, let it go. And Katara- Katara wants to, so desperately. She wishes she could just forget about all of this. She wishes she could stop thinking about her mother’s body in the snow (she wishes she could forget how light Aang felt in her arms when she fell from the sky) . She wants to stop carrying this weight, this burden. And she knows Aang means well, because he always, always does. But his advice feels suffocating, like an old shirt that doesn’t fit. It doesn’t sit right on her skin. It strangles her.
The concept of forgiveness sits heavy on her tongue. She does not think the monster deserves it. She does not know if she has it in her to give.
Sokka said he’d never turn his back on her. He said that, and he meant it, and she’d repaid him by insinuating that he didn’t love Mom as much as she did. That’s not true, she knows it’s not, but Sokka didn’t see her body and Sokka didn’t spend six years trying to bridge the gaps and Sokka isn’t filled with this rage, this uncontrollable hurt, and-
She has to do something. She has to do something. But Aang’s advice is strangling and she’s crossed a line with Sokka and maybe the only thing to do now is rage out and out and out-
Last night, Zuko (selfish Zuko? Selfless Zuko? She doesn’t know. She doesn’t want to.) asked her if she was ready. But is she ready? Is she ready?
A long time ago, her mother told her she was strong, and brave, and special. A long time ago, her mother brushed her hair and tucked her into bed at night and told her stories. Her mother took her berry picking and brought her down to the ocean’s edge to pick through smooth rocks and seashells. Her mother showed her how to cook and clean and sew. A long time ago, her mother said, for who else could cry, and calm the storms of the ocean? Who else could that voice belong to?
Who does that voice belong to?
Who does that voice belong to?
(Do I even recognize myself?)
When Katara was younger, she wished for a world where she wasn’t the last waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe. Where she wasn’t deeply, desperately lonely, where her mother’s ghost never made a home for itself in the slots of her ribcage. A world where the war is over, a world where she gets to choose.
Some things can never be undone. Deep down, Katara knows she’ll always be hurting from this. This is a wound that won’t ever close. Kya is dead, and she isn’t coming back.
But they are so close, so close to stopping the Fire Nation, to ending the war. And Katara has spent the past year learning so much about who she is and who she wants to be. She has conquered her element, made it her own, reclaimed the bits of herself that seemed to be missing. She has found a new family- one that she plans to keep.
She is still here.
Katara is still here, she’s still alive, and suddenly, she knows. She wants to make a decision. She wants it to be the right one.
She wants this ache to dull, this pain to lessen. She wants to let Aang and Sokka and Toph and Suki and maybe even Zuko (selfish Zuko, selfless Zuko) to help her through. She wants this burden to grow lighter, and she wants to move forward. She can no longer look back.
She wants to make a choice. One choice. Her choice.
Who else could that voice belong to? says her mother, and Katara says, It’s me. It’s mine.
In the moments before Katara lets go, she lets Kya’s ghost fill her up inside. It expands, seeps into her blood, reaches the tips of her fingertips and her toes. She feels it warm her, and then a million emotions flutter around inside her chest- hurt and sadness and love, so much love. And maybe something else. Something like absolution.
And then she exhales, and lets it all go. Katara releases it all, and she can feel it float away on the wind. Somehow, she is leaden and weightless all at once, a thousand times lighter, but also inextricably, impossibly heavy.
Yon Rha doesn’t die that evening. But he is not forgiven, either. She knows, as long as she lives, that she will never, ever forgive him.
It’s not about weakness or strength, not really. It’s just that Katara knows who she wants to be. She knows what she wants to carry forward.
Healing is a choice, and so is her future. So is her bending, her legacy, her tribe. All of the things she loves to do. And the family she’s spent the last year fighting tooth and nail to keep- that’s a choice, too, and she wants to carry it all forward, to forge something new for herself and for others.
And she will. She will, she will, she will.
At the end of it all, Katara chooses herself, and that’s what sets her free.
Later, she will sit on a pier in the Fire Nation and watch the sun sink down into the sea. She will look at her reflection in the water, and see her mother staring back at her. She will feel a sadness so deep it nearly swallows her whole. But she will also feel quiet, and calm, and settled.
It is a pitch black night. Her cries have stilled the ocean. Who else could that voice belong to? Only her, only her.
I loved you enough to let it go, Mom, Katara will think. The sun will fall even lower from the sky, tint everything in shades of pink and purple and orange. It will be beautiful. I loved you, and I loved myself. I hope you’re proud of me .
And somewhere across space and time, someplace where the spirits lie, Kya will know. Kya will understand. And she is proud of her daughter- prouder than can ever be put into words.
“— and have it mean only your name and not what you left behind?”
ocean vuong, a letter to my mother that she will never read