The Woodlands (2 page)

In my child brain, where an hour could seem like a week and a gap of months seemed to go by in an instant, it was like my father was swapped with Paulo almost immediately.
Suddenly, my mother was remarried, my father had disappeared, and where there was once warmth and laughter, there was only hardness. Looking back, I’m sure that’s not quite how it happened but like I said, I was eight.

Now, at sixteen,
I was amazed I had lasted as long as I had. And after the twentieth time of my mother asking me why I was like this—I started to wonder myself.

I think the answer was a combination of things. The first being that I severely lacked that healthy dose of fear
most people seemed to have. Fear being healthy, because not fearing the Superiors was about as good for you as a mugful full of bleach with your morning toast. The other reason, which took me longer to work out, was that even though I hated my father for leaving, I still wanted to hold on to him somehow. His memory was slippery and I struggled to get my hands around it. But when I did something unexpected, something to raise the eyebrows and sometimes the hands of my teachers, my father’s face became clearer in my mind, the edges sharpened. I could see him smiling at me crookedly and pretending to be cross even though I knew he wasn’t. These memories would pull in and out of focus like flipping photos.

And ultimately, when
almost everything I did was controlled by the Superiors, by my teachers and by Paulo, I took what little control I could for myself and held onto to it fiercely.

It was a slow dust of a day. The earth swirled in mini tornados
, scratching up the eight meter walls and slipping back down again, because in this place there was nothing for it to cling to. It skittered across the grass, kissing the blades, and tearing around the perfectly manicured trees that sat in the front yard of every home. Here in the rings of Pau Brazil, nothing settled—nothing ever could.

I shrugged on my grey uniform.
My mother was right about it being cheap and nasty. It was itchy and it seemed to beckon hot air and repel cool air. It clung to the wrong parts of me and billowed unflatteringly everywhere else. I didn’t really care. Everyone looked the same so it didn’t matter. I let the back of the shirt fall, wincing a little as the rough cloth brushed against my sliced-up skin. I couldn’t quite see it but I could feel it lightly with my fingertips, raised ribbons of split flesh. New scabs were already forming over the old scars. I never gave it a chance to heal. Soon there would be fresh cuts to add to the healing ones. I gathered up my assignment papers and shoved them in my bag, placing my mother’s treasured mascara into my pencil case. She would kill me if she knew I had it. It was given as payment about ten years ago and she only used it sparingly and on very special occasions.
Well, this was a special occasion
, I thought as I smiled to myself. My lips fell quickly as I remembered today was Friday. Friday was the worst day.

I tried to get out before she saw me
, edging along the faded carpet, the door just in my sights, but a hand grabbed the back of my shirt and gently halted my stride. I thought maybe she knew, but her face only showed the same exhausted apathy it always did.

“
Rosa, please eat something before you go.” My mother sighed, her hand falling to her side. She looked tired, ill, a hazy shade of green sitting just beneath a layer of dark brown skin like she was being diluted. I rolled my eyes at her.

“
You don’t need to whisper, Mother. I’m sure Paulo approves of you feeding me. It’s the rules, remember?”

She nodded, her hand trembling a little as she put the kettle on and started the ridiculously particular process of making tea for her husband so it was just right.

I listened for sounds of Paulo and heard the shower running. I nodded and picked up some toast. As I was spreading a very thin layer of jam on the bread with my mother eyeing my every move, I saw the billow of steam push out into the hall. He was out, and so was I. I slammed two pieces together and made a toast sandwich. Half walking/half running out the door, I yelled out, “Have fun sorting apples, Paulo. I hope you don’t end up in the off bin with the rest of the rotten ones!”

I turned around and saw my stepfather
’s expression as the door rebounded open from me slamming it too hard. His dark face was a wrinkled mask of pure wrath. Good.

Satisfied, I walked to scho
ol following the curve of Ring Two until I reached the first gate. It was chilly and I cursed myself for not bringing a jacket. I sought out a sunny patch on the wall and stood with my back against it, stalling. The wall was warm where the sun touched it, yet it always gave me shivers. At least eight meters tall above ground and four meters under, I felt that trapped rat feeling and kept moving. I know not everyone felt this way but I couldn’t help it. We were trapped, even if they said it was for our own protection.

I
scanned my wrist tattoo at the Ring gate. It opened reluctantly, groaning like it had just woken up. I passed through it, my eyes holding contact with the camera that was following my movements. Quietly laughing, I stepped backwards, then forwards, the small black eye zipping as it tried to follow my sporadic movements. When I was done teasing, it closed behind me only to be forced to creak open for someone else a second later. I wasn’t the only one who was running late. The difference being, when the gate opened, the other kids ran through it and sprinted to the school like their life depended on it. I took my time. Being tardy would result in a detention. I needed a detention.

I peered through the iron bars to see
the older kids hanging around outside one of the classrooms, their backs against the grey-green rendered walls. This would have to be their last day. The five students exuded the stagnant combination of nervousness and hope—prisoners about to receive parole. I snorted to myself. There was no hope, just change. They were going off to the Classes in a few weeks’ time.

I arrived at the school gate and scanned my wrist again. The double gates opened and I fell in to line with the stragglers. The neat rows of concrete classrooms looked dull and uninviting like the rest of the town. As I passed the older kids I heard a boy say,
“Yeah, I’m hoping for Teaching or maybe Carpentry.” His voice sounded confident, but with an edge of resignation tacked on, making his voice sound strong at the start only to peter out by the time he got to the end of his sentence.

The girl standing next to him bumped his shoulder affectionately
, her red-brown ponytail swinging and brushing his arm lightly. He flinched and pulled away like it bit him. “Maybe we’ll get in together. Wouldn’t it be great to be allocated the same Class?”

The boy shrugged.
“Doesn’t much matter, we’ll be separated anyway, you know that.”

Smart
, I thought, the girl needed to be shot down now. There was no future for anyone from the same town. The great claw of the Superiors would make sure of that. I imagined it like a sorting machine, kind of like what Paulo did, but instead of apples, the Superiors sorted races and Classes. These kids were going to be plucked from Pau Brazil, thrown into the Classes, and separated out into Uppers, Middles, and Lowers. The boy was right, at the end of training at the Classes, they would certainly be separated. Kids from the same town were not allowed to marry.

As I rounded the corner and made my way into my first
lesson, I snatched a glimpse of the hopeful girl’s face. It offended me. Her eyes were wide and brimming with moisture. I had little sympathy. This was the way things were. She needed to accept it. And really, she was lucky. I envied her. At least she was getting out of here soon.

First class. The teacher stood in front of us and asked us the same five questions she asked us every day. Pacing back and forth
in her sensible shoes and friction-causing nylon stockings, she nodded as the class answered in unison. I scrunched up my nose; a woman that large shouldn’t pipe herself into stockings that tight. The way her thighs were rubbing together, I thought she might spontaneously combust.

A while ago, I started formulating my own answers in my head.
Different every time to beat the monotony. Today I went with a root vegetable theme.

“
Who are we?” she barked in a low, almost manly voice.

“
Citizens of the Woodlands,” a chorus of bored teenagers replied.

I mouthed the words,
‘Various vegetative states of potatoes’.

“
What do we see?”

“
All kind,” we sung out loudly. The meaning lost on some but other eyes burned fiercely with belief.
As a potato
, I thought, and having no eyes. I am not qualified to answer that question.

“
What don’t we see?”

“
Own kind,” we said finitely.

I muttered under my breath
, “Everything, geez, I’m a potato.” I laughed to myself just at the wrong time, when the whole class was silent. The teacher gave me a sharp look, her black, olive-pit eyes narrowed.

“
Our parents are?” she snapped, whipping her head to the front.

“
Caretakers.”

“
Our allegiance is to?”

“
The Superiors. We defer to their judgment. Our war was our fault. The Superiors will correct our faults.” Our faults being that we had not yet developed into the super race that was to prevent all future wars.

I looked around the classroom. Most were dark skinned or tanned, dark hair and dark eyes. One girl had conspicuously fair hair compared to her caramel skin; she was
favored in the class since she looked like the ideal Woodland citizen. Her parents must have ‘mixed appropriately’. Kids like me were too dark, too short, and my eyes were undesirable to say the least. I shrugged; I would have had better luck currying favor if I really was a potato.

I peered down at my
skinny, dark fingers, the cracks in my palms darker than the skin surrounding them. Two hundred and fifty years on, despite the purposeful splitting up of families and distribution of races amongst the towns, you could still tell where a person came from. You could tell that my mother was Indian, as you could tell that I was half Indian, half Hispanic. The whole, All Kind and Own Kind thing hadn’t worked the way they wanted it to. People didn’t choose their mates because of their race but they didn’t
not
choose someone because of their race either. I guess you can’t just mix everyone up and assume they’ll make the choice you want them to.

My father used to
say, ‘You can’t help who you fall for,’ but then he also said he thought the Superiors were about to change everything and start forcing us to mate with someone of their choosing. That was eight years ago and nothing had happened yet. I massaged my temples, feeling a slicing headache coming on. I hated him popping up in my mind without prompting and besides, my father was wrong about a lot of things.

The teacher smacked the table with the flat of her palm
. “Good. Let’s begin.”

The first few classes went by as they always did. No one sat next to me, not that I cared. I was used to being treated like I radiated some awful smell.
Sometimes I used to sniff my armpits and then look around the class. It got a couple of laughs, but didn’t endear me enough for anyone to sit next to me. I got into trouble, a lot. And it wasn’t because I was being treated unfairly or the teacher had a grudge. Trouble just found me. If there was a bad choice, I just had to make it, regardless of what would happen. I couldn’t stop myself.

I
felt preoccupied, barely able to pretend I was listening to my teachers. I sat up straight, holding onto the edge of my old wooden desk like I was riding a wave, nervous excitement about my final class blowing imaginary wind through my hair.

Lunch, bell.