The Woodlands (3 page)

As
the bell shrilled out across the pathetic yard, I watched a child get dragged by her hair across the plastic lawn. Her little legs struggling to find a foothold so she could stand but just sliding uselessly across the dampness. My stale sandwich stuck in my throat. Tears were streaming down the poor girl’s face. She couldn’t have been more than nine. One of the policemen wrenched her head violently, trying to pull her to standing. Blood appeared at the nape of her neck as the hair pulled out of her skin. I saw her face contort and her small pink mouth form an O as she tried not to scream.

“I think she’s had enough, don’t you? You’ll pull her hair right out of her head,” I shouted. I had the students’ attention but it was morbid curiosity—no one would help me. In fact, I saw a couple of kids take a few steps back. Both policemen turned their heads my way. One of them sneered at me, his olive skin scrunched around a bulbous nose that twisted at me in disgust. He closed the gap between us in a few long strides. His eyes had that familiar hardness to them that most of the policeman had. His were a stiff set blue, with flecks in them like chipped paint.

He laughed as he spoke, looking me up and down.
“Are you talking to me, girl?” Meeting my eyes, he seemed confused as to which one to look at.

Don
’t say it
, I thought. If only that voice in my head was louder. “I don’t see anyone else trying to scalp a child, do you?”

His expression showed that
was exactly what he had been hoping I would say. He retracted his elbow like he was loading an arrow to a bow and gave me a sharp punch to the stomach, hard enough to hurt but not hard enough to cause any permanent damage. Trained well. Part of my sandwich flew out of my mouth and I doubled over, winded. Feeling the pain spread like a stain soaking into cloth.

The
policeman didn’t look back, but I could see his head swinging around, taking in the witnesses as he stormed back to his partner. Satisfied that no one of importance was watching, they continued dragging the young girl. Finally, she fainted from the pain and he scooped her up. Thankfully. Most likely her parents had done something. Probably something minor. The Superiors loved to make an example. I crossed my fingers I wasn’t going to be summoned to the center circle to watch another horrific punishment this week.

I drummed my fingers on the table in Mathematics, rubbing my sore stomach and seeing whether I could do both at once without messing it up by drumming my stomach and rubbing the desk. When I
stuffed it up and started rubbing my hands across the small, wooden table, I took a pencil out and started tapping a rhythm instead. The kids around me leaned away, afraid to be sharing the same air as me. I looked up and teacher number five, whose name I couldn’t remember, was staring down at me. She snatched the pencil from my hands.

“
Rosa!” she said, like it was a swear word. “Go stand at the back of the class with your face to the wall. I’ve had enough of your distracting behavior.”

I smiled at her sweetly.
“Yes, Miss…um...” The teacher stared at me incredulously. Her thin tweezed eyebrows arched, her face creased in frustration.
Damn, what was her name?

She put her hands on my shoulders and squeezed, digging
her fingernails into my skin. “Mrs. Nwoso,” she said angrily. Blinking once slowly, I considered it.

“
Oh yeah, Miss Knowitall,” I said, feeling her fingernails trying to touch each other through my flesh, burrowing a painful hole. She released me quite suddenly, shaking her head and showing her white teeth, which looked especially bright against her ebony skin.

“
That’s not going to work on me today, Rosa. Stand facing the wall,” she pointed.

I shrugged and did what I was told, the eyes of my fellow classmates following me as I trudged between the neat rows of desks. I walked to the wall and leaned my forehead against a laminated poster about pi. Staring at it until my vision blurred and all I could see was the red of the circle, the numbers fading away with the monotonous tone of the teacher. The rings of Pau
started to push to the front of my mind. I knew the rings were supposed to resemble a tree trunk but to me, the eight rings had always reminded me of the ripples in a puddle. And I was a stone, always trying to disrupt the order. Sending my own set of circles radiating out that didn’t match and didn’t line up with the ordered concrete.

I turned my cheek to the wall and stared out the window, watching the wind pick up leaves and bits of rubbish, hypnotizing myself and forgetting about my pain for a while. Sometimes I felt like the dust. Relentlessly banging my head against the walls, never getting anywhere. Always ending up in a pile somewhere, never in a corner though. There are no corners in a round world. Sleeting across the path, searching, settling for a second then pushed along, again and again.

I was startled out my reverie when the door started opening and closing, sending vibrations through my jaw. I quickly grabbed my things and ran out. Miss Knowitall was yelling after me, but I pretended I didn’t hear her.

Last class, History.

I hung my bag outside and retrieved the mascara, shoving it in my pocket. I pulled out my scrunched-up assignment and smoothed it out on my legs until it at least resembled a rectangle. I grinned and strode inside, ignoring the cramping in my stomach.

Everyone sat down and Mr
. Singh read the roll.

“
Last week, I asked each of you to write about an incident from Woodland history or select your favorite Superior and detail how the incident or person had inspired or influenced your life. I ask that you read your assignment to the class and hand in the written part for me to mark later. Who would like to go first?”

No hands went up, so he picked someone. I
rolled the mascara between my palms, rolling my eyes at the student’s extremely boring presentation, clearly plagiarized from the textbook.

“
…So the Superiors developed the Classes—a brilliant way to train the youth of the Woodlands, give them a purpose and a sense of fulfillment…” Ugh! Blah, blah, blah. It was a brilliant way to force children to work in jobs they would probably hate and blame it on a test. It was a brilliant way to take children away from their families, brainwash them, and fill them with Superior-loving rubbish. My brain shut me down before I yelled something out in class. Besides, thinking this way was pointless. I would have to go to the Classes too when I turned eighteen. I had no say in the matter.

“
Excellent work, Miguel. Next please.”

I had to sit through a few more rambling presentations
, each more sleep-inducing than the last, before Mr. Singh called out my name.

“
Rosa Bianca?” he said with a note of anticipatory fear in his voice.

I
took a deep breath and walked to the front of the class.

I stood before the class and held my paper in front of my face, my hands shaking a little; I patted my pocket for reassurance. Someone sneezed and I waited until the fit had ended before I started. I had the insane thought that maybe I really was dust and the corner of my mouth turned up in a suppressed smile.

“
Get on with it, child,” Mr. Singh said impatiently.

“
Superior Grant is the lawmaker of the Woodlands. His carefully weighted and wise decisions have brought prosperity to the Woodlands,” I said, rolling back on my heels, hands clasped behind my back. Trying my hardest to look like the model student.

I went on to describe several of Grant
’s laws. The one about people from the same town not being permitted to marry, the one about children not being allowed into certain Rings to preserve their innocence and maintain their safety. I also mentioned Grant’s failed law, when he stated that people with the same eye color couldn’t marry. This had turned out to be a huge mistake as almost everyone, in our town anyway, had brown eyes. This law was reversed after one year when the birth rate plummeted and the poor, blue-eyed people in our town were being harassed. Singh’s face pinched at my use of the word failed but I quickly covered it by saying that Grant was not so proud that he couldn’t admit a mistake and correct it. By this time, I had Singh slightly less unimpressed and the rest of the class was half asleep.

“
The one-child law was Grant’s most recent law. The law was made to protect the philosophy of All Kind on which our society is based. It has also raised the level of competence in schools and at the Classes five-fold due to the focused attention on one child rather than several and has therefore been a successful endeavor.”

I looked
to Singh. He was nodding along encouragingly.

It was so boring I was almost putting myself to sleep.
And it was entirely false. The Woodlands had suffered due to his latest law—with fewer children, there were fewer workers, and of course, fewer marriages. I crossed my arms, pausing for a second. It didn’t make much sense when one of the main objectives of the Woodlands was interracial breeding.

My heart started beating faster and I could feel my cheeks redden as I started into the last part of my speech,
“Grant came to our town to announce the law when I was eight years old.” I deliberately dropped my piece of paper. It floated down to the ground slowly, like a feather caught in the wind. I crouched down with my back to the class to get it and quickly whipped out the mascara to smear it over my top lip and chin.

I
stood to face the class and stroked my chin, winking at the front row, “Hi y’all,” I drawled, remembering Grant’s strange accent. Someone snickered and a few pairs of eyes looked brighter. At least I’d woken them up. A girl in the front row had her jacket on her desk so I snatched it quickly and shoved it under my shirt. Parading around the room with my shoulders back I said, “As you can see—” I hefted my bulging stomach up with both hands and let it fall, “I’m waaasting away…yer children are eatin’ all ma food,” I slurred, slipping into more of a drunk tone than I had intended. “And,” I pointed my finger to the sky, “And…” I thought Singh would have stopped me by now, but he was just staring at me with his mouth open, his fat cheeks wobbling in disbelief.

My time was running out and my
courage started to diminish as I realized how very far over the line I had gone. I ran my hand through my hair and shook my belly at the class. I had to keep going. “So I’m takin’ yer kids so they can make me and my gigantic wife more…more of that delicious creamed spinach you kids seem to love so much.”

The whole class erupted into laughter for a second. I grinned at them sheepishly
, leaning forward for a bow. My stomach fell out which caused another round of laughter.

Bang! Singh slammed a book down on his desk, rounded it, and caught a hold of my shirt, balling it up in his fist. He flung me to the floor
, my elbows jarring as I tried to break my fall. Everyone went quiet.

H
e hovered over me like a dark storm cloud, breathing quickly, hands on his hips. “Rosa!” he said cuttingly, slapping the smile off my face with his tone. “You are making a mockery of my class and a fool of yourself. What do you have to say?” He was furious but I saw his eyes darting from window to doorway. If someone reported that he had no control over his students, then he would be the one in trouble. I knew that.

“
My point is...” I started, looking up to him from my lowly position, breathless from running around and the pain in my stomach, “Grant could say anything he wanted and we would have to go along with it, wouldn’t we? My reasons are probably just as true as the ones they passed out on the day they announced the law. It’s rubbish. Why don’t they just say each family can only have one child every eighteen years and if you disobey us, we will torture you in front the whole town? It’s short, it’s sweet...” That was the last straw. Singh pushed me with the tip of his shoe like he didn’t want to get contaminated and told me to get out of his class.

“
And wipe your face,” he said, pushing a bunch of tissues into my palm and turning his back to me.

I was sent straight to detention, which was cleaning a week
’s worth of filth off the toilets, readying them for next week’s filth.

I hadn
’t expected those words to come out of my mouth. I wiped the black from my mouth as I walked to the cleaning supplies room. I picked up my usual bucket, mop, and rubber gloves, and wondered why I had said it. I was just trying to get a decent detention, not make a political point. But I knew that I really believed what I had said and it worried me. My father may have been long gone but parts of him still lived and breathed in me without me realizing. I didn’t want to end up on the center podium, having my eyes poked out or my fingers chopped off for being a dissident. The Superiors were all about creative forms of punishment, the worst being the punishment for violating the one-child law.

As I filled my wheeled bucket with hot water, letting it scald the tips of my fingers
, I remembered the one violation that was forever seared into my memory. It was a young couple who’d had a seven-year-old boy. They lived a few houses down from me. One night, I remember waking up to police sirens and hearing a woman screaming. A heart-breaking scream carrying with it some unknown trauma. My mother had come into my room—it was rare for her to do this—and sat with me until the screaming had ceased. I still recall her cool hand stroking my hair, my tiny body curled up in her lap as she rocked me back to sleep.

The next
day, they announced over the croaking old PA system that everyone was to meet in Ring One at noon. As we all gathered around, they dragged a man and woman onto the center podium, their hands tied behind their backs. People exchanged worried glances. No one wanted to be here but we were all glued to the ground. The man looked like he had been crying all night and had been badly beaten. The sun was beating down on his bowed head; sweat dripping from his glossy black hair. The woman wore the expression of one who knows her fate. Solemn, resigned, and stony. The police brought two boys to the front; they looked so similar they had to be brothers and could not be more than one or two years apart. The policeman announced that they had been hiding the younger boy for five years. We all knew what was coming next. Parents buried their children’s faces in their chests and covered their ears. I wanted to look away, I tried to, but I felt the strong arms of Paulo pushing down on my shoulders and holding my head still.

The father
fainted quickly. He was so badly beaten, I think he was half dead anyway. But the mother looked her boys in the eyes and locked on to them as the knife was buried in her chest. I remember thinking the odd thought that the heart didn’t look quite right; it was misshapen, too big on one side. See, they carved the shape of a heart into the victim’s chest. It was a reminder, a painful one. A scar they could never escape that would remind them what you got if you broke the rules and broke the hearts of the Superiors. This policeman looked like it was too much for him today. His eyes squinted and his teeth gritted as he continued his gory work.

“
Look into my eyes darlings, Mama will be ok,” the mother said calmly, trying to soothe her terrified children.

The pain must have been excruciating but she only cried out once during the initial stab, letting out a strangled moan as it punctured her skin and sliced a gash across her lung.
The policeman swore at his mistake. Like air escaping a balloon slowly, the cry had not enough air to produce much of a noise, but it was enough to make me want to scream myself. Blood pooled at her feet and dripped over the edges of the podium like a paint tin tipped over, thick red coloring the sandstone pavers and soaking into the stone. People were moving back to get away from it, blood reaching out to touch the tips of their shoes.

The mother looked up at the sky as her life left her body, her sweat-soaked
, light brown hair falling back from her face in streams as she whispered, “I love you,”“ to her boys. The brothers were screaming and holding each other, beyond hysterical. They were bundled into a van and driven away. It was over. Two crumpled bodies lay in the center of the circle, grotesque, misshaped love hearts carved into their chests. Everyone walked away. Mother took me to buy shoes that day.

I doubted that memory would ever leave me. It was carved into my chest like those love hearts. I felt it sitting there, a cut-in scar. I held my hand across my chest and dragged my bucket down the hall to start my work. Water sloshed carelessly over the
side, sending steaming splats of strong smelling chemicals in my wake.

It would take me at least three hours, maybe more. I hoped I would be late enough that I could sneak into the house, grab a warm
dinner, and go to my room. Paulo was insistent on dinner being served at seven sharp. I imagined my mother carefully laying out the meal, glancing at the clock anxiously. I felt guilty, but cleaning filthy toilets was preferable to eating with them. Paulo would bait me and I would surely say something I shouldn’t. This way I was occupied, they could eat in peace, and no one ended up in an argument.

I finished one toilet block and moved to the juniors
’ section, nodding my head in greeting to the cleaner who was sweeping the hallway. I tried not to think about going home, about the weekend that stretched before me like a desert. I had to cross it, and Paulo was always there, dangling the ice cold water right in front my face, sneering at me and pouring it out on the cracked earth as I watched it sizzle and turn to vapor. The stupid thing was all that waited for me on the other side was more school. The Classes couldn’t come soon enough. I poured out the cleaning water, almost black with things I didn’t want to think about, and wrung out the mop.

The halls were peaceful. The grey walls and green linoleum
was not quite so oppressive under the dim glow of the emergency lights. Without the scared, scurrying children, I could pretend I came here to learn, not kill time.

I placed the cleaning gear back in the cupboard
, ready for next Friday, and noted the time—eight. If I really took my time, I could get home just as they went to bed. I made my way to the principal’s office.

He was staring down at a piece of paper in his hands, reading and then putting his finger to certain words and reading again. When I tapped gently on the door he jumped, his glasses falling off his face. He fumbled around on the
floor, found them, and turned his face to mine, giving me his best icy stare. I swallowed my want to mock him. He was about as intimidating as a puff of wheat.

“
I’m finished with the bathrooms. Can you sign this so I can go home?” I said, trying to sound repentant.

He was irritated by my interruption, nothing new there. He held out his hand and I placed the detention slip in his palm. He scribbled on it and held it up, waving it
slowly in front of my face, teasing.

I narrowed my eyes, wanting to snatch it from his stubby fingers.
“You know, I don’t know why they would bother sending you to the Classes,” he said with a look of self-satisfaction, like he’d just solved some great mystery “We all know this is exactly what you’ll be doing when you get out.”

I took the slip from his fingers, managing to whisper
pathetically, “You don’t know that.”