The Woodlands

“What do you mean?”

“I was expecting you to repeat your Ring Three, Pau Brazil spiel.”

I was upset that he thought he could predict what I was going to say. He didn’t know me.

“You don’t know me, what makes you think you can….” He cut me off.

“It’s fine, Rosa, you don’t have to get angry. I was just trying to say… Good, thank you for telling me something real about yourself.”

“Don’t cut me off!” I had forgotten what I was going to say. “What do you care anyway?” I was on the offensive, the impulsive, bubbling side of me pushing through.

“I don’t know. I just do. I thought maybe you could use a friend. And for some unknown reason I like you.” He confessed it like it was a crime. I suppose it was unlikely. Every other kid in my school was afraid of me. No one wanted to know me because I caused so much trouble. My attitude towards the Superiors was barely hidden. I made a lot of jokes that they laughed at but that was all. People always kept me at a distance, never wanting to get closer, in case they got included in the punishments that always followed my behavior.

I just glared at him for a while, my shoulders hunched and tensed. Recognizing my terrible posture, I relaxed a little. “Yeah, I guess I am pretty hard to like,” I said, rolling my eyes.

“You’re just hard to know,” Joseph sighed.

“It’s not like you’ve told me anything real about yourself.”

“What do you want to know? Ask me anything.” Open and honest, as I expected.

“Umm, why aren’t you at school?” I knew why I was avoiding it but it seemed unlikely that he was just waiting around to see me.

“I’m in the waiting period.” Of course, he was eighteen. He was leaving soon. The Superiors would give him and his parents eighteen days to spend with each other. A token amount of time to say their goodbyes and prepare themselves.

“So why aren’t you with them now?”

“It’s too sad—they’re too sad.” He breathed in deeply and considered his response. “Who wants to be around all that weeping and fussing anyway!” he said, attempting to cover his obvious pain.

“At least they will miss you; mine just want me out of the house.”

“They won’t miss me, Rosa, they will grieve me. I am never coming back. Your parents will grieve you too when you go. But you’ve got some time. You could talk to them.” He nudged me with his elbow.

“I don’t have time. I’ll be gone soon too,” I said. I thought about eighteen days stuck at home with my mother and Paulo—what a joke! We’d kill each other.

“What?” he sounded half-surprised, reacting less than I would have expected. This kind of thing was a scandal. Maybe he already knew.

I started to retell what had happened to me. Joseph listened intently and waited until I had finished before speaking.

“Wow, so you have a big decision to make.” His eyes looked down kindly at me as he reached over to touch my face. I moved away. My heart was jumping around in my chest. I could see that maybe we could be friends. That we could talk. It felt nice to have someone in my life who didn’t want me to be somebody else, who wasn’t afraid or critical of me. Anything more than that was impossible. He was leaving soon and even if I left with him, we would certainly be separated, eventually. So it needed to be left there.

But what I wanted was confused. I pushed the ‘want’ side of me down, like compressing the rubbish so you can fit more in the bin, the sides of the bag starting to split a little.

He didn’t seem upset or offended. He just took a step back, his strong arms by his sides, and looked at me intently. “So, aren’t you going to ask me about your father? I brought it up when we first met and you’ve never said anything else about it.”

“You don’t know my father. So why would I ask?” I shrugged. There was no way he knew my father. I was not even sure he was alive. Mother said he had disappeared. It seemed unlikely that he was just living somewhere in the Rings.

“Sure I do, his name is Lenos Bianca. He teaches at my school. History.”

I felt a balloon of interest floating up. “How do you know he’s related to me?” I asked. My father’s name was Pelo. It was not him. It couldn’t be.

“One brown eye, one blue eye, right?” Joseph looked at me questioningly, leaning away. He looked like he was ready to take a few more steps back. Waiting for me to explode.

“That could be him, I guess.” I popped the balloon in front of me. Whatever I was feeling, I ignored it. If it was him, I would be furious. How could he have been living so close and never come find me? And if it wasn’t him, that anger would shatter into sharp splinters of disappointment. The point was nothing could be gained from following this path. Nothing at all.

There was this saying that people used many years ago before the wars—‘curiosity killed the cat’—then the Superiors turned it into one of their warnings. I can’t remember exactly how it went, their words were always so archaic and long-winded, but the local translation of it was ‘curiosity killed the cat, and its family and its neighbors’. In other words, keep your head down and mind your own business.

“Yeah, he seems like a good guy, easy. He always…”

“Stop,” I said, my hand in front of his mouth, “I don’t want to hear any more.”

“Ok, but I think you’ll change your mind. I’ll wait for you to ask next time.” He smiled at me again. He made it so hard for me to be angry with him.

We walked in silence for a while. Past the grocery shops in Ring Four. The pitiful displays of limp vegetables and out of date ca

Back at home things were much harder in comparison. With Joseph it was fun and exciting and I found myself racing out the door to meet him. My mother took my happier attitude to mean I had accepted things and was excited about my new life. She tried to spend more time with me but it was painful. The most affection she could summon up was a light pat on the shoulder. She cooked my favorite meals and made me some new clothes. This was her way of caring for me. It just made me feel worse.

I helped her pack up their things. It was a meager amount of possessions, filling only five small boxes. We had to leave most of it behind. I wondered if she was going to take the hideous curtains. Paulo was triumphant. He took every opportunity he could to rub my situation in my face. His wicked face darkened with delight as he talked about the new baby and what he was going to do with my room when I was gone.

I taunted him, “You better watch out, Paulo. If you want to be anywhere near your baby, the room better have good ventilation. You know, to get rid of the cider stink.” That was the nerve I loved to tread on. Paulo always came home smelling like sour apples and vinegar. It permeated his clothes and his hair—a smell that complimented the sourness of his personality. He scrubbed and showered twice a day but it never left him.

Paulo stiffened at my words and I could see his hand digging into his thigh. Just do it, I willed. Hit me. I stood a foot away from him, my face upturned, glaring. I knew it took everything in him not to strike me. I wished he would. He would be out of here so fast. The Superiors took child abuse very seriously. They were the only ones allowed to dish out the violence. What I was trying to do must have occurred to him. He relaxed, an evil smile creeping across his thin lips.

“You’ll be gone soon, so that’s one stink we can clear out of this house before the new owners get here.” He walked towards the kitchen. My mother was standing over a saucepan. He slipped his hands around her waist and she jumped.