The Woodlands

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 i

“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 a

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 ru

The whole class erupted into laughter for a second. I gri

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.

He 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 ru

“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 a