The Woodlands

When I woke up the next morning, the greyness still offended my eyes as it had the day before. I wondered if other people ever got used to it. Did they crave difference the way I did? I peeked out my door to see if my parents were still having breakfast and was startled when Paulo rapped on it, sending it banging into my nose.

“We need to speak with you,” he said, his chest puffed up like he was so proud he could burst. I knew this couldn’t be good. I rubbed my nose and said I would be out in a second. “Don’t dawdle, this is important,” he snapped impatiently.

My nose was searching for phantom smells of the cooked breakfast we usually had on weekends but there was no eggs or ham sizzling. So I took as much time as I could, literally dragging my toes backwards on the carpet as I walked, enjoying the itchy burn it created across my feet. When I finally got to the kitchen Paulo was tapping his foot agitatedly and frowning.

“You should sit down,” Paulo said with a criminal smile. I was irked at his tone and did the opposite. I stood, leaning my folded arms across the old, wooden chair, rocking it back and forth, enjoying the creaks and the irritated look on his face as he twitched every time it made a noise.

I eyed the odd assortment of furniture, no chair matched. Everything was clean but used. We never knew where it came from. When they moved us the first time, we were told to leave everything behind and that our new home would already have the furniture we needed. I stared down at the chair and wondered who used to sit here. Did they have these parental meetings? Did they sit around the table with their child eating meals in silence?

I was pretty sure I knew what this was about. My latest string of detentions had to come up eventually. It made Paulo look bad to have such a disobedient stepdaughter.

He stared down at me as he paced around the kitchen; his slick, dark hair combed back to reveal his wrinkled brow and strained eyes. I tried to look at him objectively. Maybe he was handsome once. Now he just looked cruel, his whole face twisted into a dark, unreadable smile.

Whilst Paulo was itching to get my attention, my mother could barely look me in the eye. Her frail, dark hand traced the lid of the jam jar over and over like she would wear a hole in the rim. She would let him do the talking. She was afraid of him. I was not. Her whole demeanor curled away from Paulo and from me. Like a leaf dried up in the sun, you just had to step on it lightly for it to disintegrate to nothing and Paulo’s foot was always hovering over her, ready to come down.

The table was spread with a bizarre assortment of food: pickles, jam, olives, and bread. Like Mother had just grabbed an armful of pantry, distractedly, and thrown it on the table. It didn’t matter. No one was eating. I looked at the food questionably and then at Paulo. “What’s this about? I have homework to do and I’m sure you have important tasks on the agenda for today, like sorting through your clothes to see which shirt stinks less.” Giving him attitude would certainly result in a harsher punishment.

Paulo smiled and a shiver ran through me. He locked eyes with mine, making me feel like something someone had scraped off the bottom of their shoe.

“We are moving house in a few weeks. So yes, I do have some important jobs to do today.” He smiled and twisted a stray hair back into the oily, black scrape on his head.

My mother gave him the slightest look of a

“Where are we going?” I said with an edge of panic in my voice. I tried to push it down. I didn’t want Paulo to see me struggling—whatever was going on.

“WE are going to Ring Two. You? Well, I don’t know where you’re going yet,” Paulo said through straight teeth set in a sickening smile.

My heart sunk and surged and I started to panic. Panic, which quickly flipped to anger as I sifted through the possibilities that would separate our uncomfortable little family. Was I going to the Classes? No, I was too young. I was sixteen; they couldn’t take me until I was eighteen, unless…

Then it dawned on me. The obvious answer.

“You’re pregnant,” I said dully. “But you promised to wait until I was eighteen.” I was in a soundless vacuum. I was unsurprised and completely disappointed that it had come to this.

Mother didn’t respond, her head bowed, ashamed or maybe too tired to bother explaining to me how she could do such a thing.

“We couldn’t wait any longer,” Paulo said in a voice that fit him as well as a tutu would. Happy.

“No, I suppose not,” I said bitterly. “You’re a medical miracle as it is,” I exclaimed, walking around the kitchen, throwing my arms in the air. “Pregnant at the ripe old age of thirty-eight, that never happens.”

Paulo grabbed my arm, squeezing it harder than necessary, and spoke in his irritatingly controlled voice, “Don’t speak to your mother that way. This is not her fault.” The chirp was gone from his voice like I had imagined it.

“I bet,” I said meeting his gaze as I shook my arm free.

“I know it’s how you operate but getting angry isn’t going to get you anywhere, Rosa,” Paulo said, in an u

I looked at my mother, who was still avoiding my gaze. I wanted to scream at her, to try and shake some sense into that tiny body. But it was pointless. It wouldn’t change anything. She’d made her choice a long time ago and it wasn’t me.

“So I could go to the Classes now?” I said, thinking out loud.

My mother placed her hand on my arm as I rounded her side of the table and tried to still my nervous pacing. “I’d like you to stay,” she said weakly, the shadow of a question mark hanging on the end of her statement, her eyes looking vacantly through me and out the window, like she wasn’t sure she really meant it. I looked down at her loose grip on my shirt. Her thin fingers were calloused from pinpricks and ru

I could feel hot tears rising and threatening to spill over but I didn’t want Paulo to see me cry. “I need to think it over,” I said in my calmest voice. It sounded wooden, forced out with shock.

I brushed Mother’s hand off violently, like she was a bee who would sting me, and went to my room to grab my jacket.

“Take your time,” Paulo called after me, his voice lacquered with dark intentions. “It won’t change anything.” And he was right. My fate was already decided, but at least I could have some say in the timing of it.

I walked out the door feeling like my life was being upturned and dug up all around me. Now I had to be filter through the dirt and decide which crappy future I wanted and when.

As I stood on the front step, a cool wind hit me and I felt my body tense with anger. Anger at the difference between us—the always unfulfilled wish that she would be stronger and tell him no. But I also felt a misplaced prick of protectiveness over her that urged me to consider staying. She might need my help.

A baby. Paulo, the stickler for rules, had broken the big one and they were having a baby. I wondered how he talked her into it; I shuddered at the thought of the two of them together and pulled the blind down on that visual nightmare.

This ‘happy’ news gave me an instant headache and I wasn’t going to come to any answer right away. I stomped down the steps and strolled down our garden path, thick slabs of concrete teetering as I stepped on them at the wrong end. The word garden was laughable. Every yard was the same in Pau Brasil—one square of lawn, a concrete path, and one Pau Brasil tree in the center of every lawn, which had to be maintained meticulously.