The Woodlands Read Online Free Page A

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