The Woodlands Read Online Free PDF Page B

stinks less.” Giving him attitude would certainly result in a harsher punishment.
    Paulo smiled and a shiver ran th rough 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 annoyance —like he had said the wrong thing—but covered it quickly.
    “ 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 i t 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 unnervingly calm voice. “You need to decide whether to go now or when the baby comes,” then he gave Mother a sideways growl, “although I don’t know why we are letting you decide.”
    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 running her hands back and forth through her ancient sewing machine. They worked her so hard. I shook my head; sympathy for her had no place in my mind right now. She was giving me up. Whether it was now or nine months from now, she was abandoning me.
    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