Seedfolks by Paul Fleischman

Author:Paul Fleischman
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-09-09T04:00:00+00:00

MARICELA

If you’re Mexican, the Cubans and Puerto Ricans hate you because they think you snuck in illegally and they didn’t. Which they would have if they could have walked. If you’re a teenager, the whole world hates you. If you’re a pregnant teenager, people think you should be burned at the stake. I’m a Mexican, pregnant sixteen-year-old. So shoot me and get it over with.

I wouldn’t actually care if you did. In a way I’m already dead. I used to be really, really hot. Because of the baby I’m as fat as a wrestler. I dropped out, I’ve been to exactly zero parties, and I’ve been asked out exactly zero times, including by the scum who got me pregnant. My parents were mad. They wanted me to graduate. But abortion or adoption—forget it. Then they got sort of excited about it. They both love little babies. Not me. They started praying for it every night, while I was begging my body to miscarry.

Three of us from my high school got into this program for pregnant teens. They give you rides to the doctor and help with getting your G.E.D. at home. Great. Except that Penny, the woman we see, saw the community garden and got the program its own spot, to give us practice taking care of something and to let us witness “the miracle of life.” And to try to keep us from eating our babies alive or dropping them into dumpsters.

It was already the middle of summer, so she had us plant radishes since they grow fast. All three of us hate radishes. As soon as the little green leaves came up a gopher or something wiped ’em out. So much for the miracle of life. I didn’t tell Penny I was hoping the same thing happened to my baby. She’s so cheerful I never could. She’s not puking or getting as big as a blimp—no wonder she’s always smiling.

After the radishes came squash, then Swiss chard, which nobody knew how to eat. I was in my seventh month. I hated the bending. We all complained, but Penny just smiled. The rest of us called working there the Chain Gang. I hated the feel of dirt under my nails. One afternoon Yolanda broke two of her fancy, painted, expensive nails and cursed out loud for ten minutes. Penny couldn’t shut her up. Then another woman came over and gave us this long lecture about the word “decorum.” I couldn’t believe my eyes—it was my old third-grade teacher, Miss Fleck. I prayed she wouldn’t recognize me, but naturally she did, and asked me all the usual questions. I should have had the answers printed up on a card to hand out. The next week, when some man threw a can out his window, which landed about a foot from my head, Miss Fleck figured out what apartment he was in, walked up, and yelled at him like he was a kid. She treated the whole world like her classroom.

Different people came to our part of the garden for different reasons.

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