The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer Read Free Book Online Page A

didn’t scold him. At first Matt was relieved, but after a while he began to feel bad. Even angry words were better than silence. At home he would have had the stuffed bear and dog and Pedro el Conejo for company. They didn’t talk, but he could hug them. Where were they now? Had Celia thrown them out because she knew he wasn’t coming back?
    Matt ate and cried at the same time. The tears ran down into his mouth and onto the dry toast Rosa had brought. He had toast and oatmeal, scrambled eggs with chorizo sausage, a plasticmug of orange juice, a strip of cold bacon. At least she wasn’t going to starve him.
    In the evening Rosa brought him a flavorless stew with cement-colored gravy. Matt was given no utensils and had to put his face in the bowl like a dog. With the stew came boiled squash, an apple, and a bottle of water. He ate because he was hungry. He hated the food because it reminded him of how wonderful Celia’s cooking had been.
    Days passed. Rosa never spoke to him. A shutter seemed to have come down over her face. She neither met Matt’s eyes nor responded when he asked her questions. Her silence made him frantic. He talked feverishly when she arrived, but he might have been a stuffed bear for all the notice she took of him.
    Meanwhile the smell in the room became appalling. Rosa cleaned the corner every day, but the stench clung to the cement. Matt got used to it. Rosa didn’t, and one day she exploded in another fit of rage.
    â€œIsn’t it enough that I have to wait on you?” she cried as he cowered next to the window. “I’d rather clean out a henhouse! At least they’re useful! What good are you?”
    Then an idea seemed to occur to her. She halted in midrant and looked at Matt in such a calculating way, he felt cold right down to his toes. What was she planning now?
    Back came the sullen gardeners. They built a low barrier across the door. Matt watched with interest. The barrier was as high as his waist—not tall enough to keep him in, but high enough to slow him down if he tried to escape. Rosa stood in the hallway, watching and criticizing. The gardeners said a few words Matt had never heard before, and Rosa turned dark with rage. But she didn’t reply.
    After the barrier was finished, Rosa lifted Matt outside andheld him tightly. He looked around eagerly. The hallway was gray and empty, hardly more interesting than the room, but at least it was different.
    Then something happened that made Matt’s mouth fall open with surprise. The gardeners trundled down the hall with wheelbarrows piled high with sawdust. They dumped them, one after the other, into his room. Back and forth they went until the floor was full of sawdust heaped as high as the barrier in the doorway.
    Rosa suddenly swung him up by his arms and tossed him inside. He landed with a whump and sat up coughing.
    â€œThat’s what dirty beasts get to live in,” she said, and slammed the door.
    Matt was so startled that he didn’t know what to think. The whole room was full of the gray-brown powder. It was soft. He could sleep on it like a bed. He waded through the sawdust trying to figure out why it had suddenly appeared in his world. At least it was something different.
    Matt tunneled. He heaped the shavings into hills. He threw it into the air to watch it patter down in a plume of dust. He amused himself this way for a long time, but gradually Matt ran out of things to do with sawdust.
    Rosa brought him food at sundown. She spoke not a single word. He ate slowly, watching the tiny yellow light that belonged to the Virgin and listening for far-off noises from the rest of the house.
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    â€œWhat in God’s green earth have you done?” cried the doctor when he saw Matt’s new environment.
    â€œIt’s deep litter,” said Rosa.
    â€œAre you crazy?”
    â€œWhat do you care?”
    â€œOf course I care,