Room (8 page)

I don’t do Scream because of disturbing Ma. I think it’s probably OK to skip one day.

Then I switch the TV on again and wiggle Bunny, he makes the planets a bit less fuzzy but only a bit. It’s racing cars, I like to see them go super fast but it’s not very interesting
after they do the oval about a hundred times. I want to wake Ma up and ask about Outside with the actual humans and things all zooming around, but she’d be mad. Or maybe she wouldn’t
switch on at all even if I shake her. So I don’t. I go up very close, half her face is showing and her neck. The marks are purple now.

I’m going to kick Old Nick till I break his butt. I’ll zap Door open with Remote and whiz into Outside Space and get everything at the real stores and bring it back to Ma.

I cry a bit but no noise.

I watch a show of weather and one of enemies are besieging a castle, the good guys are building a barricade so the door won’t open. I nibble my finger, Ma can’t tell me to stop. I
wonder how much of my brain is gooey yet and how much is still OK. I think I might throw up like when I was three and had diarrhea too. What if I throw up all over Rug, how will I wash her on my
own?

I look at her stain from when I got born. I kneel down and stroke, it feels sort of warm and scratchy like the rest of Rug, no different.

Ma’s never Gone more than one day. I don’t know what I do if I wake up tomorrow and she’s still Gone.

Then I’m hungry, I have a banana even though it’s a bit green.

Dora is a drawing in TV but she’s my real friend, that’s confusing. Jeep is actually real, I can feel him with my fingers. Superman is just TV. Trees are TV but Plant is real, oh, I
forgot to water her. I carry her from Dresser to Sink and do that right away. I wonder did she eat Ma’s bit of fish.

Skateboards are TV and so are girls and boys except Ma says they’re actual, how can they be when they’re so flat? Ma and me could make a barricade, we could shove Bed against Door so
it doesn’t open, won’t he get a shock, ha ha.
Let me in
, he’s shouting,
or I’ll huff and I’ll puff and I’ll blow your house down.
Grass is TV and
so is fire, but it could come in Room for real if I hot the beans and the red jumps onto my sleeve and burns me up. I’d like to see that but not it happen. Air’s real and water only in
Bath and Sink, rivers and lakes are TV, I don’t know about the sea because if it whizzed around Outside it would make everything wet. I want to shake Ma and ask her if the sea is real. Room
is real for real, but maybe Outside is too only it’s got a cloak of invisibility on like Prince JackerJack in the story? Baby Jesus is TV I think except in the painting with his Ma and his
cousin and his Grandma, but God is real looking in Skylight with his yellow face, only not today, there’s only gray.

I want to be in Bed with Ma. Instead I sit on Rug with my hand just on the bump of her foot under Duvet. My arm gets tired so I drop it down for a while then put it back. I roll up the end of
Rug and let her flop open again, I do that hundreds of times.

When it gets dark I try and eat more baked beans but they’re disgusting. I have some bread and peanut butter instead. I open Freezer and put my face in beside the bags of peas and spinach
and horrible green beans, I keep it there till I’m numb even my eyelids. Then I jump out and shut the door and rub my cheeks to warm them up. I can feel them with my hands but I can’t
feel them feeling my hands on them, it’s weird.

It’s dark in Skylight now, I hope God will put his silver face in.

I get into my sleep T-shirt. I wonder am I dirty because I didn’t have a bath, I try to smell myself. In Wardrobe I lie down in Blanket but I’m cold. I forgot to put up Thermostat
today, that’s why, I only just remembered, but I can’t do it now it’s night.

I want some very much, I didn’t have any all day. The right even, but I’d rather the left. If I could get in with Ma and have some—but she might push me away and that would be
worse.

What if I’m in Bed with her and Old Nick comes? I don’t know if it’s nine yet, it’s too dark for seeing Watch.

I sneak into Bed, extra slow so Ma won’t notice. I just lie near. If I hear the
beep beep
I can jump back in Wardrobe quick quick.

What if he comes and Ma won’t wake up, will he be even more madder? Will he make worse marks on her?

I stay awake so I can hear him come.

He doesn’t come but I stay awake.

•   •   •

The trash bag is still beside Door. Ma got up before me this morning and unknotted it and put in the beans she scraped out of the can. If the bag’s still here, I guess
that means he didn’t come, that’s two nights he didn’t, yippee.

Friday means Mattress time. We flip her over front to back and sideways as well so she doesn’t get bumpy, she’s so heavy I have to use all my muscles and when she flomps down she
knocks me onto Rug. I see the brown mark on Mattress from when I came out of Ma’s tummy the first time. Next we have a dusting race, dust is tiny invisible pieces of our skins that we
don’t need anymore because we grow new ones like snakes. Ma sneezes really high like an opera star we heard one time in TV.

We do our grocery list, we can’t decide about Sundaytreat. “Let’s ask for candy,” I say. “Not even chocolate. Some kind of candy we never had before.”

“Some really sticky kind, so you’ll end up with teeth like mine?”

I don’t like when Ma does sarcasm.

Now we’re reading sentences out of no-pictures books, this one’s
The Shack
with a spooky house and all white snow. “ ‘Since then,’ ” I read, “
‘he and I have been, as the kids say these days, hangin’ out, sharing a coffee—or for me a chai tea, extra hot with soy.’ ”

“Excellent,” says Ma, “only
soy
should rhyme with
boy
.”

Persons in books and TV are always thirsty, they have beer and juice and champagne and lattes and all sorts of liquids, sometimes they click their glasses on each other’s glasses when
they’re happy but they don’t break them. I read the line again, it’s still confusing. “Who’s the
he
and the
I,
are they the kids?”

“Hmm,” says Ma, reading over my shoulder, “I think
the kids
means kids in general.”

“What’s
in general
?”

“Lots of kids.”

I try and see them, the lots, all playing together. “Actual human ones?”

Ma doesn’t say anything for a minute, and then, “Yeah,” very quiet. So it was true, everything she said.

The marks are still there on her neck, I wonder if they’ll ever go away.

•   •   •

In the night she’s flashing, it wakes me in Bed. Lamp on, I count five. Lamp off, I count one. Lamp on, I count two. Lamp off, I count two. I do a groan.

“Just a bit more.” She’s still staring up at Skylight that’s all black.

There’s no trash bag beside Door, that means he must have been here when I was asleep. “Please, Ma.”

“In a minute.”

“It hurts my eyes.”

She leans over Bed and kisses me beside my mouth, she puts Duvet over my face. The light’s still flashing but darker.

After a while she comes back into Bed and gives me some for getting back to sleep.

•   •   •

On Saturday Ma makes me three braids for a change, they feel funny. I wave my face to whack myself with them.

I don’t watch the cartoon planet this morning, I choose a bit of a gardening and a fitness and a news, and everything I see I say, “Ma, is that real?” and she says yeah, except
one bit about a movie with werewolves and a woman bursting like a balloon is just special effects, that’s drawing on computers.

Lunch is a can of chickpea curry and rice as well.

I’d like to do an extra big Scream but we can’t on weekends.

Most of the afternoon we play Cat’s Cradle, we can do the Candles and the Diamonds and the Manger and the Knitting Needles and we keep practicing the Scorpion except Ma’s fingers
always end up stuck.

Dinner is mini pizzas, one each plus one to share. Then we watch a planet where persons are wearing lots of frilly clothes and huge white hair. Ma says they’re real but they’re
pretending to be people who died hundreds of years ago. It’s a sort of game but it doesn’t sound much fun.

She switches the TV off and sniffs. “I can still smell that curry from lunch.”

“Me too.”

“It tasted good but it’s nasty the way it lingers.”

“Mine tasted nasty too,” I tell her.

She laughs. The marks on her neck are getting less, they’re greenish and yellowish.

“Can I have a story?”

“Which one?”

“One you never told me before.”

Ma smiles at me. “I think at this point you know everything I know.
The Count of Monte Cristo
?”

“I’ve heard that millions of times.”

“
GulliJack in Lilliput
?”

“Zillions.”

“
Nelson on Robben Island
?”

“Then he got out after twenty-seven years and became the government.”

“
Goldilocks
?”

“Too scary.”

“The bears only growl at her,” says Ma.

“Still.”

“
Princess Diana
?”

“Should have worn her seat belt.”

“See, you know them all.” Ma puffs her breath. “Hang on, there’s one about a mermaid . . .”

“The Little Mermaid.”

“No, a different one. This mermaid is sitting on the rocks one evening, combing her hair, when a fisherman creeps up and catches her in his net.”

“To fry her for his dinner?”

“No, no, he brings her home to his cottage and she has to marry him,” says Ma. “He takes away her magic comb so she can’t ever go back into the sea. So after a while the
mermaid has a baby—”

“—called JackerJack,” I tell her.

“That’s right. But whenever the fisherman’s out fishing she looks around the cottage, and one day she finds where he’s hidden her comb—”

“Ha ha.”

“And she runs away to the rocks, and slips down into the sea.”

“No.”

Ma looks at me close. “You don’t like this story?”

“She shouldn’t be gone.”

“It’s OK.” She takes the tear out of my eye with her finger. “I forgot to say, of course she takes her baby, JackerJack, with her, he’s all knotted up in her hair.
And when the fisherman comes back, the cottage is empty, and he never sees them again.”

“Does he drown?”

“The fisherman?”

“No, JackerJack, under the water.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” says Ma, “he’s half merman, remember? He can breathe air or water, whichever.” She goes to look at Watch, it’s 08:27.

I’m lying in Wardrobe for ages, but I don’t get sleepy. We do songs and prayers. “Just one nursery rhyme,” I say, “please?” I pick “The House That Jack
Built” because it’s the longest.

Ma’s voice is yawny. “ ‘This is the man all tattered and torn—’ ”

“ ‘That kissed the maiden all forlorn—’ ”

“ ‘That milked the cow with the crumpled horn—’ ”

I steal a few lines in a hurry. “ ‘That tossed the dog that worried the cat that killed the rat that—’ ”

Beep beep.

I shut my mouth tight.

The first thing Old Nick says I don’t hear.

“Mmm, sorry about that,” says Ma, “we had curry. I was wondering, actually, if there was any chance—” Her voice is all high. “If it might be possible sometime
to put in an extractor fan or something?”

He doesn’t say anything. I think they’re sitting on Bed.

“Just a little one,” she says.

“Huh, there’s an idea,” says Old Nick. “Let’s start all the neighbors wondering why I’m cooking up something spicy in my workshop.”

I think that’s sarcasm again.

“Oh. Sorry,” says Ma, “I didn’t think—”

“Why don’t I stick a flashing neon arrow on the roof while I’m at it?”

I wonder how an arrow flashes.

“I’m really sorry,” says Ma, “I didn’t realize that the smell, that it, that a fan would—”

“I don’t think you appreciate how good you’ve got it here,” says Old Nick. “Do you?”

Ma doesn’t say anything.

“Aboveground, natural light, central air, it’s a cut above some places, I can tell you. Fresh fruit, toiletries, what have you, click your fingers and it’s there. Plenty girls
would thank their lucky stars for a setup like this, safe as houses. Specially with the kid—”

Is that me?

“No drunk drivers to worry about,” he says, “drug pushers, perverts . . .”

Ma butts in very fast. “I shouldn’t have asked for a fan, it was dumb of me, everything’s fine.”

“OK, then.”

Nobody says anything for a little bit.

I count my teeth, I keep getting it wrong, nineteen then twenty then nineteen again. I bite my tongue till it hurts.

“Of course there’s wear and tear, that’s par for the course.” His voice is moved, I think he’s over near Bath now. “This seam’s buckling, I’ll
have to sand and reseal. And see here, the underlayment’s showing through.”

“We are careful,” says Ma, very quietly.

“Not careful enough. Cork’s not meant for high traffic, I was planning on one sedentary user.”

“Are you coming to bed?” asks Ma in that funny high voice.

“Let me get my shoes off.” There’s a sort of grunt, I hear something drop on Floor. “You’re the one hassling me about renovations before I’m here two minutes
. . .”

Lamp goes out.

Old Nick squeaks Bed, I count to ninety-seven then I think I missed one so I lose count.

I stay awake listening even when there’s nothing to hear.

•   •   •

On Sunday we’re having bagels for dinner, very chewy, with jelly and peanut butter as well. Ma takes her bagel out of her mouth and there’s a pointy thing stuck in
it. “At last,” she says.

I pick it up, it’s all yellowy with dark brown bits. “Bad tooth?”

Ma nods. She’s feeling in the back of her mouth.

That’s so weird. “We could stick him back in, with flour glue, maybe.”

She shakes her head, grinning. “I’m glad it’s out, now it can’t hurt anymore.”

He was part of her a minute ago but now he’s not. Just a thing. “Hey, you know what, if you put him under your pillow a fairy will come in the night invisibly and turn him into
money.”