Grandma says her other name. “Is that such a good idea, do you think?”
“It was my idea. It’s OK, Mom. There’s counselors there around the clock.”
“But you’ve never lived away from home before. .”
Ma’s staring at Grandma, and so is Steppa. He lets out a big whoop of laughing.
“It’s not funny,” says Grandma, whacking him in the chest. “She knows what I mean.”
Ma takes me upstairs to pack my stuff.
“Close your eyes,” I tell her, “there’s surprises.” I lead her into the bedroom. “Ta-da.” I wait. “It’s Rug and lots of our things, the police gave them back.”
“So I see,” says Ma.
“Look, Jeep and Remote—”
“Let’s not cart broken stuff around with us,” she says, “just take what you really need and put it in your new Dora bag.” “I need all of it.”
Ma breathes out. “Have it your way.”
What’s my way?
“There’s boxes it all came in.”
“I said OK.”
Steppa puts all our stuff into the back of the white car.
“I must get my license renewed,” says Ma when Grandma’s driving along.
“You might find you’re a bit rusty.”
“Oh, I’m rusty at everything,” says Ma.
I ask, “Why you’re—?”
“Like the Tin Man,” Ma says over her shoulder. She lifts her elbow and does a squeak. “Hey, Jack, will we buy a car of our own someday?” “Yeah. Or actually a helicopter. A super zoomer helicopter train car submarine.”
“Now, that sounds like a ride.”
It’s hours and hours in the car. “How come it’s so long?” I ask.
“Because it’s all the way across the city,” says Grandma. “It’s practically the next state.”
“Mom. .”
The sky’s getting dark.
Grandma parks where Ma says. There is a big sign. INDEPENDENT LIVING RESIDENTIAL FACILITY. She helps us carry all our boxes and bags in the building that’s made of brown bricks, except I pull my Dora on its wheels. We go in a big door with a man called the doorman that smiles. “Does he lock us in?” I whisper to Ma.
“No, just other people out.”
There’s three women and a man called Support Staff, we’re very welcome to buzz down anytime we need help with anything at all, buzzing is like calling on the phone. There’s lots of floors, and apartments on each one, mine and Ma’s is on six. I tug at her sleeve, I whisper, “Five.” “What’s that?”
“Can we be on five instead?”
“Sorry, we don’t get to choose,” she says.
When the elevator bangs shut Ma shivers.
“You OK?” asks Grandma.
“Just one more thing to get used to.”
Ma has to tap in the secret code to make the elevator shake. My tummy feels odd when it ups. Then the doors open and we’re on six already, we flew without knowing it. There’s a little hatch that says INCINERATOR, when we put trash in it it’ll fall down down down and go up in smoke. On the doors it’s not numbers it’s letters, ours is the B, that means we live in Six B. Six is not a bad number like nine, it’s the upside down of it actually. Ma puts the key in the hole, when she turns it she makes a face because of her bad wrist. She’s not all fixed yet. “Home,” she says, pushing the door open.
How is it home if I’ve never been here?
An apartment’s like a house but all squished flat. There’s five rooms, that’s lucky, one is the bathroom with a bath so we can have baths not showers. “Can we have one now?”
“Let’s get settled in first,” says Ma.
The stove does flames like at Grandma’s. The next to the kitchen is the living room that has a couch and a low-down table and a super-big TV in it.
Grandma’s in the kitchen unpacking a box. “Milk, bagels, I don’t know if you’ve started drinking coffee again. . He likes this alphabet cereal, he spelled out Volcano the other day.”
Ma puts her arms on Grandma and stops her moving for a minute. “Thanks.”
“Should I run out for anything else?”
“No, I think you’ve thought of everything. ’Night, Mom.”
Grandma’s face is twisted. “You know—”
“What?” Ma waits. “What is it?”
“I didn’t forget a day of you either.”
They aren’t saying anything so I go try the beds for which is bouncier. When I’m doing somersaults I hear them talking a lot. I go around opening and shutting everything.
After Grandma’s gone back to her house Ma shows me how to do the bolt, that’s like a key that only us on the inside can open or shut.
In bed I remember, I pull her T-shirt up.
“Ah,” says Ma, “I don’t think there’s any in there.”
“Yeah, there must be.”
“Well, the thing about breasts is, if they don’t get drunk from, they figure, OK, nobody needs our milk anymore, we’ll stop making it.” “Dumbos. I bet I can find some. .”
“No,” says Ma, putting her hand between, “I’m sorry. That’s all done. Come here.”
We cuddle hard. Her chest goes boom boom in my ear, that’s the heart of her.
I lift up her T-shirt.
“Jack—”
I kiss the right and say, “Bye-bye.” I kiss the left twice because it was always creamier. Ma holds my head so tight I say, “I can’t breathe,” and she lets go.
• • •
God’s face comes up all pale red in my eyes. I blink and make the light come and go. I wait till Ma’s breathing is on. “How long do we stay here at the Independent Living?”
She yawns. “As long as we like.”
“I’d like to stay for one week.”
She stretches her whole self. “We’ll stay for a week, then, and after that we’ll see.”
I curl her hair like a rope. “I could cut yours and then we’d be the same again.”
Ma shakes her head. “I think I’m going to keep mine long.”
When we’re unpacking there’s a big problem, I can’t find Tooth.
I look in all my stuff and then all around in case I dropped him last night. I’m trying to remember when I had him in my hand or in my mouth. Not last night but maybe the night before at Grandma’s I think I was sucking him. I have a terrible thought, maybe I swallowed him by accident in my sleep.
“What happens to stuff we eat if it’s not food?”
Ma’s putting socks in her drawer. “Like what?”
I can’t tell her I maybe lost a bit of her. “Like a little stone or something.”
“Oh, then it just slides on through.”
We don’t go down in the elevator today, we don’t even get dressed. We stay in our Independent Living and learn all the bits. “We could sleep in this room,” says Ma, “but you could play in the other one that gets more sunshine.”
“With you.”
“Well, yeah, but sometimes I’ll be doing other things, so maybe during the day our sleeping room could be my room.” What other things?
Ma pours us our cereal, not even counting. I thank Baby Jesus.
“I read a book at college that said everyone should have a room of their own,” she says.
“Why?”
“To do their thinking in.”
“I can do my thinking in a room with you.” I wait. “Why you can’t think in a room with me?”
Ma makes a face. “I can, most of the time, but it would be nice to have somewhere to go that’s just mine, sometimes.” “I don’t think so.”
She does a long breath. “Let’s just try it for today. We could make nameplates and stick them on the doors. .” “Cool.”
We do all different color letters on pages, they say JACK’S ROOM and MA’S ROOM, then we stick them up with tape, we use all we like.
I have to poo, I look in it but I don’t see Tooth.
We’re sitting on the couch looking at the vase on the ta
ble, it’s made of glass but not invisible, it’s got all blues and greens. “I don’t like the walls,” I tell Ma.
“What’s wrong with them?”
“They’re too white. Hey, you know what, we could buy cork squares from the store and stick them up all over.” “No way Jose.” After a minute, she says, “This is a fresh start, remember?”
She says remember but she doesn’t want to remember Room.
I think of Rug, I run to get her out of the box and I drag her behind me. “Where will Rug go, beside the couch or beside our bed?” Ma shakes her head.
“But—”
“Jack, it’s all frayed and stained from seven years of — I can smell it from here. I had to watch you learn to crawl on that rug, learn to walk, it kept tripping you up. You pooed on it once, another time the soup spilled, I could never get it really clean.” Her eyes are all shiny and too big.
“Yeah and I was born on her and I was dead in her too.”
“Yeah, so what I’d really like to do is throw it in the incinerator.”
“No!”
“If for once in your life you thought about me instead of—”
“I do,” I shout. “I thought about you always when you were Gone.”
Ma shuts her eyes just for a second. “Tell you what, you can keep it in your own room, but rolled up in the wardrobe. OK? I don’t want to have to see it.” She goes out to the kitchen, I hear her splash the water. I pick up the vase, I throw it at the wall and it goes in a zillion pieces.
“Jack—” Ma’s standing there.
I scream, “I don’t want to be your little bunny.”
I run into JACK’S ROOM with Rug pulling behind me getting caught on the door, I drag her into the wardrobe and put her all around me, I sit there for hours and hours and Ma doesn’t come.
My face is all stiff where the tears dried. Steppa says that’s how they make salt, they catch waves in little ponds then the sun dries them up.
There’s a scary sound bzz bzz bzz, then I hear Ma talking. “Yeah, I guess, as good a time as any.” After a minute I hear her outside the wardrobe, she says, “We’ve got visitors.”
It’s Dr. Clay and it’s Noreen. They’ve brought a food called takeout that’s noodles and rice and slippery yellow yummy things.
The splintery bits of the vase are all gone, Ma must have disappeared them down the incinerator.
There’s a computer for us, Dr. Clay is setting it up so we can do games and send e-mails. Noreen shows me how to do drawings right on the screen with the arrow turned into a paintbrush. I do one of me and Ma in the Independent Living.
“What’s all this white scribbly stuff?” asks Noreen.
“That’s the space.”
“Outer space?”
“No, all the space inside, the air.”
“Well, celebrity is a secondary trauma,” Dr. Clay is saying to Ma. “Have you given any further thought to new identities?” Ma shakes her head. “I can’t imagine. . I’m me and Jack’s Jack, right? How could I start calling him Michael or Zane or something?” Why she’d call me Michael or Zane?
“Well, what about a new surname at least,” says Dr. Clay, “so he attracts less attention when he starts school?” “When I start school?”
“Not till you’re ready,” says Ma, “don’t worry.”
I don’t think I’ll ever be ready.
In the evening we have a bath and I lie my head on Ma’s tummy in the water nearly sleeping.
We practice being in the two rooms and calling out to each other, but not too loud because there’s other persons living in the other Independent Livings that aren’t Six B. When I’m in JACK’S ROOM and Ma’s in MA’S ROOM, that’s not so bad, only when she’s in other rooms but I don’t know which, I don’t like that.
“It’s OK,” she says, “I’ll always hear you.”
We eat more of the takeout hotted again in our microwave, that’s the little stove that works super fast by invisible death rays.
“I can’t find Tooth,” I tell Ma.
“My tooth?”
“Yeah, your bad one that fell out that I kept, I had him all the time but now I think he’s lost. Unless maybe I swallowed him, but he’s not sliding out in my poo yet.”
“Don’t worry about it,” says Ma.
“But—”
“People move around so much out in the world, things get lost all the time.”
“Tooth’s not just a thing, I have to have him.”
“Trust me, you don’t.”
“But—”
She holds on to my shoulders. “Bye-bye rotten old tooth. End of story.”
She’s nearly laughing but I’m not.
I think maybe I did swallow him by accident. Maybe he’s not going to slide out in my poo, maybe he’s going to be hiding inside me in a corner forever.
• • •
In the night, I whisper, “I’m still switched on.”
“I know,” says Ma. “Me too.”
Our bedroom is MA’S ROOM that’s in the Independent Living that’s in America that’s stuck on the world that’s a blue and green ball a million miles across and always spinning. Outside the world there’s Outer Space. I don’t know why we don’t fall off. Ma says it’s gravity, that’s an invisible power that keeps us stuck to the ground, but I can’t feel it.
God’s yellow face comes up, we’re watching out the window. “Do you notice,” says Ma, “it’s a bit earlier every morning?” There’s six windows in our Independent Living, they all show different pictures but some of the same things. My favorite is the bathroom because there’s a building site, I can look down on the cranes and diggers. I say all the Dylan words to them, they like that.
In the living room I’m doing my Velcro because we’re going out. I see the space where the vase used to be till I threw it. “We could ask for another for Sundaytreat,” I tell Ma, then I remember.
Her shoes have laces that she’s tying. She looks at me, not mad. “You know, you won’t ever have to see him again.” “Old Nick.” I say the name to see if it sounds scary, it does but not very.
“I’ll have to just one more time,” says Ma, “when I go to court. It won’t be for months and months.” “Why will you have to?”
“Morris says I could do it by video link, but actually I want to look him in his mean little eye.”
Which one is that? I try and remember his eyes. “Maybe he’ll ask us for Sundaytreat, that would be funny.” Ma does not a nice laugh. She’s looking in the mirror, putting black lines around her eyes and purple on her mouth.
“You’re like a clown.”
“It’s just makeup,” she says, “so I’ll look better.”
“You look better always,” I tell her.
She grins at me in the mirror. I put my nose up at the end and my fingers in my ears and wiggle them.
We hold hands but the air is really warm today so they get slippy. We look in the windows of stores, only we don’t go in, we just walk. Ma keeps saying that things are ludicrously expensive or else they’re junk. “They sell men and women and children in there,” I tell her.
“What?” She spins around. “Oh, no, see, it’s a clothes shop, so when it says Men, Women, Children, it just means clothes for all those people.” When we have to cross a street we press the button and wait for the little silver man, he’ll keep us safe. There’s a thing that looks just concrete, but kids are there squeaking and jumping to get wet, it’s called a splash pad. We watch for a while but not too long because Ma says we might seem freaky.
We play I Spy. We buy ice cream that’s the best thing in the world, mine is vanilla and Ma’s is strawberry. Next time we can have different flavors, there’s hundreds. A big lump is cold all the way down and my face aches, Ma shows me to put my hand over my nose and sniff in the warm air. I’ve been in the world three weeks and a half, I still never know what’s going to hurt.
I have some coins that Steppa gave me, I buy Ma a clip for her hair with a ladybug on i
t but just a pretend one.
She says thanks over and over.
“You can have it forever even when you’re dead,” I tell her. “Will you be dead before I do?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Why that’s the plan?”
“Well, by the time you’re one hundred, I’ll be one hundred and twenty-one, and I think my body will be pretty worn out.” She’s grinning. “I’ll be in Heaven getting your room ready.”
“Our room,” I say.
“OK, our room.”
Then I see a phone booth and go in to play I’m Superman changing into his costume, I wave at Ma through the glass. There’s little cards with smiley pictures that say Busty Blonde 18 and Filipina Shemale, they’re ours because finders keepers losers weepers, but when I show Ma she says they’re dirty and makes me throw them in the trash.
For a while we get lost, then she sees the name of the street where the Independent Living is so we weren’t really lost. My feet are tired. I think people in the world must be tired all the time.
In the Independent Living I go bare feet, I won’t ever like shoes.
The persons in Six C are a woman and two big girls, bigger than me but not all the way big. The woman wears shades all the time even in the elevator and has a crutch to hop with, the girls don’t talk I think but I waved my fingers at one and she smiled.
There’s new things every single day.
Grandma brought me a watercolor set, it’s ten colors of ovals in a box with an invisible lid. I rinse the little brush clean after each so they don’t mix and when the water goes dirty I just get more. The first time I hold my picture up to show Ma it drips, so after that we dry them flat on the table.
We go to the hammock house and I do amazing LEGO with Steppa of a castle and a zoomermobile.
Grandma can come see us just in the afternoons now because in the mornings she’s got a job in a store where people buy new hair and breasts after theirs fall off. Ma and me go peek at her through the door of the store, Grandma doesn’t seem like Grandma. Ma says everybody’s got a few different selves.
Paul comes to our Independent Living with a surprise for me that’s a soccer ball, like the one Grandma threw away in the store. I go down to the park with him, not Ma because she’s going to a coffee shop to meet one of her old friends.
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