Room

by Emma Donoghue

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 it 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.

  “Great,” he says. “Again.”

  “No, you,” I say.

  Paul does a huge kick, the ball bounces off the building and away in some bushes. “Go for it,” he shouts.

  When I kick, the ball goes in the pond and I cry.

  Paul gets it out with a branch. He kicks it far far. “Want to show me how fast you can run?”

  “We had Track around Bed,” I tell him. “I can, I did a there-and-back in sixteen steps.”

  “Wow. I bet you can go even faster now.”

  I shake my head. “I’ll fall over.”

  “I don’t think so,” says Paul.

  “I always do these days, the world is trippy-uppy.”

  “Yeah, but this grass is really soft, so even if you do fall, you won’t hurt yourself.”

  There’s Bronwyn and Deana coming, I spot them with my sharp eyes.

  • • •

  It’s a bit hotter every day, Ma says it’s unbelievable for April.

  Then it rains. She says it might be fun to buy two umbrellas and go out with the rain bouncing off the umbrellas and not wetting us at all, but I don’t think so.

  The next day it’s dry again so we go out, there’s puddles but I’m not scared of them, I go in my spongy shoes and my feet get splashed through the holes, that’s OK.

  Me and Ma have a deal, we’re going to try everything one time so we know what we like.

  I already like going to the park with my soccer ball and feeding the ducks. I really like the playground now except when that boy came down the slide right after me and kicked me in the back. I like the Natural History Museum except the dinosaurs are just dead ones with bones.

  In the bathroom I hear people talking Spanish only Ma says the word for it is Chinese. There’s hundreds of different foreign ways to talk, that makes me dizzy.

  We look in another museum that’s paintings, a bit like our masterpieces that came with the oatmeal but way way bigger, also we can see the stickiness of the paint. I like walking past the whole room of them, but then there’s lots of other rooms and I lie down on the bench and the man in the uniform comes over with a not-friendly face so I run away.

  Steppa comes to the Independent Living with a super thing for me, a bike they were saving for Bronwyn but I get it first because I’m bigger. It’s got shiny faces in the spokes of the wheels. I have to wear a helmet and knee pads and wrist pads when I ride it in the park for if I fall off, but I don’t fall off, I’ve got balance, Steppa says I’m a natural. The third time we go, Ma lets me not wear the pads and in a couple of weeks she’s going to take off the stabilizers because I won’t need them anymore.

  Ma finds a concert that’s in a park, not our near park but one where we have to get a bus. I like going on the bus a lot, we look down on people’s different hairy heads in the street. At the concert the rule is that the music persons get to make all the noise and we aren’t allowed make even one squeak except clapping at the end.

  Grandma says why doesn’t Ma take me to the zoo but Ma says she couldn’t stand the cages.

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nbsp; We go to two different churches. I like the one with the multicolored windows but the organ is too loud.

  Also we go to a play, that’s when adults dress up and play like kids and everybody else watches. It’s in another park, it’s called Midsummer Night. I’m sitting on the grass with my fingers on my mouth to remember it to stay shut. Some fairies are fighting over a little boy, they say so many words they all smoosh together. Sometimes the fairies disappear and persons all in black move the furniture around. “Like we did in Room,” I whisper to Ma, she nearly laughs.

  But then the persons sitting near us start calling out, “How now spirit,” and “All hail Titania,” I get mad and say shush, then I really shout at them to be quiet. Ma pulls me by the hand all the way back to the trees bit and tells me that was called audience participation, it’s allowed, it’s a special case.

  When we get home to the Independent Living we write everything down that we tried, the list’s getting long. Then there’s things we might try when we’re braver.

  Going up in an airplane

  Having some of Ma’s old friends over for dinner

  Driving a car

  Going to the North Pole

  Going to school (me) and college (Ma)

  Finding our really own apartment that’s not an Independent

  Living Inventing something Making new friends Living in another country not America Having a playdate at another kid’s house like Baby Jesus and

  John the Baptist Taking swimming lessons Ma going out dancing in the night and me staying at Steppa and Grandma’s on the blow-up. Having jobs Going to the moon

  Most important there’s getting a dog called Lucky, every day I’m ready but Ma says she’s got enough on her plate at the moment, maybe when I’m six.

  “When I’ll have a cake with candles?”

  “Six candles,” she says, “I swear.”

  In the night in our bed that’s not Bed, I rub the duvet, it’s puffed-upper than Duvet was. When I was four I didn’t know about the world, or I thought it was only stories. Then Ma told me about it for real and I thought I knowed everything. But now I’m in the world all the time, I actually don’t know much, I’m always confused.

  “Ma?”

  “Yeah?”

  She still smells like her, but not her breasts, they’re just breasts now.

  “Do you sometimes wish we didn’t escape?”

  I don’t hear anything. Then she says, “No, I never wish that.”

  • • •

  “It’s perverse,” Ma is telling Dr. Clay, “all those years, I was craving company. But now I don’t seem up to it.”

  He’s nodding, they’re sipping their steamy coffee, Ma drinks it now like adults do to keep going. I still drink milk but sometimes it’s chocolate milk, it tastes like chocolate but it’s allowed. I’m on the floor doing a jigsaw with Noreen, it’s super hard with twenty-four pieces of a train.

  “Most days . . . Jack’s enough for me.”

  “ ‘The Soul selects her own Society—Then—shuts the Door—’ ” That’s his poem voice.

  Ma nods. “Yeah, but it’s not how I remember myself.”

  “You had to change to survive.”

  Noreen looks up. “Don’t forget, you’d have changed anyway. Moving into your twenties, having a child—you wouldn’t have stayed the same.”

  Ma just drinks her coffee.

  • • •

  One day I wonder if the windows open. I try the bathroom one, I figure out the handle and push the glass. I’m scared of the air but I’m being scave, I lean out and put my hands through it. I’m half in half out, it’s the most amazing—

  “Jack!” Ma pulls me all in by the back of my T-shirt.

  “Ow.”

  “It’s a six-story drop, if you fell you’d smash your skull.”

  “I wasn’t falling,” I tell her, “I was being in and out at the same time.”

  “You were being a nutcase at the same time,” she tells me, but she’s nearly smiling.

  I go after her into the kitchen. She’s beating eggs in a bowl for French toast. The shells are smashed, we just throw them in the trash, bye-bye. I wonder if they turn into the new eggs. “Do we come back after Heaven?”

  I think Ma doesn’t hear me.

  “Do we grow in tummies again?”

  “That’s called reincarnation.” She cutting the bread. “Some people think we might come back as donkeys or snails.”

  “No, humans in the same tummies. If I grow in you again—”

  Ma lights the flame. “What’s your question?”

  “Will you still call me Jack?”

  She looks at me. “OK.”

  “Promise?”

  “I’ll always call you Jack.”

  Tomorrow is May Day, that means summer’s coming and there’s going to be a parade. We might go just to look. “Is it only May Day in the world?” I ask.

  We’re having granola in our bowls on the sofa not spilling. “What do you mean?” says Ma.

  “Is it May Day in Room too?”

  “I suppose so, but nobody’s there to celebrate it.”

  “We could go there.”

  She clangs her spoon into her bowl. “Jack.”

  “Can we?”

  “Do you really, really want to?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know,” I tell her.

  “Don’t you like it outside?”

  “Yeah. Not everything.”

  “Well, no, but mostly? You like it more than Room?”

  “Mostly.” I eat all the rest of my granola and the bit of Ma’s that she left in her bowl. “Can we go back sometime?”

  “Not to live.”

  I shake my head. “Just to visit for one minute.”

  Ma leans her mouth on her hand. “I don’t think I can.”

  “Yeah, you can.” I wait. “Is it dangerous?”

  “No, but just the idea of it, it makes me feel like . . .”

  She doesn’t say like what. “I’d hold your hand.”

  Ma stares at me. “What about going on your own, maybe?”

  “No.”

  “With someone, I mean. With Noreen?”

  “No.”

  “Or Grandma?”

  “With you.”

  “I can’t—”

  “I’m choosing for both of us,” I tell her.

  She gets up, I think she’s mad. She takes the phone in MA’S ROOM and talks to somebody.

  Later in the morning the doorman buzzes and says there’s a police car here for us.

  “Are you still Officer Oh?”

  “I sure am,” says Officer Oh. “Long time no see.”

  There’s tiny dots on the windows of the police car, I think it’s rain. Ma’s chewing her thumb. “Bad idea,” I tell her, pulling her hand away.

  “Yeah.” She takes her thumb back and nibbles it again. “I wish he was dead.” She’s nearly whispering.

  I know who she means. “But not in Heaven.”

  “No, outside it.”

  “Knock knock knock, but he can’t come in.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Ha ha.”

  Two fire trucks go by with sirens. “Grandma says there’s more of him.”

  “What?”

  “Persons like him, in the world.”

  “Ah,” says Ma.

  “Is it true?”

  “Yeah. But the tricky thing is, there’s far more people in the middle.”

  “Where?”

  Ma’s staring out the window but I don’t know at what. “Somewhere between good and bad,” she says. “Bits of both stuck together.”

  The dots on the window join up into little rivers.

  When we stop, I only know we’re there because Officer Oh says “Here we are.” I don’t remember which house Ma came out of, the night of our Great Escape, the houses all have garages. None of them looks especially like a secret.

  Officer Oh says, “I should have brought umbrellas.”

  “It’s only sprinkling,” says Ma. She gets out and holds out her hand to me.

  I don’t undo my seat belt. “The rain will fall on us—”

  “Let’s get this over with, Jack, because I am not coming back again.”

  I click it open. I put my head down and squeeze my eyes half shut, Ma leads me along. The rain is on me, my face is wetting, my jacket, my hands a bit. It doesn’t hurt, it’s just weird.

  When we get up close to the door of the house, I know it’s Old Nick’s house because there’s a yellow ribbon that says in black letters CRIME SCENE DO NOT CROSS. A big sticker with a scary wolf face that says BEWARE OF THE DOG. I point to it, but Ma says, “That’s only pretend.”

  Oh, yeah, the trick dog that was having the fit the day Ma was nineteen.

  A man police I don’t know opens the door inside, Ma and Officer Oh duck under the yellow ribbon, I only have to go a bit sideways.

  The house has lots of rooms with all stuff like fat chairs and the hugest TV I ever saw. But we go right through, there’s another door at the back and then it’s grass. The rain’s still falling but my eyes stay open.

  “Fifteen-foot hedge all the way around,” Officer Oh is saying to Ma, “neighbors thought nothing of it. ‘A man’s entitled to his privacy,’ et cetera.”

  There’s bushes and a hole with more yellow tape on sticks all around it. I remember something. “Ma. Is that where—?”

  She stands and stares. “I don’t think I can do this.”

  But I’m walking over to the hole. There’s brown things in the mud. “Are they worms?” I ask Officer Oh, my chest is thump thump thumping.

  “Just tree roots.”

  “Where’s the baby?”

  Ma’s beside me, she makes a sound.

  “We dug her up,” says Officer Oh.

  “I didn’t want her to be here anymore,” Ma says, her voice is all scratchy. She clears her throat and asks Officer Oh, “How did you find where—?”

  “We’ve got soil-sensitive probes.”

  “We’ll put her somewhere better,” Ma tells me.

  “Grandma’s garden?”

  “Tell you what, we could—we could turn her bones into ash and sprinkle it under the hammock.”

  “Will she grow again then and be my sister?”

  Ma shakes her head. Her face is all stripey wet.

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