Room (3 page)

There’s a cat in the second picture, in the third it’s on the pile of rocks. Rocks are stones, that means heavy like ceramic that Bath and Sink and Toilet are of, but not so smooth.
Cats and rocks are only TV. In the fifth picture the cat falls down, but cats have nine lives, not like me and Ma with just one each.

Ma nearly always chooses
The Runaway Bunny
because of how the mother bunny catches the baby bunny in the end and says, “Have a carrot.” Bunnies are TV but carrots are real, I
like their loudness. My favorite picture is the baby bunny turned into a rock on the mountain and the mother bunny has to climb up up up to find him. Mountains are too big to be real, I saw one in
TV that has a woman hanging on it by ropes. Women aren’t real like Ma is, and girls and boys not either. Men aren’t real except Old Nick, and I’m not actually sure if he’s
real for real. Maybe half? He brings groceries and Sundaytreat and disappears the trash, but he’s not human like us. He only happens in the night, like bats. Maybe Door makes him up with a
beep beep
and the air changes. I think Ma doesn’t like to talk about him in case he gets realer.

I wriggle around on her lap now to look at my favorite painting of Baby Jesus playing with John the Baptist that’s his friend and big cousin at the same time. Mary’s there too,
she’s cuddled in her Ma’s lap that’s Baby Jesus’s Grandma, like Dora’s
abuela
. It’s a weird picture with no colors and some of the hands and feet
aren’t there, Ma says it’s not finished. What started Baby Jesus growing in Mary’s tummy was an angel zoomed down, like a ghost but a really cool one with feathers. Mary was all
surprised, she said, “How can this be?” and then, “OK let it be.” When Baby Jesus popped out of her vagina on Christmas she put him in a manger but not for the cows to chew,
only warm him up with their blowing because he was magic.

Ma switches Lamp off now and we lie down, first we say the shepherd prayer about green pastures, I think they’re like Duvet but fluffy and green instead of white and flat. (The cup
overflowing must make an awful mess.) I have some now, the right because the left hasn’t much in it. When I was three I still had lots anytime, but since I was four I’m so busy doing
stuff I only have some a few times in the day and the night. I wish I could talk and have some at the same time but I only have one mouth.

I nearly switch off but not actually. I think Ma does because of her breath.

•   •   •

After nap Ma says she’s figured out that we don’t need to ask for a measuring tape, we can make a ruler ourselves.

We recycle the cereal box from Ancient Egyptian Pyramid, Ma shows me to cut a strip that’s as big as her foot, that’s why it’s called a foot, then she puts twelve little lines.
I measure her nose that’s two inches long. My nose is one inch and a quarter, I write it down. Ma makes Ruler flip slo-mo somersaults up Door Wall where my talls are, she says I’m three
feet three inches.

“Hey,” I say, “let’s measure Room.”

“What, all of it?”

“Do we have something else to do?”

She looks at me strange. “I guess not.”

I write down all the numbers, like the tall of Door Wall to the line where Roof starts equals six feet seven inches. “Guess what,” I tell Ma, “every cork tile is nearly a bit
bigger than Ruler.”

“Doh,” she says, slapping her head, “I guess they’re a foot square, I must have made the ruler a little too short. Let’s just count the tiles, then, that’s
easier.”

I start counting the tall of Bed Wall, but Ma says all the walls are the same. Another rule is, the wide of the walls is the same as the wide of Floor, I count eleven feet going both ways, that
means Floor is a square. Table is a circle so I’m confused, but Ma measures her across the middle where she’s the very widest, that’s three feet nine inches. My chair is three
feet two inches tall and Ma’s is the exact same, that’s one less than me. Then Ma’s a bit sick of measuring so we stop.

I color behind the numbers all different with our five crayons that are blue, orange, green, red, brown, when I’m all done the page looks like Rug but crazier, Ma says why don’t I
use it as my place mat for dinner.

I choose spaghetti tonight, there’s a fresh broccoli as well that I don’t choose, it’s just good for us. I chop the broccoli into pieces with Zigzag Knife, sometimes I swallow
some when Ma’s not looking and she says, “Oh, no, where’s that big bit gone?” but she isn’t really mad because raw things make us extra alive.

Ma does the hotting up on the two rings of Stove that go red, I’m not allowed touch the knobs because it’s Ma’s job to make sure there’s never a fire like in TV. If the
rings ever go against something like a dish towel or our clothes even, flames would run all over with orange tongues and burn Room to ashes with us coughing and choking and screaming with the worst
pain ever.

I don’t like the smell of broccoli cooking, but it’s not as bad as green beans. Vegetables are all real but ice cream is TV, I wish it was real too. “Is Plant a raw
thing?”

“Well, yeah, but not the kind to eat.”

“Why she doesn’t have flowers anymore?”

Ma shrugs and stirs the spaghetti. “She got tired.”

“She should go to sleep.”

“She’s still tired when she wakes up. Maybe the soil in her pot doesn’t have enough food left in it.”

“She could have my broccoli.”

Ma laughs. “Not that kind of food, plant food.”

“We could ask for it, for Sundaytreat.”

“I’ve got a long list of things to ask for already.”

“Where?”

“Just in my head,” she says. She pulls out a worm of spaghetti and bites it. “I think they like fish.”

“Who do?”

“Plants, they like rotten fish. Or is it fish bones?”

“Yuck.”

“Maybe next time we have fish fingers, we can bury a bit under Plant.”

“Not one of my ones.”

“OK, a bit of one of mine.”

The why I like spaghetti best is the song of the meatball, I sing it when Ma fills our plates.

After dinner something amazing, we make a birthday cake. I bet it’s going to be
delicioso
with candles the same number as me and on fire like I’ve never seen for real.

I’m the best egg blower, I make the goo spill out nonstop. I have to blow three for the cake, I use the pin from the
Impression: Sunrise
picture because I think the crazy horse
would get mad if I took down
Guernica,
even though I always put the pin back right after. Ma thinks
Guernica
is the best masterpiece because it’s realest, but actually
it’s all mixed up, the horse is screaming with lots of teeth because there’s a spear stabbed in him, plus a bull and a woman holding a floppy kid with his head upside down and a lamp
like an eye, and the worst is the big bulgy foot in the corner, I always think it’s going to stamp on me.

I get to lick the spoon, then Ma puts the cake into Stove’s hot tummy. I try juggling with the eggshells all up at the same time. Ma catches one. “Little Jacks with faces?”

“Nah,” I say.

“Will we make them a nest of flour dough? If we defrost those beets tomorrow, we could use the juice to make it purple . . .”

I shake my head. “Let’s add them to Eggsnake.”

Eggsnake is more longer than all around Room, we’ve been making him since I was three, he lives in Under Bed all coiled up keeping us safe. Most of his eggs are brown but sometimes
there’s a white, some have patterns on from pencils or crayons or Pen or bits stuck on with flour glue, a foil crown and a yellow ribbon belt and threads and bits of tissue for hairs. His
tongue is a needle, that keeps the red thread going right through him. We don’t bring Eggsnake out much anymore because sometimes he tangles and his eggs get cracked around the holes or even
fall off, and we have to use the bits for mosaics. Today I put his needle in one of the holes of the new eggs, I have to dangle it till it comes out the other hole all sharp, it’s pretty
tricky. Now he’s three eggs longer, I extra gently wind him up again so all of him fits in Under Bed.

Waiting for my cake takes hours and hours, we breathe in the lovely air. Then when it’s cooling we make stuff called icing but not cold like ice, it’s sugar melted with water. Ma
spreads it all over the cake. “Now you can put on the chocolates while I’m washing up.”

“But there aren’t any.”

“Aha,” she says, holding up the little bag and shaking it
shickety shick,
“I saved a few from Sunday treat three weeks ago.”

“You sneaky Ma. Where?”

She zips her mouth shut. “What if I need a hiding place another time?”

“Tell me!”

Ma’s not smiling anymore. “Shouting hurts my ears.”

“Tell me the hidey place.”

“Jack—”

“I don’t like there to be hidey places.”

“What’s the big deal?”

“Zombies.”

“Ah.”

“Or ogres or vampires—”

She opens Cabinet and takes out the box of rice. She points in the dark hole. “It was just in with the rice that I hid them. OK?”

“OK.”

“Nothing scary would fit in here. You can check anytime.”

There’s five chocolates in the bag, pink, blue, green, and two reds. Some of the color comes off on my fingers when I’m putting them on, I get icing on me and suck it every bit.

Then it’s time for the candles but there aren’t any.

“You’re shouting again,” says Ma, covering her ears.

“But you said a birthday cake, it’s not a birthday cake if there’s no five candles on fire.”

She puffs her breath. “I should have explained better. That’s what the five chocolates say, they say you’re five.”

“I don’t want this cake.” I hate it when Ma waits all quiet. “Stinky cake.”

“Calm down, Jack.”

“You should have asked for candles for Sundaytreat.”

“Well, last week we needed painkillers.”

“I didn’t need any, just you,” I shout.

Ma looks at me like I have a new face she’s never seen. Then she says, “Anyway, remember, we have to choose things he can get easily.”

“But he can get anything.”

“Well, yeah,” she says, “if he went to the trouble—”

“Why he went to trouble?”

“I just mean, he might have to go to two or three stores, and that would make him cranky. And what if he didn’t find the impossible thing, then we probably wouldn’t get Sunday
treat at all.”

“But Ma.” I laugh. “He doesn’t go in stores. Stores are in TV.”

She’s chewing her lip. Then she looks at the cake. “Well, anyway, I’m sorry, I thought the chocolates would do instead.”

“Silly Ma.”

“Dumbo.” She slaps her head.

“Numbskull,” I say, but not in a nasty way. “Next week when I’ll be six you better get candles.”

“Next year,” says Ma, “you mean next year.” Her eyes are shut. They always do that sometimes and she doesn’t say anything for a minute. When I was small I thought
her battery was used up like happened to Watch one time, we had to ask a new battery for him for Sundaytreat.

“Promise?”

“Promise,” she says, opening her eyes.

She cuts me a humongous piece and I swipe all the five onto mine when she’s not looking, the two reds, the pink, the green, the blue, and she says, “Oh, no, another one’s been
swiped, how did that happen?”

“You’ll never find it now, ha ha ha,” I say like Swiper when he swipes a thing from Dora. I pick up one of the reds and zoom it in Ma’s mouth, she moves it to her front
teeth that are less rotted and she nibbles it smiling.

“Look,” I show her, “there’s holes in my cake where the chocolates were till just now.”

“Like craters,” she says. She puts her fingertop in one.

“What’s craters?”

“Holes where something happened. Like a volcano or an explosion or something.”

I put the green chocolate back in its crater and do ten, nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, boom. It flies up into Outer Space and around into my mouth. My birthday cake is
the best thing I ever ate.

Ma isn’t hungry for any right now. Skylight’s sucking all the light away, she’s nearly black. “It’s the spring equinox,” says Ma, “I remember it said on
TV, the morning you were born. There was still snow that year too.”

“What’s equinox?”

“It means equal, when there’s the same amount of dark and light.”

It’s too late for any TV because of the cake, Watch says 08:33. My yellow hoody nearly rips my head off when Ma’s pulling it. I get into my sleep T-shirt and brush my teeth while Ma
ties up the trash bag and puts it beside Door with our list that I wrote, tonight it says
Please, Pasta, Lentils, Tuna, Cheese (if not too $), O.J., Thanks.

“Canweask for grapes? They’re good for us.”

At the bottom Ma puts
Grapes if poss (or any fresh fruit or canned).

“Can I have a story?”

“Just a quick one. What about . . .
GingerJack
?”

She does it really fast and funny, Gingerjack jumps out of the stove and runs and rolls and rolls and runs so nobody can catch him, not the old lady or the old man or the threshers or the
plowers. But at the end he’s an idiot, he lets the fox carry him across the river and gets eat up snap.

If I was made of cake I’d eat myself before somebody else could.

We do a quick quick prayer that’s hands clicked together, eyes shut. I pray for John the Baptist and Baby Jesus to come around for a playdate with Dora and Boots. Ma prays for sunshine to
melt the snow off Skylight.

“Can I have some?”

“First thing tomorrow,” says Ma, pulling her T-shirt back down.

“No, tonight.”

She points up at Watch that says 08:57, that’s only three minutes before nine. So I run into Wardrobe and lie down on my pillow and wrap up in Blanket that’s all gray and fleecy with
the red piping. I’m just under the drawing of me I forgot was there. Ma puts her head in. “Three kisses?”

“No, five for Mr. Five.”

She gives me five then squeaks the doors shut.

There’s still light coming in the slats so I can see some of me in the drawing, the bits like Ma and the nose that’s only like me. I stroke the paper, it’s all silky. I go
straight so my head is pressing on Wardrobe and so are my feet. I listen to Ma getting into her sleep T-shirt and taking the killers, always two at night because she says pain is like water, it
spreads out as soon as she lies down. She spits toothpaste. “Our friend Zack has an itch on his back,” she says.