Room (4 page)

I think of one. “Our friend Zah says blah blah blah.”

“Our friend Ebeneezer lives in a freezer.”

“Our friend Dora went to the store-a.”

“That’s a cheat rhyme,” says Ma.

“Oh, man!” I groan like Swiper. “Our friend Baby Jesus . . . likes to eat cheeses.”

“Our friend Spoon sang a song to the moon.”

The moon is God’s silver face that only comes on special occasions.

I sit and put my face up against the slats, I can see slices of TV that’s off, Toilet, Bath, my blue octopus picture going curly, Ma putting our clothes back in Dresser.
“Ma?”

“Mmm?”

“Why am I hided away like the chocolates?”

I think she’s sitting on Bed. She talks quiet so I can hardly hear. “I just don’t want him looking at you. Even when you were a baby, I always wrapped you up in Blanket before
he came in.”

“Would it hurt?”

“Would what hurt?”

“If he saw me.”

“No, no. Go to sleep now,” Ma tells me.

“Do the Bugs.”

“Night-night, sleep tight, don’t let the bugs bite.”

The Bugs are invisible but I talk to them and sometimes count, last time I got to 347. I hear the snap of the switch and Lamp goes out all at the same second. Sounds of Ma getting under
Duvet.

I’ve seen Old Nick through the slats some nights but never all of him close up. His hair has some white and it’s smaller than his ears. Maybe his eyes would turn me to stone. Zombies
bite kids to make them undead, vampires suck them till they’re floppy, ogres dangle them by the legs and munch them up. Giants can be just as bad,
be he alive or be he dead I’ll
grind his bones to make my bread,
but Jack ran away with the golden hen and he was slithering down the Beanstalk quick quick. The Giant was climbing down after him but Jack shouted to his Ma
for the ax, that’s like our knives but bigger, and his Ma was too scared to chop the Beanstalk on her own but when Jack got to the ground they did it together and the Giant went smash with
all his insides coming out, ha ha. Then Jack was Jack the Giant Killer.

I wonder if Ma’s switched off already.

In Wardrobe I always try to squeeze my eyes tight and switch off fast so I don’t hear Old Nick come, then I’ll wake up and it’ll be the morning and I’ll be in Bed with Ma
having some and everything OK. But tonight I’m still on, the cake is fizzing in my tummy. I count my top teeth with my tongue from right to left till ten, then my bottom teeth from left to
right, then back the other way, I have to get to ten each time and twice ten equals twenty, that’s how many I have.

There’s no
beep beep,
it must be a lot after nine. I count my teeth again and get nineteen, I must have done it wrong or else one’s disappeared. I nibble my finger just a bit
and then another bit. I wait for hours. “Ma?” I whisper. “Is he not coming or yeah?”

“Doesn’t look like it. Come on in.”

I jump up and shove Wardrobe open, I’m in Bed in two secs. It’s extra hot under Duvet, I have to put my feet out so they don’t burn. I have lots, the left and then the right. I
don’t want to be asleep because then it won’t be my birthday anymore.

•   •   •

There’s light flashing at me, it stabs my eyes. I look out of Duvet but squinting. Ma standing beside Lamp and everything bright, then
snap
and dark again. Light
again, she makes it last three seconds then dark, then light for just a second. Ma’s staring up at Skylight. Dark again. She does this in the night, I think it helps her get to sleep
again.

I wait till Lamp’s off properly. I whisper in the dark, “All done?”

“Sorry I woke you,” she says.

“That’s OK.”

She gets back into Bed colder than me, I tie my arms around her middle.

•   •   •

Now I’m five and one day.

Silly Penis is always standing up in the morning, I push him down.

When we’re scrubbing hands after peeing, I sing “He’s Got the Whole World in His Hands,” then I can’t think of another hands one, but the dickey bird one is about
fingers.

My two fingers zoom all around Room and nearly have a midair collision.

“I think they’re actually angels,” says Ma.

“Huh?”

“Or no, sorry, saints.”

“What are saints?”

“Extra-holy people. Like angels with no wings.”

I’m confused. “How come they fly off the wall, then?”

“No, that’s the dickey birds, they can fly all right. I just mean they’re named after Saint Peter and Saint Paul, two of Baby Jesus’ friends.”

I didn’t know he has more friends after John the Baptist.

“Actually, Saint Peter was in jail, one time—”

I laugh. “Babies don’t go in jail.”

“This happened when they were all grown up.”

I didn’t know Baby Jesus grows up. “Is Saint Peter a bad guy?”

“No, no, he was put in jail by mistake, I mean it was some bad police who put him there. Anyway, he prayed and prayed to get out, and you know what? An angel flew down and smashed the door
open.”

“Cool,” I say. But I prefer when they’re babies running around all nakedy together.

There’s a funny banging sound and a
scrunch scrunch.
Brightness is coming in Skylight, the dark snow’s nearly gone. Ma’s looking up too, she’s got a small smile
on, I think the prayer did magic.

“Is it still the equals thing?”

“Oh, the equinox?” she says. “No, the light’s starting to win a little bit.”

She lets me have cake for breakfast, I never did that before. It’s gone crunchy, but it’s still good.

TV is
Wonder Pets!,
pretty fuzzy, Ma keeps moving Bunny but he doesn’t sharpen them up much. I make a bow on his wire ear with the purple ribbon. I wish it was
Backyardigans,
I haven’t met them in ages. Sundaytreat’s not here yet because Old Nick didn’t come last night, actually that was the best bit of my birthday. What we asked is not very exciting
anyway, new pants because my black ones have holes instead of knees. I don’t mind the holes but Ma says they make me look homeless, she can’t explain what that is.

After bath I play with the clothes. Ma’s pink skirt is a snake this morning, he’s having a quarrel with my white sock. “I’m Jack’s best friend.”

“No, I’m Jack’s best friend.”

“I banged you.”

“I zapped you.”

“I’m going to pow you with my shooter flyer pump.”

“Yeah, well, I’ve got a jumbo megatron transformerblaster—”

“Hey,” says Ma, “will we play Catch?”

“We don’t have Beach Ball anymore,” I remember her. He burst by accident when I kicked him against Cabinet super fast. I wanted to ask for another instead of stupid pants.

But Ma says we can make one, we scrunch up all the pages I’ve been practicing my writing on and fill a grocery bag and squeeze it till it’s kind of ball shape, then we draw a scary
face on it with three eyes. Wordy Ball doesn’t go as high as Beach Ball did but every time we catch him he makes a loud
scrunch.
Ma’s the best at catching, only it pings her bad
wrist sometimes, and I’m the best at throwing.

Because of cake for breakfast we have Sunday pancakes for lunch instead. There isn’t much mix left so they’re thin ones that spread out, I like that. I get to fold them up, some of
them crack. There’s not much jelly, so we mix water in that too.

A corner of mine drips, Ma scrubs Floor with Sponge. “The cork’s wearing away,” she says with her teeth shut, “how are we supposed to keep it clean?”

“Where?”

“Here, where our feet rub.”

I get down under Table, there’s a hole in Floor with brown stuff underneath that’s harder on my nail.

“Don’t make it worse, Jack.”

“I’m not, I’m just looking with my finger.” It’s like a tiny crater.

We move Table over to beside Bath so we can sunbathe on Rug right under Skylight where it’s extra warm. I sing “Ain’t No Sunshine,” Ma does “Here Comes the
Sun,” I pick “You Are My Sunshine.” Then I want some, the left is extra creamy this afternoon.

God’s yellow face makes red through my lids. When I open it’s too bright to look. My fingers do shadows on Rug, little squished ones.

Ma is snoozing.

I hear a sound so I get up not waking her. Over by Stove, a tiny scritchy scratchy sound.

An alive thing, an animal, for really real not TV. It’s on Floor, eating something, maybe a crumb of pancake. It’s got a tail, I think what it is is, what it is is a mouse.

I go nearer and
whee
it’s gone under Stove so I hardly saw it, I never knowed anything could go so fast. “O Mouse,” I say in a whisper so he won’t be scared.
That’s how to talk to a mouse, it’s in
Alice,
only she talks about her cat Dinah by mistake and the mouse gets nervous and swims away. I put my hands praying now, “O Mouse,
come on back, please, please, please . . .”

I wait for hours but he doesn’t come.

Ma’s definitely asleep.

I open Refrigerator, she doesn’t have much inside. Mice like cheese, but we haven’t any left. I get out the bread and crumble a bit on a plate and put it down where Mouse was. I
crouch down small and wait for more hours and hours.

Then the wonderfulest thing, Mouse puts his mouth out, it’s pointy. I nearly jump in the air but I don’t, I stay extra still. He comes up to the crumbs and sniffs. I’m only
about two feet away, I wish I had Ruler to measure but he’s tidied in Box in Under Bed and I don’t want to move and scare Mouse. I watch his hands, his whiskers, his tail all curly.
He’s alive for real, he’s the biggest alive thing I ever saw, millions of times bigger than the ants or Spider.

Then something smashes into Stove,
whaaaaaack.
I scream and stand on the plate by accident, Mouse is gone, where’s he gone? Did the book break him? She’s
Pop-Up
Airport,
I look in all her pages but he’s not there. The Baggage Claim is all ripped and won’t stand up anymore.

Ma’s got a weird face. “You made him gone,” I shout at her.

She’s got BrushPan, she’s sweeping up the broken bits of plate. “What was this doing on the floor? Now we’re down to two big plates and one small, that’s
it
—”

The cook in
Alice
throws plates at the baby and a saucepan that almost takes off his nose.

“Mouse was liking the crumbs.”

“Jack!”

“He was real, I saw him.”

She drags Stove out, there’s a little crack at the bottom of Door Wall, she gets the bundle of aluminum foil and starts pushing balls of it into the crack.

“Don’t. Please.”

“I’m sorry. But where there’s one there’s ten.”

That’s crazy math.

Ma puts down the foil and holds me hard by my shoulders. “If we let him stay, we’d soon be overrun with his babies. Stealing our food, bringing in germs on their filthy paws . .
.”

“They could have my food, I’m not hungry.”

Ma’s not listening. She shoves Stove back to Door Wall.

After, we use a little bit of tape to make the Hangar page stand up better in
Pop-Up Airport,
but the Baggage Claim is too torn to fix.

We sit curled up in Rocker and Ma reads me
Dylan the Digger
three times, that means she’s sorry. “Let’s ask for a new book for Sundaytreat,” I say.

She twists her mouth. “I did, a few weeks ago; I wanted you to have one for your birthday. But he said to quit bugging him, don’t we have a whole shelf of them already.”

I look up past her head at Shelf, she could fit hundreds more books if we put some of the other things in Under Bed beside Egg-snake. Or on top of Wardrobe . . . but that’s where Fort and
Labyrinth live. It’s tricky figuring out where everything’s home is, Ma sometimes says we have to throw things in the trash but I usually find a spot for them.

“He thinks we should just watch TV all the time.”

That sounds fun.

“Then our brains would rot, like his,” says Ma. She leans over to pick up
My Big Book of Nursery Rhymes
. She reads me one I choose from every page. My bests are the Jack ones,
like
Jack Sprat or LittleJack Horner
.

I think he wanted to see if he could not burn his nightshirt. In TV there’s pajamas instead, or nighties on girls. My sleep T-shirt is my biggest, it has a hole on the
shoulder that I like to put my finger in it and tickle myself when I’m switching off. There’s
Jackie Wackie pudding and pie,
but when I figured out to read I saw it’s
actually
Georgie Porgie
. Ma changed it to fit me, that’s not lying, it’s just pretending. Same with

It actually says Tom in the book but Jack sounds better. Stealing is when a boy takes what belongs to some boy else, because in books and TV all persons have things that belong
just to them, it’s complicated.

It’s 05:39 so we can have dinner, it’s quick noodles. While they’re in the hot water, Ma finds hard words to test me from the milk carton like
nutritional
that means
food, and
pasteurized
that means laser guns zapped away the germs. I want more cake but Ma says beets chopped all juicy first. Then I have cake that’s pretty crispy now and Ma does
too, a little bit.

I get up on Rocker to find Games Box at the end of Shelf, tonight I pick Checkers and I’m going to be red. The pieces are like little chocolates, but I’ve licked them lots of times
and they don’t taste like anything. They stick to the board by magnetic magic. Ma likes Chess best but it aches my head.

At TV time she chooses the wildlife planet, there’s turtles burying their eggs in sand. When Alice gets long with eating the mushroom, the pigeon’s mad because she thinks Alice is a
nasty serpent trying to eat her pigeon eggs. Here come the turtle babies out of their shells, but the turtle mothers are gone already, that’s weird. I wonder if they meet sometime in the sea,
the mothers and the babies, if they know each other or maybe they just swim on by.