Room (7 page)

It’s Wednesday so we wash hair, we make turbans of bubbles out of Dish Soap. I look all around Ma’s neck but not at it.

She does me a mustache, it’s too tickly so I rub it off. “What about a beard, then?” she says. She puts all bubbles on my chin for a beard.

“Ho ho ho. Is Santa a giant?”

“Ah, I guess he’s pretty big,” says Ma.

I think he must be real because he brung us the million chocolates in the box with the purple ribbon.

“I’m going to be Jack the Giant Giant Killer. I’ll be a good giant,

I’ll find all the evil ones and knock their heads off
smush splat.
”

We make drums different from filling up the glass jars more or waterfalling some out. I make one into a jumbo megatron transformermarine with an antigravity blaster that’s actually Wooden
Spoon.

I twist around to look at the
Impression: Sunrise
. There’s a black boat with two tiny persons and God’s yellow face above and blurry orange light on the water and blue stuff
that’s other boats I think, it’s hard to know because it’s art.

For Phys Ed Ma chooses Islands, that’s I stand on Bed and Ma puts the pillows and Rocker and chairs and Rug all folded up and Table and Trash in surprising places. I have to visit every
island not twice. Rocker’s the trickiest, she’s always trying to catapult me down. Ma swims around being the Loch Ness Monster trying to eat my feet.

My go, I choose Pillowfight, but Ma says actually the foam’s starting to come out of my pillow so better do Karate instead. We always bow to respect our opponent. We go
Huh
and
Hi-yah
really fierce. One time I chop too hard and hurt Ma’s bad wrist but by accident.

She’s tired so she chooses Eye Stretch because that’s lying down side by side on Rug with arms by sides so we both fit. We look at far things like Skylight then near like noses, we
have to see between them quick quick.

While Ma’s hotting up lunch I zoom poor Jeep everywhere because he can’t go on his own anymore. Remote pauses things, he freezes Ma like a robot. “Now on,” I say.

She stirs the pot again, she says, “Grub’s up.”

Vegetable soup,
bluhhhhh.
I blow bubbles to make it funner.

I’m not tired for nap yet so I get some books down. Ma does the voice, “
Heeeeeeeeere’s Dylan!
” Then she stops. “I can’t stand Dylan.”

I stare at her. “He’s my friend.”

“Oh, Jack—I just can’t stand the book, OK, I don’t—it’s not that I can’t stand Dylan himself.”

“Why you can’t stand
Dylan
the book?”

“I’ve read it too many times.”

But when I want something I want it always, like chocolates, I never ate a chocolate too many times.

“You could read it yourself,” she says.

That’s silly, I could read all them myself, even
Alice
with her old-fashioned words. “I prefer when you read them.”

Her eyes are all hard and shiny. Then she opens the book again.
“ ‘Heeeeeeeeere’s Dylan!’ ”

Because she’s cranky I let her do
The Runaway Bunny,
then some
Alice
. My best of the songs is “Soup of the Evening,” I bet it’s not vegetable. Alice keeps
being in a hall with lots of doors, one is teeny tiny, when she gets it open with the golden key there’s a garden with bright flowers and cool fountains but she’s always the wrong size.
Then when she finally gets into the garden, it turns out the roses are just painted not real and she has to play croquet with flamingos and hedgehogs.

We lie down on top of Duvet. I have lots. I think Mouse just might come back if we’re really quiet but he doesn’t, Ma must have stuffed up every single hole. She’s not mean but
sometimes she does mean things.

When we get up we do Scream, I crash the pan lids like cymbals. Scream goes on for ages because every time I’m starting to stop Ma screeches some more, her voice is nearly disappearing.
The marks on her neck are like when I’m painting with beet juice. I think the marks are Old Nick’s fingerprints.

After, I play Telephone with toilet rolls, I like how the words boom when I talk through a fat one. Usually Ma does all the voices but this afternoon she needs to lie down and read. It’s
The Da Vinci Code
with the eyes of a woman peeking out, she looks like Baby Jesus’s Ma.

I call Boots and Patrick and Baby Jesus, I tell them all about my new powers now I’m five. “I can be invisible,” I whisper at my phone,

“I can turn my tongue inside out and go blasting like a rocket into Outer Space.”

Ma’s eyelids are shut, how can she be reading through them?

I play Keypad, that’s I stand on my chair by Door and usually Ma says the numbers but today I have to make them up. I press them on Keypad quick quick no mistakes. The numbers don’t
make Door beep open but I like the little clicks when I push them.

Dress-up is a quiet game. I put on the royal crown that’s some bits gold foil and some bits silver foil and milk carton underneath. I invent Ma a bracelet out of two socks of her tied
together, one white one green.

I get down Games Box from Shelf. I measure with Ruler, each domino is nearly one inch and the checkers are a half. I make my fingers into Saint Peter and Saint Paul, they bow to each other
before and do flying after each turn.

Ma’s eyes are open again. I bring her the sock bracelet, she says it’s beautiful, she puts it on right away.

“Can we play Beggar My Neighbor?”

“Give me a second,” she says. She goes to Sink and washes her face, I don’t know why because it wasn’t dirty but maybe there were germs.

I beggar her twice and she beggars me once, I hate losing. Then Gin Rummy and Go Fish, I win mostly. Then we just play with the cards, dancing and fighting and stuff. Jack of Diamonds is my
favorite and his friends the other Jacks.

“Look.” I point to Watch. “05:01, we can have dinner.”

It’s a hot dog each, yum.

For TV I go in Rocker but Ma sits on Bed with Kit, she’s putting the hem back up on her brown dress with pink bits. We watch the medical planet where doctors and nurses cut holes in
persons to pull the germs out. The persons are asleep not dead. The doctors don’t bite the thread like Ma, they use super sharp daggers and after, they sew the persons up like
Frankenstein.

When the commercials come on Ma asks me to go over and press mute. There’s a man in a yellow helmet drilling a hole in a street, he holds his forehead and makes a face. “Is he
hurting?” I ask.

She looks up from sewing. “He must have a headache from that noisy drill.”

We can’t hear the drill because it’s on mute. The TV man’s at a sink taking a pill from a bottle, next he’s smiling and throwing a ball on a boy. “Ma,
Ma.”

“What?” She’s doing a knot.

“That’s our bottle. Were you looking? Were you looking at the man with the headache?”

“No.”

“The bottle where he took the pill, that’s the exact one we’ve got, the killers.”

Ma stares at the TV, but it’s showing a car speeding around a mountain now.

“No, before,” I say. “He actually had our bottle of killers.”

“Well, maybe it was the same kind as ours, but it’s not our one.”

“Yeah it is.”

“No, there’s lots of them.”

“Where?”

Ma looks at me, then back at her dress, she pulls at the hem. “Well, our bottle is right here on Shelf, and the rest are . . .”

“In TV?” I ask.

She’s staring at the threads and winding them around the little cards to fit back in Kit.

“You know what?” I’m bouncing. “You know what that means? He must go in TV.” The medical planet’s come back on but I’m not even watching. “Old
Nick,” I say, so she won’t think I mean the man in the yellow helmet. “When he’s not here, in the daytime, you know what? He actually goes in TV. That’s where he got
our killers in a store and brung them here.”

“Brought,” says Ma, standing up. “Brought, not brung. It’s time for bed.” She starts singing “Indicate the Way to My Abode” but I don’t join
in.

I don’t think she understands how amazing this is. I think about it right through putting on my sleep T-shirt and brushing my teeth and even when I’m having some on Bed. I take my
mouth back, I say, “How come we never see him in TV?”

Ma yawns and sits up.

“All the times we’re watching, we never see him, how come?”

“He’s not there.”

“But the bottle, how did he get it?”

“I don’t know.”

The way she says it, it’s strange. I think she’s pretending. “You have to know. You know everything.”

“Look, it really doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter and I do mind.” I’m nearly shouting.

“Jack—”

Jack what? What does
Jack
mean?

Ma leans back on the pillows. “It’s very hard to explain.”

I think she can explain, she just won’t. “You can, because I’m five now.”

Her face is turned toward Door. “Where our bottle of pills used to be, right, is a store, that’s where he got them, then he brought them here for Sunday treat.”

“A store in TV?” I look up at Shelf to check the bottle’s there. “But the killers are real—”

“It’s a real store.” Ma rubs her eye.

“How—?”

“OK, OK, OK.”

Why is she shouting?

“Listen. What we see on TV is . . . it’s pictures of real things.”

That’s the most astonishing I ever heard.

Ma’s got her hand over her mouth.

“Dora’s real for real?”

She takes her hand away. “No, sorry. Lots of TV is made-up pictures—like, Dora’s just a drawing—but the other people, the ones with faces that look like you and me,
they’re real.”

“Actual humans?”

She nods. “And the places are real too, like farms and forests and airplanes and cities . . .”

“Nah.” Why is she tricking me? “Where would they fit?”

“Out there,” says Ma. “Outside.” She jerks her head back.

“Outside Bed Wall?” I stare at it.

“Outside Room.” She points the other way now, at Stove Wall, her finger goes around in a circle.

“The stores and forests zoom around in Outer Space?”

“No. Forget it, Jack, I shouldn’t have—”

“Yes you should.” I shake her knee hard, I say, “Tell me.”

“Not tonight, I can’t think of the right words to explain.”

Alice says she can’t explain herself because she’s not herself, she knows who she was this morning but she’s changed several times since then.

Ma suddenly stands up and gets the killers down off Shelf, I think she’s checking are they the same as the ones in TV but she opens the bottle and eats one then another one.

“Will you find the words tomorrow?”

“It’s eight forty-nine, Jack, would you just go to bed?” She ties the trash bag and puts it beside Door.

I lie down in Wardrobe but I’m wide awake.

•   •   •

Today is one of the days when Ma is Gone.

She won’t wake up properly. She’s here but not really. She stays in Bed with the pillows on her head.

Silly Penis is standing up, I squish him down.

I eat my hundred cereal and I stand on my chair to wash the bowl and Meltedy Spoon. It’s very quiet when I switch off the water. I wonder did Old Nick come in the night. I don’t
think he did because the trash bag is still by Door, but maybe he did only he didn’t take the trash? Maybe Ma’s not just Gone. Maybe he squished her neck even harder and now
she’s—

I go up really close and listen till I hear breath. I’m just one inch away, my hair touches Ma’s nose and she puts her hand up over her face so I step back.

I don’t have a bath on my own, I just get dressed.

There’s hours and hours, hundreds of them.

Ma gets up to pee but no talking, with her face all blank. I already put a glass of water beside Bed but she just gets back under Duvet.

I hate when she’s Gone, but I like that I get to watch TV all day. I put it on really quiet at first and make it a bit louder at a time. Too much TV might turn me into a zombie but
Ma’s like a zombie today and she’s not watching even. There’s
Bob the Builder
and
Wonder Pets!
and
Barney
. For each I go up to touch hello. Barney and his
friends do lots of hugs, I run to get in the middle but sometimes I’m too late. Today it’s about a fairy that sneaks in at night and turns old teeth into money. I want Dora but she
doesn’t come.

Thursday means laundry, but I can’t do it all myself and Ma’s still lying on the sheets anyway.

When I’m hungry again I check Watch but he only says 09:47. Cartoons are over so I watch football and the planet where people win prizes. The puffy-hair woman is on her red couch talking
to a man who used to be a golf star. There’s another planet where women hold up necklaces and say how exquisite they are. “Suckers,” Ma always says when she sees that planet. She
doesn’t say anything today, she doesn’t notice I’m watching and watching and my brain is starting to be stinky.

How can TV be pictures of real things?

I think about them all floating around in Outside Space outside the walls, the couch and the necklaces and the bread and the killers and the airplanes and all the shes and hes, the boxers and
the man with one leg and the puffy-hair woman, they’re floating past Skylight. I wave to them, but there’s skyscrapers as well and cows and ships and trucks, it’s crammed out
there, I count all the stuff that might crash into Room. I can’t breathe right, I have to count my teeth instead, left to right on the top then right to left on the bottom, then backwards,
twenty every time but I still think maybe I’m counting wrong.

When it’s 12:04 it can be lunch so I cut a can of baked beans open, I’m careful. I wonder would Ma wake up if I cutted my hand and screamed help? I never had beans cold before. I eat
nine, then I’m not hungry. I put the rest in a tub for not waste. Some are stuck to the can at the bottom, I pour water in. Maybe Ma will get up and scrub it later. Maybe she’ll be
hungry, she’ll say, “Oh Jack, how thoughtful of you to save me beans in a tub.”

I measure more things with Ruler but it’s hard to add up the numbers on my own. I do him end over end and he’s an acrobat of a circus. I play with Remote, I point him at Ma and
whisper, “Wake up,” but she doesn’t. Balloon is all squishy, she goes for a ride on Prune Juice Bottle up near Skylight, they make the light all brownly sparkly. They’re
scared of Remote because of his sharp end, so I put him in Wardrobe and fold the doors shut. I tell all the things it’s OK because Ma will be back tomorrow. I read the five books all myself
only just bits of
Alice
. Mostly I just sit.