Room: A Novel

you can run today?” “Five.”

“What about five times five? That would be your favorite squared.”

We times it on our fingers, I get twenty-six but Ma says twenty-five so I do it again and get twenty-five too. She counts me on Watch. “Twelve,” she shouts out. “Seventeen. You’re doing great.”

I’m breathing whoo whoo whoo.

“Faster—”

I go even fasterer like Superman flying.

When it’s Ma’s turn to run, I have to write down on the College Ruled Pad the number at the start and the number when she’s finished, then we take them apart to see how fast she went. Today hers is nine seconds bigger than mine, that means I winned, so I jump up and down and blow raspberries. “Let’s do a race at the same time.” “Sounds like fun, doesn’t it,” she says, “but remember once we tried it and I banged my shoulder on the dresser?”

Sometimes when I forget things, Ma tells me and I remember them after that.

We take down all the furnitures from Bed and put Rug back where she was to cover Track so Old Nick won’t see the dirty C.

Ma chooses Trampoline, it’s just me that bounces on Bed because Ma might break her. She does the commentary: “A daring midair twist from the young U.S. champion. .” My next pick is Simon Says, then Ma says to put our socks back on for Corpse, that’s lying like starfish with floppy toenails, floppy belly button, floppy tongue, floppy brain even. Ma gets an itch behind her knee and moves, I win again.

It’s 12:13, so it can be lunch. My favorite bit of the prayer is the daily bread. I’m the boss of play but Ma’s the boss of meals, like she doesn’t let us have cereal for breakfast and lunch and dinner in case we’d get sick and anyway that would use it up too fast. When I was zero and one, Ma used to chop and chew up my food for me, but then I got all my twenty teeth and I can gnash up anything. This lunch is tuna on crackers, my job is to roll back the lid of the can because Ma’s wrist can’t manage it.

I’m a bit jiggly so Ma says let’s play Orchestra, where we run around seeing what noises we can bang out of things. I drum on Table and Ma goes knock knock on the legs of Bed, then floomf floomf on the pillows, I use a fork and spoon on Door ding ding and our toes go bam on Stove, but my favorite is stomping on the pedal of Trash because that pops his lid open with a bing. My best instrument is Twang that’s a cereal box I collaged with all different colored legs and shoes and coats and heads from the old catalog, then I stretched three rubber bands across his middle. Old Nick doesn’t bring catalogs anymore for us to pick our own clothes, Ma says he’s getting meaner.

I climb on Rocker to get the books from Shelf and I make a ten-story skyscraper on Rug. “Ten stories,” says Ma and laughs, that wasn’t very funny.

We used to have nine books but only four with pictures inside—

My Big Book of Nursery Rhymes

Dylan the Digger

The Runaway Bunny

Pop-Up Airport

Also five with pictures only on the front—

The Shack

Twilight

The Guardian

Bittersweet Love The Da Vinci Code

Ma hardly ever reads the no-pictures ones except if she’s desperate. When I was four we asked for one more with pictures for Sundaytreat and Alice in Wonderland came, I like her but she’s got too many words and lots of them are old.

Today I choose Dylan the Digger, he’s near the bottom so he does a demolition on the skyscraper crashhhhhh.

“Dylan again.” Ma makes a face, then she puts on her biggest voice:

“ ‘Heeeeeeeeere’s Dylan, the sturdy digger!

The loads he shovels get bigger and bigger.

Watch his long arm delve into the earth,

No excavator so loves to munch dirt.

This mega-hoe rolls and pivots round the site,

Scooping and grading by day and night.’ ”

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