Room: A Novel

beep I can jump back in Wardrobe quick quick.

What if he comes and Ma won’t wake up, will he be even more madder? Will he make worse marks on her?

I stay awake so I can hear him come.

He doesn’t come but I stay awake.

• • •

The trash bag is still beside Door. Ma got up before me this morning and unknotted it and put in the beans she scraped out of the can. If the bag’s still here, I guess that means he didn’t come, that’s two nights he didn’t, yippee.

Friday means Mattress time. We flip her over front to back and sideways as well so she doesn’t get bumpy, she’s so heavy I have to use all my muscles and when she flomps down she knocks me onto Rug. I see the brown mark on Mattress from when I came out of Ma’s tummy the first time. Next we have a dusting race, dust is tiny invisible pieces of our skins that we don’t need anymore because we grow new ones like snakes. Ma sneezes really high like an opera star we heard one time in TV.

We do our grocery list, we can’t decide about Sundaytreat. “Let’s ask for candy,” I say. “Not even chocolate. Some kind of candy we never had before.” “Some really sticky kind, so you’ll end up with teeth like mine?”

I don’t like when Ma does sarcasm.

Now we’re reading sentences out of no-pictures books, this one’s The Shack with a spooky house and all white snow. “ ‘Since then,’ ” I read, “ ‘he and I have been, as the kids say these days, hangin’ out, sharing a coffee — or for me a chai tea, extra hot with soy.’ ” “Excellent,” says Ma, “only soy should rhyme with boy.”

Persons in books and TV are always thirsty, they have beer and juice and champagne and lattes and all sorts of liquids, sometimes they click their glasses on each other’s glasses when they’re happy but they don’t break them. I read the line again, it’s still confusing. “Who’s the he and the I, are they the kids?” “Hmm,” says Ma, reading over my shoulder, “I think the kids means kids in general.”

“What’s in general?”

“Lots of kids.”

I try and see them, the lots, all playing together. “Actual human ones?”

Ma doesn’t say anything for a minute, and then, “Yeah,” very quiet. So it was true, everything she said.

The marks are still there on her neck, I wonder if they’ll ever go away.

• • •

In the night she’s flashing, it wakes me in Bed. Lamp on, I count five. Lamp off, I count one. Lamp on, I count two. Lamp off, I count two. I do a groan.

“Just a bit more.” She’s still staring up at Skylight that’s all black.

There’s no trash bag beside Door, that means he must have been here when I was asleep. “Please, Ma.”

“In a minute.”

“It hurts my eyes.”

She leans over Bed and kisses me beside my mouth, she puts Duvet over my face. The light’s still flashing but darker.

After a while she comes back into Bed and gives me some for getting back to sleep.

• • •

On Saturday Ma makes me three braids for a change, they feel funny. I wave my face to whack myself with them.

I don’t watch the cartoon planet this morning, I choose a bit of a gardening and a fitness and a news, and everything I see I say, “Ma, is that real?” and she says yeah, except one bit about a movie with werewolves and a woman bursting like a balloon is just special effects, that’s drawing on computers.

Lunch is a can of chickpea curry and rice as well.

I’d like to do an extra big Scream but we can’t on weekends.

Most of the afternoon we play Cat’s Cradle, we can do the Candles and the Diamonds and the Manger and the Knitting Needles and we keep practicing the Scorpion except Ma’s fingers always end up stuck.

Dinner is mini pizzas, one each plus one to share. Then we watch a planet where persons are wearing lots of frilly clothes and huge white hair. Ma says they’re real but they’re pretending to be people who died hundreds of years ago. It’s a sort of game but it doesn’t sound much fun.

She switches the TV off and sniffs. “I can still smell that curry from lunch.”

“Me too.”

“It tasted good but it’s nasty the way it lingers.”

“Mine tasted nasty too,” I tell her.

She laughs. The marks on her neck are getting less, they’re greenish and yellowish.

“Can I have a story?”

“Which one?”

“One you never told me before.”

Ma smiles at me. “I think at this point you know everything I know. The Count of Monte Cristo?”

“I’ve heard that millions of times.”

“GulliJack in Lilliput?”

“Zillions.”

“Nelson on Robben Island?”

“Then he got out after twenty-seven years and became the government.”

“Goldilocks?”

“Too scary.”

“The bears only growl at her,” says Ma.

“Still.”

“Princess Diana?”

“Should have worn her seat belt.”

“See, you know them all.” Ma puffs her breath. “Hang on, there’s one about a mermaid. .”

“The Little Mermaid.”

“No, a different one. This mermaid is sitting on the rocks one evening, combing her hair, when a fisherman creeps up and catches her in his net.” “To fry her for his dinner?”

“No, no, he brings her home to his cottage and she has to marry him,” says Ma. “He takes away her magic comb so she can’t ever go back into the sea. So after a while the mermaid has a baby—”

“—called JackerJack,” I tell her.

“That’s right. But whenever the fisherman’s out fishing she looks around the cottage, and one day she finds where he’s hidden her comb—” “Ha ha.”

“And she runs away to the rocks, and slips down into the sea.”

“No.”

Ma looks at me close. “You don’t like this story?”

“She shouldn’t be gone.”

“It’s OK.” She takes the tear out of my eye with her finger. “I forgot to say, of course she takes her baby, JackerJack, with her, he’s all knotted up in her hair. And when the fisherman comes back, the cottage is empty, and he never sees them again.”

“Does he drown?”

“The fisherman?”

“No, JackerJack, under the water.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” says Ma, “he’s half merman, remember? He can breathe air or water, whichever.” She goes to look at Watch, it’s 08:27.

I’m lying in Wardrobe for ages, but I don’t get sleepy. We do songs and prayers. “Just one nursery rhyme,” I say, “please?” I pick “The House That Jack Built” because it’s the longest.