Room: A Novel

the toilet sees with this little eye when we’re all done and it flushes by itself, isn’t that clever?”

I don’t like a clever toilet looking at our butts.

Ma gets me to step out of my underwear. “I pooed a bit by accident when Old Nick carried me,” I tell her.

“Don’t worry about it,” she says and she does something weird, she throws my underwear in a trash.

“But—”

“You don’t need them anymore, we’ll get you new ones.”

“For Sundaytreat?”

“No, any day we like.”

That’s weird. I’d rather on a Sunday.

The faucet’s like the real ones in Room but wrong shaped. Ma turns it on, she wets paper and wipes my legs and my butt. She puts her hands under a machine, then hot air puffs out, like our vents but hotter and noisy again. “It’s a hand dryer, look, do you want to try?” She’s smiling at me but I’m too tired for smiling. “OK, just wipe your hands on your T-shirt.” Then she wraps the blue blanket around me and we go out again. I want to look in the machine where all the cans and bags and chocolate bars are in jail. But Ma pulls me along to the room where the Captain is for more talking.

After hundreds of hours Ma’s standing me up, I’m all wobbly. Sleep not in Room makes me feel sick.

We’re going to a kind of hospital, but wasn’t that the old Plan A, Sick, Truck, Hospital? Ma’s got a blue blanket around her now, I think it’s the one that was on me but that one’s still on me so hers must be a different. The patrol car looks like the same car but I don’t know, things in Outside are tricksy. I trip on the street and nearly fall but Ma grabs me.

We’re driving along. When I see a car coming I squeeze my eyes every time.

“They’re on the other side, you know,” says Ma.

“What other side?”

“See that line down the middle? They always have to stay on that side of it, and we stay on this side, so we don’t crash.” Suddenly we’re stopped. The car opens and a person with no face looks in. I’m screaming.

“Jack, Jack,” says Ma.

“It’s a zombie.”

I keep my face on her tummy.

“I’m Dr. Clay, welcome to the Cumberland,” says the no face with the deepest voice ever booming. “The mask is just to keep you safe. Want to see under?” It pulls the white bit up and a man person smiling, an extra- brown face with the tiniest triangle of black chin. He lets the mask back on, snap. His talk comes through the white. “Here’s one for each of you.”

Ma takes the masks. “Do we have to?”

“Think of everything floating around that your son’s probably never come in contact with before.”

“OK.” She puts one mask on her and one on me with loops around my ears. I don’t like the way it presses. “I don’t see anything floating around,” I whisper to Ma.

“Germs,” she says.

I thought they were only in Room, I didn’t know the world was all full of them too.

We’re walking in a big lighted building, I think it’s the Precinct again but then it’s not. There’s a somebody called the Admission Coordinator tapping on a — I know, it’s a computer, just like in TV. They all look like the persons on the medical planet, I have to keep remembering they’re real.

I see the most coolest thing, it’s a huge glass with corners but instead of cans and chocolate there’s fish alive, swimming and hiding with rocks. I pull Ma’s hand but she won’t come, she’s still talking to the Admission Coordinator that has a name on her label too, it’s Pilar.

“Listen, Jack,” Dr. Clay says, he bends down his legs so he’s like a giant frog, why is he doing that? His head is nearly beside mine, his hair is just fuzz like a quarter of an inch long. He doesn’t have his mask anymore, it’s only me and Ma. “We need to take a look at your mom in that room across the hall, OK?” It’s me he’s saying. But didn’t he look at her already?

Ma’s shaking her head. “Jack stays with me.”

“Dr. Kendrick — she’s our general medical resident on duty — she’s going to have to administer the evidence collection kit right away, I’m afraid. Blood, urine, hair, fingernail scrapings, oral swabs, vaginal, anal—”

Ma stares at him. She lets out her breath. “I’ll be just in there,” she tells me, pointing at a door, “and I’ll be able to hear you if you call, OK?” “Not OK.”

“Please. You’ve been such a brave JackerJack, just a bit longer, OK?”

I grab onto her.

“Hmm, maybe he could come in and we could put up a screen?” says Dr. Kendrick. Her hair is all creamy colored and twisted up on her head.

“A TV?” I whisper to Ma. “There’s one over there.” It’s way bigger than the one in Room, there’s dancing and the colors are much dazzlier.

“Actually, yeah,” says Ma, “could he maybe sit there at Reception? That would distract him better.”

The Pilar woman is behind the table talking on the phone, she smiles at me but I pretend I don’t see. There’s lots of chairs, Ma chooses one for me. I watch her going with the doctors. I have to grip onto the chair not to run after her.

The planet’s changed to a game of football with persons with huge shoulders and helmets. I wonder if it’s really happening for real or just pictures. I look at the fish glass but it’s too far, I can’t see the fish but they must be still there, they can’t walk. The door where Ma went is a bit apart, I think I hear her voice. Why are they taking her blood and pee and fingernails? She’s still there even though I don’t see her, like she was in Room all the time I was doing our Great Escape. Old Nick zoomed off in his truck, now he’s not in Room and he’s not in Outside, I don’t see him in TV. My head’s worn out from wondering.

I hate the mask pressing, I put it up on my head, it’s got a stiff bit with a wire inside I think. It keeps my hair out of my eyes. Now there’s tanks in a city that’s all smashed into bits, an old person crying. Ma’s a long long time in the other room, are they hurting her? The Pilar woman is still talking on the phone. Another planet with men in a ginormous room talking, all in jackets, I think they’re kind of fighting. They talk for hours and hours.

Then it changes again and there’s Ma and she’s carrying somebody and it’s me.

I jump up and go right to the screen. There’s a me like in Mirror only I’m tiny. Words sliding underneath LOCAL NEWS AS IT HAPPENS. A she person is talking but I can’t see: “. . bachelor loner converted the garden shed into an impregnable twenty-first-century dungeon. The despot’s victims have an eerie pallor and appear to be in a borderline catatonic state after the long nightmare of their incarceration.” There’s when Officer Oh tried to put the blanket on my head and I don’t let her. The invisible voice says, “The malnourished boy, unable to walk, is seen here lashing out convulsively at one of his rescuers.”

“Ma,” I shout.

She doesn’t come. I hear her calling, “Just a couple more minutes.”

“It’s us. It’s us in TV!”

But it’s gone blank. Pilar is standing up pointing at it with a remote and staring at me. Dr. Clay comes out, he says mad things to Pilar.

“On again,” I say. “It’s us, I want to see us.”

“I’m terribly, terribly sorry—,” says Pilar.

“Jack, would you like to join your mom now?” Dr. Clay holds out his hand, he’s got funny white plastic on it. I don’t touch. “Mask on, remember?” I put it over my nose. I walk behind not too near.

Ma’s sitting on a little high bed in a dress made out of paper and it’s split at the back. Persons wear funny things in Outside. “They had to take away my real clothes.” It’s her voice though I can’t see where it comes out of the mask.

I climb up to her lap all crinkly. “I saw us in TV.”

“So I heard. How did we look?”

“Small.”

I’m pulling at her dress but there’s no way in. “Not right this minute.” She kisses me instead on the side of