Room: A Novel

She means him, Old Nick.

“Well, the DA tells me she’s hoping for twenty-five to life, and for federal offenses there’s no parole,” says Morris. “We’ve got kidnapping for sexual purposes, false imprisonment, multiple counts of rape, criminal battery. .” He’s counting on his fingers not in his head.

Ma’s nodding. “What about the baby?”

“Jack?”

“The first one. Doesn’t that count as some kind of murder?”

I never heard this story.

Morris twists his mouth. “Not if it wasn’t born alive.”

“She.”

I don’t know who the she is.

“She, I beg your pardon,” he says. “The best we could hope for is criminal negligence, maybe even recklessness. .” They try to ban Alice from court for being more than a mile high. There’s a poem that’s confusing,

If I or she should chance to be

Involved in this affair,

He trusts to you to set them free

Exactly as we were.

Noreen’s there without me seeing, she asks if we’d like dinner by ourselves or in the dining room.

I carry all my toys in the big envelope. Ma doesn’t know there’s six not five. Some persons wave when we come in so I wave back, like the girl with the no hair and tattoos all her neck. I don’t mind persons very much if they don’t touch me.

The woman with the apron says she heard I went outside, I don’t know how she heard me. “Did you love it?”

“No,” I say. “I mean, no, thanks.”

I’m learning lots more manners. When something tastes yucky we say it’s interesting, like wild rice that bites like it hasn’t been cooked. When I blow my nose I fold the tissue so nobody sees the snot, it’s a secret. If I want Ma to listen to me not some person else I say, “Excuse me,” sometimes I say, “Excuse me, Excuse me,” for ages, then when she asks what is it I don’t remember anymore.

When we’re in pajamas with masks off having some on the bed, I remember and ask, “Who’s the first baby?”

Ma looks down at me.

“You told Morris there was a she that did a murder.”

She shakes her head. “I meant she got murdered, kind of.” Her face is away from me.

“Was it me that did it?”

“No! You didn’t do anything, it was a year before you were even born,” says Ma. “You know I used to say, when you came the first time, on Bed, you were a girl?” “Yeah.”

“Well, that’s who I meant.”

I’m even more confused.

“I think she was trying to be you. The cord—” Ma puts her face in her hands.

“The blind cord?” I look at it, there’s only dark coming in the stripes.

“No, no, remember the cord that goes to the belly button?”

“You cutted it with the scissors and then I was free.”

Ma’s nodding. “But with the girl baby, it got tangled when she was coming out, so she couldn’t breathe.”

“I don’t like this story.”

She presses her eyebrows. “Let me finish it.”

“Idon’t—”

“He was right there, watching.” Ma’s nearly shouting. “He didn’t know the first thing about babies getting born, he hadn’t even bothered to Google it. I could feel the top of her head, it was all slippery, I pushed and pushed, I was shouting, ‘Help, I can’t, help me—’ And he just stood there.” I wait. “Did she stay in your tummy? The girl baby?”

Ma doesn’t say anything for a minute. “She came out blue.”

Blue?

“She never opened her eyes.”

“You should ask Old Nick for medicine for her, for Sundaytreat.”

Ma shakes her head. “The cord was all knotted around her neck.”

“Was she still tied in you?”

“Till he cut it.”

“And then she was free?”

There’s tears falling all on the blanket. Ma’s nodding and crying but on mute.

“Is it all done now? The story?”

“Nearly.” Her eyes are shut but the water still slides out. “He took her away and buried her under a bush in the backyard. Just her body, I mean.” She was blue.

“The her part of her, that went straight back up to Heaven.”

“She got recycled?”

Ma nearly smiles. “I like to think that’s what happened.”

“Why you like to think that?”

“Maybe it really was you, and a year later you tried again and came back down as a boy.”

“I was me for real that time. I didn’t go back.”

“No way Jose.” The tears are falling out again, she rubs them away. “I didn’t let him in Room that time.”

“Why not?”

“I heard Door, the beeping, and I roared, ‘Get out.’ ”

I bet that made him mad.

“I was ready, this time I wanted it to be just me and you.”

“What color was I?”

“Hot pink.”

“Did I open my eyes?”

“You were born with your eyes open.”

I do the most enormous yawn. “Can we go to sleep now?”

“Oh, yeah,” says Ma.

• • •

In the night bang I fall out on the floor. My nose runs a lot but I don’t know to blow it in the dark.

“This bed’s too small for two,” says Ma in the morning. “You’d be more comfortable in the other one.”

“No.”

“What if we took the mattress and put it right here beside my bed so we could hold hands even?”

I shake my head.

“Help me figure this out, Jack.”

“Let’s stay both in the one but keep our elbows in.”

Ma blows her nose loud, I think the cold jumped from me to her but I still have it too.

We have a deal that I go in the shower with her but I keep my head out. The Band-Aid on my finger’s fallen off and I can’t find it. Ma brushes my hair, the tangles hurt. We have a hairbrush and two toothbrushes and all our new clothes and the little wooden train and other toys, Ma still hasn’t counted, so she doesn’t know I took six not five. I don’t know where the stuff should go, some on the dresser, some on the table beside the bed, some in the wardrobe, I have to keep asking Ma where she put them.

She’s reading one of her books with no pictures but I bring her the picture ones instead. The