Noreen knocks with somethings very exciting, the first are softy stretchy shoes like socks but made of leather, the second is a watch with just numbers so I can read it like Watch. I say, “The time is nine fifty-seven.” It’s too small for Ma, it’s just mine, Noreen shows me how to tight the strap on my wrist.
“Presents every day, he’ll be getting spoiled,” says Ma, putting her mask up to blow her nose again.
“Dr. Clay said, whatever gives the lad a bit of a sense of control,” says Noreen. When she smiles her eyes crinkle. “Probably a bit homesick, aren’t you?” “Homesick?” Ma’s staring at her.
“Sorry, I didn’t—”
“It wasn’t a
“That came out wrong, I beg your pardon,” says Noreen.
She goes in a hurry. Ma doesn’t say anything, she just writes in her notebook.
If Room wasn’t our home, does that mean we don’t have one?
This morning I give Dr. Clay a high five, he’s thrilled.
“It seems a bit ridiculous to keep wearing these masks when we’ve already got a streaming cold,” says Ma.
“Well,” he says, “there are worse things out there.”
“Yeah, but we have to keep pulling the masks up to blow our noses anyway—”
He shrugs. “Ultimately it’s your call.”
“Masks off, Jack,” Ma tells me.
“Yippee.”
We put them in the trash.
Dr. Clay’s crayons live in a special box of cardboard that says 120 on it, that’s how many all different. They’ve got amazing names written small up the sides like Atomic Tangerine and Fuzzy Wuzzy and Inchworm and Outer Space that I never knew had a color, and Purple Mountain’s Majesty and Razzmatazz and Unmellow Yellow and Wild Blue Yonder. Some are spelled wrong on purpose for a joke, like Mauvelous, that’s not very funny I don’t think. Dr. Clay says I can use any but I just choose the five I know to color like the ones in Room, a blue and a green and an orange and a red and a brown. He asks can I draw Room maybe but I’m already doing a rocket ship with brown. There’s even a white crayon, wouldn’t that be invisible?
“What if the paper was black,” says Dr. Clay, “or red?” He finds me a black page to try and he’s right, I can see the white on it. “What’s this square all around the rocket?”
“Walls,” I tell him. There’s the girl me baby waving bye-bye and Baby Jesus and John the Baptist, they don’t have any clothes because it’s sunny with God’s yellow face.
“Is your ma in this picture?”
“She’s down at the bottom having a nap.”
The real Ma laughs a bit and blows her nose. That remembers me to do mine because it’s dripping.
“What about the man you call Old Nick, is he anywhere?”
“OK, he can be over in this corner in his cage.” I do him and the bars very thick, he’s biting them. There are ten bars, that’s the strongest number, not even an angel could burn them open with his blowtorch and Ma says an angel wouldn’t turn on his blowtorch for a bad guy anyway. I show Dr. Clay how many counting I can do up to 1,000,029 and even higher if I wanted.
“A little boy I know, he counts the same things over and over when he feels nervous, he can’t stop.”
“What things?” I ask.
“Lines on the sidewalk, buttons, that kind of thing.”
I think that boy should count his teeth instead, because they’re always there, unless they fall out.
“You keep talking about separation anxiety,” Ma’s saying to Dr. Clay, “but me and Jack are not going to be separated.” “Still, it’s not just the two of you anymore, is it?”
She’s chewing her mouth. They talk about
“The very best thing you did was, you got him out early,” says Dr. Clay. “At five, they’re still plastic.”
But I’m not plastic, I’m a real boy.
“. . probably young enough to forget,” he’s saying, “which will be a mercy.”
That’s
I want to keep playing with the boy puppet with the tongue but time’s up, Dr. Clay has to go play with Mrs. Garber. He says I can borrow the puppet till tomorrow but he still belongs to Dr. Clay.
“Why?”
“Well, everything in the world belongs to somebody.”
Like my six new toys and my five new books, and Tooth is mine I think because Ma didn’t want him anymore.
“Except the things we all share,” says Dr. Clay, “like the rivers and the mountains.”
“The street?”
“That’s right, we all get to use the streets.”
“I ran on the street.”
“When you were escaping, right.”
“Because we didn’t belong to him.”
“That’s right.” Dr. Clay’s smiling. “You know who you belong to, Jack?”
“Yeah.”
“Yourself.”
He’s wrong, actually, I belong to Ma.
The Clinic keeps having more bits in it, like there’s a room with a ginormous TV and I jump up and down hoping
In the corridor I remember, I ask, “What’s the
“Huh?”
“Dr. Clay said I was made of plastic and I’d forget.”
“Ah,” says Ma. “He figures, soon you won’t remember Room anymore.”
“I will too.” I stare at her. “Am I meant to forget?”
“I don’t know.”
She’s always saying that now. She’s gone ahead of me already, she’s at the stairs, I have to run to catch up.
After lunch. Ma says it’s time to try going Outside again. “If we stay indoors all the time, it’s like we never did our Great Escape at all.” She’s sounding cranky, she’s tying her laces already.
After my hat and shades and shoes and the sticky stuff again, I’m tired.
Noreen is waiting for us beside the fish tank.
Ma lets me revolve in the door five times. She pushes and we’re out.
It’s so bright, I think I’m going to scream. Then my shades get darker and I can’t see. The air smells weird in my sore nose and my neck’s all tight. “Pretend you’re watching this on TV,” says Noreen in my ear.
“Huh?”
“Just try it.” She does a special voice: “ ‘Here’s a boy called Jack going for a walk with his Ma and their friend Noreen.’ ” I’m watching it.
“What’s Jack wearing on his face?” she asks.
“Cool red shades.”
“So he is. Look, they’re all walking across the parking lot on a mild April day.”
There’s four cars, a red and a green and a black and a brownish goldy. Burnt Sienna, that’s the crayon of it. Inside their windows they’re like little houses with seats. A teddy bear is hanging up in the red one on the mirror. I’m stroking the nose bit of the car, it’s all smooth and cold like an ice cube. “Careful,” says Ma, “you might set off the alarm.”
