Room: A Novel

It’s Steppa’s house too but he doesn’t make the rules. He’s mostly in his den which is his special room for his own.

“People don’t always want to be with people,” he tells me. “It gets tiring.”

“Why?”

“Just take it from me, I’ve been married twice.”

The front door I can’t go out without telling Grandma but I wouldn’t anyway. I sit on the stairs and suck hard on Tooth.

“Go play with something, why don’t you?” says Grandma, squeezing past.

There’s lots, I don’t know which. My toys from the crazy well-wishers that Ma thought there was only five but actually I took six. There’s chalks all different colors that Deana brought around only I didn’t see her, they’re too smudgy on my fingers. There’s a giant roll of paper and forty-eight markers in a long invisible plastic. A box of boxes with animals on that Bronwyn doesn’t use anymore, I don’t know why, they stack to a tower more than my head.

I stare at my shoes instead, they’re my softies. If I wiggle I can sort of see the toes under the leather. Ma! I shout it very loud in my head. I don’t think she’s there. No better no worse. Unless everybody’s lying.

There’s a tiny brown thing under the carpet where it starts being the wood of the stairs. I scrape it out, it’s a metal. A coin. It’s got a man face and words, IN GOD WE TRUST LIBERTY 2004. When I turn it over there’s a man, maybe the same one but he’s waving at a little house and says UNITED STATES OF AMERICA E PLURIBUS UNUM ONE CENT.

Grandma’s on the bottom step staring at me.

I jump. I move Tooth to the back of my gums. “There’s a bit in Spanish,” I tell her.

“There is?” She frowns.

I show her with my finger.

“It’s Latin. E PLURIBUS UNUM. Hmm, I think that means ‘United we stand’ or something. Would you like some more?” “What?”

“Let me look in my purse. .”

She comes back with a round flat thing that if you squish, it suddenly opens like a mouth and there’s different moneys inside. A silvery has a man with a ponytail like me and FIVE CENTS but she says everybody calls it a nickel, the little silvery is a dime, that is ten.

“Why is the five more bigger than the ten one if it’s five?”

“That’s just how it is.”

Even the one cent is bigger than the ten, I think how it is is dumb.

On the biggest silvery there’s a different man not happy, the back says NEW HAMPSHIRE 1788 LIVE FREE OR DIE. Grandma says New Hampshire is another bit of America, not this bit.

“Live free, does that mean not costing anything?”

“Ah, no, no. It means. . nobody being the boss of you.”

There’s another the same front but when I turn it over there’s pictures of a sailboat with a tiny person in it and a glass and more Spanish, GUAM E PLURIBUS UNUM 2009 and Guahan ITano’ ManChamorro. Grandma squeezes up her eyes at it and goes to get her glasses.

“Is that another bit of America?”

“Guam? No, I think it’s somewhere else.”

Maybe it’s how Outsiders spell Room.

The phone starts its screaming in the hall, I run upstairs to get away.

Grandma comes up, crying again. “She’s turned the corner.”

I stare at her.

“Your ma.”

“What corner?”

“She’s on the mend, she’s going to be fine, probably.”

I shut my eyes.

• • •

Grandma shakes me awake because she says it’s been three hours and she’s afraid I won’t sleep tonight.

It’s hard to talk with Tooth in so I put him in my pocket instead. My nails have still got soap in. I need something sharp to get it out, like Remote.

“Are you missing your ma?”

I shake my head. “Remote.”

“You miss your. . moat?”

“Remote.”

“The TV remote?”

“No, my Remote that used to make Jeep go vrumm zoom but then it got broke in Wardrobe.”

“Oh,” says Grandma, “well, I’m sure we can get them back.”

I shake my head. “They’re in Room.”

“Let’s make a little list.”

“To flush down the toilet?”

Grandma looks all confused. “No, I’ll call the police.”

“Is it an emergency?”

She shakes her head. “They’ll bring your toys over here, once they’ve finished with them.”

I stare at her. “The police can go in Room?”

“They’re probably there right this minute,” she tells me, “collecting evidence.”

“What’s evidence?”

“Proof of what happened, to show the judge. Pictures, fingerprints. .”

While I’m writing the list, I think about the black of Track and the hole under Table, all the marks me and Ma made. The judge looking at my picture of the blue octopus.

Grandma says it’s a shame to waste such a nice spring day, so if I put on a long shirt and my proper shoes and hat and shades and lots of sunblock I can come out in the backyard.

She squirts sunblock into her hands. “You say go and stop, whenever you like. Like remote control.”

That’s kind of funny.

She starts rubbing it on my back of hands.

“Stop!” After a minute I say, “Go,” and she starts again. “Go.”

She stops. “You mean keep going?”

“Yeah.”

She does my face. I don’t like it near my eyes but she’s careful.

“Go.”

“Actually we’re all done, Jack. Ready?”

Grandma goes out first through both doors, the glass one and the net one, she waves me out and the light is zigzaggy. We’re standing on the deck that’s all wooden like the deck of a ship. There’s fuzz on it, little bundles. Grandma says it’s some kind of pollen from a tree.

“Which one?” I’m staring up at all the differents.

“Can’t help you there, I’m afraid.”

In Room we knowed what everything was called but in the world there’s so much, persons don’t even know the names.

Grandma’s in one of the wooden chairs wiggling her butt in. There’s sticks that break when I stand on them and some yellow tiny leaves and mushy brown ones that she says she asked Leo to deal with back in November.

“Does Steppa have a job?”

“No, we retired early but of course now our stocks are decimated. .”

“What does that mean?”