Room: A Novel

This morning the kitchen’s empty. I get the scissors from the drawer and cut my ponytail all off.

Grandma comes in and stares. “Well, I’m going to just tidy you up, if I may,” she says, “and then you can get the brush and pan. Really we should keep a piece, as it’s your first haircut. .”

Most goes in the trash but she takes three long bits and makes a braid that’s a bracelet for me with green thread on the end.

She says go look in a mirror but first I check my muscles, I still have my strong.

• • •

The newspaper at the top says Saturday April 17, that means I’ve been at Grandma and Steppa’s house one whole week. I was one week in the Clinic before, that equals two weeks I’ve been in the world. I keep adding it up to check, because it feels like a million years and Ma’s still not coming for me.

Grandma says we have to get out of this house. Nobody would know me now my hair’s all short and going curly. She tells me to take my shades off because my eyes must be used to Outside now and besides the shades will only attract attention.

We cross lots of roads holding hands and not letting the cars squish us. I don’t like the holding hands, I pretend they’re some boy else’s she’s holding. Then Grandma has a good idea, I can hold on to the chain of her purse instead.

There’s lots of every kind of thing in the world but it all costs money, even stuff to throw away, like the man in the line ahead of us in the convenience store buys a something in a box and rips the box and puts it in the trash right away. The little cards with numbers all over are called a lottery, idiots buy them hoping to get magicked into millionaires.

In the post office we buy stamps, we send Ma a picture I did of me in a rocket ship.

We go in a skyscraper that’s Paul’s office, he says he’s crazy busy but he makes a Xerox of my hands and buys me a candy bar out of the vending machine. Going down in the elevator pressing the buttons, I play I’m actually inside a vending machine.

We go in a bit of the government to get Grandma a new Social Security card because she lost the old one, we have to wait for years and years. Afterwards she takes me in a coffee shop where there’s no green beans, I choose a cookie bigger than my face.

There’s a baby having some, I never saw that. “I like the left,” I say, pointing. “Do you like the left best?” But the baby’s not listening.

Grandma’s pulling me away. “Sorry about that.”

The woman puts her scarf over so I can’t see the baby’s face.

“She wanted to be private,” Grandma whispers.

I didn’t know persons could be private out in the world.

We go in a Laundromat just to see. I want to climb in a spinny machine but Grandma says it would kill me.

We walk to the park to feed the ducks with Deana and Bronwyn. Bronwyn throws all her breads in at one go and the plastic bag too and Grandma has to get it out with a stick. Bronwyn wants my breads, Grandma says I have to give her half because she’s little. Deana says she’s sorry about the dinosaurs, we’ll definitely make it to the Natural History Museum one of these days.

There’s a store that’s only shoes outside, bright spongy ones with holes all over them and Grandma lets me try on a pair, I choose yellow. There’s no laces or Velcro even, I just put my foot in. They’re so light it’s like not having any on. We go in and Grandma pays five dollar papers for the shoes, that’s the same as twenty quarters, I tell her I love them.

When we come out there’s a woman sitting on the ground with her hat off. Grandma gives me two quarters and points to the hat.

I put one in the hat and I run after Grandma.

When she’s doing my seat belt she says, “What’s that in your hand?”

I hold up the second coin, “It’s NEBRASKA, I’m keeping it for my treasures.”

She clicks her tongue and takes it back. “You should have given it to the street person like I told you to.” “OK, I’ll—”

“Too late now.”

She starts the car. All I can see is the back of her yellowy hair. “Why she’s a street person?”

“That’s where she lives, on the street. No bed even.”

Now I feel bad I didn’t give her the second quarter.

Grandma says that’s called having a conscience.

In a store window I see squares that are like Room, cork tiles, Grandma lets me go in to stroke one and smell it but she won’t buy it.

We go in a car wash, the brushes swish us all over but the water doesn’t come in our tight windows, it’s hilarious.

In the world I notice persons are nearly always stressed and have no time. Even Grandma often says that, but she and Steppa don’t have jobs, so I don’t know how persons with jobs do the jobs and all the living as well. In Room me and Ma had time for everything. I guess the time gets spread very thin like butter over all the world, the roads and houses and playgrounds and stores, so there’s only a little smear of time on each place, then everyone has to hurry on to the next bit.

Also everywhere I’m looking at kids, adults mostly don’t seem to like them, not even the parents do. They call the kids gorgeous and so cute, they make the kids do the thing all over again so they can take a photo, but they don’t want to actually play with them, they’d rather drink coffee talking to other adults. Sometimes there’s a small kid crying and the Ma of it doesn’t even hear.

In the library live millions of books we don’t have to pay any moneys for. Giant insects are hanging up, not real, made of paper. Grandma looks under C for Alice and she’s there, the wrong shape but the same words and pictures, that’s so weird. I show Grandma the scariest picture with the Duchess. We sit on the couch for her reading me The Pied Piper, I didn’t know he was a book as well as a story. My best bit is when the parents hear the laughing inside the rock. They keep shouting for the kids to come back but the kids are in a lovely country, I think it might be Heaven. The mountain never opens up to let the parents in.

There’s a big boy doing a computer of Harry Potter, Grandma says not to stand too near, it’s not my turn.

There’s a tiny world on a table with train tracks and buildings, a little kid is playing with a green truck. I go up, I take a red engine. I zoom it into the kid’s truck a bit, the kid giggles. I do it faster so the truck falls off the track, he giggles more.

“Good sharing, Walker.” That’s a man on the armchair looking at a thing like Uncle Paul’s BlackBerry.

I think the kid must be Walker. “Again,” he says.

This time I balance my engine on the little truck, then I take an orange bus and crash it into both of them.

“Gently,” says Grandma, but Walker is saying, “Again,” and jumping up and down.

Another man comes in and kisses the first one and then Walker. “Say bye-bye to your friend,” he tells him.

Is that me?

“Bye-bye.” Walker flaps his hand up and down.

I think I’ll give him a hug. I do it too fast and knock him down, he bangs on the train table and cries.

“I’m so sorry,” Grandma keeps saying, “my grandson doesn’t — he’s learning about boundaries—”

“No harm done,” says the first man. They go off with the little boy doing one two three whee swinging between them, he’s not crying anymore. Grandma watches them, she’s looking confused.

“Remember,” she says on the way to the white car, “we don’t hug strangers. Even nice ones.”

“Why not?”

“We just don’t, we save our hugs for people we love.”

“I love that boy Walker.”