Room: A Novel

“No, just other people out.”

There’s three women and a man called Support Staff, we’re very welcome to buzz down anytime we need help with anything at all, buzzing is like calling on the phone. There’s lots of floors, and apartments on each one, mine and Ma’s is on six. I tug at her sleeve, I whisper, “Five.” “What’s that?”

“Can we be on five instead?”

“Sorry, we don’t get to choose,” she says.

When the elevator bangs shut Ma shivers.

“You OK?” asks Grandma.

“Just one more thing to get used to.”

Ma has to tap in the secret code to make the elevator shake. My tummy feels odd when it ups. Then the doors open and we’re on six already, we flew without knowing it. There’s a little hatch that says INCINERATOR, when we put trash in it it’ll fall down down down and go up in smoke. On the doors it’s not numbers it’s letters, ours is the B, that means we live in Six B. Six is not a bad number like nine, it’s the upside down of it actually. Ma puts the key in the hole, when she turns it she makes a face because of her bad wrist. She’s not all fixed yet. “Home,” she says, pushing the door open.

How is it home if I’ve never been here?

An apartment’s like a house but all squished flat. There’s five rooms, that’s lucky, one is the bathroom with a bath so we can have baths not showers. “Can we have one now?”

“Let’s get settled in first,” says Ma.

The stove does flames like at Grandma’s. The next to the kitchen is the living room that has a couch and a low-down table and a super-big TV in it.

Grandma’s in the kitchen unpacking a box. “Milk, bagels, I don’t know if you’ve started drinking coffee again. . He likes this alphabet cereal, he spelled out Volcano the other day.”

Ma puts her arms on Grandma and stops her moving for a minute. “Thanks.”

“Should I run out for anything else?”

“No, I think you’ve thought of everything. ’Night, Mom.”

Grandma’s face is twisted. “You know—”

“What?” Ma waits. “What is it?”

“I didn’t forget a day of you either.”

They aren’t saying anything so I go try the beds for which is bouncier. When I’m doing somersaults I hear them talking a lot. I go around opening and shutting everything.

After Grandma’s gone back to her house Ma shows me how to do the bolt, that’s like a key that only us on the inside can open or shut.

In bed I remember, I pull her T-shirt up.

“Ah,” says Ma, “I don’t think there’s any in there.”

“Yeah, there must be.”

“Well, the thing about breasts is, if they don’t get drunk from, they figure, OK, nobody needs our milk anymore, we’ll stop making it.” “Dumbos. I bet I can find some. .”

“No,” says Ma, putting her hand between, “I’m sorry. That’s all done. Come here.”

We cuddle hard. Her chest goes boom boom in my ear, that’s the heart of her.

I lift up her T-shirt.

“Jack—”

I kiss the right and say, “Bye-bye.” I kiss the left twice because it was always creamier. Ma holds my head so tight I say, “I can’t breathe,” and she lets go.

• • •

God’s face comes up all pale red in my eyes. I blink and make the light come and go. I wait till Ma’s breathing is on. “How long do we stay here at the Independent Living?”

She yawns. “As long as we like.”

“I’d like to stay for one week.”

She stretches her whole self. “We’ll stay for a week, then, and after that we’ll see.”

I curl her hair like a rope. “I could cut yours and then we’d be the same again.”

Ma shakes her head. “I think I’m going to keep mine long.”

When we’re unpacking there’s a big problem, I can’t find Tooth.

I look in all my stuff and then all around in case I dropped him last night. I’m trying to remember when I had him in my hand or in my mouth. Not last night but maybe the night before at Grandma’s I think I was sucking him. I have a terrible thought, maybe I swallowed him by accident in my sleep.

“What happens to stuff we eat if it’s not food?”

Ma’s putting socks in her drawer. “Like what?”

I can’t tell her I maybe lost a bit of her. “Like a little stone or something.”

“Oh, then it just slides on through.”

We don’t go down in the elevator today, we don’t even get dressed. We stay in our Independent Living and learn all the bits. “We could sleep in this room,” says Ma, “but you could play in the other one that gets more sunshine.”

“With you.”

“Well, yeah, but sometimes I’ll be doing other things, so maybe during the day our sleeping room could be my room.” What other things?

Ma pours us our cereal, not even counting. I thank Baby Jesus.

“I read a book at college that said everyone should have a room of their own,” she says.

“Why?”

“To do their thinking in.”

“I can do my thinking in a room with you.” I wait. “Why you can’t think in a room with me?”

Ma makes a face. “I can, most of the time, but it would be nice to have somewhere to go that’s just mine, sometimes.” “I don’t think so.”

She does a long breath. “Let’s just try it for today. We could make nameplates and stick them on the doors. .” “Cool.”

We do all different color letters on pages, they say JACK’S ROOM and MA’S ROOM, then we stick them up with tape, we use all we like.

I have to poo, I look in it but I don’t see Tooth.

We’re sitting on the couch looking at the vase on the table, it’s made of glass but not invisible, it’s got all blues and greens. “I don’t like the walls,” I tell Ma.

“What’s wrong with them?”

“They’re too white. Hey, you know what, we could buy cork squares from the store and stick them up all over.” “No way Jose.” After a minute, she says, “This is a fresh start, remember?”

She says remember but she doesn’t want to remember Room.

I think of Rug, I run to get her out of the box and I drag her behind me. “Where will Rug go, beside the couch or beside our bed?” Ma shakes her head.

“But—”

“Jack, it’s all frayed and stained from seven years of — I can smell it from here. I had to watch you learn to crawl on that rug, learn to walk, it kept tripping you up. You pooed on it once, another time the soup spilled, I could never get it really clean.” Her eyes are all shiny and too big.

“Yeah and I was born on her and I was dead in her too.”

“Yeah, so what I’d really like to do is throw it in the incinerator.”

“No!”

“If for once in your life you thought about me instead of—”

“I do,” I shout. “I thought about you always when you were Gone.”

Ma shuts her eyes just for a second. “Tell you what, you can keep it in your own room, but rolled up in the wardrobe. OK? I don’t want to have to see it.” She goes out to the kitchen, I hear her splash the water. I pick up the vase, I throw it at the wall and it goes in a zillion pieces.