Room: A Novel

“Jack—” Ma’s standing there.

I scream, “I don’t want to be your little bunny.”

I run into JACK’S ROOM with Rug pulling behind me getting caught on the door, I drag her into the wardrobe and put her all around me, I sit there for hours and hours and Ma doesn’t come.

My face is all stiff where the tears dried. Steppa says that’s how they make salt, they catch waves in little ponds then the sun dries them up.

There’s a scary sound bzz bzz bzz, then I hear Ma talking. “Yeah, I guess, as good a time as any.” After a minute I hear her outside the wardrobe, she says, “We’ve got visitors.”

It’s Dr. Clay and it’s Noreen. They’ve brought a food called takeout that’s noodles and rice and slippery yellow yummy things.

The splintery bits of the vase are all gone, Ma must have disappeared them down the incinerator.

There’s a computer for us, Dr. Clay is setting it up so we can do games and send e-mails. Noreen shows me how to do drawings right on the screen with the arrow turned into a paintbrush. I do one of me and Ma in the Independent Living.

“What’s all this white scribbly stuff?” asks Noreen.

“That’s the space.”

“Outer space?”

“No, all the space inside, the air.”

“Well, celebrity is a secondary trauma,” Dr. Clay is saying to Ma. “Have you given any further thought to new identities?” Ma shakes her head. “I can’t imagine. . I’m me and Jack’s Jack, right? How could I start calling him Michael or Zane or something?” Why she’d call me Michael or Zane?

“Well, what about a new surname at least,” says Dr. Clay, “so he attracts less attention when he starts school?” “When I start school?”

“Not till you’re ready,” says Ma, “don’t worry.”

I don’t think I’ll ever be ready.

In the evening we have a bath and I lie my head on Ma’s tummy in the water nearly sleeping.

We practice being in the two rooms and calling out to each other, but not too loud because there’s other persons living in the other Independent Livings that aren’t Six B. When I’m in JACK’S ROOM and Ma’s in MA’S ROOM, that’s not so bad, only when she’s in other rooms but I don’t know which, I don’t like that.

“It’s OK,” she says, “I’ll always hear you.”

We eat more of the takeout hotted again in our microwave, that’s the little stove that works super fast by invisible death rays.

“I can’t find Tooth,” I tell Ma.

“My tooth?”

“Yeah, your bad one that fell out that I kept, I had him all the time but now I think he’s lost. Unless maybe I swallowed him, but he’s not sliding out in my poo yet.”

“Don’t worry about it,” says Ma.

“But—”

“People move around so much out in the world, things get lost all the time.”

“Tooth’s not just a thing, I have to have him.”

“Trust me, you don’t.”

“But—”

She holds on to my shoulders. “Bye-bye rotten old tooth. End of story.”

She’s nearly laughing but I’m not.

I think maybe I did swallow him by accident. Maybe he’s not going to slide out in my poo, maybe he’s going to be hiding inside me in a corner forever.

• • •

In the night, I whisper, “I’m still switched on.”

“I know,” says Ma. “Me too.”

Our bedroom is MA’S ROOM that’s in the Independent Living that’s in America that’s stuck on the world that’s a blue and green ball a million miles across and always spinning. Outside the world there’s Outer Space. I don’t know why we don’t fall off. Ma says it’s gravity, that’s an invisible power that keeps us stuck to the ground, but I can’t feel it.

God’s yellow face comes up, we’re watching out the window. “Do you notice,” says Ma, “it’s a bit earlier every morning?” There’s six windows in our Independent Living, they all show different pictures but some of the same things. My favorite is the bathroom because there’s a building site, I can look down on the cranes and diggers. I say all the Dylan words to them, they like that.

In the living room I’m doing my Velcro because we’re going out. I see the space where the vase used to be till I threw it. “We could ask for another for Sundaytreat,” I tell Ma, then I remember.

Her shoes have laces that she’s tying. She looks at me, not mad. “You know, you won’t ever have to see him again.” “Old Nick.” I say the name to see if it sounds scary, it does but not very.

“I’ll have to just one more time,” says Ma, “when I go to court. It won’t be for months and months.” “Why will you have to?”

“Morris says I could do it by video link, but actually I want to look him in his mean little eye.”

Which one is that? I try and remember his eyes. “Maybe he’ll ask us for Sundaytreat, that would be funny.” Ma does not a nice laugh. She’s looking in the mirror, putting black lines around her eyes and purple on her mouth.

“You’re like a clown.”

“It’s just makeup,” she says, “so I’ll look better.”

“You look better always,” I tell her.

She grins at me in the mirror. I put my nose up at the end and my fingers in my ears and wiggle them.

We hold hands but the air is really warm today so they get slippy. We look in the windows of stores, only we don’t go in, we just walk. Ma keeps saying that things are ludicrously expensive or else they’re junk. “They sell men and women and children in there,” I tell her.

“What?” She spins around. “Oh, no, see, it’s a clothes shop, so when it says Men, Women, Children, it just means clothes for all those people.” When we have to cross a street we press the button and wait for the little silver man, he’ll keep us safe. There’s a thing that looks just concrete, but kids are there squeaking and jumping to get wet, it’s called a splash pad. We watch for a while but not too long because Ma says we might seem freaky.

We play I Spy. We buy ice cream that’s the best thing in the world, mine is vanilla and Ma’s is strawberry. Next time we can have different flavors, there’s hundreds. A big lump is cold all the way down and my face aches, Ma shows me to put my hand over my nose and sniff in the warm air. I’ve been in the world three weeks and a half, I still never know what’s going to hurt.

I have some coins that Steppa gave me, I buy Ma a clip for her hair with a ladybug on it but just a pretend one.

She says thanks over and over.

“You can have it forever even when you’re dead,” I tell her. “Will you be dead before I do?”

“That’s the plan.”

“Why that’s the plan?”

“Well, by the time you’re one hundred, I’ll be one hundred and twenty-one, and I think my body will be pretty worn out.” She’s grinning. “I’ll be in Heaven getting your room ready.”

“Our room,” I say.

“OK, our room.”

Then I see a phone booth and go in to play I’m Superman changing into his costume, I wave at Ma through the glass. There’s little cards with smiley pictures that say Busty Blonde 18 and Filipina Shemale, they’re ours because finders keepers losers weepers, but when I show Ma she says they’re dirty and makes me throw them in the trash.

For a while we get lost, then she sees the name of the street where the Independent Living is so we weren’t