Room by Emma Donoghue
“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?”
She’s leaning her head back on the top of the chair, her eyes are shut. “Nothing, don’t worry about it.”
“Will he die soon?”
Grandma opens her eyes at me.
“Or will it be you first?”
“I’ll have you know I’m only fifty-nine, young man.”
Ma’s only twenty-six. She’s turned the corner, does that mean she’s coming back yet?
“Nobody’s going to die,” says Grandma, “don’t you fret.”
“Ma says everybody’s going to die sometime.”
She squeezes up her mouth, it’s got lines around it like sun rays. “You’ve only just met most of us, mister, so don’t be in a hurry to say bye-bye.”
I’m looking down into the green bit of the yard. “Where’s the hammock?”
“I suppose we could dig it out of the basement, since you’re so keen.” She gets up with a grunt.
“Me too.”
“Sit tight, enjoy the sunshine, I’ll be back before you know it.”
But I’m not sitting, I’m standing.
It’s quiet when she’s gone, except there’s squeaky sounds in the trees, I think it’s birds but I don’t see. The wind makes the leaves go swishy swishy. I hear a kid shout, maybe in another yard behind the big hedge or else he’s invisible. God’s yellow face has a cloud on top. Colder suddenly. The world is always changing brightness and hotness and soundness, I never know how it’s going to be the next minute. The cloud looks kind of gray blue, I wonder has it got rain inside it. If rain starts dropping on me I’ll run in the house before it drowns my skin.
There’s something going zzzzz, I look in the flowers and it’s the most amazing thing, an alive bee that’s huge with yellow and black bits, it’s dancing right inside the flower. “Hi,” I say. I put out my finger to stroke it and—
Arghhhhhh,
my hand’s exploding the worst hurt I ever. “Ma,” I’m screaming, Ma in my head, but she’s not in the backyard and she’s not in my head and she’s not anywhere, I’m all alone in the hurt in the hurt in the hurt in—
“What did you do to yourself?” Grandma rushes across the deck.
“I didn’t, it was the bee.”
When she spreads the special ointment it doesn’t hurt quite as much but still a lot.
I have to use my other hand for helping her. The hammock hangs on hooks in two trees at the very back of the yard, one is a shortish tree that’s only twice my tall and bent over, one is a million times high with silvery leaves. The rope bits are kind of squished from being in the basement, we need to keep pulling till the holes are the right size. Also two of the ropes are broken so there’s extra holes that we have to not sit in. “Probably moths,” says Grandma.
I didn’t know moths grow big enough to break ropes.
“To be honest, we haven’t put it up for years.” She says she won’t risk climbing in, anyway she prefers some back support.
I stretch out and fill the hammock all myself. I wriggle my feet in my shoes, I put them through the holes, and my hands, but not my right one because that’s still agonizing from the bee. I think about the little Ma and little Paul that swinged in the hammock, it’s weird, where are they now? The big Paul is with Deana and Bronwyn maybe, they said we’d go see the dinosaurs another day but I think they were lying. The big Ma is at the Clinic turning the corner.
I push the ropes, I’m a fly inside a web. Or a robber Spider-Man catched. Grandma pushes and I swing so I’m dizzy but a cool kind of dizzy.
“Phone.” That’s Steppa on the deck, shouting.
Grandma runs up the grass, she leaves me all on my own again in the outside Outside. I jump down off the hammock and nearly fall because one shoe gets stuck. I pull my foot out, the shoe falls off. I run after, I’m nearly as fast as her.
In the kitchen Grandma’s talking on the phone. “Of course, first things first, he’s right here. There’s somebody wants to talk to you.” That’s me she’s telling, she holds out the phone but I don’t take it. “Guess who?”
I blink at her.
“It’s your ma.”
It’s true, here’s Ma’s voice in the phone. “Jack?”
“Hi.”
I don’t hear anything else so I pass it back to Grandma.
“It’s me again, how are you doing, really?” Grandma asks. She nods and nods and says, “He’s keeping his chin up.
She gives me the phone again, I listen to Ma say sorry a lot.
“You’re not poisoned with the bad medicine anymore?” I ask.
“No, no, I’m getting better.”
“You’re not in Heaven?”
Grandma covers her mouth.
Ma makes a sound I can’t tell if it’s a cry or a laugh. “I wish.”
“Why you wish you’re in Heaven?”
“I don’t really, I was just joking.”
“It’s not a funny joke.”
“No.”
“Don’t wish.”
“OK. I’m here at the clinic.”
“Were you tired of playing?”
I don’t hear anything, I think she’s gone. “Ma?”
“I was tired,” she says. “I made a mistake.”
“You’re not tired anymore?”
She doesn’t say anything. Then she says, “I am. But it’s OK.”
“Can you come here and swing in the hammock?”
“Pretty soon,” she says.
“When?”
“I don’t know, it depends. Is everything OK there with Grandma?”
“And Steppa.”
“Right. What’s new?”
“Everything,” I say.
That makes her laugh, I don’t know why. “Have you been having fun?”
“The sun burned my skin off and a bee stinged me.”
Grandma rolls her eyes.
Ma says something I don’t hear. “I’ve got to go now, Jack, I need some more sleep.”
“You’ll wake up after?”
“I promise. I’m so—” Her breath sounds all raggedy. “I’ll talk to you again soon, OK?”
“OK.”
There’s no more talking so I put the phone down. Grandma says, “Where’s your other shoe?”
• • •
I’m watching the flames dancing all orange under the pasta pot. The match is on the counter with its end all black and curly. I touch it to the fire, it makes a hiss and gets a big flame again so I drop it on the stove. The little flame goes invisible nearly, it’s nibbling along the match little by little till it’s all black and a small smoke goes up like a silvery ribbon. The smell is magic. I take another match from the box, I light the end in the fire and this time I hold on to it even when it hisses. It’s my own little flame I can carry around with me. I wave it in a circle, I think it’s gone out but it comes back. The flame’s getting bigger and messy all along the match, it’s two different flames and there’s a little line of red along the wood between them—
“Hey!”
I jump, it’s Steppa. I don’t have the match anymore.
He stamps on my foot.
I howl.
“It was on your sock.” He shows me the match all curled up, he rubs my sock where there’s a black bit. “Didn’t your ma ever teach you not to play with fire?”
“There wasn’t.”
“There wasn’t what?”
“Fire.”
He stares at me. “I guess your stove was electric. Go figure.”
“What’s up?” Grandma comes in.
“Jack’s just learning kitchen tools,” says Steppa, stirring the pasta. He holds a thing up and looks at me.
“Grater,” I remember.
Grandma’s setting the table.
“And this?”
“Garlic masher.”
“Garlic crusher. Way more violent than mashing.” He grins at me. He didn’t tell Grandma about the match, that’s kind of lying but not getting me into trouble is a good reason. He’s holding up something else.
“Another grater?”
“Citrus zester. And this?”
“Ah . . . a whisk.”
Steppa dangles a long pasta in the air and slurps it. “My elder brother pulled a pot of rice down on himself when he was three, and his arm was always rippled like a chip.”
“Oh, yeah, I saw them in TV.”
Grandma stares at me. “Don’t tell me you’ve never had potato chips?” Then she gets up on the steps and moves things in a cabinet.
“E.T.A. two minutes,” says Steppa.
“Oh, a handful won’t hurt.” Grandma climbs down with a scrunched bag and opens it out.
The chips have got all lines on them, I take one and eat the edge of it. Then I say, “No, thanks,” and put it back in the bag.
Steppa laughs, I don’t know what’s funny. “The boy’s saving himself for my tagliatelle carbonara.”
“Can I see the skin instead?”
“What skin?” asks Grandma.
“The brother’s.”
“Oh, he lives in Mexico. He’s your, I guess, your great-uncle.”
Steppa throws all the water into the sink so it makes a big cloud of wet air.
“Why is he great?”
“It just means he’s Leo’s brother. All our relatives, you’re related to them now too,” says Grandma. “What’s ours is yours.”
“LEGO,” says Steppa.
“What?” she says.
“Like LEGO. Bits of families stuck together.”
“I saw that in TV too,” I tell them.
Grandma’s staring at me again. “Growing up without LEGO,” she tells Steppa, “I literally can’t imagine it.”
“Bet there’s a couple billion children in the world managing somehow,” says Steppa.
“I guess you’re right.” She’s looking confused. “We must have a box of it kicking around down in the basement, though . . .”
Steppa cracks an egg with one hand so it plops over the pasta. “Dinner is served.”
• • •
I’m riding lots on the bike that doesn’t move, I can reach the pedals with my toes if I stretch. I zoom it for thousands of hours so my legs will get super strong and I can run away back to Ma and save her again. I lie down on the blue mats, my legs are tired. I lift the free weights, I don’t know what’s free about them. I put one on my tummy, I like how it holds me down so I won’t fall off the spinny world.
Ding-dong, Grandma shouts because it’s a visitor for me, that’s Dr. Clay.
We sit on the deck, he’ll warn me if there’s any bees. Humans and bees should just wave, no touching. No patting a dog unless its human says OK, no running across roads, no touching private parts except mine in private. Then there’s special cases, like police are allowed shoot guns but only at bad guys. There’s too many rules to fit in my head, so we make a list with Dr. Clay’s extra-heavy golden pen. Then another list of all the new things, like free weights and potato chips and birds. “Is it exciting seeing them for real, not just on TV?” he asks.
“Yeah. Except nothing in TV ever stinged me.”
“Good point,” says Dr. Clay, nodding. “ ‘Human kind cannot bear very much reality.’ ”
“Is that a poem again?”
“How did you guess?”
“You do a weird voice,” I tell him. “What’s humankind?”
“The human race, all of us.”
“Is that me too?”
“Oh, for sure, you’re one of us.”
“And Ma.”
Dr. Clay nods. “She’s one too.”
But what I actually meant was, maybe I’m a human but I’m a me-and-Ma as well. I don’t know a word for us two. Roomers? “Is she coming to get me soon?”
“As soon as she possibly can,” he says. “Would you feel more comfortable staying at the clinic instead of here at your Grandma’s?”
“With Ma in Room Number Seven?”
He shakes his head. “She’s in the other wing, she needs to be on her own for a while.”
I think he’s wrong, if I was sick I’d need Ma with me even more.
“But she’s working really hard to get better,” he tells me.
I thought people are just sick or better, I didn’t know it was work.
For good-bye, me and Dr. Clay do high five, low five, back five.
When I’m on the toilet I hear him on the porch with Grandma. Her v
• • •
In the night there’s a million of tiny computers talking to each other about me. Ma’s gone up the beanstalk and I’m down on earth shaking it and shaking it so she’ll fall down—
No. That was only dreaming.
“I’ve had a brainwave,” says Grandma in my ear, she’s leaning down with her bottom half still in her bed. “Let’s drive to the playground before breakfast so there’ll be no other kids there.”
Our shadows are really long and stretchy. I wave my giant fists. Grandma nearly sits on a bench, but there’s wet on it, so she leans against the fence instead. There’s a small wet on everything, she says it’s dew that looks like rain but not out of the sky, it’s a kind of sweat that happens in the night. I draw a face on the slide. “It doesn’t matter if you get your clothes wet, feel free.”
“Actually I feel cold.”
There’s a bit with all sand in, Grandma says I could sit in that and play with it.
“What?”
“Huh?” she says.
“Play what?”
“I don’t know, dig it or scoop it or something.”
I touch it but it’s scratchy, I don’t want it all over me.
“What about the climber, or the swings?” says Grandma.
“Are you going to?”
She does a little laugh, she says she’d probably break something.
“Why you’d—?”
“Oh, not on purpose, just because I’m heavy.”
I go up some steps, standing like a boy not like a monkey, they’re metal with rough orange bits called rust and the holding-on bars make my hands frozen. At the end there’s a tiny house like for elves, I sit at the table and the roof’s right over my head, it’s red and the table is blue.
“Yoo-hoo.”
I jump, it’s Grandma waving through the window. Then she goes around the other side and waves again. I wave back, she likes that.
At the corner of the table I see something move, it’s a tiny spider. I wonder if Spider is still in Room, if her web is getting bigger and bigger. I tap tunes, like Hum but only tapping and Ma in my head has to guess, she guesses most of them right. When I do them on the floor with my shoe it’s different-sounding because it’s metal. The wall says something I can’t read, all scribbled and there’s a drawing that I think is a penis but it’s as big as the person.