Emma Donoghue: Room: A Novel

I’m staring at us at the same time and the us in Mirror are staring back. “Not same nose.”

“Well, you’ve got a kid nose right now.”

I hold it. “Will it fall off and an adult nose grow?”

“No, no, it’ll just get bigger. Same brown hair—”

“But mine goes all the way down to my middle and yours just goes on your shoulders.”

“That’s true,” says Ma, reaching for Toothpaste. “All your cells are twice as alive as mine.”

I didn’t know things could be just half alive. I look again in Mirror. Our sleep Tshirts are different as well and our underwear, hers has no bears.

When she spits the second time it’s my go with Toothbrush, I scrub each my teeth all the way around. Ma’s spit in Sink doesn’t look a bit like me, mine doesn’t either. I wash them away and make a vampire smile.

“Argh.” Ma covers her eyes. “Your teeth are so clean, they’re dazzling me.”

Her ones are pretty rotted because she forgetted to brush them, she’s sorry and she doesn’t forget anymore but they’re still rotted.

I flat the chairs and put them beside Door against Clothes Horse. He always grumbles and says there’s no room but there’s plenty if he stands up really straight. I can fold up flat too but not quite as flat because of my muscles, from being alive. Door’s made of shiny magic metal, he goes beep beep after nine when I’m meant to be switched off in Wardrobe.

God’s yellow face isn’t coming in today, Ma says he’s having trouble squeezing through the snow.

“What snow?”

“See,” she says, pointing up.

There’s a little bit of light at Skylight’s top, the rest of her is all dark. TV snow’s white but the real isn’t, that’s weird. “Why it doesn’t fall on us?”

“Because it’s on the outside.”

“In Outer Space? I wish it was inside so I can play with it.”

“Ah, but then it would melt, because it’s nice and warm in here.” She starts humming, I guess right away it’s “Let It Snow.” I sing the second verse. Then I do “Winter Wonderland” and Ma joins in higher.

We have thousands of things to do every morning, like give Plant a cup of water in Sink for no spilling, then put her back on her saucer on Dresser. Plant used to live on Table but God’s face burned a leaf of her off. She has nine left, they’re the wide of my hand with furriness all over, like Ma says dogs are. But dogs are only TV. I don’t like nine. I find a tiny leaf coming, that counts as ten.

Spider’s real. I’ve seen her two times. I look for her now but there’s only a web between Table’s leg and her flat. Table balances good, that’s pretty tricky, when I go on one leg I can do it for ages but then I always fall over. I don’t tell Ma about Spider. She brushes webs away, she says they’re dirty but they look like extra-thin silver to me. Ma likes the animals that run around eating each other on the wildlife planet, but not real ones. When I was four I was watching ants walking up Stove and she ran and splatted them all so they wouldn’t eat our food. One minute they were alive and the next minute they were dirt. I cried so my eyes nearly melted off. Also another time there was a thing in the night nnnnng nnnnng nnnnng biting me and Ma banged him against Door Wall below Shelf, he was a mosquito. The mark is still there on the cork even though she scrubbed, it was my blood the mosquito was stealing, like a teeny vampire. That’s the only time my blood ever came out of me.

Ma takes her pill from the silver pack that has twenty-eight little spaceships and I take a vitamin from the bottle with the boy doing a handstand and she takes one from the big bottle with a picture of a woman doing Tennis. Vitamins are medicine for not getting sick and going back to Heaven yet. I never want to go, I don’t like dying but Ma says it might be OK when we’re a hundred and tired of playing. Also she takes a killer. Sometimes she takes two, never more than two, because some things are good for us but too much is suddenly bad.

“Is it Bad Tooth?” I ask. He’s on the top near the back of her mouth, he’s the worst.

Ma nods.

“Why you don’t take two killers all the bits of every day?”

She makes a face. “Then I’d be hooked.”

“What’s—?”

“Like stuck on a hook, because I’d need them all the time. Actually I might need more and more.”

“What’s wrong with needing?”

“It’s hard to explain.”

Ma knows everything except the things she doesn’t remember right, or sometimes she says I’m too young for her to explain a thing.

“My teeth feel a bit better if I stop thinking about them,” she tells me.

“How come?”

“It’s called mind over matter. If we don’t mind, it doesn’t matter.”

When a bit of me hurts, I always mind. Ma’s rubbing my shoulder but my shoulder’s not hurting, I like it anyway.

I still don’t tell her about the web. It’s weird to have something that’s mine-not-Ma’s. Everything else is both of ours. I guess my body is mine and the ideas that happen in my head. But my cells are made out of her cells so I’m kind of hers. Also when I tell her what I’m thinking and she tells me what she’s thinking, our each ideas jump into our other’s head, like coloring blue crayon on top of yellow that makes green.

At 08:30 I press the button on TV and try between the three. I find Dora the Explorer, yippee. Ma moves Bunny around real slow to better the picture with his ears and head. One day when I was four TV died and I cried, but in the night Old Nick brung a magic converter box to make TV back to life. The other channels after the three are totally fuzzy so we don’t watch them because of hurting our eyes, only if there’s music we put Blanket over and just listen through the gray of her and shake our booties.

Today I put my fingers on Dora’s head for a hug and tell her about my superpowers now I’m five, she smiles. She has the most huge hair that’s like a really brown helmet with pointy bits cutted out, it’s as big as the rest of her. I sit back on Bed in Ma’s lap to watch, I wriggle till I’m not on her pointy bones. She doesn’t have many soft bits but they’re super soft.

Dora says bits that aren’t in real language, they’re Spanish, like lo hicimos. She always wears Backpack who’s more inside than out, with everything Dora needs like ladders and space suits, for her dancing and playing soccer and flute and having adventures with Boots her best friend monkey. Dora always says she’s going to need my help, like can I find a magic thing, she waits for me to say, “Yeah.” I shout out, “Behind the palm tree,” and the blue arrow clicks right behind the palm tree, she says, “Thank you.” Every TV person else doesn’t listen. The Map shows three places every time, we have to go to the first to get to the second to get to the third. I walk with Dora and Boots, holding their hands, I join in all the songs especially with somersaults or high-fives or the Silly Chicken Dance. We have to watch out for that sneaky Swiper, we shout, “Swiper, no swiping,” three times so he gets all mad and says, “Oh man!” and runs away. One time Swiper made a remote-controlled robot butterfly, but it went wrong, it swiped his mask and gloves instead, that was hilarious. Sometimes we catch the stars and put them in Backpack’s pocket, I’d choose the Noisy Star that wakes up anything and the Switchy Star that can transform to all shapes.

On the other planets it’s mostly persons that hundreds can fit into the screen, except often one gets all big and near. They have clothes instead of skin, their faces are pink or yellow or brown or patchy or hairy, with very red mouths and big eyes with black edges. They laugh and shout a lot. I’d love to watch TV all the time, but it rots our brains. Before I came down from Heaven Ma left it on all day long and got turned into a zombie that’s like a ghost but walks thump thump. So now she always switches off after one show, then the cells multiply again in the day and we can watch another show after dinner and grow more brains in our sleep.