Emma Donoghue - Room - A Novel

We get up and play Cat’s Cradle and Dominoes and Submarine and Puppets and lots of other things but only a little while each. We do Hum, the songs are too easy to guess. We go back in Bed to warm up.

“Let’s go in Outside tomorrow,” I say.

“Oh, Jack.”

I’m lying on Ma’s arm that’s all thick in two sweaters. “I like how it smells there.”

She moves her head to stare at me.

“When Door opens after nine and the air whooshes in that’s not like our air.”

“You noticed,” she says.

“I notice all the things.”

“Yeah, it’s fresher. In the summer, it smells of cut grass, because we’re in his backyard. Sometimes I get a glimpse of shrubs and hedges.” “Whose backyard?”

“Old Nick’s. Room is made out of his shed, remember?”

It’s hard to remember all the bits, none of them sound very true.

“He’s the only one who knows the code numbers to tap into the outside keypad.”

I stare at Keypad, I didn’t know there was another. “I tap numbers.”

“Yeah, but not the secret ones that open the door — like an invisible key,” says Ma. “Then when he’s going back to the house he taps in the code again, on this one”—she points at Keypad.

“The house with the hammock?”

“No.” Ma’s voice is loud. “Old Nick lives in a different one.”

“Can we go to his one someday?”

She presses her mouth with her hand. “I’d rather go to your grandma and grandpa’s house.”

“We could swing in the hammock.”

“We could do what we liked, we’d be free.”

“When I’m six?”

“Definitely someday.”

There’s wet running down Ma’s face onto mine. I jump, it’s salty.

“I’m OK,” she says, rubbing her cheek, “it’s OK. I’m just — I’m a bit scared.”

“You can’t be scared.” I’m nearly shouting. “Bad idea.”

“Just a little bit. We’re OK, we’ve got the basics.”

Now I’m even scareder. “But what if Old Nick doesn’t uncut the power and he doesn’t bring more food, not ever ever ever?” “He will,” she says, she’s still breathing gulpy. “I’m nearly a hundred percent sure he will.”

Nearly a hundred, that’s ninety-nine. Is ninety-nine enough?

Ma sits up, she scrubs her face with the arm of her sweater.

My tummy rumbles, I wonder what we’ve got left. It’s getting dark again already. I don’t think the light is winning.

“Listen, Jack, I need to tell you another story.”

“A true one?”

“Totally true. You know how I used to be all sad?”

I like this one. “Then I came down from Heaven and grew in your tummy.”

“Yeah, but see, why I was sad — it was because of Room,” says Ma. “Old Nick — I didn’t even know him, I was nineteen. He stole me.” I’m trying to understand. Swiper no swiping. But I never heard of swiping people.

Ma’s holding me too tight. “I was a student. It was early in the morning, I was crossing a parking lot to get to the college library, listening to — it’s a tiny machine that holds a thousand songs and plays them in your ear, I was the first of my friends to get one.”

I wish I had that machine.

“Anyway — this man ran up asking for help, his dog was having a fit and he thought it might be dying.”

“What’s he called?”

“The man?”

I shake my head. “The dog.”

“No, the dog was just a trick to get me into his pickup truck, Old Nick’s truck.”

“What color is it?”

“The truck? Brown, he’s still got the same one, he’s always griping about it.”

“How many wheels?”

“I need you to concentrate on what matters,” says Ma.

I nod. Her hands are too tight, I loosen them.

“He put a blindfold on me—”

“Like Blindman’s Buff?”

“Yeah, but not fun. He drove and drove, I was terrified.”

“Where was I?”

“You hadn’t happened yet, remember?”

I forgot. “Was the dog in the truck too?”

“There was no dog.” Ma’s sounding cranky again. “You have to let me tell this story.”

“Can I pick another?”

“It’s what happened.”

“Can I have Jack the Giant Killer ?”

“Listen,” says Ma, putting her hand over my mouth. “He made me take some bad medicine so I’d fall asleep. Then when I woke up I was here.” It’s nearly black and I can’t see Ma’s face at all now, it’s turned away so I can only hear.

“The first time he opened the door I screamed for help and he knocked me down, I never tried that again.”

My tummy’s all knotted.

“I used to be scared to go to sleep, in case he came back,” says Ma, “but when I was asleep was the only time I wasn’t crying, so I slept about sixteen hours a day.”

“Did you make a pool?”

“What?”

“Alice cries a pool because she can’t remember all her poems and numbers, then she’s drowning.”

“No,” says Ma, “but my head ached all the time, my eyes were scratchy. The smell of the cork tiles made me sick.”

What smell?

“I drove myself crazy looking at my watch and counting the seconds. Things spooked me, they seemed to get bigger or smaller while I was watching them, but if I looked away they started sliding. When he finally brought the TV, I left it on twenty-four/seven, stupid stuff, commercials for food I remembered, my mouth hurt wanting it all. Sometimes I heard voices from the TV telling me things.”

“Like Dora?”

She shakes her head. “When he was at work I tried to get out, I tried everything. I stood on tiptoe on the table for days scraping around the skylight, I broke all my nails. I threw everything I could think of at it but the mesh is so strong, I never even managed to crack the glass.”

Skylight’s just a square of not quite so dark. “What everything?”

“The big saucepan, chairs, the trash can . . .”

Wow, I wish I saw her throw Trash.

“And another time I dug a hole.”

I’m confused. “Where?”

“You can feel it, would you like that? We’ll have to wriggle . . .” Ma throws Duvet back and pulls Box out from Under Bed, she makes a little grunt going in. I slide in beside her, we’re near Eggsnake but not to squish him. “I got the idea from The Great Escape .” Her voice is all boomy beside my head.

I remember that story about the Nazi camp, not a summer one with marshmallows but in winter with millions of persons drinking maggot soup. The Allies burst open the gates and everybody ran out, I think Allies are angels like Saint Peter’s one.

“Give me your fingers . . .” Ma pulls on them. I feel the cork of Floor. “Just here.” Suddenly there’s a bit that’s down with rough edges. My chest’s going boom boom, I never knowed there was a hole. “Careful, don’t cut yourself. I made it with the zigzag knife,” she says. “I pried up the cork, but the wood took me a while. Then the lead foil and the foam were easy enough, but you know what I found then?”

“Wonderland?”

Ma makes a mad sound so loud I bang my head on Bed.

“Sorry.”

“What I found was a chain-link fence.”

“Where?”

“Right there in the hole.”

A fence in a hole? I put my hand down and downer.

“Something metal, are you there?”

“Yeah.” Cold, all smooth, I grab it in my fingers.

“When he was turning the shed into Room,” says Ma, “he hid a layer of fence under the floor joists, and in all the walls and even the roof, so I could never ever cut through.”

We’ve wriggled out now. We’re sitting with our backs against Bed. I’m all out of breath.

“When he found the hole,” says Ma, “he howled.”