Emma Donoghue - Room - A Novel

When I was a baby I only cried for a good reason. But Ma going in the shower and shutting me on the wrong side, that’s a good reason.

This time I come in, I stand flat against the glass but I still get splashed. Ma puts her face into the noisy waterfall, she makes a long groan.

“Are you hurting?” I shout.

“No, I’m just trying to enjoy my first shower in seven years.”

There’s a tiny packet that says Shampoo, Ma opens it with her teeth, she’s using it all up so there’s nearly none left. She waters her hair for ages and puts on more stuff from another little packet that says Conditioner for making silky. She wants to do mine but I don’t want to be silky, I won’t put my face in the splash. She washes me with her hands because there’s no cloth. There’s bits of my legs gone purple from where I jumped out of the brown truck ages ago. My cuts hurt everywhere, especially on my knee under my Dora and Boots Band-Aid that’s going curly, Ma says that means the cut’s getting better. I don’t know why hurting means getting better.

There’s a super thick white towel we can use each, not one to share. I’d rather share but Ma says that’s silly. She wraps another third towel around her head so it’s all huge and pointy like an icecream cone, we laugh.

I’m thirsty. “Can I have some now?”

“Oh, in a little while.” She holds out a big thing to me, with sleeves and a belt like a costume. “Wear this robe for now.” “But it’s a giant’s.”

“It’ll do.” She folds up the sleeves till they’re shorter and all puffy. She smells different, I think it’s the conditioner. She ties the robe around my middle. I lift up the long bits to walk. “Ta-da,” she says, “King Jack.”

She gets another robe just the same out of the wardrobe that’s not Wardrobe, it goes down just to her ankles.

“ ‘I will be king, diddle diddle, you can be queen,’ ” I sing.

Ma’s all pink and grinning, her hair is black from being wet. Mine is back in ponytail but tangledy because there’s no Comb, we left him in Room. “You should have brung Comb,” I tell her.

“Brought,” she says. “Remember, I was kind of in a hurry to see you.”

“Yeah, but we need it.”

“That old plastic comb with half its teeth snapped off? We need it like a hole in the head,” she says.

I find my socks beside the bed, I’m putting them on but Ma says stop because they’re all filthy from the street when I ran and ran and with holes in. She throws them in the trash too, she’s wasting everything.

“But Tooth, we forgot him.” I run to get the socks out of the trash and I find Tooth in the second one.

Ma rolls her eyes.

“He’s my friend,” I tell her, putting Tooth in the pocket in my robe. I’m licking my teeth because they feel funny. “Oh no, I didn’t brush after the lollipop.” I press them hard with my fingers so they won’t fall out, but not the bitten finger.

Ma shakes her head. “It wasn’t a real one.”

“It tasted real.”

“No, I mean it was sugarless, they make them with a kind of not-real sugar that’s not bad for your teeth.”

That’s confusing. I point at the other bed. “Who sleeps there?”

“It’s for you.”

“But I sleep with you.”

“Well, the nurses didn’t know that.” Ma’s staring out the window. Her shadow’s all long across the soft gray floor, I never saw such a long one. “Is that a cat in the parking lot?”

“Let’s see.” I run to look but my eyes don’t find it.

“Will we go explore?”

“Where?”

“Outside.”

“We’re in Outside already.”

“Yeah, but let’s go out in the fresh air and look for the cat,” says Ma.

“Cool.”

She finds us two pairs of slippers but they don’t fit me so I’m falling over, she says I can be barefoot for now. When I look out the window again, a thing zooms up near the other cars, it’s a van that says The Cumberland Clinic .

“What if he comes?” I whisper.

“Who?”

“Old Nick, if he comes in his truck.” I was nearly forgetting him, how could I be forgetting him?

“Oh, he couldn’t, he doesn’t know where we are,” says Ma.

“Are we a secret again?”

“Kind of, but the good kind.”

Beside the bed there’s a — I know what it is, it’s a phone. I lift the top bit, I say, “Hello,” but nobody’s talking, only a sort of hum.

“Oh, Ma, I didn’t have some yet.”

“Later.”

Everything’s backwards today.

Ma does the door handle and makes a face, it must be her bad wrist. She does it with the other hand. We go out in a long room with yellow walls and windows all along and doors the other side. Every wall’s a different color, that must be the rule. Our door is the door that says Seven all gold. Ma says we can’t go in the other doors because they belong to other persons.

“What other persons?”

“We haven’t met them yet.”

Then how does she know? “Can we look out the sideways windows?”

“Oh, yeah, they’re for anyone.”

“Is anyone us?”

“Us and anyone else,” says Ma.

Anyone else isn’t there so it’s just us. There’s no blind on these windows to stop seeing. It’s a different planet, it shows more other cars like green and white and a red one and a stony place and there’s things walking that are persons. “They’re tiny, like fairies.”

“Nah, that’s just because they’re far away,” Ma says.

“Are they real for real?”

“As real as you and me.”

I try and believe it but it’s hard work.

There’s one woman that’s not really one, I can tell because she’s gray, she’s a statue and all naked.

“Come on,” says Ma, “I’m starving.”

“I’m just—”

She pulls me by the hand. Then we can’t go anymore because there’s stairs down, lots of them. “Hold on to the banister.” “The what?”

“This thing here, the rail.”

I do.

“Climb down one step at a time.”

I’m going to fall. I sit down.

“OK, that works too.”

I go on my butt, one step then another then another and the giant robe comes loose. A big person rushes up the steps quick quick like she’s flying, but she’s not, she’s a real human all in white. I put my face on Ma’s robe to be not seen. “Oh,” says the she, “you should have buzzed—”

Like bees?

“The buzzer right by your bed?”

“We managed,” Ma tells her.

“I’m Noreen, let me get you a couple of fresh masks.”

“Oh sorry, I forgot,” says Ma.

“Sure, why don’t I bring them up to your room?”

“That’s OK, we’re coming down.”

“Grand. Jack, will I page an aide to carry you down the stairs?”

I don’t understand, I put my face away again.

“It’s OK,” says Ma, “he’s doing it his way.”

I go on my butt down the next eleven. At the bottom Ma ties up my robe again so we’re still the king and the queen like “Lavender’s Blue.” Noreen gives me another mask I have to wear, she says she’s a nurse and she comes from another place called Ireland and she likes my ponytail. We go in a huge bit that has all tables, I never saw so many with plates and glasses and knives and one of them stabs me in the tummy, one table I mean. The glasses are invisible like ours but the plates are blue, that’s disgusting.

It’s like a TV planet that’s all about us, persons saying “Good morning” and “Welcome to the Cumberland” and “Congratulations,” I don’t know for what. Some are in robes the exact as ours and some in pajamas and some in different uniforms. Most are huge but don’t have long of hair like us, they move fast and they’re suddenly on all the sides, even behind. They walk up close and have so many teeth, they smell wrong. A he with a beard all over says, “Well, buddy, you’re some kind of hero.” That’s me he means. I don’t look.