Emma Donoghue - Room - A Novel

“No! You didn’t do anything, it was a year before you were even born,” says Ma. “You know I used to say, when you came the first time, on Bed, you were a girl?” “Yeah.”

“Well, that’s who I meant.”

I’m even more confused.

“I think she was trying to be you. The cord—” Ma puts her face in her hands.

“The blind cord?” I look at it, there’s only dark coming in the stripes.

“No, no, remember the cord that goes to the belly button?”

“You cutted it with the scissors and then I was free.”

Ma’s nodding. “But with the girl baby, it got tangled when she was coming out, so she couldn’t breathe.”

“I don’t like this story.”

She presses her eyebrows. “Let me finish it.”

“Idon’t—”

“He was right there, watching.” Ma’s nearly shouting. “He didn’t know the first thing about babies getting born, he hadn’t even bothered to Google it. I could feel the top of her head, it was all slippery, I pushed and pushed, I was shouting, ‘Help, I can’t, help me—’ And he just stood there.” I wait. “Did she stay in your tummy? The girl baby?”

Ma doesn’t say anything for a minute. “She came out blue.”

Blue?

“She never opened her eyes.”

“You should ask Old Nick for medicine for her, for Sundaytreat.”

Ma shakes her head. “The cord was all knotted around her neck.”

“Was she still tied in you?”

“Till he cut it.”

“And then she was free?”

There’s tears falling all on the blanket. Ma’s nodding and crying but on mute.

“Is it all done now? The story?”

“Nearly.” Her eyes are shut but the water still slides out. “He took her away and buried her under a bush in the backyard. Just her body, I mean.” She was blue.

“The her part of her, that went straight back up to Heaven.”

“She got recycled?”

Ma nearly smiles. “I like to think that’s what happened.”

“Why you like to think that?”

“Maybe it really was you, and a year later you tried again and came back down as a boy.”

“I was me for real that time. I didn’t go back.”

“No way Jose.” The tears are falling out again, she rubs them away. “I didn’t let him in Room that time.”

“Why not?”

“I heard Door, the beeping, and I roared, ‘Get out.’ ”

I bet that made him mad.

“I was ready, this time I wanted it to be just me and you.”

“What color was I?”

“Hot pink.”

“Did I open my eyes?”

“You were born with your eyes open.”

I do the most enormous yawn. “Can we go to sleep now?”

“Oh, yeah,” says Ma.

In the night bang I fall out on the floor. My nose runs a lot but I don’t know to blow it in the dark.

“This bed’s too small for two,” says Ma in the morning. “You’d be more comfortable in the other one.”

“No.”

“What if we took the mattress and put it right here beside my bed so we could hold hands even?”

I shake my head.

“Help me figure this out, Jack.”

“Let’s stay both in the one but keep our elbows in.”

Ma blows her nose loud, I think the cold jumped from me to her but I still have it too.

We have a deal that I go in the shower with her but I keep my head out. The Band-Aid on my finger’s fallen off and I can’t find it. Ma brushes my hair, the tangles hurt. We have a hairbrush and two toothbrushes and all our new clothes and the little wooden train and other toys, Ma still hasn’t counted, so she doesn’t know I took six not five. I don’t know where the stuff should go, some on the dresser, some on the table beside the bed, some in the wardrobe, I have to keep asking Ma where she put them.

She’s reading one of her books with no pictures but I bring her the picture ones instead. The Very Hungry Caterpillar is a terrible waster, he just eats holes through strawberries and salamis and everything and leaves the rest. I can put my actual finger through the holes, I thought somebody teared the book but Ma says it was made that way on purpose to be extra fun. I like Go, Dog, Go more, especially when they fight with tennis rackets.

Noreen knocks with somethings very exciting, the first are softy stretchy shoes like socks but made of leather, the second is a watch with just numbers so I can read it like Watch. I say, “The time is nine fifty-seven.” It’s too small for Ma, it’s just mine, Noreen shows me how to tight the strap on my wrist.

“Presents every day, he’ll be getting spoiled,” says Ma, putting her mask up to blow her nose again.

“Dr. Clay said, whatever gives the lad a bit of a sense of control,” says Noreen. When she smiles her eyes crinkle. “Probably a bit homesick, aren’t you?” “Homesick?” Ma’s staring at her.

“Sorry, I didn’t—”

“It wasn’t a home, it was a soundproofed cell.”

“That came out wrong, I beg your pardon,” says Noreen.

She goes in a hurry. Ma doesn’t say anything, she just writes in her notebook.

If Room wasn’t our home, does that mean we don’t have one?

This morning I give Dr. Clay a high five, he’s thrilled.

“It seems a bit ridiculous to keep wearing these masks when we’ve already got a streaming cold,” says Ma.

“Well,” he says, “there are worse things out there.”

“Yeah, but we have to keep pulling the masks up to blow our noses anyway—”

He shrugs. “Ultimately it’s your call.”

“Masks off, Jack,” Ma tells me.

“Yippee.”

We put them in the trash.

Dr. Clay’s crayons live in a special box of cardboard that says 120 on it, that’s how many all different. They’ve got amazing names written small up the sides like Atomic Tangerine and Fuzzy Wuzzy and Inchworm and Outer Space that I never knew had a color, and Purple Mountain’s Majesty and Razzmatazz and Unmellow Yellow and Wild Blue Yonder. Some are spelled wrong on purpose for a joke, like Mauvelous, that’s not very funny I don’t think. Dr. Clay says I can use any but I just choose the five I know to color like the ones in Room, a blue and a green and an orange and a red and a brown. He asks can I draw Room maybe but I’m already doing a rocket ship with brown. There’s even a white crayon, wouldn’t that be invisible?

“What if the paper was black,” says Dr. Clay, “or red?” He finds me a black page to try and he’s right, I can see the white on it. “What’s this square all around the rocket?”

“Walls,” I tell him. There’s the girl me baby waving bye-bye and Baby Jesus and John the Baptist, they don’t have any clothes because it’s sunny with God’s yellow face.

“Is your ma in this picture?”

“She’s down at the bottom having a nap.”

The real Ma laughs a bit and blows her nose. That remembers me to do mine because it’s dripping.

“What about the man you call Old Nick, is he anywhere?”

“OK, he can be over in this corner in his cage.” I do him and the bars very thick, he’s biting them. There are ten bars, that’s the strongest number, not even an angel could burn them open with his blowtorch and Ma says an angel wouldn’t turn on his blowtorch for a bad guy anyway. I show Dr. Clay how many counting I can do up to 1,000,029 and even higher if I wanted.

“A little boy I know, he counts the same things over and over when he feels nervous, he can’t stop.”

“What things?” I ask.

“Lines on the sidewalk, buttons, that kind of thing.”

I think that boy should count his teeth instead, because they’re always there, unless they fall out.

“You keep talking about separation anxiety,” Ma’s saying to Dr. Clay, “but me and Jack are not going to be separated.” “Still, it’s not just the two of you anymore, is it?”