Emma Donoghue - Room - A Novel

She’s chewing her mouth. They talk about social reintegration and self-blame.

“The very best thing you did was, you got him out early,” says Dr. Clay. “At five, they’re still plastic.”

But I’m not plastic, I’m a real boy.

“ . . . probably young enough to forget,” he’s saying, “which will be a mercy.”

That’s thanks in Spanish I think.

I want to keep playing with the boy puppet with the tongue but time’s up, Dr. Clay has to go play with Mrs. Garber. He says I can borrow the puppet till tomorrow but he still belongs to Dr. Clay.

“Why?”

“Well, everything in the world belongs to somebody.”

Like my six new toys and my five new books, and Tooth is mine I think because Ma didn’t want him anymore.

“Except the things we all share,” says Dr. Clay, “like the rivers and the mountains.”

“The street?”

“That’s right, we all get to use the streets.”

“I ran on the street.”

“When you were escaping, right.”

“Because we didn’t belong to him.”

“That’s right.” Dr. Clay’s smiling. “You know who you belong to, Jack?”

“Yeah.”

“Yourself.”

He’s wrong, actually, I belong to Ma.

The Clinic keeps having more bits in it, like there’s a room with a ginormous TV and I jump up and down hoping Dora might be on or SpongeBob, I haven’t met them in ages, but it’s only golf, three old people I don’t know the names are watching.

In the corridor I remember, I ask, “What’s the mercy for?”

“Huh?”

“Dr. Clay said I was made of plastic and I’d forget.”

“Ah,” says Ma. “He figures, soon you won’t remember Room anymore.”

“I will too.” I stare at her. “Am I meant to forget?”

“I don’t know.”

She’s always saying that now. She’s gone ahead of me already, she’s at the stairs, I have to run to catch up.

After lunch. Ma says it’s time to try going Outside again. “If we stay indoors all the time, it’s like we never did our Great Escape at all.” She’s sounding cranky, she’s tying her laces already.

After my hat and shades and shoes and the sticky stuff again, I’m tired.

Noreen is waiting for us beside the fish tank.

Ma lets me revolve in the door five times. She pushes and we’re out.

It’s so bright, I think I’m going to scream. Then my shades get darker and I can’t see. The air smells weird in my sore nose and my neck’s all tight. “Pretend you’re watching this on TV,” says Noreen in my ear.

“Huh?”

“Just try it.” She does a special voice: “ ‘Here’s a boy called Jack going for a walk with his Ma and their friend Noreen.’ ” I’m watching it.

“What’s Jack wearing on his face?” she asks.

“Cool red shades.”

“So he is. Look, they’re all walking across the parking lot on a mild April day.”

There’s four cars, a red and a green and a black and a brownish goldy. Burnt Sienna, that’s the crayon of it. Inside their windows they’re like little houses with seats. A teddy bear is hanging up in the red one on the mirror. I’m stroking the nose bit of the car, it’s all smooth and cold like an ice cube. “Careful,” says Ma, “you might set off the alarm.”

I didn’t know, I put my hands back under my elbows.

“Let’s go onto the grass.” She pulls me a little bit.

I’m squishing the green spikes under my shoes. I bend down and rub, it doesn’t cut my fingers. My one Raja tried to eat is nearly grown shut. I watch the grass again, there’s a twig and a leaf that’s brown and a something, it’s yellow.

A hum, so I look up, the sky’s so big it nearly knocks me down. “Ma. Another airplane!”

“Contrail,” she says, pointing. “I just remembered, that’s what the streak is called.”

I walk on a flower by accident, there’s hundreds, not a bunch like the crazies send us in the mail, they’re growing right in the ground like hair on my head. “Daffodils,” says Ma, pointing, “magnolias, tulips, lilacs. Are those apple blossoms?” She smells everything, she puts my nose on a flower but it’s too sweet, it makes me dizzy. She chooses a lilac and gives it to me.

Up close the trees are giant giants, they’ve got like skin but knobblier when we stroke them. I find a triangularish thing the big of my nose that Noreen says is a rock.

“It’s millions of years old,” says Ma.

How does she know? I look at the under, there’s no label.

“Hey, look.” Ma’s kneeling down.

It’s a something crawling. An ant. “Don’t!” I shout, I’m putting my hands around it like armor.

“What’s the matter?” asks Noreen.

“Please, please, please,” I say to Ma, “not this one.”

“It’s OK,” she says, “of course I won’t squish it.”

“Promise.”

“I promise.”

When I take my hands away the ant is gone and I cry.

But then Noreen finds another one and another, there’s two carrying a bit of something between them that’s ten times their big.

A thing else comes spinning out of the sky and lands in front of me, I jump back.

“Hey, a maple key,” says Ma.

“Why?”

“It’s the seed of this maple tree in a little — a sort of pair of wings to help it go far.”

It’s so thin I can see through its little dry lines, it’s thicker brown in the middle. There’s a tiny hole. Ma throws it up in the air, it comes spinning down again.

I show her another one that’s something wrong with. “It’s just a single, it lost its other wing.”

When I throw it high it still flies OK, I put it in my pocket.

But the coolest thing is, there’s a huge whirry noise, when I look up it’s a helicopter, much bigger than the plane—“Let’s get you inside,” says Noreen.

Ma grabs me by the hand and yanks.

“Wait—,” I say but I lose all my breath, they pull me along in between them, my nose is running.

When we jump back through the revolving door I’m blurry in my head. That helicopter was full of paparazzi trying to steal pictures of me and Ma.

After our nap my cold’s still not fixed yet. I’m playing with my treasures, my rock and my injured maple key and my lilac that’s gone floppy. Grandma knocks with more visitors, but she waits outside so it won’t be too much of a crowd. The persons are two, they’re called my Uncle that’s Paul that has floppy hair just to his ears and Deana that’s my Aunt with rectangular glasses and a million black braids like snakes. “We’ve got a little girl called Bronwyn who’s going to be so psyched to meet you,” she tells me. “She didn’t even know she had a cousin — well, none of us knew about you till two days ago, when your grandma called with the news.” “We would have jumped in the car except the doctors said—” Paul stops talking, he puts his fist at his eyes.

“It’s OK, hon,” says Deana and she rubs his leg.

He clears his throat very noisy. “Just, it keeps hitting me.”

I don’t see anything hitting him.

Ma puts her arm around his shoulder. “All those years, he thought his little sister might be dead,” she tells me.

“Bronwyn?” I say it on mute but she hears.

“No, me, remember? Paul’s my brother.”

“Yeah I know.”

“I couldn’t tell what to—” His voice stops again, he blows his nose. It’s way more louder than I do it, like elephants.

“But where is Bronwyn?” asks Ma.

“Well,” says Deana, “we thought . . .” She looks at Paul.

He says, “You and Jack can meet her another day soon. She goes to Li’l Leapfrogs.”