Emma Donoghue - Room - A Novel

“It wasn’t even that sunny,” she keeps saying, wiping her eyes.

I ask, “Is my skin going to fall off?”

“Just little bits of it,” says Steppa.

“Don’t frighten the boy,” Grandma says. “You’ll be fine, Jack, don’t worry. Put on more of this nice cool after-sun cream, now . . .” It’s hard to reach behind me but I don’t like other persons’ fingers so I manage.

Grandma says she should call the Clinic again but she’s not up to it right now.

Because I’m burned I get to lie on the couch and watch cartoons, Steppa’s in the recliner reading his World Traveler magazine.

In the night Tooth is coming for me, bouncing on the street crash crash crash, ten feet tall all moldy and jaggedy bits falling off, he smashes at the walls. Then I’m floating in a boat that’s nailed shut and the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out —

A hiss in the dark that I don’t know it then it’s Grandma. “Jack. It’s OK.”

“No.”

“Go back to sleep.”

I don’t think I do.

At breakfast Grandma takes a pill. I ask if it’s her vitamin. Steppa laughs. She tells him, “You should talk.” Then she says to me, “Everybody needs a little something.”

This house is hard to learn. The doors I’m let go in anytime are the kitchen and the living room and the fitness suite and the spare room and the basement, also outside the bedroom that’s called the landing, like where airplanes would land but they don’t. I can go in the bedroom unless the door’s shut when I have to knock and wait. I can go in the bathroom unless it won’t open, that means anybody else is in it and I have to wait. The bath and sink and toilet are green called avocado, except the seat is wood so I can sit on that. I should put the seat up and down again after as a courtesy to ladies, that’s Grandma. The toilet has a lid on the tank like the one that Ma hit on Old Nick. The soap is a hard ball and I have to rub and rub to make it work. Outsiders are not like us, they’ve got a million of things and different kinds of each thing, like all different chocolate bars and machines and shoes. Their things are all for different doing, like nailbrush and toothbrush and sweeping brush and toilet brush and clothes brush and yard brush and hairbrush. When I drop some powder called talc on the floor I sweep it up but Grandma comes in and says that’s the toilet brush and she’s mad I’m spreading germs.

It’s Steppa’s house too but he doesn’t make the rules. He’s mostly in his den which is his special room for his own.

“People don’t always want to be with people,” he tells me. “It gets tiring.”

“Why?”

“Just take it from me, I’ve been married twice.”

The front door I can’t go out without telling Grandma but I wouldn’t anyway. I sit on the stairs and suck hard on Tooth.

“Go play with something, why don’t you?” says Grandma, squeezing past.

There’s lots, I don’t know which. My toys from the crazy well-wishers that Ma thought there was only five but actually I took six. There’s chalks all different colors that Deana brought around only I didn’t see her, they’re too smudgy on my fingers. There’s a giant roll of paper and forty-eight markers in a long invisible plastic. A box of boxes with animals on that Bronwyn doesn’t use anymore, I don’t know why, they stack to a tower more than my head.

I stare at my shoes instead, they’re my softies. If I wiggle I can sort of see the toes under the leather. Ma! I shout it very loud in my head. I don’t think she’s there. No better no worse. Unless everybody’s lying.

There’s a tiny brown thing under the carpet where it starts being the wood of the stairs. I scrape it out, it’s a metal. A coin. It’s got a man face and words, IN GOD WE TRUST LIBERTY 2004. When I turn it over there’s a man, maybe the same one but he’s waving at a little house and says UNITED STATES OF AMERICA E PLURIBUS UNUM ONE CENT.

Grandma’s on the bottom step staring at me.

I jump. I move Tooth to the back of my gums. “There’s a bit in Spanish,” I tell her.

“There is?” She frowns.

I show her with my finger.

“It’s Latin. E PLURIBUS UNUM. Hmm, I think that means ‘United we stand’ or something. Would you like some more?” “What?”

“Let me look in my purse . . .”

She comes back with a round flat thing that if you squish, it suddenly opens like a mouth and there’s different moneys inside. A silvery has a man with a ponytail like me and FIVE CENTS but she says everybody calls it a nickel, the little silvery is a dime, that is ten.

“Why is the five more bigger than the ten one if it’s five?”

“That’s just how it is.”

Even the one cent is bigger than the ten, I think how it is is dumb.

On the biggest silvery there’s a different man not happy, the back says NEW HAMPSHIRE 1788 LIVE FREE OR DIE. Grandma says New Hampshire is another bit of America, not this bit.

“ Live free, does that mean not costing anything?”

“Ah, no, no. It means . . . nobody being the boss of you.”

There’s another the same front but when I turn it over there’s pictures of a sailboat with a tiny person in it and a glass and more Spanish, GUAM E PLURIBUS UNUM 2009 and Guahan ITano’ ManChamorro. Grandma squeezes up her eyes at it and goes to get her glasses.

“Is that another bit of America?”

“Guam? No, I think it’s somewhere else.”

Maybe it’s how Outsiders spell Room.

The phone starts its screaming in the hall, I run upstairs to get away.

Grandma comes up, crying again. “She’s turned the corner.”

I stare at her.

“Your ma.”

“What corner?”

“She’s on the mend, she’s going to be fine, probably.”

I shut my eyes.

Grandma shakes me awake because she says it’s been three hours and she’s afraid I won’t sleep tonight.

It’s hard to talk with Tooth in so I put him in my pocket instead. My nails have still got soap in. I need something sharp to get it out, like Remote.

“Are you missing your ma?”

I shake my head. “Remote.”

“You miss your . . . moat?”

“ Remote .”

“The TV remote?”

“No, my Remote that used to make Jeep go vrumm zoom but then it got broke in Wardrobe.”

“Oh,” says Grandma, “well, I’m sure we can get them back.”

I shake my head. “They’re in Room.”

“Let’s make a little list.”

“To flush down the toilet?”

Grandma looks all confused. “No, I’ll call the police.”

“Is it an emergency?”

She shakes her head. “They’ll bring your toys over here, once they’ve finished with them.”

I stare at her. “The police can go in Room?”

“They’re probably there right this minute,” she tells me, “collecting evidence.”

“What’s evidence?”

“Proof of what happened, to show the judge. Pictures, fingerprints . . .”

While I’m writing the list, I think about the black of Track and the hole under Table, all the marks me and Ma made. The judge looking at my picture of the blue octopus.

Grandma says it’s a shame to waste such a nice spring day, so if I put on a long shirt and my proper shoes and hat and shades and lots of sunblock I can come out in the backyard.

She squirts sunblock into her hands. “You say go and stop, whenever you like. Like remote control.”

That’s kind of funny.

She starts rubbing it on my back of hands.

“Stop!” After a minute I say, “Go,” and she starts again. “Go.”

She stops. “You mean keep going?”