Emma Donoghue - Room - A Novel

I didn’t know persons could be private out in the world.

We go in a Laundromat just to see. I want to climb in a spinny machine but Grandma says it would kill me.

We walk to the park to feed the ducks with Deana and Bronwyn. Bronwyn throws all her breads in at one go and the plastic bag too and Grandma has to get it out with a stick. Bronwyn wants my breads, Grandma says I have to give her half because she’s little. Deana says she’s sorry about the dinosaurs, we’ll definitely make it to the Natural History Museum one of these days.

There’s a store that’s only shoes outside, bright spongy ones with holes all over them and Grandma lets me try on a pair, I choose yellow. There’s no laces or Velcro even, I just put my foot in. They’re so light it’s like not having any on. We go in and Grandma pays five dollar papers for the shoes, that’s the same as twenty quarters, I tell her I love them.

When we come out there’s a woman sitting on the ground with her hat off. Grandma gives me two quarters and points to the hat.

I put one in the hat and I run after Grandma.

When she’s doing my seat belt she says, “What’s that in your hand?”

I hold up the second coin, “It’s NEBRASKA, I’m keeping it for my treasures.”

She clicks her tongue and takes it back. “You should have given it to the street person like I told you to.” “OK, I’ll—”

“Too late now.”

She starts the car. All I can see is the back of her yellowy hair. “Why she’s a street person?”

“That’s where she lives, on the street. No bed even.”

Now I feel bad I didn’t give her the second quarter.

Grandma says that’s called having a conscience.

In a store window I see squares that are like Room, cork tiles, Grandma lets me go in to stroke one and smell it but she won’t buy it.

We go in a car wash, the brushes swish us all over but the water doesn’t come in our tight windows, it’s hilarious.

In the world I notice persons are nearly always stressed and have no time. Even Grandma often says that, but she and Steppa don’t have jobs, so I don’t know how persons with jobs do the jobs and all the living as well. In Room me and Ma had time for everything. I guess the time gets spread very thin like butter over all the world, the roads and houses and playgrounds and stores, so there’s only a little smear of time on each place, then everyone has to hurry on to the next bit.

Also everywhere I’m looking at kids, adults mostly don’t seem to like them, not even the parents do. They call the kids gorgeous and so cute, they make the kids do the thing all over again so they can take a photo, but they don’t want to actually play with them, they’d rather drink coffee talking to other adults. Sometimes there’s a small kid crying and the Ma of it doesn’t even hear.

In the library live millions of books we don’t have to pay any moneys for. Giant insects are hanging up, not real, made of paper. Grandma looks under C for Alice and she’s there, the wrong shape but the same words and pictures, that’s so weird. I show Grandma the scariest picture with the Duchess. We sit on the couch for her reading me The Pied Piper, I didn’t know he was a book as well as a story. My best bit is when the parents hear the laughing inside the rock. They keep shouting for the kids to come back but the kids are in a lovely country, I think it might be Heaven. The mountain never opens up to let the parents in.

There’s a big boy doing a computer of Harry Potter, Grandma says not to stand too near, it’s not my turn.

There’s a tiny world on a table with train tracks and buildings, a little kid is playing with a green truck. I go up, I take a red engine. I zoom it into the kid’s truck a bit, the kid giggles. I do it faster so the truck falls off the track, he giggles more.

“Good sharing, Walker.” That’s a man on the armchair looking at a thing like Uncle Paul’s BlackBerry.

I think the kid must be Walker. “Again,” he says.

This time I balance my engine on the little truck, then I take an orange bus and crash it into both of them.

“Gently,” says Grandma, but Walker is saying, “Again,” and jumping up and down.

Another man comes in and kisses the first one and then Walker. “Say bye-bye to your friend,” he tells him.

Is that me?

“Bye-bye.” Walker flaps his hand up and down.

I think I’ll give him a hug. I do it too fast and knock him down, he bangs on the train table and cries.

“I’m so sorry,” Grandma keeps saying, “my grandson doesn’t — he’s learning about boundaries—”

“No harm done,” says the first man. They go off with the little boy doing one two three whee swinging between them, he’s not crying anymore. Grandma watches them, she’s looking confused.

“Remember,” she says on the way to the white car, “we don’t hug strangers. Even nice ones.”

“Why not?”

“We just don’t, we save our hugs for people we love.”

“I love that boy Walker.”

“Jack, you never saw him before in your life.”

This morning I spread a bit of syrup on my pancake. It’s actually good the two together.

Grandma’s tracing around me, she says it’s fine to draw on the deck because the next time it rains the chalk will all get washed away. I watch the clouds, if they start raining I’m going to run inside supersonic fast before a drop hits me. “Don’t get chalk on me,” I tell her.

“Oh, don’t be such a worrywart.”

She pulls me up to standing and there’s a kid shape on the patio, it’s me. I have a huge head, no face, no insides, blobby hands.

“Delivery for you, Jack.” That’s Steppa shouting, what does he mean?

When I go in the house he’s cutting a big box. He pulls out something huge and he says, “Well, this can go in the trash for starters.” She unrolls. “Rug,” I give her a huge hug, “she’s our Rug, mine and Ma’s.”

He lifts up his hands and says, “Suit yourself.”

Grandma’s face is twisting. “Maybe if you took it outside and gave it a good beating, Leo . . .”

“No!” I’m shouting.

“OK, I’ll use the vacuum, but I don’t like to think what’s in here . . .” She rubs Rug between her fingers.

I have to keep Rug on my blow-up in the bedroom, I’m not to drag her all around the house. So I sit with her over my head like a tent, her smell is just like I remember and the feel. Under there I’ve got other things the police brung too. I give Jeep and Remote especially big kisses, and Meltedy Spoon. I wish Remote wasn’t broken so he could make Jeep go. Wordy Ball is flatter than I remember and Red Balloon is hardly at all. Spaceship is here but his rocket blaster’s missing, he doesn’t look very good. No Fort or Labyrinth, maybe they were too big to go in the boxes. I have my five books, even Dylan . I get out the other Dylan , the new one I took from the mall because I thought he was my one but the new is way shinier. Grandma says there’s thousands of each book in the world so thousands of persons can be reading the same at the same minute, it makes me dizzy. New Dylan says, “Hello, Dylan, nice to meet you.”

“I’m Jack’s Dylan,” says Old Dylan.

“I’m Jack’s one too,” says New.

“Yeah, but actually I was Jack’s first.”

Then Old and New bash each other with corners till a page of New rips and I stop because I’ve ripped a book and Ma will be mad. She’s not here to be mad, she doesn’t even know, I’m crying and crying and I zip away the books in my Dora bag so they don’t get cried on. The two Dylans cuddle up together inside and say sorry.