Room (29 page)

I take off my shoes but not my clothes, I get in with Ma at last. She’s warmy soft, I snuggle up but carefully. The pillow smells bad.

“See you guys at dinnertime,” whispers Noreen and shuts the door.

The bad is vomit, I remember from our Great Escape. “Wake up,” I say to Ma, “you did sick on the pillow.”

She doesn’t switch on, she doesn’t groan even or roll over, she’s not moving when I pull her. This is the most Gone she’s ever.

“Ma, Ma, Ma.”

She’s a zombie, I think.

“Noreen?” I shout, I run at the door. I’m not meant to disturb the persons but—“Noreen!” She’s at the end of the corridor, she turns around. “Ma
did a vomit.”

“Not a bother, we’ll have that cleaned up in two ticks. Let me just get the cart—”

“No, but come now.”

“OK, OK.”

When she switches on the light and looks at Ma she doesn’t say OK, she picks up the phone and says, “Code blue, room seven, code blue—”

I don’t know what’s—Then I see Ma’s pill bottles open on the table, they look mostly empty. Never more than two, that’s the rule, how could they be mostly empty,
where did the pills go? Noreen’s pressing on the side of Ma’s throat and saying her other name and “Can you hear me? Can you hear me?”

But I don’t think Ma can hear, I don’t think she can see. I shout, “Bad idea bad idea bad idea.”

Lots of persons run in, one of them pulls me outside in the corridor. I’m screaming “Ma” as loud as I can but it’s not loud enough to wake her.

I
’m in the house with the hammock. I’m looking out the window for it, but Grandma says it would be in the
backyard, not the front, anyway it’s not hung up yet because it’s only the tenth of April. There’s bushes and flowers and the sidewalk and the street and the other front yards and
the other houses, I count eleven of bits of them, that’s where neighbors live like Beggar My Neighbor. I suck to feel Tooth, he’s right in the middle of my tongue. The white car is
outside not moving, I rode in it from the Clinic even though there was no booster, Dr. Clay wanted me to stay for
continuity
and
therapeutic isolation
but Grandma shouted that he
wasn’t allowed keep me like a prisoner when I do have a family. My family is Grandma Steppa Bronwyn Uncle Paul Deana and Grandpa, only he shudders at me. Also Ma. I move Tooth into my cheek.
“Is she dead?”

“No, I keep telling you. Definitely not.” Grandma rests her head on the wood around the glass.

Sometimes when persons say
definitely
it sounds actually less true. “Are you just playing she’s alive?” I ask Grandma. “Because if she’s not, I don’t
want to be either.”

There’s all tears running all down her face again. “I don’t—I can’t tell you any more than I know, sweetie. They said they’d call as soon as they had an
update.”

“What’s an update?”

“How she is, right this minute.”

“How is she?”

“Well, she’s not well because she took too much of the bad medicine, like I told you, but they’ve probably pumped it all out of her stomach by now, or most of it.”

“But why she—?”

“Because she’s not well. In her head. She’s being taken care of,” says Grandma, “you don’t need to worry.”

“Why?”

“Well, it doesn’t do any good to.”

God’s face is all red and stuck on a chimney. It’s getting darker. Tooth is digging into my gum, he’s a bad hurting tooth.

“You didn’t touch your lasagna,” Grandma says, “would you like a glass of juice or something?”

I shake my head.

“Are you tired? You must be tired, Jack. Lord knows I am. Come downstairs and see the spare room.”

“Why is it spare?”

“That means we don’t use it.”

“Why you have a room you don’t use?”

Grandma shrugs. “You never know when we might need it.” She waits while I do the stairs down on my butt because there’s no banister to hold. I pull my Dora bag behind me
bumpity bump.
We go through the room that’s called the living room, I don’t know why because Grandma and Steppa are living in all the rooms, except not the spare.

An awful
waah waah
starts, I cover my ears. “I’d better get that,” says Grandma.

She comes back in a minute and brings me into a room. “Are you ready?”

“For what?”

“To go to bed, honey.”

“Not here.”

She presses around her mouth where the little cracks are. “I know you’re missing your ma, but just for now you need to sleep on your own. You’ll be fine, Steppa and I will be
just upstairs. You’re not afraid of monsters, are you?”

It depends on the monster, if it’s a real one or not and if it’s where I am.

“Hmm. Your ma’s old room is beside ours,” says Grandma, “but we’ve converted it into a fitness suite, I don’t know if there’d be space for a blow-up . .
.”

I go up the stairs with my feet this time, just pressing onto the walls, Grandma carries my Dora bag. There’s blue squishy mats and dumbbells and abs crunchers like I saw in TV. “Her
bed was here, right where her crib was when she was a baby,” says Grandma, pointing to a bicycle but stuck to the ground. “The walls were covered in posters, you know, bands she liked,
a giant fan and a dreamcatcher . . .”

“Why it catched her dreams?”

“What’s that?”

“The fan.”

“Oh, no, they were just decorations. I feel just terrible about dropping it all off at the Goodwill, it was a counselor at the grief group that advised it . . .”

I do a huge yawn, Tooth nearly slips out but I catch him in my hand.

“What’s that?” says Grandma. “A bead or something? Never suck on something small, didn’t your—?”

She’s trying to bend my fingers open to get him. My hand hits her hard in the tummy.

She stares.

I put Tooth back in under my tongue and lock my teeth.

“Tell you what, why don’t I put a blow-up beside our bed, just for tonight, until you’re settled in?”

I pull my Dora bag. The next door is where Grandma and Steppa sleep. The blow-up is a big bag thing, the pump keeps popping out of the hole and she has to shout for Steppa to help. Then
it’s all full like a balloon but a rectangle and she puts sheets over it. Who’s the
they
that pumped Ma’s stomach? Where do they put the pump? Won’t she burst?

“I said, where’s your toothbrush, Jack?”

I find it in my Dora bag that has my everything. Grandma tells me to put on my pj’s that means pajamas. She points at the blow-up and says, “Pop in,” persons are always saying
pop
or
hop
when it’s something they want to pretend is fun. Grandma leans down with her mouth out like to kiss but I put my head under the duvet. “Sorry,” she says.
“What about a story?”

“No.”

“Too tired for a story, OK, then. Night-night.”

It goes all dark. I sit up. “What about the Bugs?”

“The sheets are perfectly clean.”

I can’t see her but I know her voice. “No, the
Bugs
.”

“Jack, I’m ready to drop here—”

“The Bugs that don’t let them bite.”

“Oh,” says Grandma. “Night-night, sleep tight . . . That’s right, I used to say that when your ma was—”

“Do it all.”

“Night-night, sleep tight, don’t let the bugs bite.”

Some light comes in, it’s the door opening. “Where are you going?”

I can see Grandma’s shape all black in the hole. “Just downstairs.”

I roll off the blow-up, it wobbles. “Me too.”

“No, I’m going to watch my shows, they’re not for children.”

“You said you and Steppa in the bed and me beside on the blow-up.”

“That’s later, we’re not tired yet.”

“You said you were tired.”

“I’m tired of—” Grandma’s nearly shouting. “I’m not sleepy, I just need to watch TV and not think for a while.”

“You can not think here.”

“Just try lying down and closing your eyes.”

“I can’t, not all my own.”

“Oh,” says Grandma. “Oh, you poor creature.”

Why am I poor and creature?

She bends down beside the blow-up and touches my face.

I get away.

“I was just closing your eyes for you.”

“You in the bed. Me on the blow-up.”

I hear her puff her breath. “OK. I’ll lie down for just a minute . . .”

I see her shape on top of the duvet. Something drops
clomp,
it’s her shoe. “Would you like a lullaby?” she whispers.

“Huh?”

“A song?”

Ma sings me songs but there’s no more of them anymore. She smashed my head on the table in Room Number Seven. She took the bad medicine, I think she was too tired to play anymore, she was
in a hurry to get to Heaven so she didn’t wait, why she didn’t wait for me?

“Are you crying?”

I don’t say anything.

“Oh, honey. Well, better out than in.”

I want some, I really really want some, I can’t get to sleep without. I suck on Tooth that’s Ma, a bit of her anyway, her cells all brown and rotten and hard. Tooth hurted her or he
was hurted but not anymore. Why is it better out than in? Ma said we’d be free but this doesn’t feel like free.

Grandma’s singing very quietly, I know that song but it sounds wrong. “ ‘The wheels on the bus go—’ ”

“No, thanks,” I say, and she stops.

•   •   •

Me and Ma in the sea, I’m tangled in her hair, I’m all knotted up and drowning—

Just a bad dream. That’s what Ma would say if she was here but she’s not.

I lie counting five fingers five fingers five toes five toes, I make them wave one by one. I try the talking in my head,
Ma? Ma? Ma?
I can’t hear her answering.

When it starts being lighter I put the duvet over my face to dark it. I think this must be what Gone feels like.

Persons are walking around whispering. “Jack? ” That’s Grandma near my ear so I curl away. “How are you doing?”

I remember manners. “Not a hundred percent today, thank you.” I’m mumbly because Tooth is stuck to my tongue.

When she’s gone I sit up and count my things in my Dora bag, my clothes and shoes and maple key and train and drawing square and rattle and glittery heart and crocodile and rock and
monkeys and car and six books, the sixth is
Dylan the Digger
from the store.

Lots of hours later the
waah waah
means the phone. Grandma comes up. “That was Dr. Clay, your ma is stable. That sounds good, doesn’t it?”

It sounds like horses.

“Also, there’s blueberry pancakes for breakfast.”

I lie very still like I’m a skeleton. The duvet smells dusty.

Ding-dong ding-dong
and she goes downstairs again.

Voices under me. I count my toes then my fingers then my teeth all over again. I get the right numbers every time but I’m not sure.

Grandma comes up again out of breath to say that my Grandpa’s here to say good-bye.

“Tome?”

“To all of us, he’s flying back to Australia. Get up now, Jack, it won’t do you any good to wallow.”

I don’t know what that is. “He wants me not born.”

“He wants what?”

“He said I shouldn’t be and then Ma wouldn’t have to be Ma.”

Grandma doesn’t say anything so I think she’s gone downstairs. I take my face out to see. She’s still here with her arms wrapped around her tight. “Never you mind that
a-hole.”

“What’s a—? ”

“Just come on down and have a pancake.”

“I can’t.”

“Look at you,” says Grandma.

How do I do that?

“You’re breathing and walking and talking and sleeping without your Ma, aren’t you? So I bet you can eat without her too.”

I keep Tooth in my cheek for safe. I take a long time on the stairs.

In the kitchen, Grandpa the real one has purple on his mouth. His pancake is all in a puddle of syrup with more purples, they’re blueberries.

The plates are normal white but the glasses are wrong-shaped with corners. There’s a big bowl of sausages. I didn’t know I was hungry. I eat one sausage then two more.

Grandma says she doesn’t have the juice that’s pulp-free but I have to drink something or I’ll choke on my sausages. I drink the pulpy with the germs wiggling down my throat.
The refrigerator is huge all full of boxes and bottles. The cabinets have so many foods in, Grandma has to go up steps to look in them all.

She says I should have a shower now but I pretend I don’t hear.

“What’s stable?” I ask Grandpa.

“Stable?” A tear comes out of his eye and he wipes it. “No better, no worse, I guess.” He puts his knife and his fork together on his plate.

No better no worse than what?

Tooth tastes all sour of juice. I go back upstairs to sleep.

•   •   •

“Sweetie,” says Grandma. “You are not spending another entire day in front of the goggle box.”

“Huh?”

She switches off the TV. “Dr. Clay was just on the phone about your developmental needs, I had to tell him we were playing Checkers.”

I blink and rub my eyes. Why she told him a lie? “Is Ma—?”

“She’s still stable, he says. Would you like to play checkers for real?”

“Your bits are for giants and they fall off.”

She sighs. “I keep telling you, they’re regular ones, and the same with the chess and the cards. The mini magnetic set you and your Ma had was for traveling.”

But we didn’t travel.

“Let’s go to the playground.”

I shake my head. Ma said when we were free we’d go together.

“You’ve been outside before, lots of times.”

“That was at the Clinic.”

“It’s the same air, isn’t it? Come on, your ma told me you like climbing.”

“Yeah, I climb on Table and on our chairs and on Bed thousands of times.”

“Not on my table, mister.”

I meant in Room.

Grandma does my ponytail very tight and tucks it down my jacket, I pull it out again. She doesn’t say anything about the sticky stuff and my hat, maybe skin doesn’t get burned in
this bit of the world? “Put on your sunglasses, oh, and your proper shoes, those slipper things don’t have any support.”

My feet are squished walking even when I loose the Velcro. We’re safe as long as we stay on the sidewalk but if we go on the street by accident we’ll die. Ma isn’t dead,
Grandma says she wouldn’t lie to me. She lied to Dr. Clay about Checkers. The sidewalk keeps stopping so we have to cross the street, we’ll be fine as long as we hold hands. I
don’t like touching but Grandma says too bad. The air is all blowy in my eyes and the sun so dazzling around the edges of my shades. There’s a pink thing that’s a hair elastic and
a bottle top and a wheel not from a real car but a toy one and a bag of nuts but the nuts are gone and a juice box that I can hear still some juice sploshing in and a yellow poo. Grandma says
it’s not from a human but from some disgusting dog, she tugs at my jacket and says, “Come away from that.” The litter shouldn’t be there, except for the leaves that the tree
can’t help dropping. In France they let their dogs do their business everywhere, I can go there someday.