Room (30 page)

“To see the poo?”

“No, no,” says Grandma, “the Eiffel Tower. Someday when you’re really good at climbing stairs.”

“Is France in Outside?”

She looks at me strange.

“In the world?”

“Everywhere’s in the world. Here we are!”

I can’t go in the playground because there’s kids not friends of mine.

Grandma rolls her eyes. “You just play at the same time, that’s what kids do.”

I can see through the fence in the diamonds of wire. It’s like the secret fence in the walls and Floor that Ma couldn’t dig through, but we got out, I saved her, only then she
didn’t want to be alive anymore. There’s a big girl hanging upside down off a swing. Two boys on the thing I don’t remember the name that does up and down, they’re banging
it and laughing and falling off I think on purpose. I count my teeth to twenty and one more time. Holding the fence makes white stripes on my fingers. I watch a woman carry a baby to the climber
and it crawls through the tunnel, she does faces at it through the holes in the sides and pretends she doesn’t know where it is. I watch the big girl but she only swings, sometimes with her
hair nearly in the mud, sometimes right side up. The boys chase and do bang with their hands like guns, one falls down and cries. He runs out the gate and into a house, Grandma says he must live
there, how does she know? She whispers, “Why don’t you go play with the other boy now?” Then she calls out, “Hi there.” The boy looks over at us, I go into a bush, it
pricks me in the head.

After a while she says it’s chillier than it looks and maybe we should be getting home for lunch.

It takes hundreds of hours and my legs are breaking.

“Maybe you’ll enjoy it more next time,” says Grandma.

“It was interesting.”

“Is that what your ma says to say when you don’t like something?” She smiles a bit. “I taught her that.”

“Is she dying by now?”

“No.” She nearly shouts. “Leo would have called if there was any news.”

Leo is Steppa, it’s confusing all the names. I only want my one name Jack.

At Grandma’s house, she shows me France on the globe that’s like a statue of the world and always spinning. This whole entire city we’re in is just a dot and the Clinic’s
in the dot too. So is Room but Grandma says I don’t need to think about that place anymore, put it out of my mind.

For lunch I have lots of bread and butter, it’s French bread but there’s no poo on it I don’t think. My nose is red and hot, also my cheeks and my top bit of my chest and my
arms and the back of my hands and my ankles above my socks.

Steppa tells Grandma not to upset herself.

“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?”

“Yeah.”

She does my face. I don’t like it near my eyes but she’s careful.

“Go.”

“Actually we’re all done, Jack. Ready?”

Grandma goes out first through both doors, the glass one and the net one, she waves me out and the light is zigzaggy. We’re standing on the deck that’s all wooden like the deck of a
ship. There’s fuzz on it, little bundles. Grandma says it’s some kind of pollen from a tree.

“Which one?” I’m staring up at all the differents.

“Can’t help you there, I’m afraid.”

In Room we knowed what everything was called but in the world there’s so much, persons don’t even know the names.

Grandma’s in one of the wooden chairs wiggling her butt in. There’s sticks that break when I stand on them and some yellow tiny leaves and mushy brown ones that she says she asked
Leo to deal with back in November.

“Does Steppa have a job?”

“No, we retired early but of course now our stocks are decimated . . .”

“What does that mean?”

She’s leaning her head back on the top of the chair, her eyes are shut. “Nothing, don’t worry about it.”

“Will he die soon?”

Grandma opens her eyes at me.

“Or will it be you first?”

“I’ll have you know I’m only fifty-nine, young man.”

Ma’s only twenty-six. She’s turned the corner, does that mean she’s coming back yet?

“Nobody’s going to die,” says Grandma, “don’t you fret.”

“Ma says everybody’s going to die sometime.”

She squeezes up her mouth, it’s got lines around it like sun rays. “You’ve only just met most of us, mister, so don’t be in a hurry to say bye-bye.”

I’m looking down into the green bit of the yard. “Where’s the hammock?”

“I suppose we could dig it out of the basement, since you’re so keen.” She gets up with a grunt.

“Me too.”

“Sit tight, enjoy the sunshine, I’ll be back before you know it.”

But I’m not sitting, I’m standing.

It’s quiet when she’s gone, except there’s squeaky sounds in the trees, I think it’s birds but I don’t see. The wind makes the leaves go swishy swishy. I hear a kid
shout, maybe in another yard behind the big hedge or else he’s invisible. God’s yellow face has a cloud on top. Colder suddenly. The world is always changing brightness and hotness and
soundness, I never know how it’s going to be the next minute. The cloud looks kind of gray blue, I wonder has it got rain inside it. If rain starts dropping on me I’ll run in the house
before it drowns my skin.

There’s something going
zzzzz,
I look in the flowers and it’s the most amazing thing, an alive bee that’s huge with yellow and black bits, it’s dancing right
inside the flower. “Hi,” I say. I put out my finger to stroke it and—

Arghhhhhh,

my hand’s exploding the worst hurt I ever. “Ma,” I’m screaming,
Ma
in my head, but she’s not in the backyard and she’s not in my head and she’s
not anywhere, I’m all alone in the hurt in the hurt in the hurt in—

“What did you do to yourself?” Grandma rushes across the deck.

“I didn’t, it was the bee.”

When she spreads the special ointment it doesn’t hurt quite as much but still a lot.

I have to use my other hand for helping her. The hammock hangs on hooks in two trees at the very back of the yard, one is a shortish tree that’s only twice my tall and bent over, one is a
million times high with silvery leaves. The rope bits are kind of squished from being in the basement, we need to keep pulling till the holes are the right size. Also two of the ropes are broken so
there’s extra holes that we have to not sit in. “Probably moths,” says Grandma.

I didn’t know moths grow big enough to break ropes.

“To be honest, we haven’t put it up for years.” She says she won’t risk climbing in, anyway she prefers some back support.

I stretch out and fill the hammock all myself. I wriggle my feet in my shoes, I put them through the holes, and my hands, but not my right one because that’s still agonizing from the bee.
I think about the little Ma and little Paul that swinged in the hammock, it’s weird, where are they now? The big Paul is with Deana and Bronwyn maybe, they said we’d go see the
dinosaurs another day but I think they were lying. The big Ma is at the Clinic turning the corner.