Room (31 page)

I push the ropes, I’m a fly inside a web. Or a robber Spider-Man catched. Grandma pushes and I swing so I’m dizzy but a cool kind of dizzy.

“Phone.” That’s Steppa on the deck, shouting.

Grandma runs up the grass, she leaves me all on my own again in the outside Outside. I jump down off the hammock and nearly fall because one shoe gets stuck. I pull my foot out, the shoe falls
off. I run after, I’m nearly as fast as her.

In the kitchen Grandma’s talking on the phone. “Of course, first things first, he’s right here. There’s somebody wants to talk to you.” That’s me she’s
telling, she holds out the phone but I don’t take it. “Guess who?”

I blink at her.

“It’s your ma.”

It’s true, here’s Ma’s voice in the phone. “Jack?”

“Hi.”

I don’t hear anything else so I pass it back to Grandma.

“It’s me again, how are you doing, really?” Grandma asks. She nods and nods and says, “He’s keeping his chin up.”

She gives me the phone again, I listen to Ma say sorry a lot.

“You’re not poisoned with the bad medicine anymore?” I ask.

“No, no, I’m getting better.”

“You’re not in Heaven?”

Grandma covers her mouth.

Ma makes a sound I can’t tell if it’s a cry or a laugh. “I wish.”

“Why you wish you’re in Heaven?”

“I don’t really, I was just joking.”

“It’s not a funny joke.”

“No.”

“Don’t wish.”

“OK. I’m here at the clinic.”

“Were you tired of playing?”

I don’t hear anything, I think she’s gone. “Ma?”

“I was tired,” she says. “I made a mistake.”

“You’re not tired anymore?”

She doesn’t say anything. Then she says, “I am. But it’s OK.”

“Can you come here and swing in the hammock?”

“Pretty soon,” she says.

“When?”

“I don’t know, it depends. Is everything OK there with Grandma?”

“And Steppa.”

“Right. What’s new?”

“Everything,” I say.

That makes her laugh, I don’t know why. “Have you been having fun?”

“The sun burned my skin off and a bee stinged me.”

Grandma rolls her eyes.

Ma says something I don’t hear. “I’ve got to go now, Jack, I need some more sleep.”

“You’ll wake up after?”

“I promise. I’m so—” Her breath sounds all raggedy. “I’ll talk to you again soon, OK?”

“OK.”

There’s no more talking so I put the phone down. Grandma says, “Where’s your other shoe?”

•   •   •

I’m watching the flames dancing all orange under the pasta pot. The match is on the counter with its end all black and curly. I touch it to the fire, it makes a hiss and
gets a big flame again so I drop it on the stove. The little flame goes invisible nearly, it’s nibbling along the match little by little till it’s all black and a small smoke goes up
like a silvery ribbon. The smell is magic. I take another match from the box, I light the end in the fire and this time I hold on to it even when it hisses. It’s my own little flame I can
carry around with me. I wave it in a circle, I think it’s gone out but it comes back. The flame’s getting bigger and messy all along the match, it’s two different flames and
there’s a little line of red along the wood between them—

“Hey!”

I jump, it’s Steppa. I don’t have the match anymore.

He stamps on my foot.

I howl.

“It was on your sock.” He shows me the match all curled up, he rubs my sock where there’s a black bit. “Didn’t your ma ever teach you not to play with
fire?”

“There wasn’t.”

“There wasn’t what?”

“Fire.”

He stares at me. “I guess your stove was electric. Go figure.”

“What’s up?” Grandma comes in.

“Jack’s just learning kitchen tools,” says Steppa, stirring the pasta. He holds a thing up and looks at me.

“Grater,” I remember.

Grandma’s setting the table.

“And this?”

“Garlic masher.”

“Garlic
crusher
. Way more violent than mashing.” He grins at me. He didn’t tell Grandma about the match, that’s kind of lying but not getting me into trouble is a
good reason. He’s holding up something else.

“Another grater?”

“Citrus zester. And this?”

“Ah . . . a whisk.”

Steppa dangles a long pasta in the air and slurps it. “My elder brother pulled a pot of rice down on himself when he was three, and his arm was always rippled like a chip.”

“Oh, yeah, I saw them in TV.”

Grandma stares at me. “Don’t tell me you’ve never had potato chips?” Then she gets up on the steps and moves things in a cabinet.

“E.T.A. two minutes,” says Steppa.

“Oh, a handful won’t hurt.” Grandma climbs down with a scrunched bag and opens it out.

The chips have got all lines on them, I take one and eat the edge of it. Then I say, “No, thanks,” and put it back in the bag.

Steppa laughs, I don’t know what’s funny. “The boy’s saving himself for my tagliatelle carbonara.”

“Can I see the skin instead?”

“What skin?” asks Grandma.

“The brother’s.”

“Oh, he lives in Mexico. He’s your, I guess, your great-uncle.”

Steppa throws all the water into the sink so it makes a big cloud of wet air.

“Why is he great?”

“It just means he’s Leo’s brother. All our relatives, you’re related to them now too,” says Grandma. “What’s ours is yours.”

“LEGO,” says Steppa.

“What?” she says.

“Like LEGO. Bits of families stuck together.”

“I saw that in TV too,” I tell them.

Grandma’s staring at me again. “Growing up without LEGO,” she tells Steppa, “I literally can’t imagine it.”

“Bet there’s a couple billion children in the world managing somehow,” says Steppa.

“I guess you’re right.” She’s looking confused. “We must have a box of it kicking around down in the basement, though . . .”

Steppa cracks an egg with one hand so it plops over the pasta. “Dinner is served.”

•   •   •

I’m riding lots on the bike that doesn’t move, I can reach the pedals with my toes if I stretch. I zoom it for thousands of hours so my legs will get super strong
and I can run away back to Ma and save her again. I lie down on the blue mats, my legs are tired. I lift the free weights, I don’t know what’s free about them. I put one on my tummy, I
like how it holds me down so I won’t fall off the spinny world.

Ding-dong,
Grandma shouts because it’s a visitor for me, that’s Dr. Clay.

We sit on the deck, he’ll warn me if there’s any bees. Humans and bees should just wave, no touching. No patting a dog unless its human says OK, no running across roads, no touching
private parts except mine in private. Then there’s special cases, like police are allowed shoot guns but only at bad guys. There’s too many rules to fit in my head, so we make a list
with Dr. Clay’s extra-heavy golden pen. Then another list of all the new things, like free weights and potato chips and birds. “Is it exciting seeing them for real, not just on
TV?” he asks.

“Yeah. Except nothing in TV ever stinged me.”

“Good point,” says Dr. Clay, nodding. “ ‘Human kind cannot bear very much reality.’ ”

“Is that a poem again?”

“How did you guess?”

“You do a weird voice,” I tell him. “What’s humankind?”

“The human race, all of us.”

“Is that me too?”

“Oh, for sure, you’re one of us.”

“And Ma.”

Dr. Clay nods. “She’s one too.”

But what I actually meant was, maybe I’m a human but I’m a me-and-Ma as well. I don’t know a word for us two. Roomers? “Is she coming to get me soon?”

“As soon as she possibly can,” he says. “Would you feel more comfortable staying at the clinic instead of here at your Grandma’s?”

“With Ma in Room Number Seven?”

He shakes his head. “She’s in the other wing, she needs to be on her own for a while.”

I think he’s wrong, if I was sick I’d need Ma with me even more.

“But she’s working really hard to get better,” he tells me.

I thought people are just sick or better, I didn’t know it was work.

For good-bye, me and Dr. Clay do high five, low five, back five.

When I’m on the toilet I hear him on the porch with Grandma. Her voice is twice the high of his. “For Pete’s sake, we’re only talking about a minor sunburn and a bee
sting,” she says. “I raised two children, don’t give me
acceptable standard of care
.”

•   •   •

In the night there’s a million of tiny computers talking to each other about me. Ma’s gone up the beanstalk and I’m down on earth shaking it and shaking it so
she’ll fall down—

No. That was only dreaming.

“I’ve had a brainwave,” says Grandma in my ear, she’s leaning down with her bottom half still in her bed. “Let’s drive to the playground before breakfast so
there’ll be no other kids there.”

Our shadows are really long and stretchy. I wave my giant fists. Grandma nearly sits on a bench, but there’s wet on it, so she leans against the fence instead. There’s a small wet on
everything, she says it’s dew that looks like rain but not out of the sky, it’s a kind of sweat that happens in the night. I draw a face on the slide. “It doesn’t matter if
you get your clothes wet, feel free.”

“Actually I feel cold.”

There’s a bit with all sand in, Grandma says I could sit in that and play with it.

“What?”

“Huh?” she says.

“Play what?”

“I don’t know, dig it or scoop it or something.”

I touch it but it’s scratchy, I don’t want it all over me.

“What about the climber, or the swings?” says Grandma.

“Are you going to?”

She does a little laugh, she says she’d probably break something.

“Why you’d—?”

“Oh, not on purpose, just because I’m heavy.”

I go up some steps, standing like a boy not like a monkey, they’re metal with rough orange bits called rust and the holding-on bars make my hands frozen. At the end there’s a tiny
house like for elves, I sit at the table and the roof’s right over my head, it’s red and the table is blue.

“Yoo-hoo.”

I jump, it’s Grandma waving through the window. Then she goes around the other side and waves again. I wave back, she likes that.

At the corner of the table I see something move, it’s a tiny spider. I wonder if Spider is still in Room, if her web is getting bigger and bigger. I tap tunes, like Hum but only tapping
and Ma in my head has to guess, she guesses most of them right. When I do them on the floor with my shoe it’s different-sounding because it’s metal. The wall says something I
can’t read, all scribbled and there’s a drawing that I think is a penis but it’s as big as the person.

“Try the slide, Jack, it looks like a fun one.”

That’s Grandma calling at me. I go out of the little house and look down, the slide is silver with some little stones on.

“Whee! Come on, I’ll catch you at the bottom.”

“No, thanks.”

There’s a ladder of rope like the hammock but flopping down, it’s too sore for my fingers. There’s lots of bars to hang from if I had more stronger arms or I really was a
monkey. There’s a bit I show Grandma where robbers must have took the steps away.

“No, look, there’s a fireman’s pole there instead,” she says.

“Oh, yeah, I saw that in TV. But why they live up here?”

“Who?”

“The firemen.”

“Oh, it isn’t one of their real poles, just a play one.”

When I was four I thought everything in TV was just TV, then I was five and Ma unlied about lots of it being pictures of real and Outside being totally real. Now I’m in Outside but it
turns out lots of it isn’t real at all.

I go back in the elf house. The spider’s gone somewhere. I take off my shoes under the table and stretch my feet.

Grandma’s at the swings. Two are flat but the third has a rubbery bucket with holes for legs. “You couldn’t fall out of this one,” she says. “Want a go?”

She has to lift me, it feels strange with her hands squeezing in my armpits. She pushes me at the back of the bucket but I don’t like that, I keep twisting around to see, so she pushes me
from in front instead. I’m swinging faster faster higher higher, it’s the strangest thing I ever.

“Put your head back.”

“Why?”

“Trust me.”

I put my head back and everything flips upside down, the sky and trees and houses and Grandma and all, it’s unbelievable.

There’s a girl on the other swing, I didn’t even see her coming in. She’s swinging not at the same time as me, she’s back when I’m forward. “What’s your
name?” she asks.

I pretend I don’t hear.

“This is Ja—Jason,” says Grandma.

Why she’s calling me that?

“I’m Cora and I’m four and a half,” says the girl. “Is she a baby?”

“He’s a boy and he’s five, actually,” says Grandma.

“Then why is she in the baby swing?”

I want to get out now but my legs are stuck in the rubber, I kick, I pull at the chains.

“Easy, easy,” says Grandma.

“Is she having a fit?” asks the girl Cora.

My foot kicks Grandma by accident.

“Stop that.”

“My friend’s little brother has fits.”

Grandma yanks me under my arms, my foot goes twisty then I’m out.

She stops at the gate and says, “Shoes, Jack.”

I try hard and remember. “They’re in the little house.”

“Scoot back and get them, then.” She waits. “The little girl won’t bother you.”

But I can’t climb when she might be watching.

So Grandma does it and her bum gets stuck in the elf house, she’s mad. She Velcros my left shoe up way too tight so I pull it off again and the other one as well. I go in my socks to the
white car. She says I’ll get glass in my foot but I don’t.

My pants are wet from the dew and my socks as well. Steppa’s in his recliner with a huge mug, he says, “How did it go?”

“Little by little,” says Grandma, going upstairs.

He lets me try his coffee, it makes me shudder.

“Why are places to eat called coffee shops?” I ask him.

“Well, coffee’s the most important thing they sell because most of us need it to keep us going, like gas in the car.”