Room (34 page)

In the car she won’t look at me in the mirror. I ask, “Why you threw away my ball?”

“It was setting off the alarm,” says Grandma, “because I hadn’t paid.”

“Were you robbing?”

“No, Jack,” she shouts, “I was running around the building like a lunatic looking for you.” Then she says, more quietly, “Anything could have happened.”

“Like an earthquake?”

Grandma stares at me in the little mirror. “A stranger might snatch you, Jack, that’s what I’m talking about.”

A stranger’s a not-friend, but the women were my new friends. “Why?”

“Because they might want a little boy of their own, all right?”

It doesn’t sound all right.

“Or to hurt you, even.”

“You mean him?” Old Nick, but I can’t say it.

“No, he can’t get out of jail, but somebody like him,” says Grandma.

I didn’t know there was somebody like him in the world.

“Can you go back and get my ball now?” I ask.

She switches on the engine and drives out of the parking lot fast so the wheels screech.

In the car I get madder and madder.

When we get back to the house I put everything in my Dora bag, except my shoes don’t fit so I throw them in the trash and I roll Rug up and drag her down the stairs behind me.

Grandma comes into the hall. “Did you wash your hands?”

“I’m going back to the Clinic,” I shout at her, “and you can’t stop me because you’re a, you’re a stranger.”

“Jack,” she says, “put that stinky rug back where it was.”

“You’re the stinky,” I roar.

She’s pressing on her chest. “Leo,” she says over her shoulder, “I swear, I’ve had just about as much—”

Steppa comes up the stairs and picks me up.

I drop Rug. Steppa kicks my Dora bag out of the way. He’s carrying me, I’m screaming and hitting him because it’s allowed, it’s a special case, I can kill him even,
I’m killing and killing him—

“Leo,” wails Grandma downstairs, “Leo—”

Fee fie foe fum,
he’s going to rip me in pieces, he’s going to wrap me in Rug and bury me and
the worms crawl in, the worms crawl out
—

Steppa drops me on the blow-up, but it doesn’t hurt.

He sits down on the end so it all goes up like a wave. I’m still crying and shaking and my snot’s getting on the sheet.

I stop crying. I feel under the blow-up for Tooth, I put him in my mouth and suck hard. He doesn’t taste like anything anymore.

Steppa’s hand is on the sheet just beside me, it’s got hairs on the fingers.

His eyes are waiting for my eyes. “All fair and square, water under the bridge?”

I move Tooth to my gum. “What?”

“Want to have pie on the couch and watch the game?”

“OK.”

•   •   •

I pick up branches fallen off the trees, even enormous heavy ones. Me and Grandma tie them into bundles with string for the city to take them. “How does the
city—?”

“The guys from the city, I mean, the guys whose job it is.”

When I grow up my job is going to be a giant, not the eating kind, the kind that catches kids that are falling into the sea maybe and puts them back on land.

I shout, “Dandelion alert,” Grandma scoops it out with her trowel so the grass can grow, because there isn’t room for everything.

When we’re tired we go in the hammock, even Grandma. “I used to sit like this with your ma when she was a baby.”

“Did you give her some?”

“Some what?”

“From your breast.”

Grandma shakes her head. “She used to bend back my fingers while she had her bottle.”

“Where’s the tummy mommy?”

“The—oh, you know about her? I have no idea, I’m afraid.”

“Did she get another baby?”

Grandma doesn’t say anything. Then she says, “That’s a nice thought.”

•   •   •

I’m painting at the kitchen table in Grandma’s old apron that has a crocodile and
I Ate Gator on the Bayou
. I’m not doing proper pictures, just
splotches and stripes and spirals, I use all the colors, I even mix them in puddles. I like to make a wet bit then fold the paper over like Grandma showed me, so when I unfold it it’s a
butterfly.

There’s Ma in the window.

The red spills. I try and wipe it up but it’s all on my foot and the floor. Ma’s face isn’t there anymore, I run to the window but she’s gone. Was I just imagining?
I’ve got red on the window and the sink and the counter. “Grandma?” I shout. “Grandma?”

Then Ma’s right behind me.

I run to nearly at her. She goes to hug me but I say, “No, I’m all painty.”

She laughs, she undoes my apron and drops it on the table. She holds me hard all over but I keep my sticky hands and foot away. “I wouldn’t know you,” she says to my head.

“Why you wouldn’t—?”

“I guess it’s your hair.”

“Look, I have some long in a bracelet, but it keeps getting catched on things.”

“Can I have it?”

“Sure.”

The bracelet gets some paint on it sliding off my wrist. Ma puts it on hers. She looks different but I don’t know how. “Sorry I made you red on your arm.”

“It’s all washable,” says Grandma, coming in.

“You didn’t tell him I was coming?” asks Ma, giving her a kiss.

“Ithought it best not,incase of a hitch.”

“There’s no hitches.”

“Good to hear it.” Grandma wipes her eyes and starts cleaning the paint up. “Now, Jack’s been sleeping on a blow-up mattress in our room, but I can make you up a bed on
the couch . . .”

“Actually, we better head off.”

Grandma stands still for a minute. “You’ll stay for a bit of supper?”

“Sure,” says Ma.

Steppa makes pork chops with risotto, I don’t like the bone bits but I eat all the rice and scrape the sauce with my fork. Steppa steals a bit of my pork.

“Swiper no swiping.”

He groans, “Oh, man!”

Grandma shows me a heavy book with kids she says were Ma and Paul when they were small. I’m working on believing, then I see one of the girl on a beach, the one Grandma and Steppa took me
there, and her face is Ma’s exact face. I show Ma.

“That’s me, all right,” she says, turning the page. There’s one of Paul waving out of a window in a gigantic banana that’s actually a statue, and one of them both
eating ice cream in cones with Grandpa but he looks different and Grandma too, she has dark hair in the picture.

“Where’s one of the hammock?”

“We were in it all the time, so probably nobody ever thought of taking a picture,” says Ma.

“It must be terrible to not have any,” Grandma tells her.

“Any what?” says Ma.

“Pictures of Jack when he was a baby and a toddler,” she says. “I mean, just to remember him by.”

Ma’s face is all blank. “I don’t forget a day of it.” She looks at her watch, I didn’t know she had one, it’s got pointy fingers.

“What time are they expecting you at the clinic?” asks Steppa.

She shakes her head. “I’m all done with that.” She takes something out of her pocket and shakes it, it’s a key on a ring. “Guess what, Jack, you and me have our own
apartment.”

Grandma says her other name. “Is that such a good idea, do you think?”

“It was my idea. It’s OK, Mom. There’s counselors there around the clock.”

“But you’ve never lived away from home before . . .”

Ma’s staring at Grandma, and so is Steppa. He lets out a big whoop of laughing.

“It’s not funny,” says Grandma, whacking him in the chest. “She knows what I mean.”

Ma takes me upstairs to pack my stuff.

“Close your eyes,” I tell her, “there’s surprises.” I lead her into the bedroom. “Ta-da.” I wait. “It’s Rug and lots of our things, the
police gave them back.”

“So I see,” says Ma.

“Look, Jeep and Remote—”

“Let’s not cart broken stuff around with us,” she says, “just take what you really need and put it in your new Dora bag.”

“I need all of it.”

Ma breathes out. “Have it your way.”

What’s my way?

“There’s boxes it all came in.”

“I said OK.”

Steppa puts all our stuff into the back of the white car.

“I must get my license renewed,” says Ma when Grandma’s driving along.

“You might find you’re a bit rusty.”

“Oh, I’m rusty at everything,” says Ma.

I ask, “Why you’re—?”

“Like the Tin Man,” Ma says over her shoulder. She lifts her elbow and does a squeak. “Hey, Jack, will we buy a car of our own someday?”

“Yeah. Or actually a helicopter. A super zoomer helicopter train car submarine.”

“Now, that sounds like a ride.”

It’s hours and hours in the car. “How come it’s so long?” I ask.

“Because it’s all the way across the city,” says Grandma. “It’s practically the next state.”

“Mom . . .”

The sky’s getting dark.

Grandma parks where Ma says. There is a big sign. INDEPENDENT LIVING RESIDENTIAL FACILITY. She helps us carry all our boxes and bags in the building that’s made of brown bricks, except I
pull my Dora on its wheels. We go in a big door with a man called the doorman that smiles. “Does he lock us in?” I whisper to Ma.

“No, just other people out.”

There’s three women and a man called Support Staff, we’re very welcome to buzz down anytime we need help with anything at all, buzzing is like calling on the phone. There’s
lots of floors, and apartments on each one, mine and Ma’s is on six. I tug at her sleeve, I whisper, “Five.”

“What’s that?”

“Can we be on five instead?”

“Sorry, we don’t get to choose,” she says.

When the elevator bangs shut Ma shivers.

“You OK?” asks Grandma.

“Just one more thing to get used to.”

Ma has to tap in the secret code to make the elevator shake. My tummy feels odd when it ups. Then the doors open and we’re on six already, we flew without knowing it. There’s a
little hatch that says
INCINERATOR,
when we put trash in it it’ll fall down down down and go up in smoke. On the doors it’s not numbers it’s letters, ours is the B, that
means we live in Six B. Six is not a bad number like nine, it’s the upside down of it actually. Ma puts the key in the hole, when she turns it she makes a face because of her bad wrist.
She’s not all fixed yet. “Home,” she says, pushing the door open.

How is it home if I’ve never been here?

An apartment’s like a house but all squished flat. There’s five rooms, that’s lucky, one is the bathroom with a bath so we can have baths not showers. “Can we have one
now?”

“Let’s get settled in first,” says Ma.

The stove does flames like at Grandma’s. The next to the kitchen is the living room that has a couch and a low-down table and a super-big TV in it.

Grandma’s in the kitchen unpacking a box. “Milk, bagels, I don’t know if you’ve started drinking coffee again. . . . He likes this alphabet cereal, he spelled out
Volcano
the other day.”

Ma puts her arms on Grandma and stops her moving for a minute. “Thanks.”

“Should I run out for anything else?”

“No, I think you’ve thought of everything. ’Night, Mom.”

Grandma’s face is twisted. “You know—”

“What?” Ma waits. “What is it?”

“I didn’t forget a day of you either.”

They aren’t saying anything so I go try the beds for which is bouncier. When I’m doing somersaults I hear them talking a lot. I go around opening and shutting everything.

After Grandma’s gone back to her house Ma shows me how to do the bolt, that’s like a key that only us on the inside can open or shut.

In bed I remember, I pull her T-shirt up.

“Ah,” says Ma, “I don’t think there’s any in there.”

“Yeah, there must be.”

“Well, the thing about breasts is, if they don’t get drunk from, they figure,
OK, nobody needs our milk anymore, we’ll stop making it
.”

“Dumbos. I bet I can find some . . .”

“No,” says Ma, putting her hand between, “I’m sorry. That’s all done. Come here.”

We cuddle hard. Her chest goes
boom boom
in my ear, that’s the heart of her.

I lift up her T-shirt.

“Jack—”

I kiss the right and say, “Bye-bye.” I kiss the left twice because it was always creamier. Ma holds my head so tight I say, “I can’t breathe,” and she lets go.

•   •   •

God’s face comes up all pale red in my eyes. I blink and make the light come and go. I wait till Ma’s breathing is on. “How long do we stay here at the
Independent Living?”

She yawns. “As long as we like.”

“I’d like to stay for one week.”

She stretches her whole self. “We’ll stay for a week, then, and after that we’ll see.”

I curl her hair like a rope. “I could cut yours and then we’d be the same again.”

Ma shakes her head. “I think I’m going to keep mine long.”

When we’re unpacking there’s a big problem, I can’t find Tooth.

I look in all my stuff and then all around in case I dropped him last night. I’m trying to remember when I had him in my hand or in my mouth. Not last night but maybe the night before at
Grandma’s I think I was sucking him. I have a terrible thought, maybe I swallowed him by accident in my sleep.

“What happens to stuff we eat if it’s not food?”

Ma’s putting socks in her drawer. “Like what?”

I can’t tell her I maybe lost a bit of her. “Like a little stone or something.”

“Oh, then it just slides on through.”

We don’t go down in the elevator today, we don’t even get dressed. We stay in our Independent Living and learn all the bits. “We could sleep in this room,” says Ma,
“but you could play in the other one that gets more sunshine.”

“With you.”

“Well, yeah, but sometimes I’ll be doing other things, so maybe during the day our sleeping room could be my room.”

What other things?

Ma pours us our cereal, not even counting. I thank Baby Jesus.

“I read a book at college that said everyone should have a room of their own,” she says.

“Why?”

“To do their thinking in.”

“I can do my thinking in a room with you.” I wait. “Why you can’t think in a room with me?”

Ma makes a face. “I can, most of the time, but it would be nice to have somewhere to go that’s just mine, sometimes.”