Room: A Novel

“I’ve read it too many times.”

But when I want something I want it always, like chocolates, I never ate a chocolate too many times.

“You could read it yourself,” she says.

That’s silly, I could read all them myself, even Alice with her old-fashioned words. “I prefer when you read them.” Her eyes are all hard and shiny. Then she opens the book again. “ ‘Heeeeeeeeere’s Dylan!’ ”

Because she’s cranky I let her do The Runaway Bunny, then some Alice. My best of the songs is “Soup of the Evening,” I bet it’s not vegetable. Alice keeps being in a hall with lots of doors, one is teeny tiny, when she gets it open with the golden key there’s a garden with bright flowers and cool fountains but she’s always the wrong size. Then when she finally gets into the garden, it turns out the roses are just painted not real and she has to play croquet with flamingos and hedgehogs.

We lie down on top of Duvet. I have lots. I think Mouse just might come back if we’re really quiet but he doesn’t, Ma must have stuffed up every single hole. She’s not mean but sometimes she does mean things.

When we get up we do Scream, I crash the pan lids like cymbals. Scream goes on for ages because every time I’m starting to stop Ma screeches some more, her voice is nearly disappearing. The marks on her neck are like when I’m painting with beet juice. I think the marks are Old Nick’s fingerprints.

After, I play Telephone with toilet rolls, I like how the words boom when I talk through a fat one. Usually Ma does all the voices but this afternoon she needs to lie down and read. It’s The Da Vinci Code with the eyes of a woman peeking out, she looks like Baby Jesus’s Ma.

I call Boots and Patrick and Baby Jesus, I tell them all about my new powers now I’m five. “I can be invisible,” I whisper at my phone, “I can turn my tongue inside out and go blasting like a rocket into Outer Space.”

Ma’s eyelids are shut, how can she be reading through them?

I play Keypad, that’s I stand on my chair by Door and usually Ma says the numbers but today I have to make them up. I press them on Keypad quick quick no mistakes. The numbers don’t make Door beep open but I like the little clicks when I push them.

Dress-up is a quiet game. I put on the royal crown that’s some bits gold foil and some bits silver foil and milk carton underneath. I invent Ma a bracelet out of two socks of her tied together, one white one green.

I get down Games Box from Shelf. I measure with Ruler, each domino is nearly one inch and the checkers are a half. I make my fingers into Saint Peter and Saint Paul, they bow to each other before and do flying after each turn.

Ma’s eyes are open again. I bring her the sock bracelet, she says it’s beautiful, she puts it on right away.

“Can we play Beggar My Neighbor?”

“Give me a second,” she says. She goes to Sink and washes her face, I don’t know why because it wasn’t dirty but maybe there were germs.

I beggar her twice and she beggars me once, I hate losing. Then Gin Rummy and Go Fish, I win mostly. Then we just play with the cards, dancing and fighting and stuff. Jack of Diamonds is my favorite and his friends the other Jacks.

“Look.” I point to Watch. “05:01, we can have dinner.”

It’s a hot dog each, yum.

For TV I go in Rocker but Ma sits on Bed with Kit, she’s putting the hem back up on her brown dress with pink bits. We watch the medical planet where doctors and nurses cut holes in persons to pull the germs out. The persons are asleep not dead. The doctors don’t bite the thread like Ma, they use super sharp daggers and after, they sew the persons up like Frankenstein.

When the commercials come on Ma asks me to go over and press mute. There’s a man in a yellow helmet drilling a hole in a street, he holds his forehead and makes a face. “Is he hurting?” I ask.

She looks up from sewing. “He must have a headache from that noisy drill.”

We can’t hear the drill because it’s on mute. The TV man’s at a sink taking a pill from a bottle, next he’s smiling and throwing a ball on a boy. “Ma, Ma.”

“What?” She’s doing a knot.

“That’s our bottle. Were you looking? Were you looking at the man with the headache?”

“No.”

“The bottle where he took the pill, that’s the exact one we’ve got, the killers.”

Ma stares at the TV, but it’s showing a car speeding around a mountain now.

“No, before,” I say. “He actually had our bottle of killers.”

“Well, maybe it was the same kind as ours, but it’s not our one.”

“Yeah it is.”

“No, there’s lots of them.”

“Where?”

Ma looks at me, then back at her dress, she pulls at the hem. “Well, our bottle is right here on Shelf, and the rest are. .” “In TV?” I ask.

She’s staring at the threads and winding them around the little cards to fit back in Kit.