Room: A Novel

I’m extra cold now, my hands are all numb under the socks on them.

For dinner I keep asking can we have the last of the cereal so in the end Ma says yeah. I spill some because of not feeling my fingers.

The dark’s coming back, but Ma has all the rhymes in her head from the Big Book of Nursery Rhymes. I ask for “Oranges and Lemons,” my best line is “I do not know, says the great bell of Bow” because it’s all deep like a lion. Also about the chopper coming to chop off your head. “What’s a chopper?” “A big knife, I guess.”

“I don’t think so,” I tell her. “It’s a helicopter that its blades spin real fast and chop off heads.”

“Yuck.”

We’re not sleepy but there’s not much to do without seeing. We sit on Bed and do our own rhymes. “Our friend Wickles has the tickles.” “Our friends the Backyardigans have to try hard again.”

“Good one,” I tell Ma. “Our friend Grace winned the race.”

“Won it,” says Ma. “Our friend Jools likes swimming pools.”

“Our friend Barney lives on a farm-y.”

“Cheat.”

“OK,” I say. “Our friend Uncle Paul had a bad fall.”

“He came off his motorbike once.”

I was forgetting he was real. “Why he came off his motorbike?”

“By accident. But the ambulance took him to the hospital and the doctors made him all better.”

“Did they cut him open?”

“No, no, they just put a cast on his arm to stop it hurting.”

So hospitals are real too, and motorbikes. My head’s going to burst from all the new things I have to believe.

It’s all black now except Skylight has a dark kind of brightness. Ma says in a city there’s always some light from the streetlights and the lamps in the buildings and stuff.

“Where’s the city?”

“Just out there,” she says, pointing at Bed Wall.

“I looked through Skylight and I never saw it.”

“Yeah, that’s why you got mad at me.”

“I’m not mad at you.”

She gives me back my kiss. “Skylight looks straight up in the air. Most of the things I’ve been telling you about are on the ground, so to see them we’d need a window that faces out sideways.”

“We could ask for a sideways window for Sundaytreat.”

Ma sort of laughs.

I was forgetting that Old Nick’s not coming anymore. Maybe my lollipop was the last Sundaytreat ever.

I think I’m going to cry but what comes out is a huge yawn. “Good night, Room,” I say.

“Is that the time? OK. Good night,” says Ma.

“Good night, Lamp and Balloon.” I wait for Ma but she’s not saying any more of them. “Good night, Jeep, and Good night, Remote. Good night, Rug, and Good night, Blanket, and Good night, the Bugs, and don’t bite.”

• • •

What wakes me up is a noise over and over. Ma’s not in Bed. There’s a bit of light, the air’s still icy. I look over the edge, she’s in the middle of Floor going thump thump thump with her hand. “What did Floor do?”

Ma stops, she puffs out a long breath. “I need to hit something,” she says, “but I don’t want to break anything.”

“Why not?”

“Actually, I’d love to break something. I’d love to break everything.”

I don’t like her like this. “What’s for breakfast?”

Ma stares at me. Then she stands up and goes over to Cabinet and gets out a bagel, I think it’s the last one.

She only has a quarter of it, she’s not very hungry.

When we let our breaths out they’re foggy. “That’s because it’s colder today,” says Ma.

“You said it wouldn’t get any colder.”

“Sorry, I was wrong.”

I finish the bagel. “Do I still have a Grandma and Grandpa and Uncle Paul?”

“Yeah,” says Ma, she smiles a bit.

“Are they in Heaven?”

“No, no.” She twists her mouth. “I don’t think so, anyway. Paul’s only three years older than me, he’s — wow, he must be twenty-nine.” “Actually they’re here,” I whisper. “Hiding.”

Ma looks around. “Where?”

“In Under Bed.”

“Oh, that must be a tight squeeze. There’s three of them, and they’re pretty big.”

“As big as hippopotami?”

“Not that big.”

“Maybe they’re. . in Wardrobe.”

“With my dresses?”

“Yeah. When we hear a clatter that’s them knocking down the hangers.”

Ma’s face is flat.

“I’m only kidding,” I tell her.

She nods.

“Can they come here sometime for real?”

“I wish they could,” she says. “I pray for it so hard, every night.”

“I don’t hear you.”

“Just in my head,” says Ma.

I didn’t know she prays things in her head where I can’t hear.

“They’re wishing it too,” she says, “but they don’t know where I am.”

“You’re in Room with me.”

“But they don’t know where it is, and they don’t know about you at all.”

That’s weird. “They could look on Dora’s Map, and when they come I could pop out at them for a surprise.”

Ma nearly laughs but not quite. “Room’s not on any map.”

“We could tell them on a telephone, Bob the Builder has one.”

“But we don’t.”

“We could ask for one for Sundaytreat.” I remember. “If Old Nick stops being mad.”

“Jack. He’d never give us a phone, or a window.” Ma takes my thumbs and squeezes them. “We’re like people in a book, and he won’t let anybody else read it.”