Room: A Novel

Bugs bite for no reason. Night-night, sleep tight, don’t let the bugs bite, Ma doesn’t remember to say that anymore. “OK,” I say, “sixteen. Plus Mrs. Garber and the girl with tattoos and Hugo, only we don’t talk to them hardly, does that count?”

“Oh, sure.”

“That’s nineteen then.” I have to go get another tissue, they’re softer than toilet paper but sometimes they rip when they’re wetted. Then I’m up already so we have a getting dressed race, I win except for forgetting my shoes.

I can go down the stairs really fast on my butt now bump bump bump so my teeth clack. I don’t think I’m like a monkey like the paper people said, but I don’t know, the ones on the wildlife planet don’t have stairs.

For breakfast I have four French toasts. “Am I growing?”

Ma looks up and down me. “Every minute.”

When we go see Dr. Clay Ma makes me tell about my dreams.

He thinks my brain is probably doing a spring cleaning.

I stare at him.

“Now you’re safe, it’s gathering up all those scary thoughts you don’t need anymore, and throwing them out as bad dreams.” His hands do the throwing.

I don’t say because of manners, but actually he’s got it backwards. In Room I was safe and Outside is the scary.

Dr. Clay is talking to Ma now about how she wants to slap Grandma.

“That’s not allowed,” I say.

She blinks at me. “I don’t want to really. Just sometimes.”

“Did you ever want to slap her before you were kidnapped?” asks Dr. Clay.

“Oh, sure.” Ma looks at him, then laughs sort of groaning. “Great, I’ve got my life back.”

We find another room with two things I know what they are, they’re computers. Ma says, “Excellent, I’m going to e-mail a couple of friends.” “Who of the nineteen?”

“Ah, old friends of mine, actually, you don’t know them yet.”

She sits and goes tap tap on the letters bit for a while, I watch. She’s frowning at the screen. “Can’t remember my password.” “What’s—?”

“I’m such a—” She covers her mouth. She does a scratchy breath through her nose. “Never mind. Hey, Jack, let’s find something fun for you, will we?” “Where?”

She moves the mouse a bit and suddenly there’s a picture of Dora. I go close to watch, she shows me bits to click with the little arrow so I can do the game myself. I put all the pieces of the magic saucer back together and Dora and Boots clap and sing a thank-you song. It’s better than TV even.

Ma’s with the other computer looking up a book of faces she says is a new invention, she types in the names and it shows them smiling. “Are they really, really old?” I ask.

“Mostly twenty-six, like me.”

“But you said they’re old friends.”

“That just means I knew them a long time ago. They look so different. .” She puts her eyes nearer the pictures, she mutters things like “South Korea” or “Divorced already, no way—”

There’s another new website she finds with videos of songs and things, she shows me two cats dancing in ballet shoes that’s funny. Then she goes to other sites with only words like confinement and trafficking, she says can I let her read for a while, so I try my Dora game again and this time I win a Switchy Star.

There’s a somebody standing in the door, I jump. It’s Hugo, he’s not smiling. “I Skype at two.”

“Huh?” says Ma.

“I Skype at two.”

“Sorry, I have no idea what—”

“I Skype my mother every day at two p.m., she’ll have been expecting me two minutes ago, it’s written down in the schedule right here on the door.” Back in our room on the bed there’s a little machine with a note from Paul, Ma says it’s like the one she was listening to when Old Nick stole her, only this one’s got pictures you can move with your fingers and not just a thousand songs but millions. She’s put the bud things in her ears, she’s nodding to a music I don’t hear and singing in a little voice about being a million different people from one day to the next.

“Let me.”

“It’s called ‘Bitter Sweet Symphony,’ when I was thirteen I listened to it all the time.” She puts one bud in my ear.

“Too loud.” I yank it out.

“Be gentle with it, Jack, it’s my present from Paul.”

I didn’t know it was hers-not-mine. In Room everything was ours.

“Hang on, here’s the Beatles, there’s an oldie you might like from about fifty years ago,” she says, “ ‘All You Need Is Love.’ ” I’m confused. “Don’t persons need food and stuff?”

“Yeah, but all that’s no good if you don’t have somebody to love as well,” says Ma, she’s too loud, she’s still flicking through the names with her finger. “Like, there’s this experiment with baby monkeys, a scientist took them away from their mothers and kept each one all alone in a cage — and you know what, they didn’t grow up right.”

“Why they didn’t grow?”

“No, they got bigger but they were weird, from not getting cuddles.”

“What kind of weird?”

She clicks her machine off. “Actually, sorry, Jack, I don’t know why I brought it up.”

“What kind of weird?”

Ma chews her lip. “Sick in their heads.”

“Like the crazies?”

She nods. “Biting themselves and stuff.”

Hugo cuts his arms but I don’t think he bites himself. “Why?”