Room: A Novel

I don’t know what I say.

“Bronwyn pretty bag,” says Bronwyn, she’s waving a spangled one with hearts hanging on strings.

“Yes, hon, but you’ve got lots of pretty bags at home.” She takes the shiny bag, Bronwyn screams and one of the hearts falls on the ground.

“Sometime, could we get more than twenty feet in before the first meltdown?” asks Paul, he’s back again.

“If you were here you could have distracted her,” Deana tells him.

“Bronwyn pretty baaaaaaagggggg!”

Deana lifts her back into the wagon. “Let’s go.”

I pick up the heart and put it in my pocket with the other treasures, I walk along beside the wagon.

Then I change my mind, I put all my treasures in my Dora bag in the front zip bit instead. My shoes are sore so I take them off.

“Jack!” That’s Paul calling at me.

“Don’t keep bawling his name out, remember?” says Deana.

“Oh, right.”

I see a gigantic apple made of wood. “I like that.”

“Crazy, isn’t it?” says Paul. “What about this drum for Shirelle?” he says to Deana.

She rolls her eyes. “Concussion hazard. Don’t even try.”

“Can I have the apple, thank you?” I ask.

“I don’t think it would fit into your bag,” says Paul, grinning.

Next I find a silver-and-blue thing like a rocket. “I want this, thank you.”

“That’s a coffeepot,” says Deana, putting it back on the shelf. “We bought you a bag already, that’s it for today, OK? We’re just looking for a present for Bronwyn’s friend, then we can get out of here.”

“Excuse me, I wonder are these your older daughter’s?” It’s an old woman holding up my shoes.

Deana stares at her.

“Jack, buddy, what’s going on?” says Paul, pointing at my socks.

“Thank you so much,” says Deana, taking the shoes from the woman and kneeling down. She pushes my feet to step into the right then the left. “You keep saying his name,” she says to Paul through her teeth.

I wonder what’s wrong with my name.

“Sorry, sorry,” says Paul.

“Why she said older daughter?” I ask.

“Ah, it’s your long hair and your Dora bag,” says Deana.

The old woman’s disappeared. “Was she a bad guy?”

“No, no.”

“But if she figured out that you were that Jack,” says Paul, “she might take your picture with her cell phone or something, and your mom would kill us.” My chest starts banging. “Why Ma would—?”

“I mean, sorry—”

“She’d be really mad, that’s all he means,” says Deana.

I’m thinking of Ma lying in the dark Gone. “I don’t like her being mad.”

“No, of course not.”

“Can you back me to the Clinic now, please?”

“Very soon.”

“Now.”

“Don’t you want to see the museum? We’ll get going in just a minute. Webkinz,” Deana tells Paul, “that should be safe enough. I think there’s a toy shop past the food court. .”

I wheel my bag all the time, my shoes are Velcroed too tight. Bronwyn’s hungry so we have popcorn that’s the crunchiest thing I ever ate, it sticks in my throat and makes me cough. Paul gets him and Deana lattes from the coffee shop. When bits of popcorn fall down from my bag Deana says to leave them there because we’ve got plenty and we don’t know what’s been on that floor. I made a mess, Ma will be mad. Deana gives me a wet wipe to unsticky my fingers, I put it in my Dora bag. It’s too bright here and I think we’re lost, I wish I was in Room Number Seven.

I need to pee, Paul brings me in a bathroom that has funny floppy sinks on the wall. He waves at them. “Go ahead.”

“Where’s the toilet?”

“These are special ones just for us guys.”

I shake my head and go out again.

Deana says I can come with her and Bronwyn, she lets me choose the cubicle. “Great job, Jack, no splashing at all.”

Why would I splashing?

When she takes Bronwyn’s underwear down it’s not like Penis, or Ma’s vagina, it’s a fat little piece of body folded in the middle with no fur. I put my finger on it and press, it’s squishy.

Deana bangs my hand away.

I can’t stop screaming.

“Calm down, Jack. Did I — is your hand hurt?”

There’s all blood coming out of my wrist.

“I’m sorry,” says Deana, “I’m so sorry, it must have been my ring.” She stares at her ring with the gold bits. “But listen, we don’t touch each other’s private parts, that is not OK. OK?”

I don’t know private parts.

“All done, Bronwyn? Let Momma wipe.”

She’s rubbing the same bit of Bronwyn I did but she doesn’t hit herself after.

When I wash my hands it hurts the blood more. Deana keeps digging in her bag for a Band-Aid. She folds up some brown paper towel and tells me to press in on the cut.

“Okelydokely?” asks Paul outside.

“Don’t ask,” says Deana. “Can we get out of here?”

“What about the present for Shirelle?”

“We can wrap up something of Bronwyn’s that looks new.”

“Not something mine,” Bronwyn shouts.

They’re arguing. I want to be in bed with Ma in the dark and her all soft and no invisible music and red-faced wide persons going by and girls laughing with their arms knotted together and bits of them showing through their clothes. I press the cut to stop my blood falling out, I close my eyes walking along, I bang into a plant pot, actually it’s not really a plant like Plant was till she died, it’s plastic of one.