Room: A Novel

She makes the water very high and steamy and she pours in bubble stuff for sparkly hills. The green of the bath is nearly hidden but I know it’s still there. “Clothes off, sweetie.” She stands with her hands on her hips. “You don’t want me to see? You’d rather I was outside the door?” “No!”

“What’s the matter?” She waits. “Do you think without your ma in the bath you’ll drown or something?” I didn’t know persons could drown in baths.

“I’ll sit right here all the time,” she says, patting the lid of the toilet.

I shake my head. “You be in the bath too.”

“Me? Oh, Jack, I have my shower every morning. What if I sit right on the edge of the bath like this?” “In it.”

Grandma stares at me. Then she groans, she says, “OK, if that’s what it takes, just this once. . But I’m wearing my swimsuit.” “I don’t know to swim.”

“No, we won’t actually be swimming, I just, I’d rather not be naked if that’s all right with you.”

“Does it make you scared?”

“No,” she says, “I just — I’d rather not, if you don’t mind.”

“Can I be naked?”

“Of course, you’re a kid.”

In Room we were sometimes naked and sometimes dressed, we never minded.

“Jack, can we just get in this bath before it’s cold?”

It’s not nearly cold, there’s still steam flying off it. I start taking off my clothes. Grandma says she’ll be back in a sec.

Statues can be naked even if they’re adults, or maybe they have to be. Steppa says that’s because they’re trying to look like old statues that were always naked because the old Romans thought bodies are the most beautiful thing. I lean against the bath but the hard outside is cold on my tummy. There’s that bit in Alice,

They told me you had been to her

And mentioned me to him,

She gave me a good character

But said I could not swim.

My fingers are scuba divers. The soap falls in the water and I play it’s a shark. Grandma comes in with a stripey thing on like underwear and T-shirt stuck together with beads, also a plastic bag on her head she says is called a shower cap even though we’re having a bath. I don’t laugh at her, only inside.

When she climbs in the bath the water gets higher, I get in too and it’s nearly spilling. She’s at the smooth end, Ma always sat at the faucet end. I make sure I don’t touch Grandma’s legs with my legs. I bang my head on a faucet.

“Careful.”

Why do persons only say that after the hurt?

Grandma doesn’t remember any bath games except “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” when we try that it makes a slosh on the floor.

She doesn’t have any toys. I play the nailbrush is a submarine that brushes the seabed, it finds the soap that’s a gooey jellyfish.

After we dry ourselves, I’m scratching my nose and a bit comes off in my nail. In the mirror there’s little scaly circles where some of me is peeling off.

Steppa’s come in for his slippers. “I used to love this. .” He touches my shoulder and suddenly there’s a strip of all thin and white, I didn’t feel it go. He holds it out for me to take. “That’s a goody.”

“Stop that,” says Grandma.

I rub the white thing and it rolls up, a tiny dried ball of me. “Again,” I say.

“Hang on, let me find a long bit on your back. .”

“Men,” says Grandma, making a face.

• • •

This morning the kitchen’s empty. I get the scissors from the drawer and cut my ponytail all off.

Grandma comes in and stares. “Well, I’m going to just tidy you up, if I may,” she says, “and then you can get the brush and pan. Really we should keep a piece, as it’s your first haircut. .”

Most goes in the trash but she takes three long bits and makes a braid that’s a bracelet for me with green thread on the end.

She says go look in a mirror but first I check my muscles, I still have my strong.

• • •

The newspaper at the top says Saturday April 17, that means I’ve been at Grandma and Steppa’s house one whole week. I was one week in the Clinic before, that equals two weeks I’ve been in the world. I keep adding it up to check, because it feels like a million years and Ma’s still not coming for me.

Grandma says we have to get out of this house. Nobody would know me now my hair’s all short and going curly. She tells me to take my shades off because my eyes must be used to Outside now and besides the shades will only attract attention.

We cross lots of roads holding hands and not letting the cars squish us. I don’t like the holding hands, I pretend they’re some boy else’s she’s holding. Then Grandma has a good idea, I can hold on to the chain of her purse instead.

There’s lots of every kind of thing in the world but it all costs money, even stuff to throw away, like the man in the line ahead of us in the convenience store buys a something in a box and rips the box and puts it in the trash right away. The little cards with numbers all over are called a lottery, idiots buy them hoping to get magicked into millionaires.

In the post office we buy stamps, we send Ma a picture I did of me in a rocket ship.