But no, I used all my brave up.
“I just need this much,” says Dr. Kendrick, holding up a tube.
That’s way more than the dog or the mosquito, I won’t have hardly any left.
“And then you’ll get . . . What would he like?” she asks Ma.
“I’d like to go to Bed.”
“She means a treat,” Ma tells me. “Like cake or something.”
“Hmm, I don’t think we’ve got any cake right now, the kitchens are shut,” says Dr. Clay. “What about a sucker?”
Pilar brings in a jar that’s full of lollipops, that’s what suckers are.
Ma says, “Go on, choose one.”
But there’s too many, they’re yellow and green and red and blue and orange. They’re all flat like circles not balls like the one from Old Nick that Ma threw in Trash and I ate anyway. Ma chooses for me, it’s a red but I shake my head because the one from him was red and I think I’m going to cry again. Ma chooses a green. Pilar gets the plastic off. Dr. Clay stabs the needle inside my elbow and I scream and try to get away but Ma’s holding me, she puts the lollipop in my mouth and I suck but it doesn’t stop the hurting at all. “Nearly done,” she says.
“I don’t like it.”
“Look, the needle’s out.”
“Good work,” says Dr. Clay.
“No, the lollipop.”
“You’ve got your lollipop,” says Ma.
“I don’t like it, I don’t like the green.”
“No problem, spit it out.”
Pilar takes it. “Try an orange instead, I like the orange ones best,” she says.
I didn’t know I was allowed two. Pilar opens an orange for me and it’s good.
First it’s warm, then it gets cold. The warm was nice but the cold is a wet cold. Ma and me are in Bed but it’s shrunk and it’s getting chilly, the sheet under us and the sheet on us too and the Duvet’s lost her white, she’s all blue—
This isn’t Room.
Silly Penis is standing up. “We’re in Outside,” I whisper to him.
“Ma—”
She jumps like an electric shock.
“I peed.”
“That’s OK.”
“No, but it’s all wetted. My T-shirt on the tummy bit as well.”
“Forget about it.”
I try forgetting. I’m looking past her head. The floor is like Rug but fuzzy with no pattern and no edges, sort of gray, it goes all the way to the walls, I didn’t know walls are green. There’s a picture of a monster, but when I look it’s actually a huge wave of the sea. A shape like Skylight only in the wall, I know what it is, it’s a sideways window, with hundreds of wooden stripes across it but there’s light coming between. “I’m still remembering,” I tell Ma.
“Of course you are.” She finds my cheek to kiss it.
“I can’t forget it because I’m all still wet.”
“Oh, that,” she says in a different voice. “I didn’t mean you had to forget you wet the bed, just don’t worry about it.” She’s climbing out, she’s still in her paper dress, it’s crunched up. “The nurses will change the sheets.”
I don’t see the nurses.
“But my other T-shirts—” They’re in Dresser, in the lower drawer. They were yesterday so I guess they are now too. But is Room still there when we’re not in it?
“We’ll figure something out,” says Ma. She’s at the window, she’s made the wooden stripes go more apart and there’s lots of light.
“How you did that?” I run over, the table hits my leg bam.
She rubs it better. “With the string, see? It’s the cord of the blind.”
“Why it’s—?”
“It’s the cord that opens and closes the blind,” she says. “This is a window blind, it’s called a blind—I guess because it stops you seeing.”
“Why it stops me seeing?”
“I mean you as in anyone.”
Why I am as in anyone?
“It stops people looking in or out,” says Ma.
But I’m looking out, it’s like TV. There’s grass and trees and a bit of a white building and three cars, a blue and a brown and a silver with stripey bits. “On the grass—”
“What?”
“Is that a vulture?”
“It’s just a crow, I think.”
“Another one—”
“That’s a, a what-do-you-call-it, a pigeon. Early Alzheimer’s! OK, let’s get cleaned up.”
“We haven’t had breakfast,” I tell her.
“We can do that after.”
I shake my head. “Breakfast comes before bath.”
“It doesn’t have to, Jack.”
“But—”
“We don’t have to do the same as we used to,” says Ma, “we can do what we like.”
“I like breakfast before bath.”
But she’s gone around a corner and I can’t see her, I run after. I find her in another little room inside this one, the floor’s turned into shiny cold white squares and the walls are gone white too. There’s a toilet that’s not Toilet and a sink that’s twice the big of Sink and a tall invisible box that must be a shower like TV persons splash in. “Where’s the bath hiding?”
“There’s no bath.” Ma bangs the front of the box sideways so it’s open. She takes off her paper dress and crumples it up in a basket that I think is a trash, but it hasn’t got a lid that goes ding. “Let’s get rid of that filthy thing too.” My T-shirt pulls my face coming off. She scrunches it up and throws it in the trash.
“But—”
“It’s a rag.”
“It’s not, it’s my T-shirt.”
“You’ll get another, lots of them.” I can hardly hear her because she’s switched on the shower, all crashy. “Come on in.”
“I don’t know how.”
“It’s lovely, I promise.” Ma waits. “OK, then, I won’t be long.” She steps in and starts closing the invisible door.
“No.”
“I’ve got to, or the water will spill out.”
“No.”
“You can watch me through the glass, I’m right here.” She slides it bang, I can’t see her anymore except blurry, not like the real Ma but some ghost that makes weird sounds.
I hit it, I can’t figure out the way, then I do and I slam it open.
“Jack—”
“I don’t like when you’re in and I’m out.”
“Then get on in here.”
I’m crying.
Ma wipes my face with her hand, that spreads the tears. “Sorry,” she says, “sorry. I guess I’m moving too fast.” She gives me a hug that wets me all down me. “There’s nothing to cry about anymore.”
When I was a baby I only cried for a good reason. But Ma going in the shower and shutting me on the wrong side, that’s a good reason.
This time I come in, I stand flat against the glass but I still get splashed. Ma puts her face into the noisy waterfall, she makes a long groan.
“Are you hurting?” I shout.
“No, I’m just trying to enjoy my first shower in seven years.”
There’s a tiny packet that says Shampoo, Ma opens it with her teeth, she’s using it all up so there’s nearly none left. She waters her hair for ages and puts on more stuff from another little packet that says Conditioner for making silky. She wants to do mine but I don’t want to be silky, I won’t put my face in the splash. She washes me with her hands because there’s no cloth. There’s bits of my legs gone purple from where I jumped out of the brown truck ages ago. My cuts hurt everywhere, especially on my knee under my Dora and Boots Band-Aid that’s going curly, Ma says that means the cut’s getting better. I don’t know why hurting means getting better.
There’s a super thick white towel we can use each, not one to share. I’d rather share but Ma says that’s silly. She wraps another third towel around her head so it’s all huge and pointy like an icecream cone, we laugh.
I’m thirsty. “Can I have some now?”
“Oh, in
a little while.” She holds out a big thing to me, with sleeves and a belt like a costume. “Wear this robe for now.”
“But it’s a giant’s.”
“It’ll do.” She folds up the sleeves till they’re shorter and all puffy. She smells different, I think it’s the conditioner. She ties the robe around my middle. I lift up the long bits to walk. “Ta-da,” she says, “King Jack.”
She gets another robe just the same out of the wardrobe that’s not Wardrobe, it goes down just to her ankles.
“ ‘I will be king, diddle diddle, you can be queen,’ ” I sing.
Ma’s all pink and grinning, her hair is black from being wet. Mine is back in ponytail but tangledy because there’s no Comb, we left him in Room. “You should have brung Comb,” I tell her.
“Brought,” she says. “Remember, I was kind of in a hurry to see you.”
“Yeah, but we need it.”
“That old plastic comb with half its teeth snapped off? We need it like a hole in the head,” she says.
I find my socks beside the bed, I’m putting them on but Ma says stop because they’re all filthy from the street when I ran and ran and with holes in. She throws them in the trash too, she’s wasting everything.
“But Tooth, we forgot him.” I run to get the socks out of the trash and I find Tooth in the second one.
Ma rolls her eyes.
“He’s my friend,” I tell her, putting Tooth in the pocket in my robe. I’m licking my teeth because they feel funny. “Oh no, I didn’t brush after the lollipop.” I press them hard with my fingers so they won’t fall out, but not the bitten finger.
Ma shakes her head. “It wasn’t a real one.”
“It tasted real.”
“No, I mean it was sugarless, they make them with a kind of not-real sugar that’s not bad for your teeth.”
That’s confusing. I point at the other bed. “Who sleeps there?”
“It’s for you.”
“But I sleep with you.”
“Well, the nurses didn’t know that.” Ma’s staring out the window. Her shadow’s all long across the soft gray floor, I never saw such a long one. “Is that a cat in the parking lot?”
“Let’s see.” I run to look but my eyes don’t find it.
“Will we go explore?”
“Where?”
“Outside.”
“We’re in Outside already.”
“Yeah, but let’s go out in the fresh air and look for the cat,” says Ma.
“Cool.”
She finds us two pairs of slippers but they don’t fit me so I’m falling over, she says I can be barefoot for now. When I look out the window again, a thing zooms up near the other cars, it’s a van that says The Cumberland Clinic.
“What if he comes?” I whisper.
“Who?”
“Old Nick, if he comes in his truck.” I was nearly forgetting him, how could I be forgetting him?
“Oh, he couldn’t, he doesn’t know where we are,” says Ma.
“Are we a secret again?”
“Kind of, but the good kind.”
Beside the bed there’s a—I know what it is, it’s a phone. I lift the top bit, I say, “Hello,” but nobody’s talking, only a sort of hum.
“Oh, Ma, I didn’t have some yet.”
“Later.”
Everything’s backwards today.
Ma does the door handle and makes a face, it must be her bad wrist. She does it with the other hand. We go out in a long room with yellow walls and windows all along and doors the other side. Every wall’s a different color, that must be the rule. Our door is the door that says Seven all gold. Ma says we can’t go in the other doors because they belong to other persons.
“What other persons?”
“We haven’t met them yet.”
Then how does she know? “Can we look out the sideways windows?”
“Oh, yeah, they’re for anyone.”
“Is anyone us?”
“Us and anyone else,” says Ma.
Anyone else isn’t there so it’s just us. There’s no blind on these windows to stop seeing. It’s a different planet, it shows more other cars like green and white and a red one and a stony place and there’s things walking that are persons. “They’re tiny, like fairies.”
“Nah, that’s just because they’re far away,” Ma says.
“Are they real for real?”
“As real as you and me.”
I try and believe it but it’s hard work.
There’s one woman that’s not really one, I can tell because she’s gray, she’s a statue and all naked.
“Come on,” says Ma, “I’m starving.”
“I’m just—”
She pulls me by the hand. Then we can’t go anymore because there’s stairs down, lots of them. “Hold on to the banister.”
“The what?”
“This thing here, the rail.”
I do.
“Climb down one step at a time.”
I’m going to fall. I sit down.
“OK, that works too.”
I go on my butt, one step then another then another and the giant robe comes loose. A big person rushes up the steps quick quick like she’s flying, but she’s not, she’s a real human all in white. I put my face on Ma’s robe to be not seen. “Oh,” says the she, “you should have buzzed—”
Like bees?
“The buzzer right by your bed?”
“We managed,” Ma tells her.
“I’m Noreen, let me get you a couple of fresh masks.”
“Oh sorry, I forgot,” says Ma.
“Sure, why don’t I bring them up to your room?”
“That’s OK, we’re coming down.”
“Grand. Jack, will I page an aide to carry you down the stairs?”
I don’t understand, I put my face away again.
“It’s OK,” says Ma, “he’s doing it his way.”
I go on my butt down the next eleven. At the bottom Ma ties up my robe again so we’re still the king and the queen like “Lavender’s Blue.” Noreen gives me another mask I have to wear, she says she’s a nurse and she comes from another place called Ireland and she likes my ponytail. We go in a huge bit that has all tables, I never saw so many with plates and glasses and knives and one of them stabs me in the tummy, one table I mean. The glasses are invisible like ours but the plates are blue, that’s disgusting.
It’s like a TV planet that’s all about us, persons saying “Good morning” and “Welcome to the Cumberland” and “Congratulations,” I don’t know for what. Some are in robes the exact as ours and some in pajamas and some in different uniforms. Most are huge but don’t have long of hair like us, they move fast and they’re suddenly on all the sides, even behind. They walk up close and have so many teeth, they smell wrong. A he with a beard all over says, “Well, buddy, you’re some kind of hero.”
That’s me he means. I don’t look.
“How’re you liking the world so far?”
I don’t say anything.
“Pretty nice?”
I nod. I hold on tight to Ma’s hand but my fingers are slipping, they’ve wet themselves. She’s swallowing some pills Noreen gives her.
I know one head high up with a fuzzy small hair, that’s Dr. Clay with no mask on. He shakes Ma’s hand with his white plastic one and he asks if we slept well.
“I was too wired,” says Ma.
Other uniformy persons walk up, Dr. Clay says names but I don’t understand them. One has curves of hair that’s all gray and she’s called the Director of the Clinic that means the boss but she laughs and says not really, I don’t know what’s the joke.
Ma’s pointing me a chair to sit beside her. There’s the most amazing thing at the plate, it’s silver and blue and red, I think it’s an egg but not a real one, a chocolate.
“Oh, yeah, Happy Easter,” says Ma, “it totally slipped my mind.”
I hold the pretend egg in my hand. I never knowed the Bunny came in buildings
.
Ma’s put her mask down on her neck, she’s drinking juice that’s a funny color. She puts my mask up on my head so I can try the juice but there’s invisible bits in it like germs going down my throat so I cough it back in the glass real quiet. There’s anyones too near eating strange squares with little squares all over and curly bacons. How can they let the food go on the blue plates and get all color on? It does smell yummy but too much and my hands are slippy again, I put the Easter back in the exactly middle of the plate. I rub my hands on the robe but not my bitten finger. The knives and forks are wrong too, there’s no white on the handle, just the metal, that must hurt.
The persons are with huge eyes, they have all faces different shapes with some mustaches and dangling jewels and painted bits. “No kids,” I whisper to Ma.
“What’s that?”
“Where are the kids?”
“I don’t think there are any.”
“You said there was millions in Outside.”
“The clinic’s only a little piece of the world,” says Ma. “Drink your juice. Hey, look, there’s a boy over there.”
I peek where she points, but he’s long like a man with nails in his nose and his chin and his over-eyes. Maybe he’s a robot?
Ma drinks a brown steaming stuff, then she makes a face and puts it down. “What would you like?” she asks.
The Noreen nurse is right beside me, I jump. “There’s a buffet,” she says, “you could have, let’s see, waffles, omelet, pancakes . . .”
I whisper, “No.”
“You say, No, thanks,” says Ma, “that’s good manners.”
Persons not friends of mine watching at me with invisible rays zap, I put my face against Ma.
“What d’you fancy, Jack?” asks Noreen. “Sausage, toast?”
“They’re looking,” I tell Ma.
“Everybody’s just being friendly.”
I wish they’d stop.
Dr. Clay’s here again too, he leans near us. “This must be kind of overwhelming for Jack, for you both. Maybe a little ambitious for day one?”
What’s Day One?
Ma puffs her breath. “We wanted to see the garden.”
No, that was Alice.
“There’s no rush,” he says.
“Have a few bites of something,” she tells me. “You’ll feel better if you drink your juice at least.”
I shake my head.
“Why don’t I make up a couple of plates and bring them up to your room?” says Noreen.