Room_ A Novel - Emma Donoghue [103]
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.
We go in a skyscraper that’s Paul’s office, he says he’s crazy busy but he makes a Xerox of my hands and buys me a candy bar out of the vending machine. Going down in the elevator pressing the buttons, I play I’m actually inside a vending machine.
We go in a bit of the government to get Grandma a new Social Security card because she lost the old one, we have to wait for years and years. Afterwards she takes me in a coffee shop where there’s no green beans, I choose a cookie bigger than my face.
There’s a baby having some, I never saw that. “I like the left,” I say, pointing. “Do you like the left best?” But the baby’s not listening.
Grandma’s pulling me away. “Sorry about that.”
The woman puts her scarf over so I can’t see the baby’s face.
“She wanted to be private,” Grandma whispers.
I didn’t know persons could be private out in the world.
We go in a Laundromat just to see. I want to climb in a spinny machine but Grandma says it would kill me.
We walk to the park to feed the ducks with Deana and Bronwyn. Bronwyn throws all her breads in at one go and the plastic bag too and Grandma has to get it out with a stick. Bronwyn wants my breads, Grandma says I have to give her half because she’s little. Deana says she’s sorry about the dinosaurs, we’ll definitely make it to the Natural History Museum one of these days.
There’s a store that’s only shoes outside, bright spongy ones with holes all over them and Grandma lets me try on a pair, I choose yellow. There’s no laces or Velcro even, I just put my foot in. They’re so light it’s like not having any on. We go in and Grandma pays five dollar papers for the shoes, that’s the same as twenty quarters, I tell her I love them.
When we come out there’s a woman sitting