Room_ A Novel - Emma Donoghue [17]
Ma lies down again holding her teeth. Sometimes she does a big breath out out out.
“Why are you hissing so long?”
“Trying to get on top of it.”
I go sit by her head and stroke her hair out of her eyes, her forehead is slippy. She grabs my hand and holds it tight. “It’s OK.”
It doesn’t look OK. “You want to play with Jeep and Remote and me?”
“Maybe later.”
“If you play you won’t mind and you won’t matter.”
She smiles a bit but the next breath comes out louder like a moan.
At 05:57 I say, “Ma, it’s nearly six,” so she gets up to make dinner but she doesn’t eat any. Jeep and Remote wait in Bath because it’s dry now, it’s their secret cave. “Actually Jeep died and went to Heaven,” I say, eating my chicken slices really fast.
“Oh, yeah?”
“But then in the night when God was asleep, Jeep snuck out and slid down the Beanstalk to Room to visit me.”
“That was cunning of him.”
I eat three green beans and have a big drink of milk and another three, they go down a bit faster in threes. Five would be fasterer but I can’t manage that, my throat would shut. One time I was four, Ma wrote Green beans / other froz green veg on the shopping list and I scribbled out Green beans with the orange pencil, she thought it was funny. At the end I have the soft bread because I like to keep it in my mouth like a cushion. “Thanks, Baby Jesus, especially for the chicken slices,” I say, “and please no more green beans for a long time. Hey, why do we thank Baby Jesus and not him?”
“Him?”
I nod at Door.
Her face gets flat even though I didn’t say his name. “Why should we thank him?”
“You did the other night, for the groceries and the snow offing and the pants.”
“You shouldn’t listen.” Sometimes when she’s really mad her mouth doesn’t really open. “It was a fake thank.”
“Why it—?”
She butts in. “He’s only the bringer. He doesn’t actually make the wheat grow in the field.”
“Which field?”
“He can’t make the sun shine on it, or the rain fall, or anything.”
“But Ma, bread doesn’t come out of fields.”
She presses on her mouth.
“Why you said—?”
“It must be time for TV,” she says fast.
It’s videos, I love them. Ma does the moves with me most times but not tonight. I jump on Bed and teach Jeep and Remote to shake their booties. It’s Rihanna and T.I. and Lady Gaga and Kanye West.
“Why do rappers wear shades even in the night,” I ask Ma, “are their eyeballs sore?”
“No, they just want to look cool. And not have fans staring into their faces all the time because they’re so famous.”
I’m confused. “Why the fans are famous?”
“No, the stars are.”
“And they don’t want to be?”
“Well, I guess they do,” says Ma, getting up to switch off the TV, “but they want to stay a bit private as well.”
When I’m having some, Ma won’t let me bring Jeep and Remote into Bed even though they’re my friends. And then she says they have to go up on Shelf while I’m sleeping. “Otherwise they’ll poke you in the night.”
“No they won’t, they promise.”
“Listen, let’s put your jeep away, then you can sleep with the remote because it’s smaller, as long as the antenna’s right down. Deal?”
“Deal.”
When I’m in Wardrobe, we talk through the slats. “God bless Jack,” she says.
“God bless Ma and magic her teeth better. God bless Jeep and Remote.”
“God bless books.”
“God bless everything here and Outer Space and Jeep as well. Ma?”
“Yeah.”
“Where are we when we’re asleep?”
I can hear her yawn. “Right here.”
“But dreams.” I wait. “Are they TV?” She still doesn’t answer. “Do we go into TV for dreaming?”
“No. We’re never anywhere but here.” Her voice sounds a long way away.
I lie curled up touching the switches with my fingers. I whisper,
“Can’t you sleep, little switches? It’s OK, have some.” I put them at my nipples, they take turns. I’m sort of asleep but only nearly.
Beep beep. That’s Door.
I listen very hard. In comes the cold air. If I had my head out of Wardrobe, there’d be Door opening, I bet I could see right into the stars and the spaceships and the planets and the aliens zooming around in UFOs. I wish I wish I