Room_ A Novel - Emma Donoghue [22]
I don’t have a bath on my own, I just get dressed.
There’s hours and hours, hundreds of them.
Ma gets up to pee but no talking, with her face all blank. I already put a glass of water beside Bed but she just gets back under Duvet.
I hate when she’s Gone, but I like that I get to watch TV all day. I put it on really quiet at first and make it a bit louder at a time. Too much TV might turn me into a zombie but Ma’s like a zombie today and she’s not watching even. There’s Bob the Builder and Wonder Pets! and Barney. For each I go up to touch hello. Barney and his friends do lots of hugs, I run to get in the middle but sometimes I’m too late. Today it’s about a fairy that sneaks in at night and turns old teeth into money. I want Dora but she doesn’t come.
Thursday means laundry, but I can’t do it all myself and Ma’s still lying on the sheets anyway.
When I’m hungry again I check Watch but he only says 09:47. Cartoons are over so I watch football and the planet where people win prizes. The puffy-hair woman is on her red couch talking to a man who used to be a golf star. There’s another planet where women hold up necklaces and say how exquisite they are. “Suckers,” Ma always says when she sees that planet. She doesn’t say anything today, she doesn’t notice I’m watching and watching and my brain is starting to be stinky.
How can TV be pictures of real things?
I think about them all floating around in Outside Space outside the walls, the couch and the necklaces and the bread and the killers and the airplanes and all the shes and hes, the boxers and the man with one leg and the puffy-hair woman, they’re floating past Skylight. I wave to them, but there’s skyscrapers as well and cows and ships and trucks, it’s crammed out there, I count all the stuff that might crash into Room. I can’t breathe right, I have to count my teeth instead, left to right on the top then right to left on the bottom, then backwards, twenty every time but I still think maybe I’m counting wrong.
When it’s 12:04 it can be lunch so I cut a can of baked beans open, I’m careful. I wonder would Ma wake up if I cutted my hand and screamed help? I never had beans cold before. I eat nine, then I’m not hungry. I put the rest in a tub for not waste. Some are stuck to the can at the bottom, I pour water in. Maybe Ma will get up and scrub it later. Maybe she’ll be hungry, she’ll say, “Oh Jack, how thoughtful of you to save me beans in a tub.”
I measure more things with Ruler but it’s hard to add up the numbers on my own. I do him end over end and he’s an acrobat of a circus. I play with Remote, I point him at Ma and whisper, “Wake up,” but she doesn’t. Balloon is all squishy, she goes for a ride on Prune Juice Bottle up near Skylight, they make the light all brownly sparkly. They’re scared of Remote because of his sharp end, so I put him in Wardrobe and fold the doors shut. I tell all the things it’s OK because Ma will be back tomorrow. I read the five books all myself only just bits of Alice. Mostly I just sit.
I don’t do Scream because of disturbing Ma. I think it’s probably OK to skip one day.
Then I switch the TV on again and wiggle Bunny, he makes the planets a bit less fuzzy but only a bit. It’s racing cars, I like to see them go super fast but it’s not very interesting after they do the oval about a hundred times. I want to wake Ma up and ask about Outside with the actual humans and things all zooming around, but she’d be mad. Or maybe she wouldn’t switch on at all even if I shake her. So I don’t. I go up very close, half her face is showing and her neck. The marks are purple now.
I’m going to kick Old Nick till I break his butt. I’ll zap Door open with Remote and whiz into Outside Space and get everything at the real stores and bring it back to Ma.
I cry a bit but no noise.
I watch a show of weather and one of enemies are besieging a castle, the good guys are building a barricade so the door won’t open. I nibble my finger, Ma can’t tell me to stop. I wonder how much of my brain is gooey