Room_ A Novel - Emma Donoghue [28]
It’s a strange kind of day.
We have our cereal and brush teeth and get dressed and water Plant. We try and fill Bath but after the first bit the water comes out all icy so we just wash with cloths. It gets brighter through Skylight only not very. TV doesn’t work too, I miss my friends. I pretend they’re coming on the screen, I pat them with my fingers. Ma says let’s put on another shirt and pants each to be warm, even two socks each foot. We run Track for miles and miles and miles to warm us up, then Ma lets me take off the outside socks because my toes are all squished. “My ears hurt,” I tell her.
Her eyebrows go up.
“It’s too quiet in them.”
“Ah, that’s because we’re not hearing all the little sounds we’re used to, like the heat coming on or the refrigerator hum.”
I play with Bad Tooth, I hide him in different places like under Dresser and in the rice and behind Dish Soap. I try and forget where he is, then I’m all surprised. Ma’s chopping all the green beans from Freezer, why is she chopping so many?
That’s when I remember the one good bit of last night. “Oh, Ma, the lollipop.”
She keeps chopping. “It’s in the trash.”
Why he left it there? I run over, I step on the pedal and the lid goes ping but I don’t see the lollipop. I’m feeling around the orange peels and rice and stew and plastic.
Ma takes me by the shoulders. “Leave it.”
“It’s my candy for Sunday treat,” I tell her.
“It’s garbage.”
“No it’s not.”
“It cost him maybe fifty cents. He’s laughing at you.”
“I never had a lollipop.” I pull out of her hands.
Nothing can hot on Stove because the power’s cut. So lunch is slippery freezy green beans which are even nastier than green beans cooked. We have to eat them up because otherwise they’ll melt and rot. I wouldn’t mind that but it’s waste.
“Would you like The Runaway Bunny?” Ma asks when we’ve washed up in all cold.
I shake my head. “When the power’s getting uncut?”
“I don’t know, I’m sorry.”
We get into Bed to warm up. Ma pulls up all her clothes and I have lots, the left then the right.
“What if Room gets colder and colderer?”
“Oh, it won’t. It’s April in three days,” she says, spooning me. “It can’t be that cold out.”
We snooze, but me only a bit. I wait till Ma’s all heavy, then I wriggle out and go look in Trash again.
I find the lollipop nearly in the bottom, it’s a red ball shape. I wash my arms and my lollipop too because there’s yucky stew on it. I get the plastic right off and I suck it and suck it, it’s the sweetest thing I ever had. I wonder if this is what Outside tastes like.
If I ran away I’d become a chair and Ma wouldn’t know which one. Or I’d make myself invisible and stick to Skylight and she’d look right through me. Or a tiny speck of dust and go up her nose and she’d sneeze me right out.
Her eyes are open.
I put the lollipop behind my back.
She shuts them again.
I keep sucking for hours even though I feel a bit sick. Then it’s only a stick and I put it in Trash.
When Ma gets up she doesn’t say about the lollipop, maybe she was still asleep with her eyes open. She tries Lamp again but he stays off. She says she’ll leave him switched on so we’ll know the minute the power cut is over.
“What if he comes on in the middle of the night and wakes us up?”
“I don’t think it’ll be the middle of the night.”
We do Bowling with Bouncy Ball and Wordy Ball, and knock down vitamin bottles that we put different heads on when I was four, like Dragon and Alien and Princess and Crocodile, I win the most. I practice my adding and subtracting and sequences and multiplying and dividing and writing down the biggest numbers there are. Ma sews me two new puppets out of little socks from when I was a baby, they’ve got smiles of stitches and all different button eyes. I know to sew but it’s not much fun. I wish I could remember my baby me, what I was like.
I write a letter to SpongeBob with a picture of me and Ma on the back dancing to keep warm. We play Snap and Memory and Go Fish, Ma wants Chess but it makes my brain floppy so she says OK to Checkers instead.
My fingers