Room_ A Novel - Emma Donoghue [52]
“You don’t look too good, Jack, have you been sick lately?”
I shake my head. “Ma.”
“What’s that?”
“Ma throwed up on my T-shirt.”
The baby’s talking more but not in language. She’s grabbing the Raja dog’s ears, why isn’t she scared of him?
“Sorry, I didn’t catch that,” says the Ajeet man.
I don’t say anything else.
“The police should be here any minute, OK?” He’s turned to look up the street, the Naisha baby’s crying a bit now. He bounces her on his knee. “Home to Ammi in a minute, home to bed.”
I think about Bed. The warm.
He’s pressing the little buttons on his phone and talking more but I don’t listen.
I want to get away. But I think if I move, the Raja dog will bite me and drink more of my blood. I’m sitting on a line so there’s some of me in one square and some in another. My eaten finger hurts and hurts and so does my knee, the right one, there’s blood coming out of it where the skin broke, it was red but it’s going black. There’s a pointy oval beside my foot, I try to pick it up but it’s stuck, then it comes in my fingers, it’s a leaf. It’s a leaf from a real tree like the one that was on Skylight that day. I look up, there’s a tree over me that must have dropped the leaf. The huge light pole is blinding me. The whole bigness of the sky behind it is black now, the pink and orange bits are gone where? The air’s moving in my face, I’m shaking by accident.
“You must be cold. Are you cold?”
I think it’s the baby Naisha that the Ajeet man is asking but it’s me, I know because he’s taking off his jacket and holding it out to me.
“Here.”
I shake my head because it’s a person jacket, I never had a jacket.
“How did you lose your shoes?”
What shoes?
The Ajeet man stops talking after that.
A car stops, I know what kind it is, it’s a cop car from TV. Persons get out, two of them, short hair, one black hair one yellowy hair, and all moving quick. Ajeet talks to them. The baby Naisha is trying to get away but he keeps her in his arms, not hurting I don’t think. Raja is lying down on some brownish stuff, it’s grass, I thought it would be green, there’s some squares of it all along the sidewalk. I wish I had the note still but Old Nick disappeared it. I don’t know the words, they got bumped out of my head.
Ma’s in Room still, I want her here so much much much. Old Nick ran off driving fast in his truck but where’s he going, not the lake or the trees anymore because he saw me not be dead, I was allowed kill him but I didn’t manage it.
I have a suddenly terrible idea. Maybe he went back to Room, maybe he’s there right now making Door beep beep open and he’s mad, it’s my fault for not being dead—
“Jack?”
I look for the mouth moving. It’s the police, the one that’s a she I think but it’s hard to tell, the black hair not the yellow. She says, “Jack,” again. How does she know? “I’m Officer Oh. Can you tell me how old you are?”
I have to Save Ma, I have to talk to the police to get the Blowtorch, but my mouth isn’t working. She’s got a thing on her belt, it’s a gun, just like a police on TV. What if they’re bad police like locked up Saint Peter, I never thought of that. I look at the belt not the face, it’s a cool belt with a buckle.
“Do you know your age?”
Easy-peasy. I hold up five fingers.
“Five years old, great.” Officer Oh says something I don’t hear. Then about a dress. She says it twice.
I talk as loud as I can but not looking. “I don’t have a dress.”
“No? Where do you sleep at night?”
“In Wardrobe.”
“In a wardrobe?”
Try, Ma’s saying in my head, but Old Nick’s beside her, he’s the maddest ever and—
“Did you say, in a wardrobe?”
“You’ve got three dresses,” I say. “I mean Ma. One is pink and one is green with stripes and one is brown but you—she prefers jeans.”
“Your ma, is that what you said?” asks Officer Oh. “Is that who’s got the dresses?”
Nodding’s easier.
“Where’s your ma tonight?”
“In Room.”
“In a room, OK,” she says. “Which room?”
“Room.”
“Can you tell us where it is?”
I remember something. “Not