Room_ A Novel - Emma Donoghue [62]
She gets another robe just the same out of the wardrobe that’s not Wardrobe, it goes down just to her ankles.
“ ‘I will be king, diddle diddle, you can be queen,’ ” I sing.
Ma’s all pink and grinning, her hair is black from being wet. Mine is back in ponytail but tangledy because there’s no Comb, we left him in Room. “You should have brung Comb,” I tell her.
“Brought,” she says. “Remember, I was kind of in a hurry to see you.”
“Yeah, but we need it.”
“That old plastic comb with half its teeth snapped off? We need it like a hole in the head,” she says.
I find my socks beside the bed, I’m putting them on but Ma says stop because they’re all filthy from the street when I ran and ran and with holes in. She throws them in the trash too, she’s wasting everything.
“But Tooth, we forgot him.” I run to get the socks out of the trash and I find Tooth in the second one.
Ma rolls her eyes.
“He’s my friend,” I tell her, putting Tooth in the pocket in my robe. I’m licking my teeth because they feel funny. “Oh no, I didn’t brush after the lollipop.” I press them hard with my fingers so they won’t fall out, but not the bitten finger.
Ma shakes her head. “It wasn’t a real one.”
“It tasted real.”
“No, I mean it was sugarless, they make them with a kind of not-real sugar that’s not bad for your teeth.”
That’s confusing. I point at the other bed. “Who sleeps there?”
“It’s for you.”
“But I sleep with you.”
“Well, the nurses didn’t know that.” Ma’s staring out the window. Her shadow’s all long across the soft gray floor, I never saw such a long one. “Is that a cat in the parking lot?”
“Let’s see.” I run to look but my eyes don’t find it.
“Will we go explore?”
“Where?”
“Outside.”
“We’re in Outside already.”
“Yeah, but let’s go out in the fresh air and look for the cat,” says Ma.
“Cool.”
She finds us two pairs of slippers but they don’t fit me so I’m falling over, she says I can be barefoot for now. When I look out the window again, a thing zooms up near the other cars, it’s a van that says The Cumberland Clinic.
“What if he comes?” I whisper.
“Who?”
“Old Nick, if he comes in his truck.” I was nearly forgetting him, how could I be forgetting him?
“Oh, he couldn’t, he doesn’t know where we are,” says Ma.
“Are we a secret again?”
“Kind of, but the good kind.”
Beside the bed there’s a—I know what it is, it’s a phone. I lift the top bit, I say, “Hello,” but nobody’s talking, only a sort of hum.
“Oh, Ma, I didn’t have some yet.”
“Later.”
Everything’s backwards today.
Ma does the door handle and makes a face, it must be her bad wrist. She does it with the other hand. We go out in a long room with yellow walls and windows all along and doors the other side. Every wall’s a different color, that must be the rule. Our door is the door that says Seven all gold. Ma says we can’t go in the other doors because they belong to other persons.
“What other persons?”
“We haven’t met them yet.”
Then how does she know? “Can we look out the sideways windows?”
“Oh, yeah, they’re for anyone.”
“Is anyone us?”
“Us and anyone else,” says Ma.
Anyone else isn’t there so it’s just us. There’s no blind on these windows to stop seeing. It’s a different planet, it shows more other cars like green and white and a red one and a stony place and there’s things walking that are persons. “They’re tiny, like fairies.”
“Nah, that’s just because they’re far away,” Ma says.
“Are they real for real?”
“As real as you and me.”
I try and believe it but it’s hard work.
There’s one woman that’s not really one, I can tell because she’s gray, she’s a statue and all naked.
“Come on,” says Ma, “I’m starving.”
“I’m just—”
She pulls me by the hand. Then we can’t go anymore because there’s stairs down, lots of them. “Hold on to the banister.”
“The what?”
“This thing here, the rail.”
I do.
“Climb down one step at a time.”
I’m going to fall. I sit down.
“OK, that works too.”
I go