Room_ A Novel - Emma Donoghue [92]
“Not here.”
She presses around her mouth where the little cracks are. “I know you’re missing your ma, but just for now you need to sleep on your own. You’ll be fine, Steppa and I will be just upstairs. You’re not afraid of monsters, are you?”
It depends on the monster, if it’s a real one or not and if it’s where I am.
“Hmm. Your ma’s old room is beside ours,” says Grandma, “but we’ve converted it into a fitness suite, I don’t know if there’d be space for a blow-up . . .”
I go up the stairs with my feet this time, just pressing onto the walls, Grandma carries my Dora bag. There’s blue squishy mats and dumbbells and abs crunchers like I saw in TV. “Her bed was here, right where her crib was when she was a baby,” says Grandma, pointing to a bicycle but stuck to the ground. “The walls were covered in posters, you know, bands she liked, a giant fan and a dreamcatcher . . .”
“Why it catched her dreams?”
“What’s that?”
“The fan.”
“Oh, no, they were just decorations. I feel just terrible about dropping it all off at the Goodwill, it was a counselor at the grief group that advised it . . .”
I do a huge yawn, Tooth nearly slips out but I catch him in my hand.
“What’s that?” says Grandma. “A bead or something? Never suck on something small, didn’t your—?”
She’s trying to bend my fingers open to get him. My hand hits her hard in the tummy.
She stares.
I put Tooth back in under my tongue and lock my teeth.
“Tell you what, why don’t I put a blow-up beside our bed, just for tonight, until you’re settled in?”
I pull my Dora bag. The next door is where Grandma and Steppa sleep. The blow-up is a big bag thing, the pump keeps popping out of the hole and she has to shout for Steppa to help. Then it’s all full like a balloon but a rectangle and she puts sheets over it. Who’s the they that pumped Ma’s stomach? Where do they put the pump? Won’t she burst?
“I said, where’s your toothbrush, Jack?”
I find it in my Dora bag that has my everything. Grandma tells me to put on my pj’s that means pajamas. She points at the blow-up and says, “Pop in,” persons are always saying pop or hop when it’s something they want to pretend is fun. Grandma leans down with her mouth out like to kiss but I put my head under the duvet. “Sorry,” she says. “What about a story?”
“No.”
“Too tired for a story, OK, then. Night-night.”
It goes all dark. I sit up. “What about the Bugs?”
“The sheets are perfectly clean.”
I can’t see her but I know her voice. “No, the Bugs.”
“Jack, I’m ready to drop here—”
“The Bugs that don’t let them bite.”
“Oh,” says Grandma. “Night-night, sleep tight . . . That’s right, I used to say that when your ma was—”
“Do it all.”
“Night-night, sleep tight, don’t let the bugs bite.”
Some light comes in, it’s the door opening. “Where are you going?”
I can see Grandma’s shape all black in the hole. “Just downstairs.”
I roll off the blow-up, it wobbles. “Me too.”
“No, I’m going to watch my shows, they’re not for children.”
“You said you and Steppa in the bed and me beside on the blow-up.”
“That’s later, we’re not tired yet.”
“You said you were tired.”
“I’m tired of—” Grandma’s nearly shouting. “I’m not sleepy, I just need to watch TV and not think for a while.”
“You can not think here.”
“Just try lying down and closing your eyes.”
“I can’t, not all my own.”
“Oh,” says Grandma. “Oh, you poor creature.”
Why am I poor and creature?
She bends down beside the blow-up and touches my face.
I get away.
“I was just closing your eyes for you.”
“You in the bed. Me on the blow-up.”
I hear her puff her breath. “OK. I’ll lie down for just a minute . . .”
I see her shape on top of the duvet. Something drops clomp, it’s her shoe. “Would you like a lullaby?” she whispers.
“Huh?”
“A song?”
Ma sings me songs but there’s no more of them anymore. She smashed my head on the table in Room Number Seven. She took the bad medicine, I think she was too tired to play anymore, she was in a hurry to get to Heaven so she didn’t wait, why she didn’t wait for me?
“Are you crying?”
I don’t say anything.
“Oh, honey. Well,