Room Read online

  “Stand up straight,” says Ma. Pen tickles the top of my head.

  When I step away there’s a black 5 a little bit over the 4. I love five the best of every number, I have five fingers each hand and the same of toes and so does Ma, we’re our dead spits. Nine is my worst favorite number. “What’s my tall?”

  “Your height. Well, I don’t know exactly,” she says. “Maybe we could ask for a measuring tape sometime, for Sunday treat.”

  I thought measuring tapes were just TV. “Nah, let’s ask for chocolates.” I put my finger on the 4 and stand with my face against it, my finger’s on my hair. “I didn’t get taller much this time.”

  “That’s normal.”

  “What’s normal?”

  “It’s—” Ma chews her mouth. “It means it’s OK. No hay problema.”

  “Look how big my muscles, though.” I bounce on Bed, I’m Jack the Giant Killer in his seven-league boots.

  “Vast,” says Ma.

  “Gigantic.”

  “Massive.”

  “Huge.”

  “Enormous,” says Ma.

  “Hugeormous.” That’s word sandwich when we squish two together.

  “Good one.”

  “You know what?” I tell her. “When I’m ten I’ll be growed up.”

  “Oh yeah?”

  “I’ll get bigger and bigger and bigger till I turn into a human.”

  “Actually, you’re human already,” says Ma. “Human’s what we both are.”

  I thought the word for us was real. The persons in TV are made just of colors.

  “Did you mean a woman, with a w?”

  “Yeah,” I say, “a woman with a boy in an egg in my tummy and he’ll be a real one too. Or I’m going to grow to a giant, but a nice one, up to here.” I jump to touch Bed Wall way high, nearly where Roof starts slanting up.

  “Sounds great,” says Ma.

  Her face is gone flat, that means I said a wrong thing but I don’t know which.

  “I’ll burst through Skylight into Outer Space and go boing boing between each the planets,” I tell her. “I’ll visit Dora and SpongeBob and all my friends, I’ll have a dog called Lucky.”

  Ma’s put a smile on. She’s tidying Pen back on Shelf.

  I ask her, “How old are you going to be on your birthday?”

  “Twenty-seven.”

  “Wow.”

  I don’t think that cheered her up.

  While Bath is running, Ma gets Labyrinth and Fort down from on top of Wardrobe. We’ve been making Labyrinth since I was two, she’s all toilet roll insides taped together in tunnels that twist lots of ways. Bouncy Ball loves to get lost in Labyrinth and hide, I have to call out to him and shake her and turn her sideways and upside down before he rolls out, whew. Then I send other things into Labyrinth like a peanut and a broken bit of Blue Crayon and a short spaghetti not cooked. They chase each other in the tunnels and sneak up and shout Boo, I can’t see them but I listen against the cardboard and I can figure out where they are. Toothbrush wants a turn but I tell him sorry, he’s too long. He jumps in Fort instead to guard a tower. Fort’s made of cans and vitamin bottles, we build him bigger every time we have an empty. Fort can see all ways, he squirts out boiling oil at the enemies, they don’t know about his secret knife-slits, ha ha. I’d like to bring him into Bath to be an island but Ma says the water would make his tape unsticky.

  We undo our ponytails and let our hair swim. I lie on Ma not even talking, I like the bang of her heart. When she breathes we go up and down a little bit. Penis floats.

  Because of my birthday I get to choose what we wear both. Ma’s live in the higher drawer of Dresser and mine in the lower. I choose her favorite blue jeans with the red stitches that she only puts on for special occasions because they’re getting strings at the knees. For me I choose my yellow hoody, I’m careful of the drawer but the right edge still comes out and Ma has to bang it back in. We pull down on my hoody together and it chews my face but then pop it’s on.

  “What if I cut it just a little in the middle of the V?” says Ma.

  “No way Jose.”

  For Phys Ed we leave our socks off because bare feet are grippier. Today I choose Track first, we lift Table upside down onto Bed and Rocker on her with Rug over the both. Track goes around Bed from Wardrobe to Lamp, the shape on Floor is a black C. “Hey, look, I can do a there-and-back in sixteen steps.”

  “Wow. When you were four it was eighteen steps, wasn’t it?” says Ma. “How many there-and-backs do you think you can run today?”

  “Five.”

  “What about five times five? That would be your favorite squared.”

  We times it on our fingers, I get twenty-six but Ma says twenty-five so I do it again and get twenty-five too. She counts me on Watch. “Twelve,” she shouts out. “Seventeen. You’re doing great.”

  I’m breathing whoo whoo whoo.

  “Faster—”

  I go even fasterer like Superman flying.

  When it’s Ma’s turn to run, I have to write down on the College Ruled Pad the number at the start and the number when she’s finished, then we take them apart to see how fast she went. Today hers is nine seconds bigger than mine, that means I winned, so I jump up and down and blow raspberries. “Let’s do a race at the same time.”

  “Sounds like fun, doesn’t it,” she says, “but remember once we tried it and I banged my shoulder on the dresser?”

  Sometimes when I forget things, Ma tells me and I remember them after that.

  We take down all the furnitures from Bed and put Rug back where she was to cover Track so Old Nick won’t see the dirty C.

  Ma chooses Trampoline, it’s just me that bounces on Bed because Ma might break her. She does the commentary: “A daring midair twist from the young U.S. champion . . .”

  My next pick is Simon Says, then Ma says to put our socks back on for Corpse, that’s lying like starfish with floppy toenails, floppy belly button, floppy tongue, floppy brain even. Ma gets an itch behind her knee and moves, I win again.

  It’s 12:13, so it can be lunch. My favorite bit of the prayer is the daily bread. I’m the boss of play but Ma’s the boss of meals, like she doesn’t let us have cereal for breakfast and lunch and dinner in case we’d get sick and anyway that would use it up too fast. When I was zero and one, Ma used to chop and chew up my food for me, but then I got all my twenty teeth and I can gnash up anything. This lunch is tuna on crackers, my job is to roll back the lid of the can because Ma’s wrist can’t manage it.

  I’m a bit jiggly so Ma says let’s play Orchestra, where we run around seeing what noises we can bang out of things. I drum on Table and Ma goes knock knock on the legs of Bed, then floomf floomf on the pillows, I use a fork and spoon on Door ding ding and our toes go bam on Stove, but my favorite is stomping on the pedal of Trash because that pops his lid open with a bing. My best instrument is Twang that’s a cereal box I collaged with all different colored legs and shoes and coats and heads from the old catalog, then I stretched three rubber bands across his middle. Old Nick doesn’t bring catalogs anymore for us to pick our own clothes, Ma says he’s getting meaner.

  I climb on Rocker to get the books from Shelf and I make a ten-story skyscraper on Rug. “Ten stories,” says Ma and laughs, that wasn’t very funny.

  We used to have nine books but only four with pictures inside—

  My Big Book of Nursery Rhymes

  Dylan the Digger

  The Runaway Bunny

  Pop-Up Airport

  Also five with pictures only on the front—

  The Shack

  Twilight

  The Guardian

  Bittersweet Love The Da Vinci Code

  Ma hardly ever reads the no-pictures ones except if she’s desperate. When I was four we asked for one more with pictures for Sundaytreat and Alice in Wonderland came, I like her but she’s got too many words and lots of them are old.

  Today I choose Dylan the Digger, he’s near the bottom so he does a demolition on the skyscraper crashhhhhh.

  “Dylan again.” Ma makes a face, then she puts on her biggest voice:

  “ ‘Heeeeeeeeere’s Dylan, the sturdy digger!

  The loads he shovels get bigger and bigger.

  Watch his long arm delve into the earth,

  No excavator so loves to munch dirt.

  This mega-hoe rolls and pivots round the site,

  Scooping and grading by day and night.’ ”

  There’s a cat in the second picture, in the third it’s on the pile of rocks. Rocks are stones, that means heavy like ceramic that Bath and Sink and Toilet are of, but not so smooth. Cats and rocks are only TV. In the fifth picture the cat falls down, but cats have nine lives, not like me and Ma with just one each.

  Ma nearly always chooses The Runaway Bunny because of how the mother bunny catches the baby bunny in the end and says, “Have a carrot.” Bunnies are TV but carrots are real, I like their loudness. My favorite picture is the baby bunny turned into a rock on the mountain and the mother bunny has to climb up up up to find him. Mountains are too big to be real, I saw one in TV that has a woman hanging on it by ropes. Women aren’t real like Ma is, and girls and boys not either. Men aren’t real except Old Nick, and I’m not actually sure if he’s real for real. Maybe half? He brings groceries and Sundaytreat and disappears the trash, but he’s not human like us. He only happens in the night, like bats. Maybe Door makes him up with a beep beep and the air changes. I think Ma doesn’t like to talk about him in case he gets realer.

  I wriggle around on her lap now to look at my favorite painting of Baby Jesus playing with John the Baptist that’s his friend and big cousin at the same time. Mary’s there too, she’s cuddled in her Ma’s lap that’s Baby Jesus’s Grandma, like Dora’s abuela. It’s a weird picture with no colors and some of the hands and feet aren’t there, Ma says it’s not finished. What started Baby Jesus growing in Mary’s tummy was an angel zoomed down, like a ghost but a really cool one with feathers. Mary was all surprised, she said, “How can this be?” and then, “OK let it be.” When Baby Jesus popped out of her vagina on Christmas she put him in a manger but not for the cows to chew, only warm him up with their blowing because he was magic.

  Ma switches Lamp off now and we lie down, first we say the shepherd prayer about green pastures, I think they’re like Duvet but fluffy and green instead of white and flat. (The cup overflowing must make an awful mess.) I have some now, the right because the left hasn’t much in it. When I was three I still had lots anytime, but since I was four I’m so busy doing stuff I only have some a few times in the day and the night. I wish I could talk and have some at the same time but I only have one mouth.

  I nearly switch off but not actually. I think Ma does because of her breath.

  • • •

  After nap Ma says she’s figured out that we don’t need to ask for a measuring tape, we can make a ruler ourselves.

  We recycle the cereal box from Ancient Egyptian Pyramid, Ma shows me to cut a strip that’s as big as her foot, that’s why it’s called a foot, then she puts twelve little lines. I measure her nose that’s two inches long. My nose is one inch and a quarter, I write it down. Ma makes Ruler flip slo-mo somersaults up Door Wall where my talls are, she says I’m three feet three inches.

  “Hey,” I say, “let’s measure Room.”

  “What, all of it?”

  “Do we have something else to do?”

  She looks at me strange. “I guess not.”

  I write down all the numbers, like the tall of Door Wall to the line where Roof starts equals six feet seven inches. “Guess what,” I tell Ma, “every cork tile is nearly a bit bigger than Ruler.”

  “Doh,” she says, slapping her head, “I guess they’re a foot square, I must have made the ruler a little too short. Let’s just count the tiles, then, that’s easier.”

  I start counting the tall of Bed Wall, but Ma says all the walls are the same. Another rule is, the wide of the walls is the same as the wide of Floor, I count eleven feet going both ways, that means Floor is a square. Table is a circle so I’m confused, but Ma measures her across the middle where she’s the very widest, that’s three feet nine inches. My chair is three feet two inches tall and Ma’s is the exact same, that’s one less than me. Then Ma’s a bit sick of measuring so we stop.

  I color behind the numbers all different with our five crayons that are blue, orange, green, red, brown, when I’m all done the page looks like Rug but crazier, Ma says why don’t I use it as my place mat for dinner.

  I choose spaghetti tonight, there’s a fresh broccoli as well that I don’t choose, it’s just good for us. I chop the broccoli into pieces with Zigzag Knife, sometimes I swallow some when Ma’s not looking and she says, “Oh, no, where’s that big bit gone?” but she isn’t really mad because raw things make us extra alive.

  Ma does the hotting up on the two rings of Stove that go red, I’m not allowed touch the knobs because it’s Ma’s job to make sure there’s never a fire like in TV. If the rings ever go against something like a dish towel or our clothes even, flames would run all over with orange tongues and burn Room to ashes with us coughing and choking and screaming with the worst pain ever.

  I don’t like the smell of broccoli cooking, but it’s not as bad as green beans. Vegetables are all real but ice cream is TV, I wish it was real too. “Is Plant a raw thing?”

  “Well, yeah, but not the kind to eat.”

  “Why she doesn’t have flowers anymore?”

  Ma shrugs and stirs the spaghetti. “She got tired.”

  “She should go to sleep.”

  “She’s still tired when she wakes up. Maybe the soil in her pot doesn’t have enough food left in it.”

  “She could have my broccoli.”

  Ma laughs. “Not that kind of food, plant food.”

  “We could ask for it, for Sundaytreat.”

  “I’ve got a long list of things to ask for already.”

  “Where?”

  “Just in my head,” she says. She pulls out a worm of spaghetti and bites it. “I think they like fish.”

  “Who do?”

  “Plants, they like rotten fish. Or is it fish bones?”

  “Yuck.”

  “Maybe next time we have fish fingers, we can bury a bit under Plant.”

  “Not one of my ones.”

  “OK, a bit of one of mine.”

  The why I like spaghetti best is the song of the meatball, I sing it when Ma fills our plates.

  After dinner something amazing, we make a birthday cake. I bet it’s going to be delicioso with candles the same number as me and on fire like I’ve never seen for real.

  I’m the best egg blower, I make the goo spill out nonstop. I have to blow three for the cake, I use the pin from the Impression: Sunrise picture because I think the crazy horse would get mad if I took down Guernica, even though I always put the pin back right after. Ma thinks Guernica is the best masterpiece because it’s realest, but actually it’s all mixed up, the horse is screaming with lots of teeth because there’s a spear stabbed in him, plus a bull and a woman holding a floppy kid with his head upside down and a lamp like an eye, and the worst is the big bulgy foot in the corner, I always think it’s going to stamp on me.

  I get to lick the spoon, then Ma puts the cake into Stove’s hot tummy. I try juggling with the eggshells all up at the same time. Ma catches one. “Little Jacks with faces?”

  “Nah,” I say.

  “Will we make them a nest of flour dough? If we defrost those beets tomorrow, we could use the juice to make it purple . . .”

  I shake my head. “Let’s add them to Eggsnake.”

  Eggsnake is more longer than all around Room, we’ve been making him since I was three, he lives in Under Bed all coiled up keeping us safe. Most of his eggs are brown but sometimes there’s a white, some have patterns on from pencils or crayons or Pen or bits stuck on with flour glue, a foil crown and a yellow ribbon belt and threads and bits of tissue for hairs. His tongue is a needle, that keeps the red thread going right through him. We don’t bring Eggsnake out much anymore because sometimes he tangles and his eggs get cracked around the holes or even fall off, and we have to use the bits for mosaics. Today I put his needle in one of the holes of the new eggs, I have to dangle it till it comes out the other hole all sharp, it’s pretty tricky. Now he’s three eggs longer, I extra gently wind him up again so all of him fits in Under Bed.

  Waiting for my cake takes hours and hours, we breathe in the lovely air. Then when it’s cooling we make stuff called icing but not cold like ice, it’s sugar melted with water. Ma spreads it all over the cake. “Now you can put on the chocolates while I’m washing up.”

  “But there aren’t any.”

  “Aha,” she says, holding up the little bag and shaking it shickety shick, “I saved a few from Sunday treat three weeks ago.”

  “You sneaky Ma. Where?”

  She zips her mouth shut. “What if I need a hiding place another time?”

  “Tell me!”

  Ma’s not smiling anymore. “Shouting hurts my ears.”

  “Tell me the hidey place.”

  “Jack—”

  “I don’t like there to be hidey places.”

  “What’s the big deal?”

  “Zombies.”

  “Ah.”

  “Or ogres or vampires—”

  She opens Cabinet and takes out the box of rice. She points in the dark hole. “It was just in with the rice that I hid them. OK?”

  “OK.”

  “Nothing scary would fit in here. You can check anytime.”

  There’s five chocolates in the bag, pink, blue, green, and two reds. Some of the color comes off on my fingers when I’m putting them on, I get icing on me and suck it every bit.

  Then it’s time for the candles but there aren’t any.

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