Steppa comes to the Independent Living with a super thing for me, a bike they were saving for Bronwyn but I get it first because I’m bigger. It’s got shiny faces in the spokes of the wheels. I have to wear a helmet and knee pads and wrist pads when I ride it in the park for if I fall off, but I don’t fall off, I’ve got balance, Steppa says I’m a natural. The third time we go, Ma lets me not wear the pads and in a couple of weeks she’s going to take off the stabilizers because I won’t need them anymore.
Ma finds a concert that’s in a park, not our near park but one where we have to get a bus. I like going on the bus a lot, we look down on people’s different hairy heads in the street. At the concert the rule is that the music persons get to make all the noise and we aren’t allowed make even one squeak except clapping at the end.
Grandma says why doesn’t Ma take me to the zoo but Ma says she couldn’t stand the cages.
We go to two different churches. I like the one with the multicolored windows but the organ is too loud.
Also we go to a play, that’s when adults dress up and play like kids and everybody else watches. It’s in another park, it’s called Midsummer Night. I’m sitting on the grass with my fingers on my mouth to remember it to stay shut. Some fairies are fighting over a little boy, they say so many words they all smoosh together. Sometimes the fairies disappear and persons all in black move the furniture around. “Like we did in Room,” I whisper to Ma, she nearly laughs.
But then the persons sitting near us start calling out, “How now spirit,” and “All hail Titania,” I get mad and say shush, then I really shout at them to be quiet. Ma pulls me by the hand all the way back to the trees bit and tells me that was called audience participation, it’s allowed, it’s a special case.
When we get home to the Independent Living we write everything down that we tried, the list’s getting long. Then there’s things we might try when we’re braver.
Going up in an airplane
Having some of Ma’s old friends over for dinner
Driving a car
Going to the North Pole
Going to school (me) and college (Ma)
Finding our really own apartment that’s not an Independent
Living Inventing something Making new friends Living in another country not America Having a playdate at another kid’s house like Baby Jesus and John the Baptist Taking swimming lessons Ma going out dancing in the night and me staying at Steppa and Grandma’s on the blow-up. Having jobs Going to the moon
Most important there’s getting a dog called Lucky, every day I’m ready but Ma says she’s got enough on her plate at the moment, maybe when I’m six.
“When I’ll have a cake with candles?”
“Six candles,” she says, “I swear.”
In the night in our bed that’s not Bed, I rub the duvet, it’s puffed-upper than Duvet was. When I was four I didn’t know about the world, or I thought it was only stories. Then Ma told me about it for real and I thought I knowed everything. But now I’m in the world all the time, I actually don’t know much, I’m always confused.
“Ma?”
“Yeah?”
She still smells like her, but not her breasts, they’re just breasts now.
“Do you sometimes wish we didn’t escape?”
I don’t hear anything. Then she says, “No, I never wish that.”
“It’s perverse,” Ma is telling Dr. Clay, “all those years, I was craving company. But now I don’t seem up to it.” He’s nodding, they’re sipping their steamy coffee, Ma drinks it now like adults do to keep going. I still drink milk but sometimes it’s chocolate milk, it tastes like chocolate but it’s allowed. I’m on the floor doing a jigsaw with Noreen, it’s super hard with twenty-four pieces of a train.
“Most days . . . Jack’s enough for me.”
“ ‘The Soul selects her own Society — Then — shuts the Door—’ ” That’s his poem voice.
Ma nods. “Yeah, but it’s not how I remember myself.”
“You had to change to survive.”
Noreen looks up. “Don’t forget, you’d have changed anyway. Moving into your twenties, having a child — you wouldn’t have stayed the same.” Ma just drinks her coffee.
One day I wonder if the windows open. I try the bathroom one, I figure out the handle and push the glass. I’m scared of the air but I’m being scave, I lean out and put my hands through it. I’m half in half out, it’s the most amazing—
“Jack!” Ma pulls me all in by the back of my T-shirt.
“Ow.”
“It’s a six-story drop, if you fell you’d smash your skull.”
“I wasn’t falling,” I tell her, “I was being in and out at the same time.”
“You were being a nutcase at the same time,” she tells me, but she’s nearly smiling.
I go after her into the kitchen. She’s beating eggs in a bowl for French toast. The shells are smashed, we just throw them in the trash, bye-bye. I wonder if they turn into the new eggs. “Do we come back after Heaven?”
I think Ma doesn’t hear me.
“Do we grow in tummies again?”
“That’s called reincarnation.” She cutting the bread. “Some people think we might come back as donkeys or snails.” “No, humans in the same tummies. If I grow in you again—”
Ma lights the flame. “What’s your question?”
“Will you still call me Jack?”
She looks at me. “OK.”
“Promise?”
“I’ll always call you Jack.”
Tomorrow is May Day, that means summer’s coming and there’s going to be a parade. We might go just to look. “Is it only May Day in the world?” I ask.
We’re having granola in our bowls on the sofa not spilling. “What do you mean?” says Ma.
“Is it May Day in Room too?”
“I suppose so, but nobody’s there to celebrate it.”
“We could go there.”
She clangs her spoon into her bowl. “Jack.”
“Can we?”
“Do you really, really want to?”
“Yeah.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know,” I tell her.
“Don’t you like it outside?”
“Yeah. Not everything.”
“Well, no, but mostly? You like it more than Room?”
“Mostly.” I eat all the rest of my granola and the bit of Ma’s that she left in her bowl. “Can we go back sometime?” “Not to live.”
I shake my head. “Just to visit for one minute.”
Ma leans her mouth on her hand. “I don’t think I can.”
“Yeah, you can.” I wait. “Is it dangerous?”
“No, but just the idea of it, it makes me feel like . . .”
She doesn’t say like what. “I’d hold your hand.”
Ma stares at me. “What about going on your own, maybe?”
“No.”
“With someone, I mean. With Noreen?”
“No.”
“Or Grandma?”
“With you.”
“I can’t—”
“I’m choosing for both of us,” I tell her.
She gets up, I think she’s mad. She takes the phone in MA’S ROOM and talks to somebody.
Later in the morning the doorman buzzes and says there’s a police car here for us.
“Are you still Officer Oh?”
“I sure am,” says Officer Oh. “Long time no see.”
There’s tiny dots on the windows of the police car, I think it’s rain. Ma’s chewing her thumb. “Bad idea,” I tell her, pulling her hand away.