by Robin Hobb
After four or five months, I noticed Mom wasn’t keeping the house as clean. She still swept and stuff, but not like before, and I was doing almost all the cooking. Something had gone out of Mom and left her flat, something more than just a baby coming out of her stomach. I think she had expected more, had thought that Lisa was going to be better, somehow. Disappointed was how she acted at first, and then later, uninterested. I felt mad about it, and I’d try to make her pay more attention to Lisa. I’d take her to Mom and show her how Lisa was learning to smile, or how she could sit on her own. But it didn’t do any good. Mom would hold her awhile and look at her, and then she’d go set her down on the couch, without even making sure she couldn’t roll off. She never talked to Lisa or played with her. And after a while I knew she never would. So I started loving her even more, to make up for Mom not loving her.
It got harder as Lisa got bigger. Summer went okay, but by the time school started again, it wasn’t safe for me to leave her all day. I tried putting her in a cardboard box while I was gone, but it was hard to find ones that were strong enough. She’d get hold of the edges and try to stand up, and I was afraid she’d fall. She was eating more, too, so even if I left a bottle inside her box for her, she’d still be really hungry when I got home. Mom didn’t notice her at all, and of course she couldn’t hear Lisa’s silent crying. Mom didn’t seem to notice much of anything. She’d tidy up the house each day, and then just sit at the table. Late at night, she might put a scarf around her face and go out for a walk. But that was about all she did, and it didn’t make me feel any safer about leaving Lisa all day. So after Christmas I just didn’t go back to school and no one ever noticed.
When I think about those days, with Lisa starting to be a real person and all the time we had together, they’re almost as good as the days with Lavender. Lisa’s eyes turned brown, but they never lost that Lavender look, where she could look right through me while I rocked her to the music. Her hair was dark like Mom’s, but curly at the back of her head, and she was almost always smiling. I hated dressing her in stuff made from old T-shirts. The stuff was too small, and Mom hadn’t made her any new clothes. So I asked the aid lady who came about once every two months then, and she told me where I could get baby clothes that rich people gave away. She gave me slips for Lisa and me and Mom and helped me write down the right sizes on them. That aid lady wasn’t too bad.
On Monday I took the slips and Lisa and went, using my aid pass to ride the bus. Everyone on the bus thought Lisa was cute and kept calling her honey and touching her hands or bouncing her feet. She was real good about it. One old lady who sat beside us part of the way gave me a five-dollar bill and told me to buy my little sister something with it. She was really nice. When she got off the bus, she kept saying, “Bye-bye, sweetie. Bye-bye,” like she expected Lisa to say something. “She doesn’t talk,” I told her, and the old lady just smiled and said, “Oh, she will pretty soon. Don’t you worry.”
It was the same at the clothes place. A lady at the counter kept talking to Lisa, saying, “You such a sweet thing! You such a good girl, aren’t you?” Lisa would smile, but never make a sound.
“She’s shy, isn’t she?” the lady said. “I bet she babbles her head off at home.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, and then felt bad for lying when the other lady came back with three bags of clothes for us. They showed me the stuff they’d picked out for Lisa, little dresses with lace and a new blanket and a chiming rattle that Lisa grabbed right away. Lisa’s bag was the fullest of all, probably because she was so cute.
I should have felt good going home. But the bags were heavy, and it was hard to carry them and Lisa. There was another baby on the bus, making fussy angry noises. It sounded awful, but I wished Lisa could do that. Her being quiet at home had never worried me, but now I was thinking, she won’t always be a baby at home, and what then?
I got off the bus with the heavy bags, and Lisa was wriggly. It was getting dark and starting to rain and I had eight blocks to go. I felt like I couldn’t take another step when the fat Skoag bounced out of an alley right in front of us.
“Hello, little boy!” he honked.
“Stuff it up your ass!” I said back, because I was really scared. Even if I dropped all the clothes, I couldn’t run with Lisa. In the dark and the rain I might fall on top of her and kill her. I squished her close to me, hoping the Skoag wouldn’t see Lavender’s eyes, and kept walking. Maybe if I just kept walking, he’d leave us alone. But his flipper feet kept on slapping the wet sidewalk beside us.
“I’ve got something for you,” he said, and I got even scareder, because that was just like the guy in the Okay to Say No book at school.
“Stuff it up your ass,” I said again and walked faster. One of the bags tore, and I wanted to cry. I’d have yelled for help, but it was dark and there was no one on the streets. This close to home, even if I did yell for help, no one would want to come.
“Boy,” he tootled softly. “It has been hard to find you, for it was commanded that none should speak of it. Every time I speak to you, I put myself in danger of a most unfortunate occurrence. Please take these and free me of a heavy promise.”
Lisa was wriggling in my arms, trying to get a better look at the tootling voice. She kicked out and one of my bags went flying. Before I could grab it up, he took a package from his pouch and dropped it into the bag. Plastic baggies, taped together, but I couldn’t tell what was inside them. I stood still and stared through the dark at him. I was scared to pick up the bag because I didn’t want to get close to him and I didn’t know what he’d put in it. Drugs, maybe, something I’d get arrested for having. But it was the bag with Lisa’s clothes in it, the ones I’d gone through all this for.
“What’s that?” I demanded, trying to sound tough.
“One for each of your months. Green trading paper, what is the word for it? Money. For you to take care of the Mom.”
“Lavender.” I said his name, knowing there was a connection but not figuring it out yet.
“Silence!” the fat Skoag honked, and he sounded like a scared Volkswagen. “To speak the name of a blasphemer is to invite a most unfortunate occurrence.”
“But . . .”
“My task is done, until your next month begins. Next time I call, do not run away. This task is heavy and I would call back the promise, if I had known what would befall the one who asked. Go away quickly, before I am seen with you.”
He waddled off like a frightened duck. I managed to snag up the fallen bag. All the way home, my heart was banging against my lungs. I felt like I’d seen Lavender’s ghost, that he was still around somehow, looking out for us. I kept wondering about the money in the bag. Not how much it was, or what I’d use it for, but what Lavender had been thinking when he made the fat Skoag promise. If he’d known he was going to die, why’d he go to the Skoags who killed him, why didn’t he go to the police or something, or even just come home and ignore those message boxes?
Somehow I got Lisa and the bags down the ramp and managed to turn the doorknob without dropping anything. When I got inside, there was only one light burning and Mom wasn’t there. I didn’t know if she’d gone looking for us because it was so late or just gone out on one of her night walks.
Some things you just have to do first. So I changed Lisa and got her a bottle and put one of the new nightgowns on her and put her in a cardboard box with her bottle, the chiming rattle, and the new blanket. She looked so sweet, all done up in new stuff that it was suddenly worth all I’d gone through. I turned the stereo to some soft music and she settled down.
Then there was time to think, but too much to think about. The package in Lisa’s bag was money, little rolls of it in plastic baggies. I opened it carefully and threw the bags away, even though the slime on them was dried, and dry Skoag slime isn’t dangerous. Each baggie was the same, five ten-dollar bills. I unfolded every single one, looking for a note, or some sign from Lavender to help me understand why he had left us
and let someone kill him. But there was only money.
I wrapped the money in one of Lisa’s old nightgowns and stuffed it down into the couch. I wasn’t giving it to Mom. Lavender had left it for me, because he knew I would buy the right things with it. I already knew I was going to get Lisa a playpen so she didn’t have to crawl on the cold cement anymore. And fresh, real bananas instead of dried banana flakes that always looked like gray goop.
I went over to her box and looked in at her. She looked back at me, her legs curled up on her tummy and helping hold the bottle, one little leak of milk trickling down her cheek. I reached down and wiped it away, but she smiled at my touch and more milk trickled out of the corner of her mouth. Her dark Lavender eyes looked at me and through me, and for a second he was there, like any moment his cello voice would fill the room.
But Lisa had no voice.
And that was another thing to think about.
She could hear, that was for sure. So why didn’t she make noises like other babies? I took her bottle away and tried to look in her mouth. She sucked on my finger, but when I tried to open her mouth, she got mad. Finally, she opened it herself, in one of her silent screams. I looked in, but if there was anything wrong in there, I couldn’t see what it was. I looked until she was all red and sweaty from her soundless crying. Then I gave her the bottle back and rocked her to make up for being mean. And I thought.
Lisa was asleep and I was bedded down beside her, nearly falling off the couch now because she’d grown so much, when Mom came back in. She didn’t turn on any lights or say anything; she just came in and went straight to her room, making a little humming sound as she went.
And I lay there on the couch and I knew. I knew what she’d gone out for.
God, I was mad.
I lay there and shook with anger and being scared. Because she was going to blow us all up. I wanted to get up and go into her room and scream at her. But she wouldn’t hear me, and if I held up a note, she’d just ignore it. I could go to her and tell her everything, about the money from Lavender and the new clothes and Lisa not being able to talk, and she wouldn’t even care. She’d only go on with her idiot humming and staring. Because she didn’t care, and probably never had, not about anything except her damn music.
She wasn’t stupid. She’d keep the house clean and dress decent and pick up her aid checks. She didn’t want to be a Skoag gropie in the streets. She’d sneak out by night, find Skoags standing outside the clubs listening to the music, and touch one. I knew it as plainly as if I’d seen it. That was what mattered to her, a press of Skoag flesh. She didn’t care that if the aid worker caught her with slimy hands, they’d take Lisa and me to some children’s home. I remembered what it was like. I could imagine Lisa there, her silent crying going ignored, growing up not able to tell anyone when someone was mean to her. They’d put her with the other ones they called “special” in a big room with a lot of baby toys and ignore her. I’d never see her and she’d forget about me. I’d lose the only thing Lavender had left me. Because of Mom.
I watched Mom the next day, hoping I was wrong. But the signs were there, in the rhythmic way she swept the floor, her chin nodding to the unheard beat. She was groping Skoag slime. It was such a slutty thing to do. I had thought that her touching Lavender had been because they loved each other. Now she seemed like a whore to me, someone who’d touch any Skoag just to make music in her head. I hated her.
The next day I went out to the secondhand store. I bought Lisa a stroller, a playpen, and a piece of carpet to go in the bottom of it. And one of those suits with the feet and a hood. It took me two trips to get everything home.
When my Mom saw all the stuff, she tried to ask me where it had come from. But I just ignored her and her mashed potato voice. She grabbed hold of my arm and shook me. “Biw-wweee! Wherr aw thisss-tuff frum? Huh?”
That’s what she sounded like. I grabbed her hand off my arm and turned it over and pried her fingers open. The Skoag scars were shiny and wet in the cracks. She jerked away from me.
“I don’t have to tell you anything,” I said as she held her hands to her chest. I didn’t yell it. I just said it real clearly, making sure she could see my mouth move. I picked Lisa up and took her to the couch. I started playing patty-cake with her, ignoring Mom. After a while, Mom started going, “Hub. Huh-uh-uh! Hub!” She sat down and put her scarred hands over her scarred face and rocked. After a while I realized she was crying. I didn’t go to her. I remembered Don’t Do Drugs at school, and I knew it was true, that junkies don’t have friends, don’t love, don’t care about anything but their next fix. No one can afford to love a junkie. So I did what the books said. I ignored her. And that was the day I was ten years old.
I took control of things. I found the sign language booklets that the aid lady had left, and I started making Lisa sign. Simple stuff at first. Hold up your arms to be picked up. Finger in the mouth for bottle. Nod your head for stereo turned on. It was harder for me than for Lisa. Because I knew what she wanted, but I couldn’t give it to her until she signed, no matter how she cried. I’d make the sign and then I’d take her hands and make the sign. But after a while, I had to make her sign for herself. She cried a lot. But finally, she started doing the simple signs. By the time she was two, we were on the ones in the pamphlet.
Things went okay for a while. Mom was careful about her habit. None of the aid ladies caught on to her. She was always home when they visited, and the place was tidy. Once, I came back from the store and found her giving Lisa a bath in the sink. But it was only because the aid lady was there. It was just a trick to have her hands busy, and if the aid lady saw the wetness in the cracks of her palms, she’d think it was bathwater. Lisa was splashing water all over and smiling like it was normal for Mom to take care of her. I set the groceries on the table and said, “Hi, Mom,” like we were a happy little family. Mom kept on sponging Lisa, and finally the aid lady said she had to go, but she was glad that things were going better for us.
As soon as she left, I got a towel and took my Lisa and dried her carefully. Lisa kept signing for “cookie” while I was drying her and dressing her while she was kicking and wriggling. Mom gave her one, and it wasn’t until I got her shoes tied and set her on the floor that I realized what that meant. It made me madder than her using Lisa’s bath to keep the aid lady from checking her hands. I found the sign booklets on her nightstand. I carried them out and slapped them down on the kitchen table. Mom was watching me.
“These are mine,” I told her, making my lip movements plain. “Leave them alone.”
“Bwee,” she said pleadingly, and I could see how big and purple her tongue was getting inside her mouth. It made me feel sick and sad and sorry, for Lisa and myself, mostly. That big purple tongue was a withdrawal symptom for a Skoag gropie; it meant she’d been down for more than forty-eight hours. I thought about her washing Lisa, keeping her back to the aid lady. Hiding. She’d still been hiding from the aid lady; it was just a different way from the one I’d figured. She was still using us.
She wasn’t getting her slime. I didn’t know why, but I knew it was dangerous for us. She wouldn’t be able to last. Before long, everyone would know. It hit me. I’d have to take care of it. One more thing for me to handle to keep Lisa safe. It made me angry and at the same time, hot and satisfied because I’d been right about her; she was just going to drag us in deeper and make it all harder. I’d been right to stop caring about her, because she was just going to hurt us if we let her be important to us.
Everything was getting harder. They’d tracked me down for school, and now I had to get there an hour earlier for remedial math. Which meant leaving Lisa with Mom for even longer. And Lisa was walking, so if you left the door open she’d head up the ramp and out onto the sidewalk. I’d sit in school and wonder if Mom had gone out to finger some Skoags and left the door open and Lisa had toddled out and been hit by a car. Or worse, just wandered off and I’d go home and call her but she wouldn’t be able to ans
wer . . . My imagining made school hours torture.
I’d race home each day, and each day Lisa would be okay. Every few nights Mom would go out, and I didn’t know what to hope for. That she’d score some slime and come home hummy, but easy to spot as a gropie? That she wouldn’t get any, but then she’d be trying to sign to Lisa and showing off her withdrawal? Maybe that she wouldn’t hear a delivery van coming down the alleys?
It all came together one night when I went to get another envelope from the fat Skoag. The streetlamp was glinting off his skin, and flashing off his voice membrane each time it swelled like a khaki neon light. He was holding out the envelope in a plastic-mittened flipper, but I said, “I need a favor.”
“No,” he tooted. “No favors.” He flapped the envelope at me frantically. He looked toward the alley mouth, but there was nothing there. I took a breath.
I said calmly, like I was sure of it, “You promised Lavender you’d look out for me and the Mom.”
“Yes. I bring you the money, every time.”
“Yeah. Well, that’s good, but not enough. I need you to come to my house, twice a week, late at night.”
“No.” He said it fast, scared. Then, “Why?”
“Yes. You know why.”
He rocked on his flippers like a zoo elephant. “I can’t,” he tootled mournfully. “Please. I can’t. Take the money and go. Dangerous for me.”
“Dangerous for me if you don’t. And you promised Lavender.”
“I . . . Please. Please. Once a week. Wednesday night, very late. Please.”
He shoved the envelope into my hand. I watched him rock. If I demanded it, he’d come twice a week, but he’d hate me. Or he’d come once a week and think I’d let him off easy. “Okay,” I said, settling for the second one. I might need something else someday, and once a week would hold Mom together.
He came late Wednesday. It startled me awake, his flippering down the ramp and then slapping the door. Mom had stayed in, looking at her hands and sighing, and gone to bed around midnight. It was two A.M. when the fat Skoag showed. I’d gone to sleep, thinking he wasn’t going to come. Odd. Just the sounds of him coming down the ramp and me opening the door like I used to for Lavender made my heart pound. Like maybe I’d open the door and somehow it would be Lavender standing there, gently waving his flippers and waiting for me.