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 answer . . . 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
