But it was only the fat Skoag. He was pressed into the darkest corner of the stairwell, staring up at the sidewalk. As soon as I opened the door, he scuttled in and pushed it shut.

"Quickly," he said, pulling off a plastic mitten. "Quickly, please, and then I will go."

"This way," I said, and led him into my mother's bedroom.

She wasn't asleep. She was lying on her back, staring at the ceiling. The bed, wedged in a corner of the small room, was a tousled wreck. Some movement of air as we came into the room turned her eyes to us. She stared at us, between dreaming and awake, and suddenly she sat up and screamed "Lavender!"

The word came out crisp and hard and real, like she used to talk. Then she saw it wasn't him and she broke. She made this horrible laughing-crying sound. The fat Skoag freaked when she screamed and waddled frantically for the door, but I was closer, and I slammed it and put my back to it. "No," I said, gripping the knob. "You don't leave until she's touched you."

His eye spots went flat and dead. He turned and slowly walked toward the bed. Her hysterics trailed away in broken sobs. I watched her face, her shock fading and being replaced by horror as the fat Skoag came closer. "No," she said, clearly, and then, "Nooh. Nooh." She backed up on the bed, pressing into the corner. "Noooh. Doanwanis. Goway. Bwee. Pease. Trynstob. No." But when the Skoag held his flipper out, she suddenly lunged across the bed and gripped it like a handful of free lottery tickets. She held on and her body jerked in little spasms, like the kid at school who had fits. Her eyes went back and she threw her head way back on her neck and her tongue came out. I felt sick and dirty, like I was watching her have sex with someone, or watching a doctor work on guts. But I couldn't look away. The Skoag stood there until her hands slid away. They were thick with his slime, and iridescent in the darkness. The stuff was thick, like the goop she used to rub on my chest when I was little and had a bad cold. She crumpled over onto her side. I pulled the blankets back up over her. As I let the Skoag out, I wondered why I had bothered to do that.

"Remember," I said, as he waddled up the ramp. "Next Wednesday. It's important. And you promised Lavender."

I was thinking that Wednesday was about right, because the aid lady always came on Thursdays or Fridays, and Mom would still look okay when she got here. The fat Skoag paused on the ramp.

"For Lavender," he said, like brass trumpets coming from a far hill. "Only for him would I do this thing. Only for him."

I knew then that the fat Skoag was close to hating me tonight, and that it didn't have to have been that way. If I hadn't demanded this, he might have become my friend. I watched the fat Skoag leave and felt pimpish and sly and small for trading on his loyalty to Lavender. But I had to, to keep Lisa safe. Sometimes the only thing I was sure of was that Lavender had entrusted Lisa to me. I went back to bed, curling up around Lisa. I fell asleep hoping that the things I did to protect her wouldn't stain her.

So that's how it went. The fat Skoag came once a week. Mom stayed slimed and happy. The aid lady never suspected a thing. I went to school enough to keep everyone happy, and took care of Lisa. Lisa grew. She turned into a little kid. On Saturdays we'd bus over to Gasworks Park. I'd push her on the swings or we'd watch the fancy kites people fly there. I kept her away from other kids, so she wouldn't be teased about being mute. When some Mommy would say hello to her, or say, "My, such.pretty hair," I'd step in and say, "She's real shy. And my Mom says don't talk to strangers." Then I'd take her away and buy her ice cream. No one expects kids to talk while they're eating.

She was three when the message came. The radio was always on for Lisa. Classical music made her close her eyes and sway, or suddenly shiver. Jazz made her hyperactive. If I wanted her to go to sleep, it was good old rock and roll. I should have heard about it. But I never listened to the news, or wasted food money on a newspaper. So I scowled at the check-out guy when he shoved a Seattle Times into my brown bag.

"I ain't paying for that," I told him.

"On the house, kid," he told me. "I figure you got a right to know, it being your Skoag and all."

He'd never talked about Lavender before that. He'd treated me decent while Lavender was alive, and he'd never given me a bad time about shopping there after Lavender died. Not like the laundromat where they threw me and our laundry out because they didn't want "Skoag slime clogging the drains." Anyway, he turned right away to the next customer so I knew he didn't want me to say anything. I headed home.

After I got dinner cooking, I unfolded the paper, wondering what I was supposed to look at. The headlines jumped at me. "SKOAG PLANET CONTACT CONFIRMED." I read slowly, trying to understand it. The story said the rumors were confirmed, without saying what they were. The big deal was the Skoags officially sending a message to Earth, planet to planet. The newspaper went on about the sending technology being based on stuff we knew but hadn't thought about using together, and stuff like that. I had to sort through the whole paper to find the last few lines. They scared the hell out of me. Sources wouldn't say what the message had been, but didn't deny it had to do with the ritual murder of a "highly-placed Skoag exile in Seattle."

I didn't know the microwave had buzzed until Mom set food in front of me. I looked up, arid Lisa had already finished eating. I hated it when Morn did stuff like that. Like she was pretending she was a good little mommy, taking care of her kids instead of a Skoag gropie who didn't give a damn. In the drug classes at school, they called that "ingratiating behavior" and said junkies and alkies used it to fool their families into thinking they were changing, especially if the families were close to sending them to a cure station. It didn't fool me. I crumpled up the paper and gave it to Lisa to play with, and ate dinner.

Two nights later, the man came. Maybe he thought no one would notice a grey government sedan pulled up in front of a slummy house at midnight. I heard someone nearly fall down the ramp, and when he knocked, I opened the door on its chain.

"Yeah," I said, but my stomach was shaking. Skoag slime dependency wasn't supposed to show up in pee tests. That's what all the kids said, and I'd always believed it was true, but what if they'd changed the test and knew from Mom's pee that she was a gropie? But I tried not to let any of that show on my face as I stared out the crack at the government man.

"I have to come in," he said, whispery. "I have to talk to your mother." "Too bad," I said, being tough. "She's deaf. You can write it down, or you can tell it to me, but you can't talk to her."

"I can sign," he said nervously, echoing with his fingers.

"She can't," I said, and started to close the door.

"Please," he said, not quite shoving his foot in the crack, but leaning on the door to keep it open. "It's about the dead Skoag. Lavender. And it's important, kid."

We stared at each other.

"Look, kid," he finally said. His voice came out normal, not whispery, but real tired. "I can come back with cops tomorrow and kick this door in and drag you out. It's that important. Or you can let me in now, and we'll keep this quiet."

My mom reached past me and undid the chain and the man came in. I hadn't even known she was awake. She looked awful, with her scarred face shining in the streetlamp light leaking in the door. All except for her hair, which was as pretty as ever. She clicked on the light and shut the door behind him. He looked around and said, "Oh, Jesus Christ." It was the first time I'd ever heard a grown man say it like a prayer. Then he sat down at our table, and started signing to my Mom.