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, sweety. 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 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 grey 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.