In February the first package fame for Lavender. It was at the bottom of the ramp when I got home, and I picked it up and took it into the house. Just a little flat black plastic box. "Look what I found," I said as I came in the door, and Lavender came immediately and took it from me.
"For me," he told me. "A message." His cello strings quivered unnaturally as he slipped it into his pouch. I never saw him open it, and he didn't speak of it again, just asked to see my school papers.
There were three more after that, or perhaps four. Always at the bottom of the ramp when I got home from school, and always Lavender took them. One day it started raining on my way home and when I got to our house, there were flipper prints outlined on the ramp, leading to the flat black box. So Skoags left them. I wondered why the Skoags were sending him messages instead of just talking to him.
The last message box was silver, not black. Lavender held it for a long time, just looking at it. Then the muscles around his eye spots moved and he looked at my Mom for a long time. She knew something about those message boxes, and it wasn't good. I wanted terribly to know what it was, but I was too frightened to ask. Silence wrapped me so tightly it cut into me like wires. I went to my Mom, and she held me against her fat stomach and stroked my head like I was a baby. Then she gave me a gentle push and pointed to the door. I was to go outside.
"I'm not a baby anymore," I said angrily, knowing I was being shut off from something.
"No," said Lavender. He moved a slow flipper, and my Mom let go of me. "You certainly aren't. You are old enough to be trusted with important things." He paused, then the cello thrummed rapidly. "Billy Boy. I have made the other Skoags very angry by being here with you. They demand I come back to them and live as they wish me to live. I cannot. Tomorrow I will go to tell them that. There may be…" the cello sighed wordlessly, then went on, "a great unpleasantness for me. A most unfortunate happening, perhaps. Until I come back, I will rely on you to take care of the Mom." He turned slowly until he faced my Mom again. "That is all there is to say. Billy does not need to leave." She bowed her head, accepting his wishes. He spoke no more about it, but went about the apartment tunelessly humming and adjusting the wall hanging from pale mauve to a sky blue.
That evening he played long, wordless songs with lots of strings and high pitched wind instruments. I fell asleep to music like sea gulls crying after a storm.
The next day when I got home from school, Lavender wasn't there. My Mom was sitting at the table. She didn't even look up until I slapped my school books down in front of her. Then she looked up with eyes as flat and dark as Lavender's eye spots. Her face was like the day she'd given Teddy our check, but a thousand times worse. "Billy," she said, in a low swollen voice like her mouth was packed with marshmallows. She reached for me, to pull me near, but the palms of her hands were scarred with iridescence, like the pictures in the Don't Do Drugs textbook. Suddenly I couldn't let her touch me. My mind tagged and rejected the truth. I pulled back, feeling betrayed, knowing something was terribly, terribly wrong. "Lavender!" I cried, but no cello sawed an answer. I looked again at my Mom, at her scarred hands and her deaf loneliness. I saw what he had done, but his not being here, now, was worse.
"Don't hate him," Mom said, in her slow, sticky voice. "We had to do it, Billy. We couldn't help ourselves. And someday it's going to be all right."
She couldn't have known how bad it was going to get. All that long empty evening, she'd shiver suddenly and then wrap her arms around herself and cock her head as if seeking for a sound. I sat on the couch and watched her and tried to imagine her loneliness. My mother cut off from music, from all sound. As kind to seal off her lungs from air. But he loved her, he loved me, he couldn't leave her empty like that and me alone, he wouldn't just go away. I watched her digging her fingers into her ears like she was trying to claw out a stopper. Her nails came out with tiny shreds of dry skin and scabby stuff. She wiped at her ears with pieces of toilet paper, and they came away pink. It was awful to watch. But the worst was the sound of flippers on the ramp, and the heavy slap at the door. The worst was me jumping up, believing that Lavender had come back and everything was going to be all right. I ran to the door and dragged it open for him, and he fell halfway into the room.
It was a terribly clattery sound, his fall, but he didn't cry out. My Mom didn't make a sound as she went to him. I stood clear of them both, watched her roll him over.
I screamed when I saw what they had done to him. The remains of his bladders fluttered in feeble rags and a pale yellowish stuff oozed from the torn edges. They had slashed them all, every sound membrane on his body. He tried to speak, but made only a ridiculous sound of flapping curtains and newspapers blowing down the street, a terrible fluttering of ripped drumheads. My mother knelt over him and lifted his flippers and pressed them to her cheeks. Even now, I don't believe it was the act of a junkie trying for one last rush. There was terrible wisdom and love in her eyes as his shining iridescence ate into her skin and marked her. His tattered membranes fluttered once more and then hung still.
I ran out of the apartment and down the streets. They were shiny with rain, shining like his skin, and wet like the dripping stuff from his wounds. I ran as far and fast as I could, trying to run away from those terrible moments to a place where it hadn't happened. I don't know who called the police or the ambulance or whoever it was that came and took the body away. I know it wasn't my Mom. She would have sat there forever, just holding his flippers while his music faded.
I came back in the grey part of morning. A man and a woman were waiting for me. They wore long overcoats and stood, as if sitting in our chairs might make them dirty. An outline was chalked on the floor, and they wouldn't answer any of my questions. Instead, they asked me questions, lots of them. Had the Skoags killed Lavender? Why? Did I see them do it? Did my Mom help them do it? Why had a Skoag been living with us? Had he ever tried to touch me? But the anger inside me wouldn't let me answer their questions. "Where's my Mom?" I demanded each time, and finally they put me in a car and took me to the Children's Home and left me there.
The women at the Children's Home all wore grey pants and white shirts. They all called me "honey." They gave me two pants, two shirts, underwear, socks and shoes and a bath. They threw away all my own stuff. Then they showed me a bed with a brown blanket on it in a row of beds with brown blankets, and told me the bed and the box at the foot of it were mine.
The next day, more people came to talk to me. Nice people, with kind voices and gum and Lifesavers. A lady told me my Mommy was sick, but was in a place where she'd get better soon. But she said it like really my Mom was very bad, and had to stay somewhere until she was good again. They told me the Skoag was gone and I didn't have to be afraid anymore. I could tell about it and no one would hurt me. They told me the best way to help my Mom was to answer all of their questions. But their voices sounded like creaking cage doors and iron gates swinging in the wind. I knew that talking to them wouldn't help my Mom. So when they asked me questions, I always said I didn't know, or answered the opposite of what was true. I contradicted myself on purpose. I said Lavender was my father. I said my Mom was his secretary. I said I was going to throw up. Then I did, trying to make it hit their shoes. After three days they left me alone.