Robin Hobb - The Inheritance and Other Stories

And Lavender was never there.

That’s how it would hit me; I’d be going along, doing a math page or signing out something about someone’s sister or folding up my blanket or getting a drink of water, and suddenly I’d notice, all over again, that Lavender wasn’t there. It always felt like someone had suddenly grabbed hold of my heart and squeezed it. I looked all through the house one day, trying to find one thing that he had touched, one thing he’d given to us that we still had. But there was nothing. It was like he’d never existed, and the silence was like he’d never made music.

One May day I came home from school and Mom had a baby. She hadn’t warned me, so it was a big shock to find her lying in bed with this little pink thing dressed in a nightgown made from one of my old T-shirts. I knew someone had helped her from the neatly folded towels by the bed, and the gray box of paper diapers. More aid stuff. My mom’s fat stomach was gone, and I felt really dumb for not knowing she had been pregnant. I saw pregnant women in the streets all the time, but it had never occurred to me that my mom could get that way. I knew, too, that she couldn’t get a baby unless she’d done it with somebody. And the only one who’d been living with us . . .

Mom wasn’t saying much, just watching me as I looked at the baby. What fascinated me the most was those tiny little fingernails she had, thin as paper. I kept staring at her hands.

“Go ahead,” Mom finally said. “You can touch her. She’s your little sister, Billy. Put your finger in her hand.” Her voice dragged like an old tape, and she sounded really tired.

“Is it . . . safe?” I asked. But she wasn’t watching my mouth, so she didn’t know I’d said anything. I went and got my school tablet. On it I printed, very carefully, IS SHE PART SKOAG ON HER SKIN? Then I took it back into Mom’s bedroom and handed it to her.

She read it and crumpled it up and threw it across the room. Her mouth went so tight it was white around her lips. It scared me. She’d never been mad at me while Lavender was around, and since he’d died, she’d been too beaten to be angry at anything.

“Shit!” she said, and the word came out with hard edges, sounding like she used to. She grabbed my wrist, and I could feel the hard slickness of her Skoag scarred palms. “You listen to me, Billy Boy,” she said fiercely. “I know what you been hearing. But you knew Lavender, and you damn well know me. And you should know that we . . . that we loved each other. And if he’d been a human and we could have had a baby together, we’d have done it. But he wasn’t, and we didn’t. This baby here, she’s all mine. One hundred percent. It sometimes happens to women who get hooked on Skoag touch. They call it a self-induced pregnancy. This baby’s a clone of me. You understand that? She’s the same as me, all over again. Only I’m going to make sure she comes out right. She’s going to be loved, she’s going to have chances. She’s not going to end up in a dump on aid, with no . . .” Her voice got more and more runny, the words souping together. She let go of my wrist and started crying. She lifted her hands and curled her fingers toward the tight skin on her palms and held them near her face but not touching it. Her tears trickled into the flipper scars that her final touching of Lavender had left on her face. Her crying woke the baby up, and she started crying, too. Her little face got red and her mouth gaped open, but no sound came out. Then my mom said to her, in the most terrible voice I’ve ever heard, “Baby, what’d you come here for? I got nothing to give you. I got nothing to give anyone.” And she rolled over and turned her back on her.

I stood there, watching them, thinking that any minute Mom would turn back and pick her up and take care of her. But a long time passed, and Mom just lay there, crying all shaky, and the baby lay there, all red and crying without sound.

So I picked her up. I knew how; I used to hold Janice’s baby before she gave her kids away. I held her against my chest, with her head on my shoulder so it wouldn’t wobble. I carried her around and rocked her, but her face stayed red and she kept breathing out through her mouth, really hard. She didn’t make any sound when she cried, but I thought maybe newborn babies didn’t cry out loud. I thought she might be hungry. So I went in the kitchen and I checked the refrigerator, to see if Mom had bottles and government aid formula in plastic envelopes like Janice used to have. And there was, so I warmed one up in the microwave until the plastic button on it turned blue to show it was the right temperature. Then I sat down and put the bottle in her wide open mouth. But she acted like she didn’t even know it was there and kept up her unhearable screaming.

I sat down on the couch with her on my lap. Her little legs were curled up against her belly. I looked at her red wrinkly feet and her teeny toes. My old T-shirt looked dopey on her, and I wished I had something better for her to wear. Maybe she was cold. So I pulled a corner of my blanket up over her. Her mouth stayed open and her face stayed red. I really wished I had a suck-on thing to stick in her mouth. But I didn’t. So I started rocking her on my lap and singing this song Janice used to sing to baby Peggy, about a mockingbird and a pony cart and all sorts of presents the baby would get if she’d be quiet. And right away she closed her mouth and went back to being pink instead of red. She opened her eyes that she’d squinched shut and looked right at me. Her eyes were kind of a murky blue. I looked into them and I knew Mom had lied. Because she looked at me just the way Lavender used to, when I didn’t know if he was looking at my face or at something inside my head. I knew she was his, and as long as I had her, he wasn’t really gone. This baby was something he’d touched, something he’d left for me to hold on to and keep. Part of him for me to keep.

I suddenly felt shaky and my throat closed up so tight I couldn’t breathe or sing, but she didn’t seem to mind now. She just kept looking up at me and I kept looking at her, and I wondered if this was what Lavender had meant about closing a circle. Because I knew she was loving me as much as I loved her. It was as important as he had said it was. I held her until her eyes closed, and then I carefully lay down on the couch with her on my stomach and my blanket over us. Her face was against my neck, breathing, and every now and then her mouth would move in a wet baby kiss. Before I fell asleep, I named her Lisa, from an old song Lavender used to sing about Lisa, Lisa, sad Lisa, Lisa.

After that, she was more my baby than Mom’s. Coming home to her was like coming home to Lavender. I meant that much to her. She was always crying and wet when I got home. Mom never seemed to notice when she needed changing, and even if she hadn’t been deaf, she wouldn’t have heard this baby cry. So I’d clean her up and feed her and hold her and rock her. And I’d sing to her. She liked that the best. She was just like my mom that way. I got the idea of tuning the stereo to an all-music station and leaving it on for her when I had to go to school in the morning. Since our place had been trashed, the stereo always had a background sound like cars going by on a wet street, but Lisa didn’t care. I’d put her down in the morning and turn on the stereo for her, and she’d still be happy when I got home from school. She slept with me at night, since I was afraid she’d fall out of Mom’s bed. But my couch was perfect, because I could put her between me and the back of it, and she’d be safe all night long, just as safe as the little mice nesting inside it.

A new pattern came into my life. I was taking care of things, taking care of the Mom, just like Lavender had told me, and taking care of him, in the form of Lisa. Mom didn’t have to do much at all. She got her checks and kept the house clean. I took the checks to the store and got food and sometimes a few extra little things for Lisa. She loved anything that made a noise, rattles, bells—anything. The only time Mom got mad was when I spent seven dollars on a stuffed lamb with a music box inside it. She yelled at me in her mushy voice, because to get it I had to buy tofu instead of hamburger and skipped getting margarine and eggs and jam. But it was worth it to watch Lisa wave her little fists excitedly every time the lamb started playing.