<0027 Night Has Fallen. Little Ones, Close Your Eyes.>
Bowls of hot, pale chicken porridge were set on the table, ladled from a large pot. Shredded chicken, rice, broccoli, celery, and pieces of carrot filled the bowls.
The children’s portions came in small, pretty, soft silicone bowls that were difficult to overturn. The adults also received herb-roasted chicken breasts and warm cornbread.
After placing a bowl of salad in the middle of the table, Mei sat down.
“Let’s eat.”
“Thank you. This looks lovely.”
Cynthia took a spoonful of porridge and felt an unexpected pang of nostalgia.
“This tastes like what my mom used to make when I had a cold.”
Mei smiled quietly.
“Yes. I kept the seasoning light for the children, so help yourself to salt and pepper.”
Katty quickly finished her porridge, then turned toward the children.
They were less interested in eating theirs than in methodically picking out the broccoli and investigating the texture of rice with their fingers.
“Eat the broccoli too. Chew it properly. Mama Mei worked hard on this.”
At least they did not spit out the spoonfuls Katty fed them. She alternated between praise and gentle persuasion as she worked through their porridge.
Mei wiped Leo’s mouth, then caught a spoon just before it fell to the floor. Katty nudged Hazel’s bowl closer and resumed negotiations over the broccoli.
Cynthia watched them with a small smile.
She had been a little nervous when she first arrived. This was her first time visiting a household with two mothers and their children. She had worried about how much she could ask about their family, and whether an unnecessary question might offend them.
But somewhere between drying the children’s hair and sitting down at the table, those concerns had faded.
Cynthia thought of her parents back in Brooklyn.
It had probably been like this when she and her brother were little. Someone feeding them, someone wiping up, someone scolding, someone laughing.
After dinner, Mei brought out pecan pie for dessert.
Cynthia took a bite, then ventured a question.
“Did you bake this yourself? It’s so good.”
Mei cut a little off the tip of her slice with her fork and answered as though it were nothing.
“No. How would I find time to make something like this with children to look after? The pie’s store-bought. But I did roast and boil the chicken myself.”
Cynthia nodded quickly.
“The roast chicken was wonderful too. You’re a very good cook, Mrs. Lee.”
“Thank you. And you can just call me Mei.”
“Oh… all right. Mei.”
Katty smiled contentedly as she chewed her pie.
“Right? Mei makes everything look like she barely bothered, and it still turns out great.”
Mei glanced at her.
“Your cooking isn’t bad either. You just season it too heavily.”
“…I’m from Louisiana.”
“Yes. That’s what I said. You season it too heavily.”
Cynthia tried not to laugh with her fork still in her mouth.
After dinner, Katty emerged from the shower in an old T-shirt and joggers.
She tossed her damp towel into the laundry basket.
“Cindy. Your turn. Did you bring a change of clothes?”
Cynthia rummaged through her backpack.
“Yes. Here.”
She pulled out a yellow track suit with black stripes.
Katty stared at it for a moment.
“…What is that?”
Cynthia answered solemnly.
“A change of clothes.”
“No, that’s a Bruce Lee track suit.”
“Ms. St.Claire gave it to me.”
Katty looked at the yellow track suit in Cynthia’s hands again.
“…That woman has the strangest taste.”
Mei looked up from picking dried grains of rice off Leo’s clothes.
“That does sound like Louise. She has more of a sense of humor than you’d think.”
Cynthia looked down at the track suit. Under the living room lights, the yellow fabric shone with entirely unnecessary confidence.
Katty asked cautiously,
“Cindy. Do you actually like that outfit that turns you into a Kill Bill cosplayer?”
Cynthia considered it.
“Yes. I think it’s starting to grow on me.”
“Then I guess there’s nothing to be done.”
Katty gave up and pointed toward the bathroom.
“It’s all yours. Go take a shower.”
When Cynthia emerged in the yellow track suit, Hazel and Leo giggled and clapped.
All she had done was change into something comfortable. Seeing the children find that entertaining was oddly heartwarming.
She sat down with them on the mat and helped them build with their blocks. Before she knew it, the wall clock read 9:40 p.m.
The children’s eyes began to droop, and their little bodies swayed back and forth.
Katty noticed. Without so much as announcing bedtime, she simply picked Leo up and carried him into the children’s room.
Mei took Hazel’s hand and followed, speaking softly to Cynthia as she passed.
“Make yourself comfortable out here. Or you can turn in first, if you like. The guest room’s ready.”
The living room went quiet all at once.
Cynthia wondered whether she really was allowed to go to bed before them.
She gathered the wooden blocks from the mat, placing them in their tub as quietly as possible. Then she sat on the sofa and took out her phone.
She sent her parents a message.
[I’m staying at Katty Fisher’s place tonight. They treated me to dinner too. Good night. I’ll call tomorrow.]
A little later, her mother replied.
[All right. We watched some videos with Ms. Fisher and her wife. They’re quite entertaining. Sleep well. We’ll talk tomorrow.]
Cynthia blinked.
[Videos? I haven’t seen them.]
[They’re on your band’s channel. I’m more surprised that you haven’t seen them. I thought you would have looked up everything about the band. I’ll send you the links.]
Two links arrived shortly afterward.
They were edited clips from appearances on a local talk show.
Cynthia took her earbuds from a pocket in her backpack, put them in, and opened the first link.
<0028 Katty Breaks the Show>
The footage had been recorded on a local New Orleans talk show in January 2020, just before the pandemic took hold.
Lydia, Katty, and Louise wore glittering stage dresses and elaborate glitter makeup. Satin Crescent had been a trio then.
The three women sat together on a sofa, talking with the host.
The white male host threw both arms up in an exaggerated display of astonishment.
“Ladies and gentlemen, what a night this has been. Katty Fisher, Satin Crescent’s trumpeter, has just announced her marriage right here on our show. And to a woman, no less. First of all, let’s give her a round of congratulations.”
At his prompting, applause and a few cheers rose from the audience.
“To be perfectly honest, I had no idea you were a lesbian.”
“Hahaha! Strictly speaking, I’m not. I’ve had boyfriends too.”
“Oh. So you’re…”
“I believe the world calls people like me bisexual.”
The host nodded at Katty’s unhesitating answer.
“I see. Have you ever struggled with your sexual orientation?”
“Not particularly. Think about it. I’m such an open person. I can get along with men and women.”
The audience laughed. The host gave an awkward chuckle and took a sip of water.
“Ah. Yes…”
Katty snickered and added,
“I don’t discriminate by race either.”
“Uh… wow… that’s quite something. So you take all comers?”
“Excuse me?! Daniel! What was that look? Do I seem that promiscuous to you?!”
Katty sprang up from the sofa. Lydia and Louise immediately caught an arm each and pulled her back down. The host took out a handkerchief and made a show of dabbing his forehead.
“Ah… no.”
“You don’t think being bisexual means I just sleep around, do you?”
“I never said that!”
“What I wanted was freedom in love and sex, not irresponsible orgies!”
“Sit down. Sit down.”
Lydia tugged at her arm. Louise joined in from the other side.
“Please sit down.”
Katty allowed herself to be coaxed back onto the sofa. Then she put on a grave expression.
“I mentioned earlier that I was in juvie. I saw girls there get letters saying their gangbanger boyfriends had caught something serious. They were terrified they might have it too. Do you know how frightening that is?”
The laughter in the audience subsided.
Katty looked around at them.
“We all have to take responsibility for our sex lives. Right?”
Voices of agreement and applause answered her.
Katty pressed a hand to her chest and declared proudly,
“I didn’t let just anybody have this body!”
“Uh. Well.”
Beside her, Lydia put a hand to her forehead.
“Oh… Kat. Please…”
“Only gorgeous people I actually liked got to do this to me!”
Katty stuck out her tongue and flicked it back and forth.
“Kat!”
Louise hurriedly clapped a hand over her mouth.
The host checked his watch and turned hastily toward the camera.
“And now, a commercial break. Stay tuned while we wait for Ms. Fisher to calm down!”
Whoever had edited the clip had left the original commercial in.
By a remarkable coincidence, it was an advertisement for a local brewery, starring Satin Crescent’s three jazz heroines.
Onscreen, Lydia and Louise took long, refreshing drinks of beer.
Then Katty licked the foam from her lips and whispered with exaggerated sensuality,
“Oh, feeling good~”
She was trying so hard to look seductive that it was mostly just funny.
The fifteen-second commercial ended, and the camera returned to the studio.
Katty was still flicking her tongue.
Lydia and Louise had their faces in their hands. The host opened his mouth, let out a laugh, and closed it again.
“Lerol erol erol ero~”
Finally, the host cried out,
“Katty! Can you show this to your wife? Does your wife know you do this?”
“What? I’m scatting.”
Katty shrugged innocently.
“Freddie Mercury went lirol erol eroling too.”
A mischievous woman somewhere in the audience called out,
“Do it to me!”
“Get my wife’s permission first.”
Applause and whistles broke out.
Katty did not appear to be finished.
“Personally, I like to have some lemon-flavored cream ready beforehand.”
The audience fell briefly silent. Then delayed groans began to escape from various corners.
“Ohhh…”
“Ugh…”
Lydia practically shrieked.
“Kat! You pervert! Idiot!”
Louise bowed her head toward the camera.
“I’m sorry about her!”
If the owner of the local brewery was watching, they were probably giving serious thought to whether Satin Crescent’s advertising contract should be renewed.
But Katty was still going.
“What my wife and I do is nothing special, really.”
Sitting on the sofa, she rolled her eyes upward and spread her arms like an overturned frog.
“Urrp. Urrrrrp. Oooooorrrp. Ohohohohooo.”
An extravagantly theatrical frog call.
The host tried to begin his next question twice and failed both times. On the third attempt, he kept his eyes on his cue cards instead of looking at Katty.
“So… Lydia Coleman. You had no reservations about welcoming an LGBTQ member into your band.”
Lydia answered.
“She told me outright when I approached her on the breakwater and asked her to join. I wasn’t after her sexual orientation. I was after her sound.”
“Yeah, Lydie. You wanted my frog noises. Urrp, urrrroooo. Mmm, feeling so good. Ooooooh.”
The host’s cue cards dropped onto his lap.
Lydia turned away from Katty and said coldly,
“I don’t believe being queer is what makes her such a strange person.”
Louise nodded.
“We nearly gave people the mistaken impression that all queer people are like this.”
Without even attempting to retrieve his cue cards, the host managed,
“…Commercial break. Stay… pffhahahaha… tuned…”
Another commercial.
Onscreen, Katty Fisher flicked her tongue through the foam on her beer, then winked at the camera.
“Feeling so goooood.”
“Mom. What on earth did you watch?”
Cynthia nearly dropped the phone from her limp hand.
Just then, a short cry came from the children’s room.
She could not tell whether it was Hazel or Leo.
Shh, shh, shh.
She could also hear Katty and Mei’s low, soothing voices.
<0029 Mei Rules the Show>
While the child fussed in the bedroom, Cynthia switched off her phone’s screen and waited quietly.
Katty and Mei kept shushing softly until the fussing gradually faded.
Only when the living room was quiet again did Cynthia open the second link.
This video was from 2023.
It was the same local station’s late-night talk show. This time, however, the guests were Katty and Mei rather than all three members of Satin Crescent.
The host smiled.
“How did the two of you meet?”
Mei thought for a moment.
“Well… the young Black woman next door seemed to be living rather precariously. I worried about her. So I fed her, helped her keep the place in order. And somehow, here we are.”
A low ripple of laughter passed through the audience.
“Did you think it would become a romantic relationship from the beginning?”
“Not at all. I’d never thought of myself as a lesbian. In fact, I’d never dated anyone before Kat. My first time having sex was with her too.”
A chorus rose from the audience.
“Ooooooh—”
Katty turned toward Mei in alarm.
“Mei.”
Mei looked back calmly.
“It’s true.”
Holding back a laugh, the host continued.
“Was there a reason you’d never dated?”
“I got into Stanford to study economics, and I was sleeping five hours a night while I studied.”
The audience responded with a mixture of impressed murmurs and laughter.
Encouraged, the host leaned a little farther forward.
“Then… in bed, which of you usually makes the first—”
Katty immediately raised a clenched fist.
“Daniel! Don’t make me cause an incident tonight.”
The host hunched his shoulders and laughed.
Then Mei nudged her glasses up.
“I pounce first.”
After a brief silence, laughter erupted.
Katty lowered her fist and covered her face with both hands.
“Oh, Mei. Please.”
The host caught his breath.
“Did your parents object when you got married?”
“When I told them I was marrying her, they didn’t say much. Or, more precisely, they tried not to say much. So I’m not saying much either.”
Mei added matter-of-factly,
“I think there are some matters in life where parental approval isn’t terribly important.”
A little applause drifted through the audience. The host nodded.
“Then why do you love her?”
Mei paused to consider, then answered in the same even voice.
“If I itemized the reasons I love her, that would be accounting. I do that all day. But I imagine love is rather different from accounting.”
Another gentle round of applause followed.
The host looked impressed.
“What a wonderful answer. Then is there anything in particular that helps the two of you stay happy together?”
“A Womanizer.”
The host’s smile stopped moving.
Katty slowly turned toward Mei.
“…Oh, Mei.”
Mei continued as though nothing had happened.
“My fingers turned out to be no match for the machine.”
The host sat speechless with his mouth open. Somewhere in the audience, someone was repeatedly slapping a knee.
Mei regarded him calmly.
“You seem to have a great many questions, though. Perhaps you could tell us about your own nighttime activities, Mr. Macwood?”
“Uh… I’m single.”
“In that case, I imagine a silicone cylinder would be quite helpful.”
The host pressed a hand to his chest and leaned back.
“Oh! What a counterattack. I think you’ve beaten me.”
Mei shook her head.
“A counterattack? Not at all. There’s nothing shameful about doing it alone. Do try a silicone cylinder.”
“Enough! I surrender!”
As the host raised both hands, cheers and applause broke out.
Trying to contain his laughter, he said,
“Mei Lee. It turns out you’re the one most in touch with the soul of jazz.”
“Well. I don’t know about the soul of jazz.”
Mei tilted her head slightly.
Then she raised both hands, spreading the index and middle fingers of each into a pair of scissors.
The color drained from Katty’s face.
“Mei.”
Mei crossed the fingers of one hand with those of the other.
“But I am… very much in touch with a woman who plays it.”
Katty leaped up and fled behind the set.
The host laughed so hard he slid out of his chair.
The living room remained quiet. No more crying came from the children’s room.
Cynthia stared blankly at her phone.
The woman who had calmly admitted over dinner that the pecan pie was store-bought had apparently laid waste to a portion of New Orleans’s late-night living rooms.
And Katty had run behind the set to escape her.
Cynthia put down her phone and murmured,
“So Mei… is the apex predator.”
The children’s bedroom door opened a crack.
Mei peeked out first. When she met Cynthia’s eyes across the living room, she pressed a finger to her lips. Katty followed, ducking through the gap.
They came down the hallway almost on tiptoe.
Mei carefully closed the door. When it settled into place without so much as a click, both women looked at the wall clock.
Ten o’clock.
Mei let out a relieved breath.
“We survived.”
Cynthia blinked.
“I thought you two were turning in as well.”
Mei’s lips curved as though she were holding back a smile.
“You don’t have any little siblings, do you? Nieces or nephews?”
“No.”
“Once the children are asleep, the parents finally get some time of their own.”
“Oh…”
As Cynthia nodded, Katty gave a small laugh and discreetly held up what she was carrying.
“You heard the crying earlier? Leo pooped just as he was falling asleep.”
She was holding a loosely bundled diaper.
Mei spoke at once.
“Kat. Don’t wave our child’s diaper at our guest.”
“Right. I’ll deal with it.”
Katty took the diaper into the bathroom. Cynthia heard her empty its contents into the toilet and flush.
A little later, Katty emerged. She rolled the diaper up, secured it with its adhesive tabs, and put it in a black plastic bag, twisting and knotting the opening.
On the sofa, Cynthia wrinkled her nose ever so slightly. Apparently embarrassed to have done so, she immediately composed her face.
“I’ll toss the diaper bomb in the dumpster before we have a beer.”
Mei narrowed her eyes.
“You’re going outside to vape.”
“…Well, that too. Can’t do it in the house with the kids.”
Katty headed toward the entrance and slipped on her slides.
“All right. See you in a bit.”
After seeing Katty out, Mei opened the living room window a crack. She checked that no strong draft was reaching the children’s room, then dropped onto the sofa and closed her eyes.
A thin current of cold air passed through the living room. The diaper smell gradually faded.
The black plastic bag was banished to the dumpster behind the apartment complex.
When Katty returned, she washed her hands and closed the window again.
“Still smells, doesn’t it?”
Cynthia’s lips moved slightly as she searched for an answer.
“Well, it’s a baby’s diaper… That’s just how it is?”
Katty nodded.
“That’s how it is.”
She said it so matter-of-factly that Cynthia found she had nothing more to say.