〈0030 The Role of Parents〉
Katty dried her hands on a towel and walked toward the refrigerator.
“At first, I thought the diaper smell was going to send my soul right out of my body.”
Mei spoke from the sofa, her eyes closed.
“It still does.”
“Right. It just comes back faster now.”
Katty opened the refrigerator.
Cynthia laughed softly.
The word baby usually came with things like the soft scent of skin and tiny fingers. But actual babies ate, cried, pooped, ate again, and cried again.
Which meant someone had to wipe all of it up, tie it off, throw it away, and wash their hands.
Katty took two bottles of Abita beer from the refrigerator. She considered them for a moment, then opened the door again and took out a can. Zero-calorie vanilla cream soda.
“This one’s for Cindy.”
Cynthia accepted it with a smile.
“Thank you.”
Katty found a bottle opener, opened both beers, and held one out to Mei.
“Congratulations on clocking out of parenting, darling.”
Mei clapped her hands softly.
“Clocking out of parenting. That’s an excellent phrase.”
Cynthia looked from one to the other.
“So you’ve been on parenting duty until now.”
Mei answered.
“Yes. Unpaid, no breaks, customer complaints delivered immediately as crying, and night shifts included.”
She took the bottle Katty offered and sank back against the sofa, almost collapsing into it.
“But the customers are so cute that we can’t resign.”
Cynthia nodded, looking as though she understood a little at last.
“…Parenting is quite something.”
“The more I do it, the more I think about my own parents.”
The beer bottles touched with a low clink. The two women took a quiet sip, almost as though performing a ritual.
Cynthia opened the zero-calorie vanilla cream soda Katty had given her. The tab made a small sound, and she instinctively glanced toward the children’s room.
Mei said,
“It’s all right. A sound like that won’t wake them.”
“Then what does wake them?”
At Cynthia’s question, Katty answered with her beer bottle still in her hand.
“The moment we relax.”
“…”
Cynthia knew it was a joke, but she looked toward the children’s room once more. Being careful couldn’t hurt.
She sat at the end of the sofa and drank her vanilla cream soda.
For a little while, the home that had been occupied by toys, bottles, and tiny socks until a moment ago seemed to have become a place where adults lived too.
Mei stretched out on the sofa and let out a long breath.
“All right, Kat. Let’s finally talk about the things we haven’t had a chance to discuss all day.”
Katty leaned against the back of the sofa.
“Couldn’t we just be quiet for a little while and not talk about anything?”
Mei considered that, then nodded.
“That sounds better.”
Cynthia looked at their faces. They were exhausted, but somehow happy.
The two of them had given almost their entire day to the children, and were now giving each other back the handful of night that remained.
After about ten minutes of drinking beer without talking, the couple began to speak again, neither one quite starting before the other.
The conversation continued quietly. The daycare teachers. The socks that disappeared every morning. The stubbornness of a child who ate nearly all the baby food but invariably refused the last spoonful. The hopeful assurances they gave themselves that things would get a little easier once the children were out of diapers.
Even while talking, Mei occasionally listened toward the children’s room. Even while drinking her beer, Katty picked up a small toy rolling around under the dining table and put it in a basket.
Cynthia watched them and took another sip of cream soda. The fizz briefly came alive in her mouth, then faded.
The parents’ time, beginning only after the children were asleep. A night of dealing with smells, washing hands, opening windows, and finally managing to open a bottle. People looking at each other with tired faces and smiling.
The couple’s voices grew more distant.
Katty said something. Mei laughed softly. The refrigerator hummed.
No sound came from the children’s room at the end of the hallway.
Cynthia held the can in both hands and blinked. Once. Twice.
Then keeping her eyes open became too difficult. She set the can on the table.
“Good night…”
The words came out almost as a breath.
Mei turned her head.
“Oh, my.”
Katty laughed quietly.
“Looks like we have to put this one to bed too.”
Instead of answering, Cynthia got to her feet and staggered toward the guest room. Katty hurried after her and unfolded the sofa bed kept there for visitors.
“Th… thank… you.”
Cynthia flopped facedown onto the bed. Katty took out a blanket and spread it over her.
As she left the guest room, Katty glanced toward the children’s room again, just as she had before.
Quiet.
This time, it really seemed as though the whole home was asleep.
Katty took the beer bottle from Mei’s hand and put it away, then whispered,
“Good work today.”
“You too.”
They turned off the living room lights and walked into the bedroom, holding hands.
〈0031 Bye-Bye, Babies〉
It was eight in the morning when Cynthia opened her eyes.
At first, she thought she had woken up quite early. Eight on a Sunday morning was practically diligent, at least by her standards.
But the moment she heard the sounds outside the guest room door, she realized she knew nothing about this household’s timetable.
A tower of blocks came crashing down in the living room. Then Hazel, the older child, burst out laughing.
Leo shouted, “Sissy!” and spent a while rattling off words Cynthia couldn’t understand. Between them came Katty’s low, hoarse voice.
“No, that’s not for eating. Food comes later. Blocks are building materials.”
Cynthia pushed back the blanket and slowly sat up. Her head felt a little foggy. She had only drunk one can of vanilla cream soda the night before, yet a strange, hangover-like fatigue lingered in her body.
When she opened the door and stepped out, the living room already looked as though it had hosted an entire day’s activities.
Katty was sitting on the floor. Her hair was loosely tied back, and a small, unidentified stain marked the shoulder of her T-shirt. A picture book lay open on one knee, while she rebuilt a collapsed block tower with one hand.
The two children orbited her like little planets.
“All right. This time, let’s build a planned city.”
Katty set a yellow block beside a blue one.
Hazel brought her palm down on the blocks, demolishing them in one stroke. The planned city collapsed as soon as it was built.
Katty closed her eyes briefly, then opened them.
“No, I didn’t mean destroy it immediately. Right. Pruitt-Igoe.”
Mei stood in the kitchen with a coffee cup. Her glasses were straight and her posture neat, but the shadows under her eyes looked a little heavier than they had the night before.
She was arranging small pieces of banana beside a plate of toast.
“You’re up?”
“Yes. Good morning.”
Cynthia greeted her cautiously.
Only then did Katty look up. She tried to smile, but yawned first.
“Morning, Cindy. Sleep well?”
“Yes. But… you’re already up.”
Mei answered with a perfectly calm expression.
“Leo woke up at six fifteen.”
Cynthia was briefly speechless.
“…Six fifteen?”
“He slept in today.”
Katty picked up a block.
“Yesterday it was five forty.”
Leo immediately took the block from her hand. Katty offered no resistance.
She seemed to have very little strength left for resisting anything.
Cynthia stood at the entrance to the living room and looked at the two women.
She was only just starting her day. The adults in this home already looked as though they had finished one.
Breakfast was less noisy than dinner had been the night before.
The toast was spread with peanut butter and grape jelly, with thin slices of banana lined up on top.
On the plate beside it, the scrambled eggs had lost some of their steam. The children’s cups were half full of milk.
“Good thing nobody in this family has a peanut allergy. Peanut butter and jelly is so good. Peanut butter and banana… that was Elvis Presley’s favorite combination.”
“Though we do need to make sure we get our vitamins and protein.”
Mei added that with a small smile.
The scrambled eggs gradually migrated from the children’s plates to the floor. Katty held Leo’s cup with one hand and tried to drink her own coffee with the other, failing about three times.
Mei watched it all without much change in her expression and cut more banana.
Cynthia sat quietly with her own plate in front of her.
The night before, only after the children were asleep had the two women finally been able to lean back on the sofa and have some time to themselves. Then morning came, and everything started again from the beginning.
Still, when Hazel ate the little pieces of toast, Katty stroked her head.
Mei picked up the spoon that had fallen under the table, washed it, and put it back in Leo’s hand.
After breakfast, Mei took her car keys from the small shelf beside the front door.
“I’ll drive you to the airport.”
“That’s all right. I could call a taxi.”
“It’s Sunday morning. From here, it’ll be quicker and easier if I take you.”
Mei spoke like someone who had already made the decision. Cynthia did not try to decline again.
Katty came outside to see her off, carrying Leo in her left arm. Hazel held on to the leg of Katty’s pants.
Katty shifted Leo in her arms and smiled.
“Good work this week, Cindy!”
“Oh, no. You’ve all done so much for me.”
“You’ll be staying with the three of us in turn from now on anyway.”
“Pardon?”
“You’ll have to keep going back and forth between school in Boston and the band here in New Orleans for a while. It’ll be tiring, though.”
“Yes…”
Cynthia gave her a quiet smile.
Outside the front door, Katty took Leo’s hand and waved it toward her.
“Say bye-bye. Aunt Cindy’s coming back next week.”
Cynthia took Leo’s little hand and shook it, then bent down to hug Hazel.
The children cried miserably, as though they were saying goodbye forever.
Mei’s gray Buick Envision was parked in the apartment complex’s lot.
The interior wasn’t completely tidy. Two child seats were securely fastened in the back, with a little sock, a picture book, and some wipes scattered between them.
Once Cynthia had buckled her seat belt, Mei pulled away with practiced ease.
〈0032 Mei & Katty〉
Cynthia looked out the window. The New Orleans sun was already a little higher in the sky.
As the Buick Envision passed through the apartment complex’s shared gate and joined the road, Mei spoke.
“You’re from Brooklyn, Cindy. And your school is in Boston, right?”
“Yes.”
The roads on Sunday morning felt considerably more relaxed than they did on weekdays.
Mei turned the steering wheel left and continued.
“Boston is my hometown. Though I spent about four years in California for college.”
Cynthia looked at Mei’s profile, her eyes widening.
“Oh! So you weren’t originally from New Orleans.”
“No. Around graduation, I applied to several companies. The best offer came from a port company in New Orleans.”
Mei entered the left-turn lane and paused.
“That was the beginning of my life in New Orleans… and then I met Kat.”
The light changed. The car slowly made a U-turn.
“After that, my life took a direction I hadn’t expected. It’s been five years already… No, six, counting from when we decided to get married.”
One day in September 2019.
Mei was walking briskly, holding Katty’s hand. They had come to the Canal Place shopping mall, not far from the Mississippi riverfront.
Katty looked up at the soaring ceiling and around at the imposing hexagonal marble columns. Between them, luxury stores stood in proud rows.
She wasn’t sure whether she should be walking across the gleaming, polished tile in her dirty sneakers.
But Mei kept urging her along, so she followed in bewilderment and muttered in a subdued voice,
“Um, Mei. I thought places like this would never be part of my life.”
“Then make a fancy place part of your life today.”
Mei adjusted her handbag strap and opened the glass door of the Tiffany store.
“Uh…?”
Katty stumbled over her words as Mei pulled her into the store by the hand.
The Tiffany staff greeted them with neat posture and their hands folded together. Mei did not hesitate. Apparently having already looked around once, she went straight to the ring display.
“The rings I picked out yesterday, please.”
“Yes. I’ll bring them out right away.”
The salesperson took out a pair of rose-gold rings and placed them on Tiffany Blue velvet.
Mei picked up one of them.
“Kat. Give me your hand.”
Only then did Katty look directly at Mei’s face.
“Mei, wait. Is this for real?”
“It is.”
“Here?”
“Yes. Here.”
Mei took Katty’s hand. It was the hand that carried plates in a restaurant by day and held a trumpet on club stages at night.
She slid the ring onto a finger and kept holding the hand. She did not kneel. Her eyes stayed fixed on Katty’s.
“Katty. Marry me.”
Katty’s breath caught. She couldn’t say anything.
One of the staff drew in a sharp breath.
Mei spoke again.
“Katty, answer me. You’re going to stop their hearts.”
“W-wait. Have you… considered all of this?”
“I have. About four times.”
Katty looked down at the ring on her hand.
“I’m… a musician. My income isn’t stable.”
“Mine is.”
“We’re both women.”
“If that bothered me, our relationship wouldn’t have made it this far.”
“What about kids? You wanted a baby.”
“We can do artificial insemination.”
Mei shrugged.
A beat later, Katty looked at her.
“…Mei Lee. Are you in your right mind?”
Mei considered that very briefly.
“Apparently not, Katty Fisher.”
Then she held Katty’s hand more firmly.
“Now answer me.”
Katty squeezed her eyes shut.
Her lips moved a few times before the answer came.
“Yes.”
Katty picked up the remaining ring. Her hand trembled a little as she slipped it onto the finger Mei offered.
Mei turned her head.
The three staff members were pretending they hadn’t heard anything, but their faces said they had heard everything.
The woman beside the display case was dabbing at her eyes with a handkerchief. The other two couldn’t hide their smiles either.
Mei said,
“My wife-to-be has answered. You may applaud now.”
Only then did the applause break out.
After silently remembering the past for a while, Mei glanced at Cynthia in the passenger seat and asked,
“You said this was your first time seeing a same-sex couple up close, didn’t you, Cindy?”
“Yes…”
“After spending a day with us, what do you think? Between Kat and me, which one seems to be playing the ‘wife’?”
Cynthia couldn’t answer immediately.
She thought of the living room the night before and the breakfast table that morning.
Katty going out to throw away a diaper.
Katty sitting beside the children, building with blocks.
Mei cutting fruit in the kitchen.
Mei driving her to the airport.
Cynthia answered carefully.
“Both of you.”
Mei narrowed her eyes briefly, then nodded.
“Correct. In this home, we share the roles of husband and wife.”
“How?”
“The one who goes out to earn money, the one who stays home with the children. The one who scolds, the one who comforts. The one who drives, the one who changes diapers.”
Mei shrugged slightly.
“It might be convenient if those things were clearly divided. In practice, whoever has a free hand at the time does it.”
When Cynthia nodded, Mei continued.
“So sometimes we’re both husbands, and sometimes we’re both wives. And most of the time, we’re simply both parents.”
The words stayed with Cynthia. Both parents. It was such an obvious thing to say.
Mei paused, then spoke again, looking through the windshield.
“I was the first to get pregnant.”
Cynthia quietly turned toward her.
Mei’s profile was calm.
She looked different from the woman who had turned the studio upside down in the video Cynthia had watched the night before. She was smiling, but it wasn’t the face of someone who was only making jokes.
“Having children was something I was determined to do. So I chose a donor carefully, went to the clinic, and spent months preparing.”
Mei paused briefly, then continued.
“Tests, consultations, schedules, injections, and pills. Then the procedure. It isn’t as romantic as you might think. There’s a lot of paperwork. It costs money. Your body gets tired.”
“Oh…”
“But it was something I chose.”
Mei tapped the steering wheel lightly with her fingers.
“Then, one day after I had Hazel, Kat told me she couldn’t let me be the only one giving birth.”
Cynthia blinked.
“Ms. Fisher too?”
“Yes. She said she’d have a baby herself.”
Mei gave a very small smile, as though remembering the moment.
“At first, I thought she was joking. You know how Kat says things. Even a major decision sounds as though she’s announcing she’ll open another beer.”
Cynthia smiled a little too.
“But she meant it?”
Mei nodded slightly.
“I had Hazel, and sixteen months later, Kat had Leo.”
Cynthia looked back at the two empty child seats.
Until a moment ago, she had simply thought of them as places for two children to sit. Behind those little seats were two pregnancies and two births, followed by the life she had been watching since the night before.
“So you really are both…”
Cynthia stopped, trying to find the words.
Mei finished for her.
“We’re both mothers.”
She took a very short breath and continued.
“And we’ve both come to know it in our own bodies.”
Cynthia couldn’t fully understand the weight of those words.
But the exhaustion of the two women sitting in the living room with beer bottles the night before, and Katty’s face as she sat on the floor building with blocks that morning, came back to her a little differently.
Cynthia nodded slowly.
“So that’s how it is.”
Mei smiled.
“Yes. That’s how it is.”
The airport signs drew a little closer.