The Mothers A Novel - By Jennifer Gilmore Page 0,24

plate, garnished with long strands of tender basil, a ramekin of vinaigrette nestled to the side.

“Yum.” I was the first to stab one with a fork.

“But we are gay women. You know what that means?” Anita carved her tomato.

“I do and then I guess I don’t,” I said, shoving a quarter of the tomato in my mouth, where it burst with juice and the zing of lime.

“It means that the birthmother? She is dealing with the prospect of two mothers. Did you know gay men are the first to get matched? Because with two men as parents, she will always get to be the mother. Everyone wants to be the mother. Even when the child is being raised elsewhere.”

Paula, who hadn’t yet touched her portion, nodded at Anita as she spoke.

My eyes widened. Chewing, I felt my throat stitch closed. I couldn’t look at Ramon.

“This is delicious.” Ramon chewed exaggeratedly.

“This is a roundabout way of saying we’re kind of open to everything. We realize we have to be, unless we want to wait until we’re, like, eighty for a kid. We have to be open, and so we are open, which means drug use, yes, and race, and all of it. Just whatever comes our way,” Anita said.

“We’re ready,” Paula affirmed.

I swallowed the last of the tomato and batter that had come apart in my mouth, and cleared my throat.

“We’ve discussed this a lot,” Anita said. “Those men in there? We don’t think they’re wrong to want a white child.”

Paula nodded.

“They’re realistic. And if they want a white child, having them check a child of color would be wrong for them and wrong for the child.”

“That makes a lot of sense,” Ramon said. “I don’t hold it against them either.” He put his fork down. “Look, we’re all just doing what we can.”

Well I do, I thought. The white gay guys and their guns and their white choices were wrong. I was wrong, too. I remembered Nickie speaking about special-needs children. Think about the prospect of raising a child who has autism or cystic fibrosis, she said. But I didn’t want to choose a child who had either of those things, I’d thought when Nickie introduced the idea.

And then the waiter arrived. With a tray of food so enormous, he had a helper with him to lower it. Massive amounts of greens hung off the sides of the plate like wilted streamers. The steaming creamed corn nearly lapped over the edges of the dish, and some of the fried okra tumbled out of the red plastic basket lined with a paper towel before it even hit the table.

Then came the meat.

Shaking his head and smiling—glibly?—the waiter placed about fourteen ribs, food from prehistoric times, in front of Ramon, who gazed down at it, stunned. My chopped pork was piled so high I could have sledded down it. I couldn’t help myself; I thought of the pigs in that documentary thrown atop each other into live shrieking piles, cows branded, stomachs seared, and herded in the most inhumane of ways. And then I realized. I had gotten caught up in being around people, in being outside myself again, and of all the things I’d asked, I had neglected the one single most important question.

I’d forgotten to ask about the meat.

I grabbed the waiter by the arm. “The meat!” I said. I could feel the tears hot along my cheeks and I tried to turn away from Paula and Anita, who looked up from dividing up their meals like civilized people. “Where is it from?” I asked our waiter.

He cocked his head. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said.

“Please,” I said to Ramon and to the waiter, pushing my chair out from the table. I couldn’t look at the piles of food, the slop of it. I thought of waste and those children in Ethiopia, their bellies distended with hunger, flies buzzing around their heads in the USA for Africa infomercials, “We Are the World” playing in the background, flashes of the video, Billy Joel and Bruce Springsteen baby-faced, Cyndi Lauper, dewy and pudgy—even Dylan was young then.

How had I ever had the right to want?

“Can you just tell me where you got this meat?” I asked again.

“Honey, where do you think I got the meat?” The waiter crossed his arms. “From the kitchen,” he said, laughing.

_______

In the bathroom, surrounded by cartoon renderings of pigs and cows, I gathered myself up like so much loose change, coins I had collected on