Mimi reached a dimpled, oatmeal-gooey hand out to touch Lily’s stiff hair. “Funny Mama.”
Lily had to agree. “Yeah, I’m pretty funny looking all right. Are you done with your dinner?”
“All done.”
“Okay, let’s go hose you off, then.”
Mimi grinned, flashing her perfect, white baby teeth. “Baffy?”
“That’s right. Bathy time.”
As Lily watched Mimi splash happily in the tub, she found herself wondering what the Maycombs and their kind thought she would do to damage her daughter. Did they think she was simply raising Mimi to recruit her, to train her from the earliest possible age in the rites of Sappho? Such thinking — if it could even be called thinking — was ridiculous. As long as Mimi found someone who’d be good to her, Lily didn’t care whom she grew up to love, male or female. She and Charlotte had decided to have a child to love, not to recruit.
It was the fundamentalists who recruited. From the time their children were babies, they dragged them to Sunday school and church for hours on end, indoctrinating them when they were too young to know what hit them. Maybe this was why fundamentalists always assumed gays and lesbians were raising their children with some kind of agenda in mind; the fundamentalists themselves certainly were.
Lily loved the way Mimi smelled and felt when she was fresh out of the tub. After she got Mimi diapered and dressed, Lily sat down in the nursery’s rocking chair for storytime. Mimi toddled over to her bookshelf. Lily was amused to note that while three of her own picture books were on the shelf, Mimi always avoided them like the plague. Everybody was a critic.
Mimi returned to the rocking chair with Janell Cannon’s beautifully illustrated book Stellaluna.
Lily cuddled her daughter on her lap, opened the book, and began to read.
Stellaluna was the story of a baby fruit bat who gets separated from her mother and so is raised, for a time, by a family of birds. The birds are kind to Stellaluna as long as she exhibits birdlike behavior.
She is not allowed to fly at night or hang upside down, and she is fed insects instead of the mangoes she loves. While Stellaluna appreciates the birds’ kindness, she is only happy when she is reunited with her fruit bat family.
Lily’s eyes filled as she read the book to Mimi. It was amazing how a simple children’s book could say so much. She identified with Stellaluna. A lost fruit bat, she was taken in by the McGillys. Their kindness was unquestionable, but it was contingent on her pretending to be something she was not. The McGillys were her bird family—well- meaning, but different from her — and capable of offering her only insects, not the mangoes she craved.
She tucked Mimi into her crib just as Ben returned with the pizza. After they ate, Lily asked, “So are you just gonna hang out here tonight?”
“Thought I would. Ken has some god-awful departmental function tonight.”
“So...would it be okay if I went out for a while?”
“Sure. I’ll look after Mimi if she wakes up.”
Lily was up from the table already.
“So where are you going?” Ben asked.
