The Annointed Fig

The bacon comes home to roost

If you are a long-suffering wife married to a gruff household tyrant making up for certain physical deficiencies by demanding unfailing obeisance, chucking beer cans at a family cat, cheating right on his executive desk, or lubing up his muscle truck, I guarantee you have, at least, once said to yourself, “Men Are Pigs!”  And, probably, more than once.

Did it help?  It is, after all, a truism.  It is designed to make us feel better, the wisdom of the ages ingested with our mother’s milk – or recently, the Enfamil.

But what if you are a woman who had risked and lost your family’s regard for a sweet, tall, kind, testosterone-unencumbered love of your new lesbian life?  Do you still suffer pangs of wanting to take a sledgehammer to your partner’s unreasonable self-involved head?  Further clarification, you are slightly overweight, favor double-breasted suits, wear narrow modish glasses, watch American Idol and the Casablanca reruns, had a perfect 4.0 in college, clerked for a most respected family court judge while working your way through law school.  You just got rid of your Invisalign braces.  You are anal-retentive about timely Valentine’s and Happy Hanukkah cards.  You like to cook, but never have the time.  You are now a judge yourself, one of the youngest in your division.  And you and your partner decide to adopt.

In your state, it remaining illegal for two women to marry, the lawyer in you plays it smart.  Certainly, your wife the UPS pilot isn’t home often enough to look like a good candidate.  So, it’s you who applies for the fostership gig.  The adoption is to be the next logical step.  You have a stable income, opulent living conditions, the child you fall in love with is over 7 years old (it’s healthy infants that are all the rage), so, despite your ostensibly single status, no colleague of yours in the world who would say no.

As a matter of fact, your new son is 9, and he personifies traumatized.  His family died of carbon monoxide poisoning, while he had a sleepover with a school friend.  He opened the door with a spare key behind a planter, ran in, screamed himself raw — and didn’t speak since.  He was not an easy adoption sell for the State.  His mom, dad, and a big sister died over two years ago.  And his godmother, well, apparently enforced goodwill only takes one so far.

But wouldn’t you know it, slowly, your boy starts to thrive.  He is learning piano — and relearning to talk.  Another year, another hearing — from which you two emerge a law-sanctified mother and son.

Your partner’s training him in basketball and bowling.  And looking at yourself in the mirror, sweet latkes!, aren’t you a Jewish mother through and through?  Instead of making you cringe, the thought makes you laugh — and look for gray hairs.  A waste of time.  You, growing old?!

One day, you wake up to a sharp pain under your diaphragm.  You are rushed to ER, then under a knife.  You have a perforated ulcer.  All those nights cramming for exams, poring over the thornier cases.  Coffee is a hell of a drug, but there’s always a price.  Or, maybe, you’re just lucky that way.

You develop a bleeder, but overall, the surgery is a success.  You bounce back, and life is proceeding apace.

And then, you catch pneumonia.  Another ulcer.  Pneumonia, again.  Persistent headaches.  Flu-like symptoms that wouldn’t let go.  Your toothbrush bleeds red.  A painful-looking dark discoloration springs seemingly overnight on the underside of your arm.

Discussing your diagnosis, the doctor is carefully skirting the amorality of a partnered non-hemophiliac lesbian developing AIDS.  A chronic condition like any other, you never realized even for an enlightened you, the first A in the moniker is a scarlet one.  A stigma, it isn’t there to let you escape.

In an effort to keep yourself from going insane — which, your doctor warns, you, possibly, could — you throw yourself headlong into investigation.  That it really isn’t your fault doesn’t help.

What does it matter to you if it was a bleeder?  That in an effort to save your life, they unwittingly pumped in a contaminated pint?  That somebody was either making money through paid plasma donation or even freely giving their blood and didn’t know they had HIV?  That the Red Cross workers serve for a pittance while inundated with do-gooders and hospitals demanding their share?

All good intentions, but reality is, it’s your hell.  At least, this particular road has a shortcut.

Your son spends hours playing you Czerny’s etudes.  You try to get in touch with your family to mend bridges, but the termites of time have done too thorough a job on the logs.

And then, comes the cherry on your spoiled cake.  Your unfailingly nice, unfailingly supportive partner sits you down and tells you, in the kindest possible terms, the spark, that unidentifiable something, was gone even before the first pneumonia scare.  But didn’t you notice, she stuck around, working to get you back on your feet?  She’s that kind of girl.

“But…,” you begin.

“This,” your wife patiently explains.  “Is chronic.  You are not getting better.  Yet, who is to know when…  Well, you know what I mean.”

“Yes, but Alex…”

“I had been meaning to talk to you about that.”

The talk reveals a standard-issue midlife crisis.  Your now-ex wants freedom to re-explore herself.  And your son…  “Well, he’s not strictly MY son.  But, you know, I’ll be sure to stop by.”

You tell her not to.  That she doesn’t beg you to reconsider…

You want to rage.  Cry.  Kill her.  You want to beg her to stay and look after your kid.  You want to remind her of your trip for the formal handfasting in Hawaii.  You want to tell her how much you missed her hands on your breasts.  You manage nothing.  Your breathing’s a pain with another sore throat.

Should you have succeeded in pushing out something, wouldn’t it be along the lines of, “Women are pigs!”

Alex starts to revert back into stupor.  It’s too late not to have to be honest with him.

“You are not going to be alone, sweetie!  We’ll…”

“Yeah, when the pigs fly!”

Your ex calls you one day and says, she’s moving.  Could you, please, forward any mail to Louisville, a UPS hub?

You frantically visit acupuncturists, healers.  You aren’t buying a lifetime, just a couple of years, until Alex’s eighteen.

There is a drug testing place nearby, an acquaintance tells you.  Supposedly, there’s revolutionary stuff.  Free, incidentally, not that you’d fibble over the cost.  You come in, sign the release forms.  New.  Stage 3 testing.  Higher risk of stomach upsets.  And ditto suicides.  Suicides?  You look in the mirror, and you don’t laugh, and you don’t trawl for gray hairs.  Suicides?!

Half-year study starts.  You feel better.  But AIDS isn’t cancer, it doesn’t really have a remission, once you have it, symptoms simply wane and wax.  Besides, until FDA approves the formulation, once the study ends in four more months, you are back on your regular meds.

You don’t care.  It will have bought Alex 6 months.

And if the study caveat is, you have to come be evaluated once every week, no big deal.  You religiously come, let yourself be pricked with needles, prodded, illuminated, your slowly growing tumor measured, answer questions as to your bowel movements, general well-being, suicidal thoughts.  You get to know fellow study subjects — a divorced schoolteacher, a 15-year old ex-druggie, a flamboyantly gay stage hand, a dapper surgeon, an old infectious ward volunteer, a hemophiliac 12-year old, a happy-go-lucky woman cop.  Some have HIV and are in the holding pattern, some — they’re like you, and every hello is goodbye.

Months pass, and the scarlet tint to the letter A disappears.  No one deserves it, no matter the past.

“Hey, hey, hey, I do,” laughs the cop.  Ex-exotic dancer, ex-street walker, ex-cocaine hound, she came by her virus honestly — and now, she is  a university senior, pre-law.  “I am so making detective, girl!  Me, I’m applyin’ to vice squad. I gotta know my beat!”

You and she become friends.  She regularly visits.  Healthy as she is, she gives Alex hope.  He is a boy, he needs more than music.  They play catch.  He teaches her chess.  Slow to trust behind a gregarious facade, eventually, she opens up.

You like to read.  She only tolerates schoolbooks.

She fries cheeseburgers.  You do vegetarian takeouts.

You don’t have much time.  She is doing fine.

She’s lean as a post.  You have lost weight, but you’re still pear-shaped.

You are a 21st century Luddite.  She is a gadgets freak.

She rocks out.  You are a classics chick.

You drink champagne.  She is a recovering addict.  “Six years!  You know what sucks?  I actually used to love the fucking TASTE of bourbon.”

She trades jeans only for a policewoman’s garb.  You used to love dressing up.

You’re gay.  She would fuck anything that was human.  “Something’s gotta be there.  Mechanics, though?  That takes care of itself.”

She craves a kid.  You have got one.

“Alex, Alex, Alex,” ruffling his hair, tearing up over his class treasurer nomination, don’t you, at least, once, also, say, “Check it out, pigs fly!”

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