shoveled away, managing to convey about sixty percent of the food into her mouth. Overall, she wasdoing a better job than Buzz Dobson.
Every day Mimi was getting more independent, learning to do more things for herself, addingmore words to her vocabulary, including some she’d be better off without. Colorful vocabulary or not,Lily was proud of Mimi, and she loved watching her grow and learn. She thought of the other steps Mimiwould be taking in the next year or so — moving from a crib to a bed, learning to use the potty — andhoped she would be there to help her daughter with these difficult milestones.
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 Maycombsand their kind thought she would do to damage her daughter. Did they think she was simply raising Mimito recruit her, to train her from the earliest possible age in the rites of Sappho? Such thinking — if it couldeven be called thinking — was ridiculous. As long as Mimi found someone who’d be good to her, Lilydidn’t care whom she grew up to love, male or female. She and Charlotte had decided to have a child tolove, not to recruit.
It was the fundamentalists who recruited. From the time their children were babies, they draggedthem to Sunday school and church for hours on end, indoctrinating them when they were too young toknow what hit them. Maybe this was why fundamentalists always assumed gays and lesbians were raisingtheir 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 Mimidiapered and dressed, Lily sat down in the nursery’s rocking chair for storytime. Mimi toddled over to herbookshelf. Lily was amused to note that while three of her own picture books were on the shelf, Mimialways 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.