by Julia Watts
stepping with the Stepford Wives. She took some comfort in watching the fat woman, who at least looked appropriately miserable. It wasn’t the exercise that was exhausting Lily; it was the fact that she was supposed to be perky while she was doing it.
In the car after the ordeal was over, Sheila said, “I can’t believe what you said in class. I thought I was gonna die!”
“It’s just cause you’re a newlywed,” Sheila said. “In a few years, you’ll know how important it is to keep them pounds off ... to keep Benny Jack’s eye from wandering.”
“Well,” Lily said, feeling ridiculous even as she said it, “I like to think that Ben wants me for me, and not for my waist size.”
Sheila and Tracee burst out laughing.
“Yeah,” Tracee hooted, “you’d like to think that, wouldn’t you?”
Lily entered the house to find Ben and Ken cuddling on the couch. “It’s getting late,” she barked.
“Y’all can’t be together at all hours of the night. People will talk.”
“Damn,” Ben said, “what’s wrong with you? PMS or something?”
“Ben,” Lily sighed, “how would you like it if you were forced to go out and play a game of tackle football with a bunch of straight boys who farted a lot and talked incessantly about pussy?”
“Uh ... well, it sounds like my idea of hell,” Ben said.
“Exactly. And I have just been to that same circle of hell for the opposite sex, with Sheila and Tracee as my guides.” She nodded toward Ken. She really did like him, and didn’t want to come off as a total psychopath. “I’m sorry I was rude, Ken. I enjoyed visiting with you tonight ... before I got sucked into the vortex of doom. And now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to check on Mimi, take a shower, and have a nervous collapse.”
Lily stood in the shower, the sound of the running water drowning out her sobs. There were only two things she wanted — Charlotte, and her old life back—and both of them were as impossible to retrieve as the water that went down the drain.
She knew one thing for sure. If she didn’t find some lesbian friends soon, didn’t find a safe place where she could hang out and be herself, she was going to lose her mind. She was not psychologically fit for this kind of intense, twenty-four-hour undercover work.
CHAPTER 12
“No oozing around the site of the injury?” Dr. Jack’s voice asked over the phone.
“No.” Feeling her throat constrict around the mouthful of yogurt she’d been trying to swallow, Lily wondered if there was a more unpleasant word in the English language than oozing.
“Any pus?” Dr. Jack asked, answering Lily’s unspoken question.
“No.” Giving up on eating any yogurt herself, she instead spooned it into Mimi’s gaping mouth.
“Okay, then, why don’t you just bring him into the office in ten days, and we’ll get those stitches out. If he has any problems before then, be sure and call me.”
Lily knew that Dr. Jack was winding down their phone conversation, but she didn’t want to let her go until she had asked her about another matter. “Dr. Jack?”
“Uh-huh.”
“There was something else I wanted to talk to you about.”
“Uh-huh?” She sounded puzzled.
“I, uh ... I don’t think I mentioned this to you the other day, but I write and illustrate — that is, draw the pictures —” She mentally kicked herself for explaining what illustrate meant. The Dr. in Dr.
Jack’s name meant she probably understood the meaning of three-syllable words. “Children’s books.”
“Is that a fact?” Dr. Jack sounded mildly interested, but still puzzled.
“Yeah. I was thinking about what you said about going on farm calls with your dad when you were a little girl, and I thought that a story about a little girl who did that might make a good picture
“Ha!” Dr. Jack laughed. “I don’t think anybody’s ever thought of me as literary material before.” She was silent for a moment. “Seriously, though, I like the idea. Daddy died last year. A book like that might be a good way to remember him.”
“We could even dedicate it to him if you wanted,” Lily said.
“Hmm.”
Lily waited for her to add something, but she never did. Finally she jumped in. “The thing is, I’m kind of a city girl, and I’d really need to spend some time around farm animals in order to draw them well. So I was wondering if maybe I could go on a few farm calls with you. I’d stay out of your way, of course —”
Dr. Jack laughed — a deep, low chuckle. “I don’t know. A city girl has to get up pretty early in the mornin’ to go on a farm call.”
“I can handle that. I’m kind of a morning person anyway.” That last part was a big lie, but she didn’t want Dr. Jack to stereotype her as a night-owl urbanite.
“Well, you just keep your drawing things packed then, Mrs. McGilly, ’cause I’ll be calling you one mornin’ without any notice.”
Lily hung up the phone and realized that the conversation had made her so nervous that she had been spooning yogurt into Mimi’s mouth faster than she could eat it.
Dr. Jack hadn’t been kidding about the early part. On Saturday morning, when the clock read four seventeen, the phone rang. “Hello?” Lily croaked.
“Hey. I thought you said you were a mornin’ person,” Dr. Jack laughed. “Just got a call about a sow in trouble. You wanna come?”
“Sure, I guess so.”
“You live on that road out by the Free Will Baptist, don’tcha?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’ll come by and get you then. I’m on my way.”
Lily threw on yesterday’s clothes and splashed some water on her face. She bumped into Ben on her way out of the bathroom.
“Was it that bull dyke veterinarian on the phone?” he asked, rubbing his heavy-lidded eyes.
“Now, now, dear, that’s not a very politically correct way to refer to her.”
“Nobody who calls at four o’clock on a Saturday morning gets the PC treatment,” Ben muttered.
“I shouldn’t be gone long,” Lily said. “I don’t think Mimi will wake up before I get back, but if she does, you can look after her, right?”
“Hey, what are self-proclaimed fathers for?”
Dr. Jack came to fetch Lily in a faded red Chevy pickup. It was impossible to imagine her driving anything else. “Hop on in, Mrs. McGilly,” she said, grinning. Dr. Jack, clearly a morning person, looked alert and cheerful despite the fact that it wasn’t even five a.m.
“Please call me Lily.” Pretty please, she thought. “Lily McGilly!” Dr. Jack laughed.
“Trust me. You’re not the first person to find my married name amusing.”
“I guess not. Well, some folks call me Jack, and some folks call me Doc. You take your pick —just as long as you don’t call me by my given name.”
“Which is?”
“Jacqueline. My momma got it outta some book she was reading. It never did suit me. Her giving me that name was just like her putting me in frilly dresses all the time. Pretty things just don’t suit me. I was always the plain, practical type. Not like Momma.”
“Is your mother still alive?”
“As far as I know. ’Course, the last time I heard anything was probably four years ago. She was still living down in Florida then. That’s where she went when she left Daddy and me. She left Daddy for another man when I was seven years old, but she didn’t stay with him either. She couldn’t be satisfied with nothin’ . . . she was the restless type. I think that’s one of the things that got on her nerves about Daddy and me: We were both content to stay in the same place and do the same thing. Not a restless bone in our bodies.”
“Hmm,” Lily said. “I think a lot of women in your mother’s generation were probably dissatisfied, always thinking they’d be happier with some other man, when the source of their unhappiness was really a lot deeper than that.”
“Huh,” Jack said. “You think a lot.”
L
ily blushed. She hadn’t meant to get all theoretical, but she had just the same. All those years of living with a college professor, maybe. “I guess I do. Maybe it’s because I’m a writer. Of course, I don’t tend to philosophize like that in my books, since my usual audience is made up of seven-year-olds.”
Jack grinned. “You know, when you asked me if you could come along on some farm calls, I kinda wondered if you’d be a nuisance, since I’m so used to being by myself. But having some company for a change is nice.”
“We’ve not even gotten to the farm yet. I’ve still got plenty of time to be a nuisance.” It occurred to her that she had absolutely no idea what to expect when they arrived. “Say, when you called you said there was a sow in trouble. What did you mean by that? It sounded like she’d been caught writing bad checks or something.”
Jack laughed. “No, a pig’s too smart to get caught writing bad checks. This sow’s in labor, but she can’t get one of the piglets pushed out. It happens sometimes — a baby’ll get turned the wrong way in the birth canal. And the mother panics cause she doesn’t know what’s going on. It’s really just a matter of getting the piglet turned around the right way. It’s not hard if you know what you’re doing.”
Jack pulled the truck into a long gravel driveway at the end of which was a small, white frame house. The house was dwarfed by the huge, unpainted barn that sat behind it.
A craggy-faced man in a John Deere cap and overalls began talking to Jack before she could even get out of the truck. “She’s in the barn over yonder. I done got you some soap and hot water.”
“Thanks, Ed. Let’s go take a look at her.”
Jack was apparently in an all-business mood, since she didn’t bother introducing Lily to the farmer. Figuring that manners took the backseat in a medical crisis, Lily grabbed her sketch pad and pencils and tagged along behind Jack and Ed, feeling faintly ridiculous.
The sweet hay smell of the barn was soured by sounds of fear and pain. In a corner pen, the enormous sow paced and squealed. Her eyes were wild, terrified. Two newborn piglets lay a few feet away from her, tiny and pink, rooting blindly in the straw.
This was the first birth Lily had attended since Mimi’s, and while the mother pig didn’t have as colorful a vocabulary as Charlotte, the similarities between the two occasions were striking. Lily knew the party line was that giving birth was a beautiful thing, and she agreed with that sentiment up to a point. But the miracle of birth also had a dark, scary side. One only needed to look at the panicking sow and her frail piglets to remember that all living creatures are born helpless, out of their mother’s fear and pain.
Lily kept her distance and watched the vet do her work.
Jack began by scrubbing her hands in the basin of hot water Ed had provided. She nodded toward the sow. “Now, Ed, this un’s named Minnie, right?”
He nodded.
“I like how you name all your livestock, Ed,” she said, climbing into the pen. “It makes it easier when I’ve got somethin’ to call ’em.” She leaned down so the pig could see her. “Now, Minnie. You take it easy, ole girl. You’re gonna be just fine.” She looked up at Ed. “Hey, Ed, you got any little treats you could hand-feed this girl? Food’s better than anesthesia to a pig.”
Ed disappeared and returned shortly with a bowl of sliced apples.
“That oughta do the trick,” Jack said. “Ed, you hold her steady for me. Lily, why don’t you come over here and feed Minnie some apple? If you’re gonna draw her, you might as well get acquainted with her.”
Lily approached the pen reluctantly. “Uh, what if she bites me?”
Jack laughed. “I can’t believe you’ve got that big monster of a dog at your house, and you’re scared of a pig biting you. Just put the apple in your palm and hold your hand flat. That way she won’t be able to get a hold of your hide.”
My hide? Lily thought, but she did as she was told. Minnie slurped the apple slice off her hand gratefully.
While Lily concentrated on the sow’s mouth, Jack squatted down at its opposite end and rolled up the sleeves of her coveralls. “Keep those apple slices coming, Lily. I’m about to do somethin’ the ole girl’s not gonna appreciate a bit.”
Lily dutifully served up the apple, glad that she was dealing with the preferable end of the pig.
“No wonder that piglet’s stuck, Ed. It’s trying to back out of her.”
“It still alive?” Ed asked.
“Yup,” Jack muttered. “Won’t be for long, though, if we don’t get it out.”
Lily doled out more apple while Jack rummaged around in the pig’s nether regions. “Damn,” Jack said. “She’s tight in there. Being scared’s caused her to seize up, I reckon.” Jack moved around in an attempt to get a better angle. “Damn it, Ed, would you believe my hand’s too big to get a grip on the little fella?” She groped around a few more seconds, then said, “Hey, Lily, would you come here a minute?”
“What for?”
“I want you to wash your hands, then see if you can get a grip on this piglet.”
Lily shuddered. Knowledge of animals’ insides was definitely not required in order to draw them for a picture book. “I was having a hard enough time just feeding her this apple.”
“It’s either you try to do it or I kill this piglet so the others can get out.”
Lily rose and scrubbed her hands. She was squeamish as hell about getting so intimate with a hoofed creature, but as a vegetarian, she was supposedly devoted to protecting animal life.
Jack gestured toward the pig’s orifice. “Now if you can just wedge your hand in so you can get a good grip around the piglet’s middle, you can pull it right out.”
“Sorry, Minnie,” Lily mumbled as she shoved her hand into the sow’s vagina. “Usually I at least buy a girl dinner before we get to this part.”
As Lily groped around in the darkness, she suddenly felt the warmth and movement of a living creature. The piglet was wedged in tight, but she slowly worked her hand alongside it, and then painstakingly turned her wrist until she was gripping the animal just behind what felt like its back legs.
“Got it ... I think.”
“Okay,” Jack said. “Now pull, but go easy.”
Gripping the tiny animal firmly, Lily brought her arm back in a slow, steady pull. The piglet’s curly tail was visible first, then finally its wet pink ears and snout. “It’s breathing!” Lily cried, overcome with the emotion of the moment. “Is it a boy or a girl?”
Jack glanced under the pig’s tail. “Looks like a girl.”
Ed looked at Lily and laughed. He apparently wasn’t used to seeing someone get so worked up over livestock.
“Well, it sure is,” Jack said. “Ed, I reckon you’ll have to name this piglet Lily ... after her midwife.”
Ed grinned. “You’re plum crazy, Doc ... not changed a lick since you was a little girl.”
Jack grinned back. “Why don’t you get us some more hot water so we can wash up? I’ll stay till all the piglets are born, but my guess is the rest of the delivery will go normally.”
It did go normally. Minnie lay on her side and squeezed out piglet after piglet, until the litter totaled seven. Lily sketched the pigs while Jack kept the apple slices coming.
“How they doing?” Ed asked when he returned with fresh water.
“They look great,” Jack said.
“Well, Vina’s got some breakfast cooked, if y’all wanna eat before you go.”
“You know me,” Jack said, scrubbing her hands. “I wouldn’t miss one of Vina’s breakfasts.
They’re this job’s number-one fringe benefit.”
Lily sat with Jack at the table in Ed and Vina’s spotless kitchen, with the morning sun shining through the red-and-white gingham curtains. The table was spread with an artery-clogging breakfast buffet: hot biscuits, red-eye gravy, cooked apples, fried eggs, grits, ham, bacon, and sausage.
“Now you girls eat all the biscuits you want,” Vina, a smiling, plump woman said, filling th
eir mugs with coffee. “I just put another pan in the oven.”
“Thanks, but I’m sure one pan will be plenty,” Lily said. But after she saw the way Jack was filling up her plate, she wasn’t so sure anymore. She bit into a biscuit and surveyed the numerous pig products on the table uneasily. “So,” she said, “what’s gonna happen to my piggy namesake after she grows up?”
“Same thing that happens to most pigs, I reckon,” Ed said, spearing a sausage patty.
“Oh.” The thought of the little piglet surviving a difficult birth only to wind up on someone’s breakfast table depressed Lily. The piglet’s plight seemed similar to Mimi’s. Lily mourned for small creatures who had no control over their destinies. She was embarrassed to feel a tear sliding down her cheek.
