“I have a problem with these animal rights people.”
“Yeah, me, too. They instantly start comparing animals to black people. They say, ‘We did the same thing to black people.’ And you say, ‘But they were people.’ And they say, ‘Yes, we know that now, but that’s not what they were saying then.’ And you say, ‘Well, many people were saying it then. And no one now, that I know of, is saying a cow is a person.’ ”
“A species-ist!”
“There are Austrians saying that chimpanzees are people.”
“And don’t get me started with the primate research. There is such eagerness to lump black people with apes. Beasts of any kind.”
“That’s done even to the Jews.”
“Well, Austrians …”
“What do you mean, ‘even’?”
“I mean nothing. I meant even chickens. I’ve heard the PETA people compare what goes on with chickens to what went on with the Jews.”
“Well, how else are you going to make them sit still in their nests and do your taxes if you don’t cut their legs off?”
“Your sense of humor is too dark.”
“Don’t say ‘dark.’ It’s racist.”
“Have you noticed that when people say ‘I’m not racist’ you instantly know they are?”
“It’s like those completely unself-aware men who say, ‘I am not sexist,’ and you want to say, ‘Darling! Of course you are!’ ”
“I wish people would get it straight and say ‘birth parent’ and not ‘biological parent.’ Everybody’s biological.”
“That’s in part what’s too bad about everybody.”
“And I don’t like the use of the word adoption for animals. The humane societies use it all the time, but it’s confusing to children who are adopted.”
“I once heard I. B. Singer speak of the holocaust of chickens.”
“And now there’s that other one, Peter Singer.”
“Are you sure you don’t mean Pete Seeger?”
“The ethicist who says kill the deformed babies but don’t eat meat.”
“Oh, he’s a horse’s patoot.”
I had seen a horse’s patoot. I had seen plenty of them, and the large swatch of tail that like a creature unto itself swept the flies away.
“Too many Singers.”
“Now we’re back to Sarah Vaughan. Yes. I’ll have a timbale.”
I’d seen a crock. I’d seen a horse’s patoot. It was a timbale that I’d never seen.
“Too many Sarahs.”
“No such thing!”
“Too many timbales. Please! Have another one.”
“There’s the argument that people are so cruel to one another that until we take care of that we’ll never get square with animals.”
“And then, as I was saying, there’s the argument that humanitarian practices with animals will cause us to improve our relationship with people. We’ll say, ‘Wait a minute: We don’t even do this to animals. Why are we doing it to people?’ ”
“Sometimes it doesn’t matter where you begin.”
“Is that really what the moral ethicists are saying now?”
“I don’t know about them all. My field is actually dairy science.”
“Their argument is that unless an animal is expressing all his native animalness, he is being cruelly used and his life is unworthy. You would think that would then cause them to see death as a mercy. But the death is not the issue. It’s the life.”
“I would think the actual killing is the issue — how is it to be done?”
And here I thought I heard Sarah’s voice. “How to kill chickens: Enough to feed the planet? I mean, have we learned nothing from the Holocaust? Can’t we just round them up and gas them?”
More laughter all around. “That would express the Jewishness of the chickens — or do I mean the chickenness of the Jews?”
“That’s why we got Israel, baby. We’re not chicken anymore.”
“This is such bullshit. Even humans don’t get to express the fullness of their native humanness. You think the homeless person sleeping in his windowless car is expressing his humanness? And yet everyone breezes by and carries on. It makes bullshit of our finest intentions.”
I had seen bullshit. I had seen chickens run after it and eat it warm.
“All I know is, gee whiz, you water your plant! A plant you would water! A deformed child no?”
“Would anyone like some water? Is your wine OK?”
“No, it’s not OK! I need another one!”
“I thought we were supposed to be talking about interracial families.”
“Sonya won’t stay on subject.”
I had once seen a comedy sketch in which a host chloroformed a dinner guest to keep him from saying one more word.
“Everything’s genetic! It seems there’s a gene for everything! Sad but true, or maybe not so sad.”
“Or maybe not so true.”
“All I know is that our son has the jock gene. And he is adopted — obviously. Not one person in our extended family has this gene. We go to all his games and he’s like a Greek god out there, and we are in the stands looking like the peanut vendors.”
I could hear Edward’s voice. Proximity to science and scientists and academics had caused him to speak in a kind of mimicry of professors. He would use the phrase if you will. A lot. “Let’s call it recombinant rehydration, if you will.” And Sarah’s voice would pounce. “Edward. Let me give you a pointer: Lose the if you wills.”
There was a long pause. “I would rather throw sand in my eyes.”
Some merriness. Most of the voices I never really recognized.
“Just kidding.”
“What melting pot? It doesn’t really melt all the stuff you put in the pot. There is DWB, driving while black, and there’s DWJ, driving while Jewish. Guess which gets you pulled over and searched?”
“I’m not that well read on the subject.”
“Perhaps you are not that well read.”
“Anyone who’s read all of Proust plus The Man Without Qualities is bound to be missing a few other titles.”
“I’m sure.”
“You know those automobile window shades to prevent baby sunburn? Did we need one? Of course! But he argued no — Edward, you did! You argued with me!”
“Because she’s not white?”
“Here is my security system: me. A black man in the house. It scares away everyone.”
The soft weight of feet on the carpeted steps. I looked up from my place on the floor with Mary-Emma. A woman appeared in the doorway, brown, tall, slender, her hair in neatly braided dreads, her head looked like a pot of vines, her figure stylishly offset with dark and bright. No one said “Mama” and ran to her. Not one child claimed her. Only two even looked up. Edward appeared behind her and touched her arm and she turned. Then they both receded, stepped back, disappeared.
At the end of the night, when the parents came up to fetch the kids, several asked their children how the evening had gone and the kids said “awesome” or “sucky”—there was no middle ground, nothing that wasn’t a thrill or a debacle. I loved the way the black women grabbed their boys and pulled them close. I loved the white dads carrying their black daughters up high. Only Mary-Emma with her little smile said nothing at all as one by one the children left her room. Downstairs, I heard Sarah’s voice alone with Edward in the kitchen.
“You emptied the top rack of the dishwasher but not the bottom, so the clean dishes have gotten all mixed up with the dirty ones — and now you want to have sex?”
Was I hearing things? Was this the grassroots whimpering of an important social movement, or was it a small, deep madness? If two things fell in the forest and made the same sound, which was the tree?