WHEN YOU LOVE

THE OX'S TALE

The ride back home was a silent one. Camille stared out the window while Janet kept her eye on the road. Only the slamming car and house doors animated the scene.

"Aren't you going to say something?" Janet asked, gesturing her hands in the air.

"I don't want to talk to you while you're mad."

"Oh, because you think we'll carry on as if nothing happened."

Janet hated it when Camille closed herself off to a conversation. It was somewhat a masculine trait. Women usually talked things out. Men were the ones who avoided or pretended, Janet thought though she had never dated one.

Janet forgot smoothing things out wasn't something Asian culture excelled at even in these modern times. Keeping one's emotions buried was a prerogative and the beginning of Camille's uneasiness concerning her sexuality.

"Why didn't you tell me Lee had a vasectomy?" Janet asked. She needed answers.

"What did Sana give you?"

"I'm asking the questions. Why didn't you tell me."

Camille sighed and crossed her arms, "You would have refused."

An answer?

Though partial, Camille tried. She always did for Janet.

"Of course, I would have said no. You told me you wanted Lee to be happy. You said you were glad he met Sana. Didn't it occur to you that he and Sana might need the sample?"

"It did, it did," Camille opened her arms, "but you matter more."

Janet pursed her lips and stormed past Camille. She went straight to their bedroom and grabbed a roll bag.

"What are you doing?" Camille asked when she joined her.

"I'm going to my mother's. I need space to think."

"Janet."

"No, don't touch me," the woman replied, raising a hand to repel her lover.

"What's the matter?"

Camille didn't comprehend her wife's untamed reaction.

Janet closed her eyes, "how can you ask that? Doesn't this fucking mess stir you? ㅡ You really have no idea, do you? For many were abnormal, we shouldn't exist. Lesbian, gay, and transgender, we're seen as heartless monsters capable of breaking family ties and wrecking homes for the sake of our libido. ㅡWe come off selfish and inconsiderate. And you just spoon-fed any hater the proof we don't care about anything except ourselves indulgence. You've always told me how much you regretted lying and pretending you were happy with Lee. And now this?"

"So you're siding with Lee now?"

"Camille, it's not about siding. It's about respect. You act as though you have some for him. You think Lee should believe himself lucky you thought of him as a donor. You don't respect him. You see him as your pet."

"Janet."

"And I can't stand it. Men aren't my enemies. I don't fancy them, but I don't hold the ones I know responsible for governing patriarchal societies for centuries. You literally castrated that man so you wouldn't be pregnant from him again. It's as despicable as men who perpetrate FGM."

"Oh, come on, Janet. It's reversible."

Janet shook her head. Her wife's aloofness baffled her, "great, and what if he can't bear other kids? How do you think Lee or Dylan will feel to know our child was one Lee could have had with the person he chose. Tell me, Camille, how would you feel if Sana had the last egg your ovaries produced?"