Tina started to cry, which caused Alice to ease up on her rant. Alice moved them to the sofa and hugged her friend. Tina found Alice’s compassion very comforting; once she composed herself she started talking. Tina hadn’t felt this relaxed in a long time and she found that she really did miss talking with her friend and confidante.

***

When Bette and Tina started talking about having children Tina was ecstatic and scared at the same time. She’d always dreamed of having a family though she’d pictured herself with a husband, and two or three tow-headed kids. Never in her wildest dreams had she imagined that she would be trying to have a child with the mocha beauty she’d fallen in love with seven years earlier. The impending possibility terrified her.

She and Bette had primarily approached White donors to father their children however in the beginning they had talked about possibly using an African American donor. If Tina were to be the birth mother they wanted children that would be reflective of both their heritages. Tina was already envisioning the obstacles their children would face in the world coming from a non-traditional family but adding to that being bi-racial just seemed like too much “otherness” to put on them. Tina suppressed the thoughts but it wasn’t until she was confronted with the reality that Bette had found a viable donor who happened to be African American that the feelings resurfaced. She surprised herself at her unexpected reaction.

“It was a month after the disaster with Jean Paul. I’d pretty much given up on the idea of motherhood. Bette and I weren’t getting along too well but we put everything aside to concentrate on the Fae Buckley attack. She was in rare form Alice. You know how passionate she is. I hadn’t seen her so riled up about anything in a long time. I got caught up in the euphoria too. It was good for both of us to have something else to concentrate on except trying to have a baby. A couple of days after the debate Bette was still on a natural high. She came home one evening in an exceptionally good mood. She had some exciting news so naturally I thought it had to do with the CAC. You can imagine the shock when she said ‘I have found the perfect donor.”