A Scarcity of Condors

by Suanne Laqueur

  Jude told about the court case. The ACLU pushing the Tholets to go to trial and the community pushing them to keep quiet and settle. How push turned to shove and then to threats.

  “Where was Feño during all this?” Tej asked. “Was he getting the same shit you were from the neighborhood?”

  “He was sent away to boarding school. Which is what nice homophobic people call conversion therapy.”

  “Shut. Up.”

  “His family did not come to play.”

  “Honest to God, they put him in conversion therapy? Or did he go willingly?”

  “Willingly in the sense he went to make peace and get things to blow over as fast as possible. He told me he’d go, he’d fake straight. Then when the heat was off, supposedly, we’d…”

  “Skip town?”

  “Something dramatic like that.”

  “Did you see him before he left?”

  “Night before. He snuck out of his house and into mine. That was the last time.”

  “Never again?”

  Jude shook his head.

  “You mean ever? You never slept together again?”

  “No.”

  All the teasing drained out of Tej’s face. He was pure, stunned compassion as he looked at Jude and said, simply, “Shit.”

  “Yeah. He left and everything went to shit. The bullying started. The harassment. The threats. The phone calls. The letters. The graffiti. And then the blood.”

  “What blood?”

  “Someone filled the windshield wiper fluid reservoir of my father’s car with blood. Taped a note to the inside of the hood. Infected with HIV. Now you can share AIDS with your faggot son. And we—”

  Tej put up a silencing hand. After a moment, the hand folded into a single pointing finger. “That took effort,” he said. “That’s not a random, spontaneous act of hate. Someone put a lot of thought into it.”

  “I know.”

  His palm turned up to the ceiling. “How much fear and loathing do you need in your heart to not only come up with that kind of plan, but actually implement it?”

  “Right? It was so deliberate, so calculated and masterminded, it was almost more violent than my leg being broken.”

  “You left town afterward?”

  “Within a month. The situation was untenable and the whole family was affected. My sister was born in lotus position. Her feet don’t touch the ground, and she was having night terrors about the house burning down. Then my brother developed this weird phobia about the telephone.”

  “From all the prank calls?”

  “Mm. To this day, it’s a chore getting Aiden to answer the phone.”

  “Your parents must’ve been freaked out of their minds.”

  “It was unsustainable. We were gone within a month.”

  “And Feño?”

  “Feño stayed and converted. The next time I saw him, it was to say goodbye for good.”

  “What about us?” Jude said.

  “You and I are finished,” Feño said. “It’s over. It’s done. I came here to say goodbye.”

  “And just like that, you’re straight?”

  “It was a phase.”

  “Oh spare me.”

  “I got it out of my system. It’s nothing I am anymore.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “I’m in a different phase of my life.”

  “You’re gay.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You’re gay, Fen. You can’t pretend or pray it away.”

  “What the hell do you know about it? You weren’t there. You don’t know the work I did.”

  “The work denying yourself to please your parents?”

  “The work finding myself. Finding God. Finding the way. Putting away childish things and figuring out my family is the most important thing to me.”

  “Childish things. So fucking me was basically a game of duck duck goose?”

  “It’s not me anymore. I have a bigger purpose now.”

  “What, getting married, pumping out some kids and having a boyfriend on the side? Gonna cruise the altar boys at Sunday mass?”

  Feño seized two handfuls of Jude’s shirt and slammed him back into the wall. Held him pinned there while the toe of one foot pressed into Jude’s shin. Precisely. Expertly. Knowing the fault line along the bone where it hurt under pressure. Their eyes burned, unblinking. Their bodies burned, poised on an edge.

  “How bad do you want me right now?” Jude said.

  Feño’s lips drew back from his teeth and he didn’t answer.

  “Want me to turn the other cheek,” Jude said. “Or turn both of them?”

  The fists in Jude’s shirt tightened. Feño’s jaw twitched with the effort to suppress a comeback.

  “I know you,” Jude said. “I know you better than anyone. And I know you want me.”

  “Shut up.”

  “You’re hard for me. I don’t even need to look down.”

  “Shut. Your mouth.”

  Jude’s finger drew down the placket of Feño’s zipper. Tracing the bulging outline. “Told you.”

  Tears filled Feño’s eyes.

  “Why are you doing this,” Jude whispered, making his hand soft and gliding it up Feño’s side. Around his back and pressing between the trembling shoulder blades. “You don’t have to do this.”

  “It will kill my mother,” Feño said through his teeth. “You don’t understand how she relies on me to—”

  “To be something you’re not? She’s the parent, you’re the kid, you’re not responsible for her happiness and security. She has a husband for that.”

  “He’s not her husband, he’s her fucking master. Don’t you get that either? I’m the only thing standing between her and three men who use her as a punching bag. I can’t leave. And I can’t stay and be gay.”

  “What happens when she dies?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Nobody lives forever. At some point you—”

  “Don’t fucking do this to me, Jude.”

  “I’m doing nothing but loving you.” Jude took Feño’s face in his hands. “Come with me. I’m the most honest thing in your life right now. You can be yourself with me. We can find somewhere to—”

  “I belong with my people. Not with you. This is done. You and I are finished.”

  “Maybe you’re done with me, but you’ll never be done with who you really are. You can stuff yourself into a new life but look me in the eye and tell me you’ll forget what we had. Tell me you’ll leave it behind like it meant nothing. Look at me. Look at you, you were hard within thirty seconds of seeing me. You’ll never forget.”

  One last shiver went through Feño’s body. His eyes went flat as death. “I’m already forgetting. In a few years I’ll have to think hard to remember your name.”

  “And that was it,” Jude said. “Gotta hand it to the guy, when he said done, he meant done. No word, no contact, no nothing. Next time I saw him, he was in a casket.”

  Tej’s gaze was far away, his head slowly shaking. “What a waste of life.”

  Jude rolled his hand palm up on the table. Tej regarded it a long moment, then dropped his on it and said, “Seventeen years old. It must’ve killed you.”

  “It was such a total, complete rejection. Not just of my love but my identity. When I was working it all out in therapy, Phil said Feño abjured me.”

  “Abjure,” Tej said. “Yeah. If there’s a more apt word, I’d like to know what it is.”

  “It hurt so fucking bad. The kind of misery that changes you. Don’t get me wrong, time heals and I carried on and I had boyfriends. But no one like Feño. And for a long, long time, I never let anyone that close to me. Figuratively and literally. I became a top and resolved to stay on top, stay in control, stay protected. Love could come into my life but
it couldn’t come into me.”

  Tej traced the outline of Jude’s hand, not looking up. “You let me into you.”

  “I know,” Jude said. “Which is kind of a thing. I mean, that night was so unlike me.”

  “How so?”

  “I responded to an aggressive pick-up. I went home with a stranger. And I wanted him to top. I wanted to let him inside everything I was feeling.” He smiled. “Let him take my sad song and make it better.”

  Ten years dropped from Tej’s face. He looked like a boy at the gates of Disneyland.

  “Whatever you’re thinking about,” Jude said. “Don’t stop.”

  “I’m thinking not once did you feel like a stranger to me that night.”

  Jude nodded, skinless and pure and content. “Maybe that’s why I keep coming back.”

  Because it feels like coming home.

  Tej let go Jude’s fingers. “Make a fist. Tight.”

  Jude did and Tej peered close, tracing along the network of blue veins beneath the heel of Jude’s hand.

  “What are you looking for?”

  “The palmaris longus,” Tej said. “It’s a vestigial muscle absent in about fifteen percent of the population.” He extended his own arm and made a fist. Two prominent tendons bulged up in his wrist. “See? The tendons sticking up show I have the muscle. But the inside of your arm is flat and smooth when you make a fist, so you don’t.”

  Jude raised his eyebrows, not sure where this was going.

  “In other species, the palmaris longus is used to retract the claws. I’m not sure if lacking the muscle means your claws are always out and you can’t retract them when people are being nice. Or if they’re stuck inside and you have to find other means to defend yourself.” He looked up at Jude and smiled. “What do you think?”

  “I think you’re beautiful.”

  Tej’s palms planed up Jude’s forearms, dry and warm, leaving goose bumps in their wake. The night moved up to number three, turning the air thick and juicy in Jude’s chest. A rush to the head as the blood in his body galloped due south.

  “I haven’t felt this way in a long time,” Jude said.

  “What way is that?”

  “Only recently, I was saying to a friend I haven’t felt high on someone since my teens. I was wondering if you only get one shot at that kind of euphoria. If it’s exclusive to your first love. Or exclusive to being a teenager.”

  “Maybe that’s why they call it high school?”

  Jude laughed. “Maybe. But I think what I’m trying to say is… You make me feel the way I did before my leg got broken.”

  Tej’s chin rose and fell.

  “After the attack, something in me turned off. Or rather, it turned on. A new home security system. I’d get into relationships always knowing what my exit strategy was. I had to construct everything to keep from getting hurt, from what guys I picked to what we did in bed. But you showed up, picked me up, hit some kind of reset button on the system and I feel really…”

  “Free?”

  “Young.” He exhaled, feeling his shoulders drop. “I feel young.” He laughed under his breath to fill the silence. “And when you smile at me like that, I feel really good.”

  Tej took Jude’s hand and pulled him up. Then pulled him close.

  The night hugged itself and moved up to number two.

  Penny embarrassed herself by justifying her son’s existence, concocting the most absurd theories around the baby she delivered and the baby she left the hospital with. Having settled on a name long before the birth proved problematic: she tied her mind in knots referring to both boys as Jude. Then it became Jude and Not-Jude but she couldn’t decide which was which. Jude 1 and Jude 2 felt downright cruel. Same with Jude and Jude Lite, she hated herself for even thinking it.

  It’s starting. I’m distancing my son already. I’m trying to figure out how to take his name back.

  I can’t take his name away, it’s unconscionable.

  But if he’s not Jude, who is he?

  He is Jude, he’s always been Jude. He’s mine. He’s my boy. He’s my son. He’s…

  She smacked herself out of it, demanded she get it together.

  Jude is Jude and will always be Jude. End of story.

  The baby she carried was her biological son. Until she learned his name, he would simply be Biological Son.

  She stopped in the middle of the thought, her hand going to her mouth.

  Until she learned his name.

  Was he alive?

  She assumed he was alive.

  “Babies switched, report at eleven,” she said behind her fingers. That was the scenario being entertained, wasn’t it? A careless nurse, a chaotic hospital, an administrative glitch. A newborn baby put down in the wrong bassinet. It was a horrible, horrible accident.

  Wasn’t it?

  Are you alive? Do you know who you are or who you aren’t? Is your own mother pacing around, wondering what became of the baby she gave birth to in November of 1973?

  Is she alive? Does she know?

  “I’m so sorry,” she whispered, still hiding behind her fingers. “I had no idea. If we hadn’t taken that silly little test, I never would’ve known. We did it for fun. To see how many shades of white we were.”

  What did her biological son even look like? Was he a sandy Canadian in a brown-skinned family? A dark Sephardic son among Teutonic ancestry? Had he lived a life of ridicule and exclusion? Was he cherished? Was he safe? Was he loved?

  Was he even alive?

  I couldn’t swear, Penny thought. In a court of law with my hand on a bible, I could not swear my son was born alive.

  Jesus Christ, I couldn’t even swear it was a boy.

  I could’ve given birth to a girl.

  Jude could be Serena.

  But then who the hell would Serena be?

  She put her face in her hands.

  I have nothing to go on. How would I even start looking and what would I find?

  Anxiety coiled like a snake in her stomach. If she reported this—reported it to who for God’s sake?—would she be held accountable? Prosecuted for kidnapping? International kidnapping?

  “I didn’t know,” she said aloud for the hundredth time.

  And for the hundred and first time, a little voice answered, Fool, how could you not have known? Which sent her into the bungalow’s crawlspace, dragging out photo albums and keepsake boxes. Going through innumerable pictures, looking for the time and place she screwed up and failed to notice her baby was not her own.

  But once she had a gallery of her children spread across the living room floor she objectively and brutally decided no, she hadn’t been an oblivious fool. Jude wasn’t a carbon copy of either parent, but neither was Serena. Or Aiden. All three exhibited enough familial traits to be satisfying to the eyes. Jude had the dark Sephardic genes, Aiden had the pale Cambie sandiness, and Serena had a little of both. True, Jude’s height struck everyone as an oddity, as did his blue eyes. His terrible nearsightedness was definitely an outlier in this 20/20 nuclear family.

  Aiden just started wearing glasses to read, Penny thought. And Uncle Louis couldn’t see further than three feet from his nose.

  She stared at the wall of family photos, at the tall, nearsighted man who played credible piano and had an ear for languages. His cheeks were creased with dimples. The eyes behind thick, dark-framed glasses were hazel green.

  “And he was gay,” Penny said under her breath.

  If homosexuality was something you were born with, why wouldn’t it be an inherited trait?

  No, she decided. She hadn’t been blind. The day little Jude was fitted with his first pair of specs, Cleon laughed and laughed at the resemblance to Louis. This was the story and she had no reason to doubt it. Jude was her firstborn, her she-wolf cub and her war mate. She didn’t wan
t to know any other story but this. She didn’t care.

  Except she did.

  Because when she sat at the kitchen table with pictures and papers, wondering who Jude was, she couldn’t help thinking of a nameless, faceless woman, somewhere in the world, wondering where he was.

  Weeks passed, nervous nights spent falling down internet rabbit holes and bookmarking dozens of websites. Perusing forums for survivors of Operation Condor, looking for accounts of switched babies. Anything out of the ordinary going on at hospital maternity wards.

  Anything. Any little fragment with edges that matched, or even sort of matched Penny’s fragment.

  Her heart rose when she made contact with a woman who was a nurse in Santiago in the seventies. She wrote Penny a long email:

  I was still in school during the early months of the coup, but my older sister was a nurse at Hospital San Juan de Dios. I vividly remember the stories she told. It’s vivid because she could rarely even get home from work. Either she didn’t finish a shift until after curfew, or she was afraid to make the journey home by herself. My mother would be frantic every night, waiting for the phone call, waiting to know if my sister was staying or coming home.

  Anyway, the stories she told in the last months of 1973 were of pure chaos. People who’d been tortured and detained being brought in by family or friends. Or practically crawling in by themselves. Ambulances dropping off the living and dead they’d picked up in the streets and in ditches. And soldiers everywhere. In the halls, on the wards, outside operating rooms. Often for no reason than to just stand there and intimidate. Sticking a gun in your face if you dared to say, “Excuse me, can I get by.”

  When I started to work at Hospital Paula Jaraquemada, the chaos had morphed into a more systematic terror and I honestly don’t know which was worse. We would find babies dumped at the hospital loading dock. At least one baby a week, no exaggeration. We’d assess its health and if it required no treatment, we’d send it to the Casa de Huérfanos. Those were the abandoned babies. Then there were the babies the soldiers brought in. In a section of the nursery, one line of bassinets was off-limits and guarded around the clock. I saw obstetricians signing birth certificates at gunpoint, for babies they hadn’t delivered. Certificates pre-stamped with the seal of the Civil Clerk. Then the soldiers took the infants away. We were helpless. A doctor who objected was nearly beaten to death. What could we do?