About Code Switching

by Lee Benoit
11 pages / 4420 words
Available file types - html, lit, pdf, prc, epub, Sony-optimized pdf

For four years, Haven and his dancer-lover Tadeo have been living their happy-ever-after, raising their son and making a discreet home in Sister City. When a friend and patient dies of a rare pneumonia, their secure life is thrown into disarray. Attacks -- and support -- emerge from unexpected quarters as Nurse Haven Tucker returns in this story set at the dawn of the AIDS crisis. Haven was first seen in the Bedside Manner anthology.
 

Sample

A very messy dessert of apple slices dipped in Tadeo’s homemade dulce de leche prompts a bath for Suyai, and I clean up the kitchen, all the while thinking of other ways Tadeo and I might use the sweet stuff later, when we’re alone. The traditional one bedtime story turns into two when I join them in Suyai’s little bedroom, then three when I prove helpless against big brown eyes and a guileless “please, Tío, please?”

“You are such a sucker,” Tadeo says after goodnight kisses, night-light lighting and one-more-glass-of-watering. “And you’re stalling.” He knows me so well. Too well.

“Lucky for you, I’m a sucker for your big brown eyes, too,” I remind him. I follow Tadeo into our room, shedding clothing as I go. I try to leer as I say it, but I know I’ve failed when Tadeo fixes me with a sharp look.

“You have had many bad days at work lately, mi amor.” His voice, soft with concern, threatens the control I’d won back during supper and Suyai’s bedtime.

“He died alone, Tadeo. They wouldn’t let Dennis see him. There was no family, not even the Cadorets.” Mem and Pep Cadoret are the oldest residents of our neighborhood, and they’d adopted pretty much everybody on and around River Road that didn’t have other family. They’d adopted me and Tadeo and Suyai the day we moved in four years ago, and they’d always been friendly toward Greg and Dennis even though everyone knew they were queer.

“You told them?” Tadeo asked and I nodded. The old couple had been heartbroken.

Supple arms enfold me and I finally let loose. I sob out the story of Gregory’s strange cancer and the pneumonia that took him in the end. “He was our age, Tadeo, barely thirty. And he wasted away like an old man in a famine.”

Tadeo makes the same soft chucking noise he uses when Suyai skins his knee or misses Sesame Street. With his voice in my ear and his hands skimming up and down my back, I finally feel strong enough to admit the worst thing of all.

“Tadeo, he’s not the only one.”

Tadeo goes rigid beside me. “You’re not... you’re all right, yes?”

“Yes!” I hate giving Tadeo even a moment of panic. “I’m fine. But there are other men, other gay men... Tadeo, something’s going on.” I trail off -- I don’t need to elaborate for Tadeo to know it’s bad.

Tadeo pulls me down on the bed. “What do you need, mi amor?”

“Make me forget, just for tonight?”

I usually try to leave my work at the clinic, but tonight it had followed me home, and I feared I couldn’t banish it without Tadeo’s help.

Tadeo wraps his long fingers around my shoulders and turns me face to face. It’s not easy -- I’m given to fidgeting worse than Suyai -- but I force myself to sit still for the long, searching look Tadeo drives into my eyes. I hope Tadeo hears what I’m not saying -- that I need my normally reticent lover to take the lead tonight. After several heavy beats, Tadeo nods once and I know I needn’t have worried -- he’s figured out what I need and will give it to me.