Spin Doctor by Leslie Carroll Page A

females in her native culture and believesthat adopting a Chinese girl is a political stand as well as a personal intervention. I hoped their little girl would turn out to be an absolute angel…and not eventually become a teenager like Molly, so sullen and angry at the world, channeling her adolescent rage into any opportunity to get attention, as if attention were something she had ever been denied.
    â€œYou are! You are cutting me out!” Naomi spat at Claude. “Literally! Tell her! Tell Susan what you did to me last night.” She lapsed into her nervous “tic,” bringing her long dark braid forward and beginning to split the ends of her hair.
    â€œI didn’t do anything to you,” Claude replied.
    â€œOkay, Claude. Naomi. Naomi, what do you think Claude ‘did’ to you last night?”
    â€œI told you; she cut me out.”
    â€œGee, you two, I’d love some specifics so we can work on what’s really the core of the issue here. Let’s revisit how you two usually handle major decisions in your partnership.”
    I received my answer from the more even-tempered Claude. “Fifty-fifty—most of the time. We’ve always been very concerned about being sensitive to that when it comes to the big stuff. But stuff like the nuts and bolts of the adoption issue is something we’ve never faced before, never even imagined we’d need to face. Since I’m now going to be the sole adoptive parent, I have to compile a bunch of photos of me that will make the bureaucrats believe I’m straight and send them to the agency for my dossier. And I have all these pictures of me and Naomi with our arms around each other and stuff like that, and…I had to do a Photoshop number on the ones that were on our computer and replace Naomi with the image of a guy who’s a friend of ours. And with some of the old prints, I had to snip off the half of the pictures that Naomi was in, because it was so obvious she was my lover. So…yeah…I guess I didliterally cut her out, but it wasn’t with malice or anything.” Claude gave her partner a much beleagured, though compassionate, look, but her attempt to connect was pointedly ignored.
    â€œI can’t even go to China with Claude unless I pretend to be just her friend. Obviously I can’t say I’m her sister, ” Naomi fumed. “Funny, you don’t look Chinese,” she simpered. “I told her, we should just say fuckit and adopt from another country.”
    â€œNo. It has to be China,” insisted Claude. “You’re not changing my mind on that one.”
    â€œLook…I hate to shine a spotlight on the obvious, and I’m going to warn you that I’m not speaking to you right now with my impartial therapist hat on, but the world is what it is,” I said. “You know that’s true. And the reality is that you’re not going to change it overnight. A grimmer reality is that you may never succeed in changing it at all. So. You have a lot to think about. But basically we’re looking at two major options. In this situation you can choose to be rebels and allow your individual agendas to divide the two of you, or you can chose to be parents and let the situation unite you even more. I know it may sound like a deal with the devil, and it is, in some respects. I know it pisses you off; and the stakes are really high no matter which road you take. Frankly, I see it this way, and you’re welcome to disagree with me, but you two women—even if Claude has to be the mom on paper—can give a, well…‘discarded’ little girl from across the world a loving home with myriad opportunities and advantages. There’s where you get to make your difference.”
    I flashed on my own background: being carried on my dad’s shoulders to rallies against the Vietnam War in Washington Square Park; as a preteen marching in support of the Equal