Milk Fed

by Melissa Broder

  I delayed the protein bar consumption by having “afternoon teatime” in the office kitchen. I liked drinking tea with Ana, the office manager, a busty woman in her midfifties who dressed in exquisite, low-cut silk blouses tucked into high-waisted pants that showed off her slender middle. Most women Ana’s age who worked in the entertainment industry were Botoxed within an inch of their lives. But Ana’s enhancements were elegant—subtle fillers, gentle relaxers—allowing for fine lines around her pretty mouth and big brown eyes, but no deep creases or folds: a feigned realness, rather than an outright fake.

  “Shhhh,” said Ana, quieting me so we could hear Ofer on his phone down the hall. “Listen, it’s the sound of movies getting stupider.”

  “I know. Is there anything worse than entertainment?”

  Ana’s ex-husband produced a hit trilogy of vampire movies in the early 2000s: Night’s Sundry, Enigma’s Descent, and Wicked Shroud. During the postproduction of Enigma’s Descent, he’d left her and their nine-year-old son for a special-effects makeup artist. Now, Ana saw it as an insult that she had to work in the industry for a living. She only remained in Los Angeles because her son and his girlfriend lived in Highland Park.

  “I’m older than you, so I get to hate everything more,” she said. “Wait, tell me you aren’t drinking the house Lipton. Please, take my Harney & Sons, I beg of you.”

  I was pleased that Ana wanted to give me the good stuff. I actually loved Lipton, plus one teaspoon of creamer and four Splenda, like a “milkshake.” But I craved any nurturing I could get from her. It wasn’t so much that she was kind to me. She just hated everyone else more. We had become an “us” because our coworkers were such a “them.” Still, I really liked being an “us.” I wondered if she talked shit behind my back the way she did about everyone else.

  “At least you don’t eat the slop they leave around here,” said Ana. “The other assistants are playing it a little too fast and loose with the pastries. That Kayla, especially, is looking one cheese Danish over the line.”

  I hoped I was far, far under the line. People said that Ana and I resembled each other. She looked more like me than my own mother did. We both had an abundance of coarse, wavy brown hair, olive skin that tanned easily in the sun, and dark brown eyes. My mother had fine black hair, gray eyes, and skin so fair it was translucent. But in their equation of thinness with goodness, my mother and Ana were so like-minded. My mother persuaded me to stay thin by insulting me. Ana did it by insulting everyone but me. This absence of rejection felt like an embrace.

  CHAPTER 4

  My therapist in Los Angeles, Dr. Rana Mahjoub, wore sensible clogs and said insight-adjacent things like “put on your oxygen mask before helping others,” but I didn’t entirely respect her because she accepted my insurance. How good could she be if she was willing to deal with Blue Shield? I couldn’t help but see our sessions as disposable soap samples handed out for free at a mall.

  Dr. Mahjoub’s office was filled with elephants: elephant lithographs, elephant statuary, elephant carvings. I wondered whether she genuinely loved elephants and had collected them over the years, or if Pier 1 was having a sale and she thought, Yes, thematically cohesive decor fosters ego integration in patients, and purchased them all at once.

  I’d entered therapy hoping to alleviate the suffering related to both my food issues and my mother, but without having to make any actual life changes in either area. I’d hoped that Dr. Mahjoub and I could pursue a subconscious, hypnotherapeutic modality, like learning to go comatose while still appearing alive. But Dr. Mahjoub wanted me to take real action.

  “I suggest that you take a communication detox from your mother,” she said.

  “Sure,” I said. “No problem.”

  “I suggest ninety days of no contact.”

  “Ninety days! No contact?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Like, not even an emoji?”

  “Try,” she said.

  I laughed, as they say, out loud.

  “She’d never let me go more than four days without talking.”

  “She won’t let you?”

  “I guess she can’t force me to talk. But the guilt would be excruciating.”

  “Setting boundaries doesn’t always feel good,” said Dr. Mahjoub. “Just because it feels bad doesn’t mean it’s wrong.”

  Maybe it wasn’t wrong to set boundaries. But I knew that my feelings would be intolerable. I kept thinking, My mother is going to die someday. I would die too. Dr. Mahjoub couldn’t stop death. What did she really know?

  At our last session, she’d encouraged me to learn to “parent myself.” Amidst the Mahjoubian elephants, this idea seemed positive, doable, maybe even fun. I was going to speak gently to young Rachel, tell her that everything was going to be okay in hushed, empathetic tones. I’d be a mother to me.

  Then I left the office and thought, Wait, what am I supposed to do? Something about self-soothing, offering up compassion for the young Rachel who lived inside of me. But I hated that young Rachel.

  Young Rachel was always getting excited and then being popped like a balloon animal. She was always being deflated. She wanted too much. This week, young Rachel wanted a little acknowledgment from her mother.

  I had just been chosen by a low-trafficked entertainment blog as one of 25 young female comics to watch. When I’d texted the link to my mother, she wrote back: How did they find you?

  A few minutes later she followed that up with: Can’t opem link

  And then: I hope there’s nothing embarrassing in it

  And then: You didn’t embarrass me did you??!

  Dr. Mahjoub said that if her daughter came to her with that kind of news, she would be incredibly proud.

  “My daughter is only eleven,” she said. “But I only hope that she can one day have your success.”

  “Let’s not get carried away,” I said. “It’s a blog.”

  It seemed strange that mothers like Dr. Mahjoub existed in the world—mothers who supported their daughters. I felt jealous of her daughter, that she got to have a mother like that. I told Dr. Mahjoub I hadn’t expected fanfare from my mother. But I’d thought she would at least be a little bit proud.

  “You were going to the hardware store for milk again,” said Dr. Mahjoub.

  “Well, maybe just a tiny bit of milk,” I said.

  “That’s the problem,” she said. “You have to expect nothing.”

  Expect nothing. The simplicity of that directive, its bare-bones, self-contained power was intoxicating. Expect nothing. It was so clean, so potent.

  It was a phrase you’d associate with a person who didn’t need anything from anyone; a closed system, an automaton. I wanted to be that person. I wanted to be that automaton.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll try it.”

  “Try it,” said Dr. Mahjoub.

  “Okay!” I said again. “Why not?”

  I left the office feeling strong, hopeful, a bit high. I kind of sashayed across the parking lot. Expect nothing. Why expect something if you could expect nothing?

  In my car, I texted my mother.

  Hi. I will not be reachable for the next 90 days. Thank you.

  She wrote back immediately: What are you talking about?!?

  Sorry, I replied. Unavailable.

  Then she called.

  “I’m detoxing,” I said.

  “What do you mean, detoxing?”

  “From our relationship,” I said. “It’s emotionally unsafe.”

  “What do you mean, emotionally unsafe?”

  This was the thing about boundaries: they made sense in therapy, but when you tried to implement them in the real world, people had no idea what you were talking about. Or, deep down they knew exactly what you were talking about and immediately set to work reinforcing their case of denial.

  “So I’ve been a terrible mother,” said my mother. “I guess I’ve done nothing right.”

  I could feel her opening an emotional spreadshe
et that began with the womb. This was why I never confronted her. Now we’d have to go traipsing through it together, cell by cell, until I retracted everything.

  But what if I just refused to traipse?

  “I can’t,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t.”

  I closed the spreadsheet.

  CHAPTER 5

  This Show Sucks was a Silverlake comedy night started by my ex-boyfriend from college, Nathan. In Madison, Nathan always drove us to and from open mic night at a bar called Blind Willie’s Hideaway. I began dating him by default when one night, in his car, he put his hand on my thigh and I was too hungry and tired to deal with moving it. I ended things a few months later, when I got the energy to move it.

  Nathan had achieved quick success in LA and was now in his first season hosting a Comedy Central show called Assplainin’, an Internet meme-based charades game. He never came to This Show Sucks anymore, but he had them book me every week—even though it was obvious I didn’t fit in with the regular comics on the bill.

  The other comics emanated Moon Juice, organic lip tint, and cocaine, whereas I used only cancer-causing cosmetics and sweated Coke Zero. They wore ugly clothes on purpose: mom jeans, dad sneaks, serial-killer glasses, neon visors. I maintained a uniform of all-black everything, the bulk of it from Saks Off Fifth. I was an alt JAP; they were just alt.

  The crowd was mostly tourists. They loved it when I said shit like, “I’m thinking of freezing my eggs at a fertility clinic in Beverly Hills, so my eggs can live in the 90210.”

  But if thirty people laughed and three people didn’t, those three were clearly the most important. I wanted to write the kind of mixed bangers that tickled the out-of-towners while simultaneously signaling a scathing core of outré cred to the comics. My newest bit was about natural disasters.

  “Anyone here from the East Coast?” I asked.

  I was met with cheers from the crowd, a scowl from the light dude.

  “Why do you guys know more about our weather than we do? My mother texts me every day from New Jersey about my impending death. ‘You have now entered the dry season! The Weather Channel said someone in Pasadena just lit a candle! Be careful!’ ”

  The mother part was sort of true. It had only been a day since the detox began, and I was now receiving cautionary weather missives in rapid-fire succession:

  Just read about the Santa Anas on Yahoo! Remain alert!!

  Earthquuke in Mojave Desert!!! 1.6 Did u feel it??

  Tsunami warning in effect!! Do NOT sleep on the beach!!!

  I tried to give the crowd a version of my life seasoned with enough “but really it’s fine” bravado to make the underlying desperation that compelled me to stand there in the first place seeking validation from strangers a palatable experience—delightful, even! When they laughed at my sort-of truth, I felt the thrill of being sort of seen.

  My college degree was in theater. I’d started as a freshman at the University of Wisconsin, spouting feverish diatribes about the dramatic arts as an agent of social change, inspired by a hot streak of high school roles as Abigail Williams in The Crucible, Nora Helmer in A Doll’s House, and Sheila in Hair. This was the dawning of the Age of Aquarius, and I was going to usher in the new era.

  But by the time I completed my first year, I’d learned two things. One was that I wasn’t quite as talented as my high school drama teacher, Ms. Dannenfelser, seemed to believe. Another was that I fucking hated theater people. I hated the way they enunciated every consonant, even offstage. I hated their studied, deliberate movements, the idea of the self as craft, the body as instrument. By my third year I was only hanging out with the props people. I began doing open mic stand-up comedy at Blind Willie’s Hideaway to take the edge off my dead dreams. I was good at comedy, or at least the patrons of Blind Willie’s thought so. After the artifice of theater, I wanted something real. Drunk laughter felt real. I decided that after school I would move to Los Angeles and pursue it.

  My LA life began with a job waitressing at a vegan diner on La Brea, followed by the realization that I was a terrible waitress. I was too easily distracted, obsessing about what the customers were eating: seitan-chorizo nachos, avocado tostadas, spinach-artichoke dip. I didn’t have the energy to be on my feet all day. Sometimes, when no one was looking, I would stand there and touch all the food: stroking a bun, caressing a stuffed potato, massaging a warm flour tortilla. When somebody’s uneaten soysage patty made its way into my mouth, I went home and applied to all of the sitting-down jobs I could find online.

  I interviewed with Ofer, feigning excitement about “supporting” other artists—the same actor types I’d fled in college. Really, I just wanted a chair for my ass, a place of refuge from the avalanche of vegan donuts that threatened to suffocate me.

  CHAPTER 6

  I was required to burn 3,500 calories a week, a number I’d arrived at via an interactive equation of old Weight Watchers data, my daily caloric intake, and the way my clothes fit over time. I clung to my 3,500 like a winning lotto ticket. No one could lay a hand on it. The number guaranteed my security, physically and emotionally.

  I was no athlete. I didn’t run, swim, ski, or play soccer. I didn’t fuck around with anything that could be defined as “sport” or “game.” I was devoted to only one thing: the green glow of ascending numbers—147 cals, 215 cals, 319 cals—as I pedaled nowhere frantically on the stationary bike or elliptical machine.

  I went to the gym every night, even Thursdays, when I’d change into spandex after work and then change again into an all-black outfit for cold-shouldering by the neon visors at This Show Sucks. I spent a good three hours at the gym most days: an existence defined by calories per minute, time elapsed, and stride length. My gym schedule, conveniently, precluded me from having to engage in any real human intimacy. Even if I’d wanted that, there simply wasn’t time.

  It was only after I’d served my gym sentence for the day that I could soften a little. Hunkered down at night, alone at home, having successfully completed the day’s calibrating and calculating, I could reward myself with a culinary parade, a procession of delicacies rolling in one after the other.

  First came a 240-calorie light frozen spaghetti dinner mixed with one tablespoon of Sriracha. Next was a medium sweet potato, microwaved for seven minutes, with three packets of Splenda poured into its guts. If I ever seemed to be gaining weight, the primary suspect was the size of the sweet potato—and so I would be forced to downgrade to a smaller potato for a few weeks: a sad, but necessary, alteration.

  Following the sweet potato came Dessert One: a 100-calorie diet muffin top crowned with four tablespoons of Cool Whip Lite. All of this was eaten standing up in my empty galley kitchen, on paper plates, with plastic silverware. I owned no dishes or cutlery, no pots or pans. I did have a set of four extra-large Christmas glasses—printed with a lovely holly and berry motif—which had been left behind by the prior tenant.

  Right before bed, I capped off the orgy with a pint of 150-calorie diet chocolate ice cream, microwaved for 45 seconds then mixed with half a cup of Special K Red Berries cereal. This delicacy I consumed under the covers in bed, converting my sheets into a temporary tablecloth.

  Ending each day on such an abundant high note felt like freedom. Was it real freedom? Unlikely. But my rituals kept me skinny, and if happiness could be relegated to one thing alone, skinniness, then one might say I was, in a way, happy.

  CHAPTER 7

  “Can you believe how well I’m doing?” I asked Dr. Mahjoub.

  It was day 3 of the detox, and I was still holding strong, but I’d come to her office for an extra reinforcement session when the weather alerts from my mother suddenly took a darker turn. Now I was receiving allegations of ungrateful daughterhood in the form of rhetorical questions:

  Who took you to Baby Thespian classes at the Paper Mill Playhouse?

  Who was there for you when you didn’t get Éponine??!

  Who cheered for you when you got into Wisconsin??


  Am I such a horrible person!?!!

  She texted repeatedly, then stopped and waited a few hours, then texted again. The silent times were the hardest. That was when I had to mourn. I would close one eye and look at my phone, imagine it cracking in half, the way people sitting shiva ripped a piece of clothing. I didn’t want to mourn. I didn’t want to accept my loss—not only the loss of communication, but the loss of an idea that my mother was going to be the one to change. It made me feel like a loser. It meant I had wanted something and hadn’t gotten it, that I’d been, in some way, rejected. It meant my needs were too big for this world.

  “This is a good first step,” said Dr. Mahjoub. “But if you’re really serious about getting free of your mother’s voice, we’ve got to work on your eating.”

  I could tell by the breathable cotton tunics she wore, the cropped, wide-legged pants in organic linen, that Dr. Mahjoub was a woman who ate when she was hungry and stopped when she was full. Occasionally I spotted a package of Fig Newmans on her desk. She was probably someone who genuinely enjoyed a nice pear.

  “Why can’t I leave things the way they are?” I asked.

  “Are you satisfied with just surviving?” asked Dr. Mahjoub. “Or do you want to get well?”

  I glanced at a papier-mâché elephant kneeling on her end table with his trunk in the air, then at a multicolored elephant triptych hanging on the wall. She’d definitely bought all the elephants at once.

  “I’m well enough,” I said.

  On my way out of the office I checked my phone again. No new texts. What would happen if my mother just showed up at my apartment? Rationally, I knew this was unlikely. She was terrified of flying and had not been on a plane in over ten years. But all night, I kept expecting her to materialize. In some way, I even wished she would just appear.