Milk Fed

by Melissa Broder

  I was aware that the mother I truly desired would not be the one who appeared. I’d learned that from Dr. Mahjoub, who I never wanted to see again. I felt resentful toward Mahjoub, exhausted by my mother. I wished that I could procure, from nowhere, an incarnation of a mother I wanted. This interplay between hope and reality was also part of the mourning.

  CHAPTER 8

  Ana was the only maternal figure I had left. I wanted to please her more than ever. I wanted her to soak me in praise. I also recognized that I was physically attracted to her. This was something I’d tried to conceal, especially from myself, but it was bursting out of me. Every time I masturbated, Ana popped into my head; and when she surfaced—her giant breasts and slender waist, the little bulge just above her pussy, her heady white floral perfume—I always blocked her image out. I felt ashamed, as though it were my own mother I was fantasizing about. But on night four of the detox, as I masturbated drowsily in bed, I allowed myself to imagine being with Ana fully for the first time.

  I was her daughter and had menstrual cramps. Mommy Ana had cajoled me into bed with a cup of Harney & Sons tea. I lay still under the cool sheets as she spoke to me in a hushed voice, almost a whisper.

  “Can I rub your belly?” she asked.

  She was wearing a pink bathrobe, which was slightly open, and I could see the length of her abundant breasts in the dim light.

  “Yes,” I said. “That would be nice.”

  She really wanted to comfort me. She was just aching to soothe me. She was dying for it. I felt beautiful and treasured as she cooed and rubbed my lower abdomen over my cotton pajamas (I was wearing cotton pajamas as I touched myself in reverie).

  “I’m going to take this off,” she said of her robe. “So I can be more comfortable in rubbing you.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  When she opened her robe, a waft of her white floral perfume came toward me like a sweet and filthy wind. There was also the smell of her pussy in the air, salty and a little fishy. Her breasts were gorgeous pendulums with big nipples the color of dusky valentines, ample and perfect. But that bump below her waist, just above her pussy, where the flesh had gathered in her aging, drove me the craziest. I wanted to rub against it, then work my way down to her pubic hair: unshaved and unwaxed, a thick mound of dark and coarse femininity.

  I could hear her breathing as she rubbed my abdomen softly.

  “How does that feel?” she asked.

  “Good,” I whispered.

  “Good,” she said.

  I was beginning to get the feeling she liked me as more than a daughter. I mean, she was naked. But she hadn’t yet touched any parts of me that a mother wouldn’t touch.

  “I want you to feel good,” she said, as she continued to tenderly stroke my tummy.

  She moved her body over me so that her face was by my face, her hair brushing against my cheek. She nuzzled my forehead, the tip of my nose, my neck. Then she kissed me very lightly on the lips. There was a pause. Then she kissed me again, this time with her mouth open. Her tongue was in my mouth, tasting for mine like a ripe strawberry.

  So it was confirmed. Mommy wanted me! She was seducing me, and she didn’t even seem the least bit ashamed. If she wasn’t ashamed, then I wouldn’t be ashamed. I was merely the seducee. I was the innocent one here.

  “You are the innocent one here,” she said.

  I loved being the innocent one. I heard a soft moan come out of my mouth, filling hers. Gently, she lifted up my shirt and moved her lips to my nipples. I felt like I was made of liquid, viscous, throbbing with ache. I continued to rub myself frantically, imagining what would come next. I replayed that first tongue kiss again and again. Then she let her tits dangle over my face. I suckled on each one, thinking: Feed me, Mommy! So that I may live!

  My real mother had not breastfed me. She said I hurt her nipples too much. I knew that if Ana were my mother, she would have breastfed me as a little baby. Now she was doing it again. I sucked as much as I could of her nipple into my mouth. I wanted to choke on her, to gag on her, to be filled up entirely with her breast, all the way down my throat. I made little squelching noises as I sucked.

  Her legs straddled my thigh. Then she began to ride me. Her thigh moved on my pussy in a circular motion. Her pubic hair was thick and wiry. I could feel her wetness, how much she wanted me. I could smell her fish and flowers. She was doing everything. I only had to lie there and be myself.

  Every time I got close to coming, I would stop masturbating and let the wave of my pleasure simmer back down.

  I want you to eat me, I thought as I edged closer.

  The consuming mother, I thought as I pulled away.

  I want you to eat me, closer, closer.

  The consuming mother, further, further.

  Then I got so close that I could not pull myself back from the edge. I spilled over, dissolving into pure light.

  When the wave of pleasure receded, Mommy Ana had disappeared. In her place was office manager Ana. She was seated in a Staples ergonomic chair, headset on, eating a shrimp Caesar from Simply Salad, answering the phone.

  “The Crew, please hold.”

  CHAPTER 9

  Ofer was unhappy with the company that sold the fake Instagram followers we purchased for our clients.

  “They aren’t paying enough attention to diversity along the lines of race, ethnicity, and gender,” he said as we sat down together at Last Crush.

  “But the followers are fake,” I said.

  “They should look real. When we get back to the office, I want you to start researching other companies. Find out prices, longevity, the diversity of the fake followers, and—what’s that crinkling sound?”

  The crinkling sound was me. I was attempting to extricate a piece of nicotine gum from its foil wrapper in my purse. Usually, I’d remove at least five pieces of the gum and place them bareback in the purse, along with a ball of toilet paper for the chewed ones, prior to any client lunch. This enabled me to access the gum soundlessly. But I’d forgotten to pre-release the gum, and was now forced to extricate in-booth while we waited on the arrival of Ofer’s prize pig—an actor named Jason Blagojevich, who called himself “Jace Evans”—and his two agents.

  Jace had a lead role as “Liam” on a hot new CW show, Breathers, about three sexy young people who survive a zombie apocalypse. The show had become a phenomenon in the teen market and was growing popular with the types of adults who acted ironically anti-intellectual but were maybe just dumb. Breathers had just been renewed for a second season, and Jace was sitting pretty. He’d only been out of Akron for less than two years.

  Ofer began repping Jace before he had an agent. He managed to secure him the part without agency representation, which was rare. Jace’s agents, two heat-seeking sheep named Josh and Josh, had “joined the team” just in time to do the contract. They never would have touched Jace without a pilot, but now they acted like they’d birthed him.

  “My duuudes!” grunted Ofer, rising to greet Jace and the Joshes.

  He secretly hated the Joshes, claiming they lacked a moral compass, but I knew the real reason for his animosity was because they thought he couldn’t hack it in the agency world. I was happy the Joshes were in attendance. The more people at the table, the less anyone paid attention to what I ate.

  I was there to take notes on my phone. Mostly, I googled calorie counts and tried not to stare at Jace. I couldn’t decide if I was attracted to him. His hair was exhausting, a shaved undercut with a skyward floof on top. The floof was straining to stay erect, while the overall look struggled to find itself: punk or pompadour, skinhead or sculpture, it didn’t know what it was. Jace clearly invested a lot of time and money in his hair, though I didn’t imagine any salons survived the zombie apocalypse.

  Jace was the type of dude who always seemed like he was wearing a fedora—even when he wasn’t. He wore two rosaries around his neck, which I assumed were from Fred Segal. His motorcycle jacket appeared new, yet pre-distressed, and t
he stacks of leather and metal bracelets on his wrists suggested he was headed off to battle in an ancient war right after lunch. On his left hand, he had a freckle the size of a pencil eraser. I decided it was ugly.

  “I’m concerned about Liam’s love triangle going into next season,” said Jace, caressing his own jaw with his freckle hand. “I hope the writers don’t make it the central conflict of the show.”

  I typed the words central conflict in my notes. I was surprised he knew what that was.

  “Agreed, it’s a show about survival, not love,” said Josh.

  I typed: survival not love.

  “Ofer, let’s find a constructive way to express Jace’s concern to the network,” said the other Josh.

  “On it,” said Ofer. “Though I think the tone change is flattering. When Jace was cast, no one had any idea what a star he would become. Except me, of course.”

  I would not have called Jace a star. A glow-in-the-dark sticker, maybe.

  “We just have to make sure the world of the show stays authentic,” said Jace.

  I typed: authentic. It was a show about zombies. How authentic could the world be?

  I could never tell if other people genuinely believed their own bullshit or not. I felt genuinely perplexed about it—especially at work lunches, but frequently in my nonlunch life too. At times like this, I longed to break the fourth wall, to whisper, Hey, just between us: Is this a performance or is it really what you believe?

  I decided that Jace was objectively attractive. I didn’t necessarily want our genitals to touch, but there was a certain place in my mind, or maybe in my solar plexus, where I liked him. I felt programmed, like a drug-sniffing dog, to seek his approval.

  What I wanted most was for this certified hot person to see a hotness in me, thereby verifying, once and for all, that I was hot. It wasn’t that civilians didn’t find me attractive. But for a licensed hot person to verify me? That was the real shit.

  “Maybe we need to remind the network that Jace has fans elsewhere,” said Josh.

  I typed: fans.

  “He’s got fans at Netflix, fans at Universal,” said the other Josh. “Big fans at Universal, and on the movie side too.”

  I typed: fans fans. big fans.

  Jace turned to me.

  “Thanks for taking notes,” he said.

  He acted like I was doing this voluntarily. Still, he seemed nice. But he could afford to be nice. All of the attention was on him. If he were in my position, if he weren’t the one being feted, would he be so nice?

  “No prob,” I said, looking at the word BEEF printed on the back wall over his head.

  Last Crush had a farm-to-hell look that always made me think of death by hanging: wooden beams, lightbulbs dangling from the ceiling like ligatures. There were enough upcycled bulbs to illuminate a stadium. Nobody needed that much light.

  “Bread?” asked Jace, extending a basket of carbs threateningly close to my head.

  I imagined a pack of zombies infiltrating the restaurant, smearing blood and pus on the stone floors, the fake-rustic walls, soaking the bread. Whose brains would they eat first? Probably Jace’s because he had the most fans.

  “Thank you,” I said. “But no.”

  CHAPTER 10

  Dr. Mahjoub wouldn’t let me break up with her by phone.

  “If you’re going to terminate, it’s important that we honor the work we’ve done together with a final processing session,” she said.

  I didn’t want to honor anything. But now I was seated across from her, and between us were four containers of something called Theraputticals Anti-Microbial Modeling Clay.

  “Rachel, if this is going to be our last session together, I’d like us to try something a little different,” she said. “I was hoping that you might be amenable to doing a bit of art therapy work.”

  I wasn’t amenable. But the clay seemed ready to go.

  “Over the course of our sessions, I’ve written down some words you’ve used to describe your body,” she said, clearing her throat. “Amorphous. Out of control. Disgusting. Exploding. These kinds of words reveal to me a deep dysmorphia—”

  “No,” I said. “I don’t feel like I’m exploding.”

  “That was the word you used.”

  “I was talking about the future. I just don’t want to get to that point. Of exploding.”

  “So, it would be more accurate to say that these descriptors are what you… fear becoming.”

  “That’s right.”

  “But not how you see yourself now.”

  “Not today.”

  “Okay,” she said. “I’d still like to try this approach, if we may. I was going to ask that you use the clay to sculpt an image of yourself. I was hoping that we might identify, in a visual, tactile way, the discrepancy between how you perceive yourself and how you actually appear to others—”

  “You mean, like a self-portrait?”

  “Yes,” she said. “But now I’m thinking it might be more productive, and lead to greater insight, if you would be willing to sculpt for me—well, for yourself, really—a rendering of those future fears you describe. Who is that ‘out of control’ woman you are so afraid of becoming? What does she look like?”

  “You want me to make a body?”

  “Well, yes,” she said.

  Did I look like Michelangelo? I was annoyed. But there were still 36 minutes left until termination.

  I opened the container of pink Theraputticals, took out the whole blob, smushed it with my hand. I broke off a chunk and shaped a round head. Then I put the head down on Dr. Mahjoub’s glass coffee table. I took the rest of the clay and started mushing it into a torso. I began shaping an immense belly, huge tits. But there wasn’t nearly enough clay, so I opened the blue container. Then the green. I made massive thighs, weighty calves, a voluminous ass. I layered more and more clay, swirling it into an immense psychedelic woman.

  I lost myself in the sculpting. I actually enjoyed the sensation: the cool of the clay, the way it warmed in my hands, the not-thinking, the feeling my way around, the enlarging of my woman. I also realized, as I sculpted, that I wasn’t so much making what I was scared of becoming, a future, but a shape I already knew very well. It was a shape that had always lived inside of me. It was destined to come out. What was even scarier was how much my hands liked this.

  I used the last of the yellow clay to give her hair. Then I held the figure up to Dr. Mahjoub.

  “There,” I said. “Happy?”

  “Well done, Rachel. I really appreciate your willingness to try that. You seemed to rather enjoy the exercise, no?”

  “It was fine,” I said.

  “Good. So let me ask you. This body—this creature you’ve sculpted—this is what you mean when you say ‘amorphous, exploding, out of control’?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “I just made it because you told me to.”

  “Uh-huh,” she said, adjusting a sensible clog. “And let me ask you, do you imagine this is what you will look like if—”

  “No,” I said. “It’s just a thing.”

  I didn’t want to tell her that I did feel, in some way, like the figure was part of me—that I’d made her from the inside out.

  “Well, I think she’s rather lovely,” said Dr. Mahjoub. “Don’t you think she’s lovely?”

  “She’s fine,” I said.

  “Yes, I think she’s quite lovely. And I think she’s worthy of love—more than worthy of love, actually? Don’t you think so?”

  “What?”

  “Don’t you think that she’s worthy of love?”

  “Yeah,” I said, my cheeks burning. “I guess so.”

  I was crying. I felt angry, tricked. This was supposed to be closure, not some psychological art show.

  I stormed out of the office without even paying my copay. When I got to my car, I realized I still had the stupid clay figure in my hand. I opened my trunk, then buried the thing in a trash bag of old clothes.

  “Fuc
k insight,” I said, and slammed the trunk shut.

  CHAPTER 11

  On day 7 of the detox, I went over to Yo!Good for my usual 16-ounce no-topping delight, only to discover that the Orthodox boy wasn’t working. In his place was a woman who looked to be my age—maybe a little younger, twenty-two or twenty-three. She was very pale, with light blue eyes and a braid of wheat-blond hair. Her eyebrows were gold, eyelashes nearly white. Her fair complexion made her other features seem surprising—as though I forgot that lips could be pink, and then, in looking at her mouth, remembered again.

  On one of her round cheeks was a small brown beauty mark, like a caramel chip from the toppings bar. There was a rosiness to her cheeks, a natural flush that swept over the beauty mark, interacting with it, bathing it in a wash of color. On her neck was a triangle of three darker moles: a dark chocolate drop on her Adam’s apple, framed by two milk chocolate drops to the left. She looked both Jewish and not Jewish at the same time—but there was something distinctly Jewish about her, a shtetl essence that perhaps only a fellow Jew could detect.

  Above all, she was fat: undeniably fat, irrefutably fat. She wasn’t thick, curvy, or chubby. She surpassed plump, eclipsed heavy. She was fat, and she exceeded my worst fears for my own body.

  But it was as though she didn’t know or care that she was fat. If she were concerned with hiding her body, she could have worn something baggy and black. Instead, she’d stuffed herself into a straight-cut, pale blue cotton dress, modest in its long sleeves and ankle-length skirt, but otherwise revealing every stomach roll, side bulge, and back fold of her body. The soft fabric stretched and sheered as it detoured her hips and ass. Her breasts were enormous—an F cup? a G cup?—but the dress did nothing to flatter them. The dress was there and the breasts were there, and neither was cooperating with the other.