Milk Fed

by Melissa Broder

  “Rachel, is that you?”

  I saw a light beaming from the top of the stairs.

  “What are you doing down there in the dark?” she called. “Let me bring you a candle.”

  I heard her tiptoe down the stairs. Then I saw her white feet in the dark. She was wearing a pair of baby-blue cotton pajamas and was holding a pair of tea light candles in small glass jars. She had no bra on, and her breasts and belly heaved up and down.

  “Here,” she said, handing me the candles. “Sorry, I’m bad with the timer.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Is this bed all right? And Ayala’s pajamas?”

  “Everything is great,” I said. “So comfortable.”

  “Good,” she said. “I want you to feel at home here.”

  I put the candles on top of the nightstand, which was really an end table that had been pulled next to the sofa bed. I sat down on the bed but did not invite her to come sit with me. I felt nervous and strange, but also excited to have her so close and unbound, near me in the candlelight. She was wearing underwear, and I could see them through her pajamas. I could tell that they were full underwear, like granny panties, and I couldn’t help but think about what her pussy smelled like under there. I wondered if she was wet. Then I felt guilty for wondering that.

  “You’re sure you’re not creeped out down here?” she asked.

  “No,” I said.

  “Well, why don’t I stay a bit, just in case, until you fall asleep.”

  She sat down on a cushiony chair across from the sofa bed.

  “Okay,” I said, but I didn’t get under the covers. I imagined going over to the chair, facing her and rubbing up against her body like a cat. I imagined grabbing the back of her head and kissing her forcefully, our teeth clicking together, her gorgeous tongue in my mouth. I imagined opening her pajama top and seeing those tremendous breasts, sucking each of them.

  “Why don’t you get into bed?” she asked.

  “Okay,” I said.

  I lifted up the sheets and blankets, crawled under them. Miriam did not stand up or make any effort to tuck me in, and yet I felt as though she were somehow tucking me in from across the room. I watched her body moving gently up and down with each breath, her pale blue eyes so clear in the candlelight, like glass. I could hear her breathing too, as though she were trying to lull me to sleep with the rhythm.

  “Comfy?” she asked.

  “Mmmm.”

  “Good,” she said.

  “Tell me a story,” I said.

  “Really?” She laughed.

  I hoped I wasn’t pushing it. But I was in such a blissful space, and if I couldn’t touch her, then I wanted the room filled with her words.

  “Yes,” I said.

  “Okay. Do you want a story about animals or a story about plants?”

  “Animals,” I said.

  What I really wanted was to slide my hand under my waistband and rest it there, to comfort myself, help myself drift off. But I was afraid that she would see the bump in the sheet where my hand was and be disturbed by it. Also, I didn’t trust myself to simply cocoon my vagina with my hand without rubbing. I was wet and would have loved to gently rub my clit, light and fast. Instead, I settled for wrapping my arms around my upper body—like Dracula in his coffin, only sweet and soft. It felt nice, the warmth of a hug. I sucked my nicotine gum.

  “There was a woman who lived in a village,” she began. “She was about our age. It was a village outside of Los Angeles, but not in Orange County or the Valley. It was a village that had all palm trees and no other kind of tree. It was the only one in Southern California without any other kind of tree or bush except palm trees.”

  She stopped for a second.

  “Sorry, I veered into plants. I’ll get to the animals in a minute,” she said.

  “That’s okay,” I said.

  “This woman was looking to bring some other types of trees to the village, particularly, what are those trees? Oh yes, evergreens. But none of the other villagers wanted them there. They didn’t understand why she wanted any other kind of tree when palm trees were so beautiful. In fact, one or two other kinds of shrubs had started to grow there over the years, and the people had gone so far as to rip them out. This woman reminded the rest of the people that other kinds of trees, including evergreens, were native to Los Angeles, whereas palm trees had been brought over from somewhere else. But that didn’t matter to them.”

  I heard her swallow.

  “Also, this woman couldn’t figure out why she even cared so much about other kinds of trees. The only thing she could come up with was that when she looked at a palm tree, she always felt like it was laughing at her. But when she looked at an evergreen tree, she felt that it was on her side. Uh-oh…”

  “What?”

  “Maybe this is going to be about plants. Sorry. Anyway, one night this woman went to see her aunt. Her aunt was the only person who didn’t shut her down entirely when she said that she wanted to go to another town and get a baby sapling evergreen tree and bring it to this village, which, by the way, was illegal according to town ordinances. Her aunt didn’t understand her fascination with evergreens, but she understood what it was like to really want something, because when the aunt was younger, she had wanted to marry a person but had been forced by her parents to marry someone else. So her aunt tried to be compassionate toward her. At the same time, she didn’t want this woman to go to jail for bringing in another kind of tree.”

  “Jail?”

  “It was serious business.”

  “Okay. Keep going.”

  “The aunt’s name was Puah, by the way.”

  “Puah?”

  “Yes. Puah Feinstein.”

  “What about the tree woman’s name?” I asked, laughing.

  “I don’t know,” said Miriam. “How about Esther?”

  “Okay. One more question. Why didn’t Esther just move? To a place where evergreens were allowed and she felt more comfortable?”

  “She didn’t want to move. It’s hard for a woman to move, to just separate from her family, stuff like that.”

  “Yeah, I guess so. But I mean, how badly did Esther want these evergreens? Maybe rather than risking going to jail, or always being upset that she couldn’t have the evergreens, she could just go somewhere else, to another town, and be amongst them there.”

  “Maybe it wouldn’t have made her happy to move to another town, you know?”

  “I get it,” I said.

  “Anyway, so Aunt Puah decided that she was going to have to find a way to stall Esther on her plan. So she told Esther that she should wait for a sign before she went and dug up a tree and brought it over. Aunt Puah instructed her to go to sleep each night and wait until, in her dreams, there appeared a bull. Okay, I think this is where the animals come in!”

  “Okay.”

  “Aunt Puah told Esther that if she saw a bull in a dream, and the bull was gentle and kind to her, then it was probably safe to go steal a sapling and bring it back. But if she dreamt that the bull was cruel and vicious, or tried to attack her in any way, that meant it was a bad omen. If the bull was violent, then she should in no way attempt to bring an evergreen tree into the town, or she would surely be punished terribly.”

  “Shit.”

  “Aunt Puah thought that she was being clever. After all, everyone knows that bulls are never gentle and are always charging at you, on the attack. So she figured that the dream would never come. What were the chances of Esther dreaming of a bull anyway?”

  “Probably fairly slim.”

  “Yes. Like a fifteen percent chance, maximum.”

  “More like ten percent.”

  “Right. And you know what? Aunt Puah was correct. Not only did Esther never dream about a bull being nice to her, but she never ended up dreaming about a bull at all. Every night she waited for a bull to come to her in her dream, and it never did. And actually, in doing this, in waiting for the bull, Esther’s interest shi
fted from evergreens to bulls. And she was set free! She was no longer haunted by the need to have an evergreen. Okay, what do you think?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “About the story?”

  “Wait. That’s it?”

  “Yes.”

  “That’s how it ends? Esther never goes to get her evergreen?”

  “Right,” she said.

  “What kind of story is that? I mean, how passionate was Esther about the evergreens if she ended up just forgetting about them?”

  “Pretty passionate,” she said. “I mean, she really loved them.”

  “She obviously didn’t love them that much.”

  “No, she did, it’s just that, you know, she didn’t want to ruin her life for the evergreens.”

  “Oh,” I said. “Okay.”

  “You seem upset,” she said.

  “No, I’m not. It’s just, I don’t know, I was kind of expecting it to end with like her planting an evergreen and everyone in the town eventually coming to love it. Or at least Aunt Puah would see its appeal.”

  “The town was never going to love it. Or Aunt Puah.”

  “Fine, so Esther should have just left and stayed away.”

  “I told you, there was no way she was going to do that.”

  “Well, it’s kind of a sad story, then.”

  “Not as sad as if she had gone to jail. Or never seen her family again.”

  “I guess not.”

  “It’s a good ending. Esther has her family and she doesn’t get punished. Oh! And since she isn’t so in love with the evergreens anymore, it’s not like she’s suffering. She got over it. She has bulls now. She can become a bull-ologist if she wants. The town has no problem with bulls.”

  “Fine,” I said.

  I felt angry. Was I annoyed that Miriam couldn’t tell a good story? Or was I pissed off by the story itself?

  “Well, I’m gonna go upstairs,” she said.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Sleep well.”

  “You too,” I murmured.

  After she went back upstairs, I rolled over onto my side and put my hand down my pants. I was still wet. Some of the anger was maybe desire, trapped in there without anywhere to go. I rubbed my clit and the opening of my vulva quickly, not thinking about any images, only the anger and the feeling down there. Then I imagined Miriam, not from the front but from the back, lying fully nude on a bed with her hair wet. No, I would not allow myself to fantasize about her. Instead, I imagined another woman, one I’d never seen before, who had the same body as Miriam’s but with very dark hair. Yes, I would create a woman right there in the Schwebels’ basement. Esther! I was going to fuck Esther.

  I rolled over onto my stomach and put one of the pillows between my legs. I was the Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel of that fucking pillow. I was Adam, and the pillow was my rib, or whatever. From that pillow, I could create my dream woman.

  I imagined how Esther’s ass would look: how big and round, like two gibbous moons. I imagined rubbing my pussy against each of her ass cheeks, humping and riding them. I imagined biting at her back fat and sucking on the rolls there as I fucked her ass cheeks. I realized that in my fantasy, Esther was not saying a word (it figured since she’d been so passive with the evergreens). Did I want Esther to speak? No, I liked it like this, her silence, her passivity, allowing me to move freely and have my way with her body. I felt no judgment from Esther, totally free to do what I wished. It was probably because I could not see her face or hear her voice. Also, Aunt Puah was dead.

  CHAPTER 38

  When I woke up the next morning, I had no idea where I was. Then I remembered. I felt strangely safe and relaxed. The basement had a window, and the sun shone white through the glass. It was 11:30, and I realized I’d slept late because of all the wine. Someone had brought down clean clothing for me—a long skirt and a long-sleeve shirt—but I decided to put back on what I had been wearing the day before. I didn’t take a shower, but I fixed my hair as well as possible with sink water.

  I went upstairs and found Miriam and Mrs. Schwebel sprawled on the avocado-green sofas in the living room. They were drinking tea, and both of them had little plates of crumbs—the remnants of what looked like challah. There was also a plate with a half stick of margarine on it and a bowl of dried fruits and nuts. At this point I didn’t know where I stood with food at all.

  “Well, you’re finally up, sleepyhead,” said Miriam.

  She looked so happy to see me. But what did she even know about me: that I was Jewish, ate frozen yogurt every day for lunch, and lived far away from my family? Was that enough to make a person like you? I supposed it was.

  I could only look at her and grin. Her mouth was wet with tea. I wished I could go over and pull her close to me, give her a big warm kiss. I wondered how she would kiss, if she’d know what to do from studying old movies or find her way intuitively. How would she react when my tongue entered her mouth? Would she prefer me just to suck on her lips lightly, or would she follow my lead and put her tongue inside my mouth? I wanted her tongue in my mouth. I wanted to swallow her tongue right there in the living room.

  “Would you like some tea?” Mrs. Schwebel asked.

  Of course I did. I wanted to be part of their little party, whatever they were talking about. They’d been gossiping, I could tell from the tinkle of laughter as I approached.

  “We will be having lunch, but not until one o’clock,” said Mrs. Schwebel. “You must be famished. Let me fix you some challah with margarine like we had for breakfast.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  It was amusing to think of an hour and a half as too long to go without food. In my old life, I’d considered anything less than four hours easy. Four hours meant that food was on the horizon, and it was the idea of forthcoming food that mattered most: an edible future. I’d subsisted on ideas, fantasies. But in this house, an hour and a half of hunger was not to be suffered.

  The three of us talked while I drank my tea and ate the challah. The tea was sugared and nondairy creamed, and the challah sweet.

  “In my day, in Monsey, you would never have thought of staying home from synagogue,” said Mrs. Schwebel. “Everyone was up in everyone else’s business. The women were always secretly taking attendance.”

  “More nosy than here in Los Angeles?” asked Miriam.

  “You think the community gossips here? It is nothing compared to Monsey. You could not do anything as a child, good, bad, or otherwise, without someone else sniffing around you and reporting it back to your parents. And I’m not even talking about having a drink, but something as simple as lifting your skirt above your ankles for a moment on a hot day. You are lucky, Miriam, that we are so liberal.”

  I wondered if Mrs. Schwebel ever desired to be even less religious than she was now. Did she ever want to lift her skirt even higher? Above her knee? What would she have done with her life if she hadn’t been religious at all? She might have gone to college, gotten an MBA. I could see her as the CEO of a nationwide chain of restaurants, rebranding Dairy Queen, infusing the Blizzard with lactobacillus and other friendly bacteria. Mrs. Schwebel as industry renegade, Mrs. Schwebel profiled in Forbes magazine, arms bared, no wig. I wasn’t sure that was necessarily any better or more important than what she was doing right now.

  “Whatever, Mom,” said Miriam. “Everyone here is up in each other’s business too. Like when Chaya Spielvogel started secretly dating a goy. Everyone knew in about four seconds what was going on, because Tali Diamond gossiped about it to a bunch of other people. Tali was supposed to be her best friend!”

  “Oh, that’s different,” said Mrs. Schwebel. “I mean, that is something of major interest, you know? If I were the Spielvogels, I would be very ashamed.”

  So that was her official stance: no non-Jews for her kids. Was this how the Jews had stayed around for so long? We didn’t recruit or attempt to convert anyone. We didn’t go on pilgrimages, and we had no missionaries. But those who w
ere already Jewish—we wanted to keep them Jewish at all costs.

  In the living room, the sun was warming everything, warming me too. I couldn’t imagine anything as delicious as sitting here with Miriam and her mother, gently filled with challah, sipping hot tea, so languid. What would Mrs. Schwebel think about the fact that I wanted to date her daughter? On the one hand I was Jewish; on the other hand I was a woman.

  I watched Mrs. Schwebel smooth her red wig. I imagined that my mother would see the wig as archaic. My mother ate shrimp, ignored Shabbat, and hadn’t been in a synagogue since my bat mitzvah. She referred to Orthodox Jews as “Oy, those people.” But I was sure that she and Mrs. Schwebel shared some of the same prejudices when it came to their daughters. In this regard, neither of them had come very far from the shtetl.

  I thought about the mikvah, the ritual bath where women would go together on their periods. Warm women, wet women, women together, women taking care of one another, women naked in the same hothouse. Some of them must have secretly gotten it on.

  When the rest of the family returned from synagogue, I felt like it was my family returning from synagogue, but a family I liked. It was as though they knew me well by now, despite knowing barely anything about me. It was as though you could know a person without knowing the details of their life. You could know their light, because you shared the same light, the way I’d known the prayers the night before without knowing I knew them. I had never imagined this kind of warmth could be so safe, abundant. I’d spent so much time cutting and carving away at myself, worshipping cold. I feared that light and warmth were a trick, a tease, false offerings that lured you into relaxing, and just when you made yourself vulnerable, they would be seized. Better to adapt to the cold. Better to thrust the cold on oneself. Be prepared.

  Yet with the Schwebels it was so easy. The light was sustained, plentiful. It wasn’t going anywhere. And so I ate what I wanted, when I wanted, maybe even overindulged compared to what a normal person would eat. I wasn’t sure exactly what that was yet, to eat normally. But I feasted on the food and the warmth, the cozy togetherness, and I realized that the food itself was only one part of what a person needed in order to be sustained.