Milk Fed

by Melissa Broder

  It was our own creation myth of sorts—seven days and nights commenced by a rabbi in a calla lily and god’s cosmic buzzer. I felt as though a new calendar had begun. I stopped counting the days of the mother detox and started counting the nights of Miriam.

  On the third night, I humped her over her skirt, rubbing myself wildly on the meaty dome between her belly button and her pussy. I almost came on top of her, but I wanted to make her come first. Clothes still on, I positioned myself between her thick legs. I used what I had: my pelvic bone, my thigh. I undulated against her. She rose and fell beneath me. Then she gasped. I kissed her lips to drink her sounds. She moaned loudly in my mouth.

  “Did you have enough?” I asked her, touching her hair as we sprawled together on my sofa after, legs still entwined.

  She nodded. We were both quiet for a while.

  “Crickets,” she said finally.

  “What?”

  “There’re crickets outside. In the grass.”

  I had never noticed them before. But now that she’d pointed them out, they were all I could hear. I felt enveloped by their chirping. The sound filled my ear canals and skull. It covered me like a soft, minty blanket.

  CHAPTER 55

  On the fourth night, we went on a proper date. At the Golden Dragon, we sat across from each other at a back corner booth and shared a Scorpion Bowl and a Blue Hawaii.

  “Open your mouth,” she said, giggling over her straw.

  “What?”

  “Just open.”

  I obliged. She fished a cherry out of the Scorpion Bowl, then placed it in my mouth.

  “Mmmm,” I said. “Cherrylicious.”

  “And?”

  “Cherrytacular. With subtle notes of cherry.”

  “Yes,” she said. “It’s the best part.”

  But when I went to hold her sticky hand, she pulled it away and said, “No, it’s a bad idea. Someone might see.”

  “Of course,” I said quickly.

  I felt hurt—and surprised that I was hurt. But I didn’t want to ruin our date by sulking. So I focused on the strands of lights twinkling over the bar. One was made of pink flamingos, another of green palm trees. Then there was a long strand of shooting stars and crescent moons, space blue and banana yellow. The lights were reflected in our Scorpion Bowl, as though the whole solar system were in there.

  “By the way, just so you know, I think I kind of believe in god now,” I said to Miriam.

  “Really,” she said, grinning. “And how did this shocking turn of events come to pass?”

  “Okay, maybe believe is a strong word,” I said. “But I definitely like god. I’m down with it.”

  “What’s not to like?”

  I reached under the table and found her knee. I expected her to bat my hand away, but she didn’t, so I parked there for a while. Then I inched my hand up just a little, to the zone that was not quite knee and not quite thigh. She crunched aggressively on a handful of noodles. She did not evict me. I wanted to go higher. But from where I was sitting, I couldn’t quite reach my desired territory. I slipped off my shoe, then tiptoed my foot under her skirt, up her leg.

  “Rachel,” she said.

  “Yes, Miri?”

  I continued to tiptoe until I reached her underpants.

  She took a sip of the galaxy from the Scorpion Bowl and closed her lids. Softly I rubbed my foot over her undies, finding her crease. I tickled and kneaded. She cleared her throat but did not open her eyes. Her undies were warm and moist.

  “You’re the wettest,” I whispered.

  She gritted her teeth at me. Then the food arrived. For a moment, she looked like she couldn’t eat, and I felt proud to have put her in a state where she only wanted me. I made my way back down her leg, out from under her skirt. Gradually, she started eating. I loved watching her slurp dumplings, so aroused by her appetite. I swore I could smell her on me now, the scent of dirt in rain coming up from under the table. I imagined her leaking through her skirt, leaving a wet mark on the pink banquette. I wanted it stained forever, as if to say, We were here.

  CHAPTER 56

  Miriam wore white cotton underpants, full coverage, the fullest of all the coverages, concealing every pubic hair, cordoning her from my wants. The underpants were basically bloomers, and I was on my knees on the floor of my bedroom, under her skirt, lapping at the cotton.

  She was the one who took them off, then removed her skirt with a look of benevolence. Her pubic hair was reddish brown, and from thigh to thigh she was covered in thick, balmy swirls of it. She sat down on the edge of my bed, then stretched out on her back across my comforter, leaned her head on my pillow, stared at me.

  “You are so fine,” I murmured. “So very fine.”

  She closed her eyes. When she opened them again, she smiled.

  “And?” she asked.

  I smiled back at her.

  “Gorgeous.”

  I lay down beside her and kissed her mouth. Then, as I kissed my way down her naked body, I spoke to her more.

  “So lush. So pretty.”

  I put my face in her soft shtetl wool.

  “Fucking delicious too.”

  When I tasted her brine, I was hit with a feeling of timelessness, as though this had all happened before, somewhere as far back as our ancestors in Russia or Lithuania or Poland or Moldova. We were two shtetl Jewish women reincarnated, two women who had known each other and been lovers in a past life. I felt that all that had ever happened before was happening right now—and that everything happening right now would happen forever. There was a love that had always existed between women. It would continue to exist. We were propagating that love. It was radiating out my apartment windows, through the city, across the canyons, over the hills, and into the night sky.

  I ate her with empathy, the way that I would want to be eaten. I teased her clit with my tongue, letting her know that I knew where her pleasure locus was, and that I would get there, just not yet. As I teased, I smelled the faintest waft of shit coming up from underneath her. It smelled like fertile heaven: peat moss, soil, sod, loam. It smelled good because it was her. She had a perfume, and this was her base note. I wanted to work my tongue all the way down, taste the sludge of her, the deepest secrets. But I continued licking her as I would want to be licked: with tiny, fast strokes on her clit, as though my tongue had a vibrator in it. I was fast and gentle. I was a hummingbird, a cicada, a flickering eyelid.

  Miriam began to groan and writhe. I tongued her harder. I spelled out the word L-O-V-E on her clit. I spelled B-A-R-U-C-H-H-A-S-H-E-M. I spelled E-M-E-T and M-E-T, T-R-U-T-H and D-E-A-T-H. Then I tongued her in my own language. The words meant nothing, but they made sense to both of us. She was enjoying the rhythm so much. I was fluent. I knew exactly what to do to keep her going. I took her clit fully in my mouth, sucked until she swelled. She became a juicy piece of pulp.

  Then, for a moment, she stopped moving entirely. Her moans ceased. She got still and tense. She gripped her hands around my head, and I knew that she was going to come. I wanted to fuck her with my fingers. But I held back. I would penetrate her next time.

  She bucked against my face. She shook as she came. It was a fucking wonder. She said my name.

  “Rachel.”

  Then she moaned, “You feel so good!”

  “You feel so good,” I said.

  “I feel so good,” she cried.

  “Good,” I said.

  CHAPTER 57

  I found myself eating the way I imagined normal people ate: three squares, some snacks, whatever I wanted, really, with a feeling of impunity, and without bingeing to the point of illness. There were pancakes for breakfast at the diner, pizza for lunch on my break, burritos for dinner. My kitchen counter was full of junk—Reese’s peanut butter cups, Doritos, frosted Donettes—all the food I’d fantasized about over years of deprivation. Only now I wasn’t eating everything all at once. It felt like a miracle to be able to eat what I desired, not more or less than that. It was
shocking, as though my body somehow knew what to do and what not to do—if only I let it.

  It was as though I had a knowing person inside me, not the healthy, loving adult that Dr. Mahjoub had said I should try to cultivate in order to “reparent” young Rachel, but some kind of careless skater teen, the lovable scamp I’d never been, who ate what she wanted, when she wanted, and stopped when she was full.

  Miriam had begun buying me presents: a black, tailored, menswear-inspired blazer from Nordstrom at The Grove that fit me perfectly, a pair of motorcycle boots. On the fifth night, she brought a boxy denim jacket with a pair of sparrows on the back, a fragrance redolent of whiskey and ambergris, and a sports bra.

  “Why a sports bra?”

  “I just thought it was cute.”

  “Cute?”

  “Yeah. Cute.”

  “Oh. Well, I already have a ton of these, because I used to go to the gym a lot.”

  “Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t know you had them. I like the look of them.”

  “What is it about the look of them?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “I just think they are attractive.”

  “Well, I could wear it, I guess,” I said, wanting to please her.

  That night, with my breasts bound, I fucked her with my hand. As I was licking her clit, my tongue flattened the way I knew she liked, I introduced the tip of my middle finger inside her. I didn’t go deep inside, just below the clit, where I knew there was sensitive tissue. She gasped and moved against my finger, trying to push me deeper inside of her. But I stood my ground and stayed at the entrance, just hinting at the fact that I could put a finger deeper in there if and when I wanted. I did it for a while like that until she was sopping, my hand covered in her juices, my tongue slick with her. Then I inched in a little farther and began to thrust.

  “I’m so hard for you,” I said. “Do you feel how fucking hard you make me?”

  “Uh-huh.” She sighed.

  “I’m—I’m bulging for you.”

  She reached down and grabbed my hand, pushing it deeper inside her pussy. I began to thrust my finger in and out, fucking her there, slow but strong, with the same rhythm as I was moving my tongue.

  She was drowning my finger. I made come-hither motions each time I penetrated her so that I could rub her G-spot, never taking my tongue off her clit. I put two more fingers inside her and felt that she was about to come.

  “Do you feel how fucking hard you make me?” I asked again.

  “I feel it,” she said. “I feel it I feel it I feel it.”

  CHAPTER 58

  The black blazer that Miriam got me made me feel debonair. I went to Nordstrom and bought a second one, also black but pin-striped, with matching pants for both. I wore them to work with my hair tied back tight in a low bun, the way a minimalist fashion person or a name-dropping aesthete might. I thought the suits hid my weight gain too. I felt sexy and protected, as though I had evolved to a more sophisticated realm of beauty.

  “You’re dressed differently,” said Ana.

  It wasn’t teatime, but we had run into each other in the kitchen. She was putting green goddess dressing on a salad, preparing to take it back to her desk, and I was taking two leftover pieces of pizza out of the fridge to microwave them.

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m experimenting with power clothes.”

  “Power clothes.” She laughed. “What sort of power are you looking for? You want to be a Hollywood power player?”

  I realized that she was making fun of me. I didn’t know what to say. I took the pizza slices out of their foil and stuck them in the microwave, set it to 75 seconds.

  “Oh, pizza power,” she said. “Pizza power clothes.”

  “Yep, pizza power clothes,” I said, though I had no idea what the hell she was talking about. I wasn’t even sure if she knew.

  I watched the microwave timer creep from 67 seconds to 63. I wanted it to move faster.

  “You know, Rachel,” she said, putting her dressing back in the fridge, “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way. But I’ve noticed—well, is everything all right?”

  “What have you noticed?” I asked.

  “Never mind.”

  “No, tell me.”

  “I’ve noticed that you’ve… gained a little weight.”

  I felt, immediately, that her words would kill me. This was how it was going to end. I was going to die in a talent management office kitchen. The microwave timer was at 54 seconds. My pizza started to bubble.

  “Everything is fine,” I said, staring at a mushroom on the bubbling pizza.

  I wanted to disappear under the mushroom, just tuck myself into the warm pizza cheese and drape the mushroom over me like a blanket.

  “Are you eating differently?” she asked. “It seems like you are. I know you indulge in the snacks here at the office more now.”

  I felt tears come to my eyes. The timer was at 41 seconds.

  “Do you think I look bad?” I asked.

  “No, not bad,” she said. “But I did notice.”

  I couldn’t believe that I’d gotten to this place. I was angry at myself. I was angry at Ana too, for saying what she said. But I was most angry at Miriam. From the very first bite of the yogurt with the sprinkles, she had led me to this territory. At times I’d felt courageous on the journey, but it was borrowed courage. Now we were here, and neither of us had a plan. Was she going to abandon me, leave me stranded in my body? I’d be in exile with a stomach that demanded more of everything.

  No one is abandoning anyone, I said to myself.

  How do you know? I replied.

  “Well, thanks for telling me,” I said to Ana. “I appreciate it.”

  “Just looking after you,” she said.

  The timer on the microwave went to 2, then 1, then 0. It beeped three times. The light went out. My pizza was done.

  CHAPTER 59

  Miriam and I were lying in bed in my empty, white bedroom. It was the sixth day, the one where god created all the animals—the cattle and sheep and beasts of the Earth. It was the Adam and Eve day, the “be fruitful and multiply” one. She was on her back, smoking a clove, tapping the ashes out my window into the night. I was wearing leggings and a T-shirt, and I’d wrapped myself around the side of her thigh. She had just come. I traced the crease of her pussy and made little designs with her own moisture across the canvas of her belly.

  “You know what I miss?” I asked, taking the clove from her hand.

  “Hmmmm,” she said.

  “That challah,” I said, taking a puff of the clove. “That Shabbat challah. The amazing one your mom served.”

  “It’s delicious, isn’t it? I know where she gets it. I’ll bring you a loaf.”

  “Okay,” I said, exhaling up to the ceiling and handing the clove back to her. “Although I wouldn’t mind having it with some of that cholent too.”

  “That’s a little bit harder to bring,” she said. “Though if I come over this Sunday, I could put it in a Tupperware. It’s meant to be eaten for a few days, and we always have extra.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  We were both silent. She took another puff of the clove, then stubbed it out in a bottle cap on the windowsill.

  “I thought maybe I could come to Shabbat dinner tomorrow night,” I said. “That is, if the invitation is still open.”

  “It is!” she said quickly, a little too quickly.

  “Good,” I said.

  “I mean, you know my mother liked you. And you are always welcome.”

  “Great!”

  “It’s just. I mean. We can’t do any of this,” she said, gesturing to her naked body and my clothed one.

  I took my hand off her belly.

  “No, no,” I said. “Of course not, not in your parents’ house.”

  “Right, but I just mean—like, we can’t even hint at the fact that this has gone on, you know?”

  “Hint how?” I asked. “Like, I can’t get you naked at the
dinner table?”

  “No.” She laughed. “I just mean no kisses or anything.”

  “Of course not.”

  “No hand-holding.”

  “No hand-holding. I’ll be a perfect gentleman.”

  She kissed my cheek.

  “Hey, where do they think you are, anyway?” I asked. “All these nights. Where do they think you’ve been spending your time? Do they know you are always with me? What kind of friends spend every single night together? It would be a lot, wouldn’t it?”

  “Oh no,” she said. “They don’t know I’m with you. They think I’m interning at a movie theater.”

  I laughed out loud.

  “Interning? At a movie theater?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Why is that funny?”

  “I’ve just never heard of anyone getting an internship at the movies. Anyway. So tomorrow is good?”

  “I don’t know about tomorrow. Adiv is home visiting.”

  I didn’t understand what Adiv being home had to do with it not being a good night for me to come.

  “What’s wrong?” she asked.

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Do you really want to come over for Shabbat that badly? I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. It has nothing to do with you. I just thought the table might be a little too full.”

  I didn’t want to have to push. I wanted to be wanted, as I had been in that first Shabbat incarnation, before anything physical had happened between us. Yet I felt I had to push, just to test and see what she was willing to do. I wished I was cool enough or strong enough not to test her. I didn’t want to show that I wanted or needed anything from her. But the truth was I did want and need her. Why did it feel so much safer to be wanted or needed than to be the one who wanted or needed?

  I was terrified of being rejected. I didn’t want to be a loser. That was the word that came into my head whenever I ran the risk of caring about someone: loser. I couldn’t remember my mother ever saying it to me. It was something I must have come up with all by myself. What did it mean, anyway? If Miriam hurt me, would that make me a loser?