Milk Fed

by Melissa Broder

  Miriam was not the malicious sort. I knew she would never take pride or joy in hurting me. It was not about power or control for her at all. It was me who saw people and the world that way.

  “Forget it,” I said to her.

  “No,” she said. “I’m being silly. I just get nervous, I guess.”

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  “Please,” she said. “Will you come? I really want you to come.”

  She kissed the side of my face and then my neck. I closed my eyes and envisioned us again as the ancestral shtetl women. We were in a dark cottage that smelled of cholent. Everything stank like potatoes, chicken schmaltz, turnips, beef. The house was so tiny that we were forced to be intimate. Only now, in this vision, I was not a woman, but Miriam’s husband. She was trying to convince me to do something or other—let her trade the mule for a new saucepan, maybe—by kissing me.

  No, that was not right. Start again. We were in the dark cottage. It was still pungent with potatoes. But she was nobody’s wife, and I was nobody’s husband. I was a woman. We were daughters of the village. We were both beautiful. She was plumper than I was, but I was a well-fed beauty too. I suppose we were wealthy, then, even though the house we were in was so small. Was it my parents’ house or her parents’ house? Was it a house we had snuck into?

  No, that was not right either. We were not in a house at all, but in the forest. We had snuck away with each other to an evergreen forest, two daughters of the shtetl, friends since childhood. We had snuck away in the dark of night so that we could have the whole forest floor to ourselves to make love. We had just fucked. We had fucked each other in our skirts. We had fucked each other in mutual desire and now we were lying on the forest floor curled up together, two girls in pine needles, under starlight. This was the definition of holy. Tell the village matchmaker not to bother with us. Here in the forest there was no potato smell, no pogroms. Only the scent of evergreens.

  I opened my eyes. Miriam didn’t seem worried about our future. I wondered if her faith in god made her believe that everything was going to work out for us. I decided that I would borrow some of her faith, siphon that solace of existing only here, in these sheets, because I didn’t want to think about the alternative. I hugged her, kissed her mouth softly. She was very warm. We were safe for now.

  CHAPTER 60

  When Mrs. Schwebel opened the door, she gave me a big smile.

  “Rachel!” she said.

  Then she noticed my outfit, the pants and matching blazer, and her face changed. She looked me up and down. I wondered if it was bad that I’d worn pants on Shabbat.

  “I brought you this,” I said, handing her a bottle of kosher white wine.

  “Wonderful,” she said briskly.

  In the hall, I pulled Miriam aside.

  “Should I have worn a skirt?” I whispered. “I feel like your mother doesn’t like that I’m wearing pants.”

  “No,” she said. “We’ve had women come over for Shabbat wearing pants. Don’t be self-conscious.”

  I followed behind her as she went into the kitchen to get some wineglasses.

  “Grab me a napkin off the counter,” she said.

  I handed her a big stack. But instead of taking the whole pile, she only took one. When I opened my hand, the napkins fluttered to the floor.

  “Oy,” she said, laughing.

  “I’ll pick them up,” I said, touching her on the arm.

  When I turned around to grab the ones that landed behind me, Mrs. Schwebel was standing in the entrance to the kitchen, watching us. Her eyes were narrowed. I wondered if it was something about this particular pair of pants that had bothered her. Maybe it was the full suit.

  I told myself to stop obsessing about what was wrong with Mrs. Schwebel and focus on Adiv. When he saw me in the kitchen, he waved as though I were an old friend, which I guess I kind of was. But seeing him made me feel sad. He looked different—no longer pale and lanky, but tan and buffed up. He had lost his boyishness, his awkwardness. Now he had a confidence that bordered on arrogance.

  “Try Rachel’s wine,” Miriam said to him at dinner.

  “I don’t like white,” said Adiv.

  “Since when?”

  He didn’t respond.

  “Try this other one, then—cabernet,” she said, bossing him around as usual.

  “I’m fine,” he said.

  “You’re not going to get drunk with me? Boring!”

  She picked up a glass and began to pour. But just as she reached the halfway mark, he jutted his hand out against the bottle to stop it, and the red wine spilled onto her denim skirt.

  “Adiv!” said Miriam.

  Noah and Eitan laughed.

  “Go get me some seltzer!” she said.

  But Adiv just sat there and stared ahead calmly.

  “I told you I was fine,” he said.

  CHAPTER 61

  That night in the Schwebels’ basement, I couldn’t sleep. The sheets were very cold, and every time I tossed and turned, I felt like my feet were touching something wet. At 2 a.m., I finally kicked off the covers and tiptoed upstairs to Miriam’s room. I knew that I shouldn’t, but I couldn’t help myself. I got into bed with her and put my arms around her big belly, pressed myself against her ass. Miriam stirred, then she put her hands on mine.

  “Is it okay that I’m here?” I whispered into her ear.

  She rolled over to face me.

  “Shhhhh,” she said.

  She got up and locked the door. Then she came back into bed and began kissing me, rubbing her body against my body. Gladly I kissed her back, crawled on top of her. On the other side of the wall was Ayala’s room, and I knew we could not make a sound. I kissed her very quietly all the way down to her pussy. She was wearing a nightgown to her ankles, and I pulled it up, exposing all of her pallor in the dark. But when I went to take the nightgown over her head, she said, “No, leave it on,” and so it remained up around her neck like a funny scarf.

  I buried my face in her soft pubic hair. Wetness was running out of her, and I wondered if she had been like that at dinner. Her pussy tasted different tonight, like pure water, spring water from a mountain in Austria or Switzerland. She tasted Alpine. She tasted… Christian? I had never eaten her on Shabbat, and I tried not to laugh when I thought, A Shabbos goy is running this pussy tonight.

  I put two of my fingers inside her and fucked her while I licked her clit. When she gasped, I shoved my other fingers in her mouth to quiet her down. She sucked on my hand and thrust herself in my face. Then I felt her come, contracting and surging with her usual brine. The Shabbos goy was gone. It was the seventh day.

  CHAPTER 62

  I sat in the avocado-green living room looking at a photo book called Israel: An Introduction. Miriam was still upstairs. Ezra crawled around at my feet. Mrs. Schwebel came in. She did not offer me any challah or tea. Instead, she looked at the sofa where I was seated, sighed, then walked out again. I wasn’t sure if the sigh was for me or for Ezra. I was worried. The look on her face seemed troubled, even disgusted. The corners of her mouth turned down. It was like she was going to sneeze, then didn’t. I wasn’t sure whether I should go try to grovel, suss her out, or just sit there. I stayed put.

  I looked at a photo of the Dome of the Rock, its intricate blue tiles and beaming golden dome. Qubbat As-Sakhrah: Seventh-century Islamic edifice enshrining the rock from which Muhammad is said to have ascended to heaven, read the caption. I thought about my grandparents, and I wondered how they felt about this beautiful old mosque. Did they love it like they loved the rest of Israel? Probably not.

  What did it mean to love something so much and also be wrong about it? What did it mean to love a version of something that might not really exist—not as you saw it? Did this negate the love? Was the love still real?

  Mrs. Schwebel came into the living room again.

  “Rachel,” she said, “would you please cover your arms when you’re in our home?”

  I
t was true, I was still wearing the T-shirt I’d worn to sleep, and it only came to my elbows.

  “Oh shoot,” I said, flailing. “I’m sorry.”

  “And Ezra, let’s go,” she said.

  I stood up, followed her out of the living room, Ezra crawling behind me. Why was I such an idiot? In the hallway, we ran into Miriam coming down the stairs.

  “Hi Mom,” said Miriam.

  Mrs. Schwebel looked at her.

  “What?” she asked her daughter.

  “Hi,” said Miriam.

  “Hi,” she replied briskly.

  When Mrs. Schwebel went into the kitchen, I made Miriam stay out with me in the hall.

  “Hey,” I whispered. “I hope everything is okay. Your mother seems—weird.”

  “Shhhh,” she said. “You have to be quieter!”

  Sorry! I mouthed.

  It was the first time I could remember Miriam ever scolding me. She beckoned me to follow her farther down the hall, away from the kitchen.

  “This is why I didn’t want you here for Shabbat,” she hissed.

  “Why?”

  “You know. You should not have come upstairs last night.”

  “You didn’t exactly kick me out.”

  We were quiet.

  “I’m sorry,” I said finally. “I’m not trying to cause a rift between you and your mother.”

  “But you are!”

  “Do you think she knows?” I asked.

  “She may not know exactly. But something is up. She’s a smart woman.”

  “And you care?”

  “About what?”

  “What she thinks.”

  “Of course I do,” she said. “I love her.”

  This kind of love seemed strange to me. It was not out of love that I’d obeyed my mother, not really. It was out of fear, the way a person might placate a punishing god. Ultimately, I’d always been terrified that if I didn’t please my mother, she would smite me. But I believed Miriam when she said that she cared out of love.

  “Even if she is dead wrong?” I asked.

  “Wrong about what?” asked Miriam.

  “That two women together are… disgusting!”

  “Yes, even if she’s wrong,” she whispered. “But she isn’t.”

  I felt like she’d punched me in my throat. My tongue was thick and furry in my mouth.

  “Do you want me to leave?” I asked.

  “No!” she said. “That would look weird. You have to stay.”

  I thought about Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel in the calla lily. He had said that Miriam and I were a mitzvah. I wanted to tell her that a famous rabbi from the sixteenth century, a mystical rabbi from Prague, had given us his blessing.

  “Okay,” I said.

  CHAPTER 63

  I wished I could enjoy Saturday’s Shabbat lunch, all of the Schwebels gathered around the table. But the cholent tasted different this time, bland. I found it hard to swallow it down. I wondered if the dish had ever been flavorful at all.

  “Look at my soldier,” said Mrs. Schwebel, ruffling Adiv’s hair. “Doing god’s work. Spiritually and physically.”

  What did she imagine Adiv was doing in Israel? How could she be so sure of what god thought: about soldiers, the occupation?

  “Do we really know?” I murmured.

  Miriam, seated next to me, nudged my leg with hers under the table. But Mrs. Schwebel had heard me.

  “Excuse me?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” I said.

  Everyone at the table was silent. They all looked at me. I could feel my pulse beating in my temples.

  “Please, Rachel,” said Mrs. Schwebel calmly. “I’d like to know what you said.”

  I took a deep breath. A tiny piece of vegetable flew from my molar into my throat. I coughed it back out into my mouth, then swallowed it.

  “I guess I was just wondering how we know,” I said. “Like know, know. What god wants.”

  “God wants to see the state of Israel protected,” she said. “Don’t you think god wants to see Israel protected? Don’t you think god wants Israel to flourish?”

  What had I done?

  “I just mean—I guess it’s hard for me to believe that god is happy when people are suffering,” I said. “You know. With the occupation and everything. The conditions in Gaza and everything.”

  “You’ve been to Gaza?” asked Mrs. Schwebel.

  I shook my head no.

  “No. I didn’t think so. You told us you’ve never been to Israel.”

  “You’re right,” I said.

  “Okay, then.”

  Satisfied, she began eating again.

  Just keep your mouth shut, I said to myself.

  Fine, I replied.

  “But what about the history?” I heard myself say aloud. “What kind of god would be happy with seeing hundreds of thousands of people expelled from their homes?”

  “Rachel!” said Miriam angrily.

  She had her pointer finger in her mouth and was biting her nail. I noticed that her thumbnail and ring finger were bitten too, up past the skin. When had she started biting her nails?

  It dawned on me then that Miriam might not know how the Palestinians had been expelled—that she might never have learned about it. I wasn’t taught this in my Jewish education either.

  Mr. Schwebel met my eyes. It seemed he was aware of what I was talking about. Then he looked back down at his plate quickly again and put his fork into a tender piece of beef.

  “There’s something that the Palestinians call the Nakba,” I said. “It refers to when they were driven from their homes into exile—when Israel became a state. It sort of puts a different perspective on Israeli independence. I mean, I was taught that the Palestinians went to war with us. But I don’t think that’s true. If you’re kicked out of your home, I don’t think you’re going to war if you retaliate. You’re just defending your home.”

  There was silence at the table. Adiv got up and went to the bathroom. Miriam was still chewing on her pointer fingernail. I wondered if I had somehow transmitted the habit to her, if she’d caught it from me.

  “That isn’t true,” said Mrs. Schwebel. “I don’t know where you got that information, but it’s wrong.”

  I’d never been a good debater, and I could not point to one place where I had gotten my information. The Internet, mostly. Students for a Free Palestine. Arguments between stoned people at college parties. Half an audiobook called Disputed Yesterdays: The Israeli-Palestinian Conflict Made Simple.

  “What part?” I asked. “That they didn’t live there first? That they weren’t kicked off their land? That when someone attempts to reclaim what belongs to them, it’s not an attack but a defense?”

  “All of it,” she said. “The land belonged to Britain. It didn’t belong to anyone else. It did not belong to the Palestinians any more than it belonged to the Christians who lived there. The British gave it to us. It was given as a reparation for the Holocaust, because we had nowhere else to go and we should never have nowhere to go again.”

  “But there were Palestinians living there,” I said.

  “So they were relocated,” said Mrs. Schwebel. “So what? That’s history. It’s just how it is.”

  “Is it?” I asked.

  “They had plenty of time to make peace. They were given land in the separation, and they chose not to accept it. They chose to always stay and fight. They brought the rest of the Arab world into it with them. And that’s the thing, if the Arab world cared so much about the Palestinians, why didn’t they give them any of their own land? If they cared so much, why didn’t Egypt just cut out a slice for them? Because Egypt didn’t actually care about the Palestinians. It’s purely anti-Semitism.”

  “Well, I don’t know about that,” I said.

  “What don’t you know? That history belongs to the victor? How about you give up your apartment right now? That land once belonged to the Native Americans, but I don’t see anybody coming after that now. It’s only whe
n it’s Israel and the Jews are involved that people raise a stink, because they like to have a reason to hate the Jews.”

  I didn’t know what to say.

  “The Arab world does not care about the Palestinians one bit or they would give up a cut of their land. Israel is only the size of New Jersey. Why should we be asked to give up what is rightfully ours?” she asked.

  “But is it rightfully ours?”

  She ignored my question.

  “It’s only because people hate the Jews that they take the side of the Palestinians. That is the truth. It’s true of anyone who believes that Israel does not have a right to exist.”

  Now I was silent. Adiv was still in the bathroom. Miriam picked up her glass and took a sip of water. Her cuticle was bleeding. She wouldn’t look at me.

  “Let me ask you,” Mrs. Schwebel continued, “do you hate yourself? Because that’s the only reason why I could see picking a side against your own. My guess is that you do. You hate yourself. You must, or else why would you go against your own people?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “Maybe I do hate myself. But I know it’s more complicated than that. I just—I want to know what is right, what is the truth about that part of the world. I feel like I have never known the truth.”

  “Do you hate our family? Do you hate us?”

  “Of course not,” I said. “Of course I don’t hate your family. I really love being here. I’m grateful to be here. I love your cooking and the way that this house feels and the way that you welcomed me as a Jew.”

  “Maybe that was foolish of us,” she said. “To have welcomed you with such open arms. You take the welcome you receive for granted. You think that Israel is just an idea that you can toy with and play with. But you don’t know what it was like before it existed, when there was nowhere, no homeland for the Jews. What do you think it was like then? No, I think you must hate yourself—and more than that, you must hate us.”