By Samantha Schwartz

I take my boobs off and hang them in the closet. The nipples are cracked and red, the left one cries out a tear of milk. I reach out with my bottle and capture it. Now is the time when I can fold my arms to my middle and not feel the weight, the ache, the presence of those twin lumps, when I can just be. I squeeze my middle and feel the welcoming flatness of my own body. Elbows rest on ribs, sternum nuzzles my arm, and very slowly each bone of my chest emerges, like stars at night after days of dull grey clouds.

I lean back on the bed. Fingers run the length of my stomach, push down the leftover paunch where Little Me used to live, rest on the thighs, now spongy and bump-dry from disuse. The muscles of my legs quiver to my touch, then lie still. I raise up my head and say hello to my toes, which wiggle in acknowledgement.

In the next room, Little Me cries, and like cause and effect, like lightening and then thunder, the boobs in the closet start to cry. I’m not quick enough. Several drops escape before I can shove the bottle under the nips. There’s a few more dribbles before he finally stops and the boobs take a rest. Then I rub cream over the puckers and massage the swollen skin above.

After looking both ways for interlopers, I slap the left one and it jiggles its neighbor. I play bongo drums on their sides and the boobs sway from side to side, slapping each other silly, almost reveling in their newfound double-D-ness. Then I stuff them in a bra, like shoving melons in a grocery bag.

***

Little Me on my side, about to slide off despite my wide hips, the dressed-up boobs thrown over my shoulder, holding the bra straps like a drawstring bag, I leave the house. There’s no time to strap them back on; we’re late for an appointment with the pediatrician. The boobs bump against my shoulder blades and I can already feel the wetness of the milk blooming through the bra, then through the shirts. Installing Little Me into the car is easier without them aching downward, jumping in pain each time my arm accidentally touches their swollen sides.

I put my boobs in the front passenger seat and point them outward. I’ve given them the faded denim shirt with old milk stains, so that my front seat companion looks like a headless down-on-their-luck sort of gal. Conversely, I’m wearing my new baby blue blouse that would howl in pain if even a drop of milk spilled on its silky surface. It cost a small bundle and gives me the shakes each time I slip it on, but then I look in the mirror and notice the color echoed in the pupils of my eyes, the way it clings to my ribcage like a lover. There will be a time later today when I will have to remove the silk and slap on my boobs with the stained denim shirt. But until then I breath in my baby blue silk.

***

At the pediatrician’s office, I am told that The Formula will lead to stupidity and torpor, an epidemic of dumb kids playing video games and slurping Yoo-Hoos through plastic straws. Say goodbye to Harvard or Yale if your kid gets The Formula. “It’s not natural, made in a warehouse,” the lactation specialist whispers to me as she massages the boobs. She had an orange for lunch; I can smell it on her fingers and will eventually smell it on the boobs. They lie over her lap like some tuckered-out porn star.

So I persevere. I nod, I squint, I take my place as a solider in World War Mothers against the dangers of The Formula. Later, the pediatrician tells me over the phone that Little Me must have The Formula or he will starve. Apparently the boobs have not been as productive as they could be. I look over at said boobs and give them a glare, and like small recalcitrant children, the left one looks away while the right one stares at me with all the fire of a thousand infected bacteria. Just yesterday, I dropped the boobs in the mud while leaning in to fetch Little Me from his car seat. I wiped the dirt from the nips but didn’t get every last bacterium and now it has taken residence in the right boob, the non-achiever, the sickie.

I count to ten before strapping them on and at ten the white-hot rage of infection grabs my chest like a fist on fire. Little Me takes his lunch while I slam my fist against the wall to combat the fire that takes hold of my boob. I look up at the ceiling and breathe in time to the light that swings over my head, jolted into motion by my rage. The suckling noise beneath accompanies my ragged breaths. Eventually the fire becomes a dull rumble and that too gives way to a warm ache. I sigh my last ragged breath. The dam has broken, the milk has flowed, the infection has receded. And yet, it won’t be enough. My body will fail this tiny little man.

Five minutes later, I’m in bed, sipping chamomile tea. Little Me is asleep against my sternum, his belly full of treachery—a combination of mother’s milk and The Formula, but a full belly it is. I contemplate the boobs, which I’ve removed and placed carefully on a soft blanket. Righty doesn’t look so sick and Lefty, perhaps feeling the companionship of kin, nestles against its twin. Both are red, of course, cracked, yes, and the milk still clings to the nips. But, feeling the baby against my bones, feeling the warmth of tea and life, we finally just are.

~~~~~

Samantha Schwartz is a public interest lawyer, recovering podcaster, and writer. She lives with her family in Northern California.