Read Online Milk by Emily Hammond - Free Book Online

time we have a drill at school, either for earthquakes in which we crawl under our desks, or for civil defense in which we all troop to the auditorium single file, I panic. My heart rocks against the walls of my chest, I can hardly breathe. Outwardly, I look the same as all the other kids, crouching under my desk with my skirt clutched against my thighs so the boys can’t see my underwear, or in the auditorium, acting bored and restless along with everyone else, glancing casually at my brother Corb as I would a stranger. Inside of me, panic. Can’t remember my name or address, can’t distinguish my right hand from my left. I remember that my mother is dead, a refrain: my mother’s dead, Charlotte’s dead … but I can’t remember anything about them. Nobody talks about them, not my father or my aunt or uncle or cousins, or my teachers, not even my brother. Nobody says suicide. My mother’s dead, Charlotte’s dead, mother’s dead, Charlotte’s dead.…

S EVEN
    I wake up sneezing, as I always do at the Alta Vista. Sneeze and sneeze again, dust motes swirling in the sunlight. I’m nauseated, too, so I reach for my saltines on the nightstand—I keep the box double-wrapped in plastic bags, old-lady-style. Fear of cockroaches and mice, though I have yet to see either here.
    Half reclining, I eat saltines, a tip I got out of my one book on pregnancy so far, bought at Thrifty’s. “Eat the saltines before getting out of bed; this will stabilize the stomach acids.” A book that’s about twenty years out of date, even if this particular piece of advice seems to work. The rest of the book is about not gaining very much weight; disguising the weight you do gain; losing weight after the baby’s born. Pictures of slim, smiling mothers holding infants so teeny they could fit inside the curl of their mothers’ flip hairdos.
    I bought the book, along with a standard paperback thesaurus, when I bought the sheets for this bed. I figured if I had to be here even one more night, it would be worth a new set of sheets. The existing sheets were threadbare and smelled of old people, ancient sex, body odor; the new set smells of air wicks, scented toilet paper. A floral print—the sheets have a white background, orange and blue and prune-colored flowers.
    Throwing back the sheets, I run to the toilet. Dry heaves. Pregnancy, or guilt over last night? The baby’s punishment for dining with a man other than the baby’s father. But nothing happened, or so I tell the baby. Nothing really.
    We kissed a long time in the car. I prevented Gregg’s hands, and mine, from traveling any further. I said “no” a few times. “This is it, Gregg, for old time’s sake. No more.”
    â€œWhy not?” he asked.
    â€œWell, I’m married, for one thing.”
    He wrenched away from me.
    â€œI wasn’t going to tell you,” I say. All during dinner I kept my left hand in my lap like a well-mannered person, the foundation I dabbed on my finger a poor disguise. It was sort of a relief to tell him. “I’m thirty-five,” I said. “Did you think I’d been alone all these years?” I didn’t bother mentioning I was married the last time I saw him, four years ago. “Anyway, I’m separated.”
    â€œSince when?”
    â€œA week.”
    â€œOne week?”
    I nodded.
    We began making out again. What else was there to do?
    â€œI almost got married,” Gregg said suddenly, disengaging himself again.
    â€œWhen?”
    â€œTwo years ago.”
    â€œSince then, what?”
    Exchanging romantic résumés, reluctantly, resentfully. You’d think we might’ve covered this during dinner, but instead I strung Gregg along with stories about my job. Funny stuff. Not the writing part—boring—but the photo shoots I travel to several times a year. The boxes and hangers and bags full of clothes,