Chapter 3 - The Taste of Poison
Sharon stopped three feet from the garbage can.
Her gaze shifted from Micah’s milk-covered hands to my tear-streaked face, and finally down into the open maw of the municipal bin. Her expression didn't show panic. It didn't show remorse.
It settled into that practiced, patronizing purse of the lips she used whenever someone placed a fork on the wrong side of the dinner plate.
“Oh,” she said lightly, adjusting the foil on her casserole dish. “I see you found where I cleared out the junk.”
Micah took a step forward, his voice trembling with a terrifying blend of rage and confusion. “Mom… what did you do?”
Sharon sighed, a theatrical exhalation that suggested she was dealing with two dramatic toddlers. “Micah Thomas, don't use that tone with me. I spent four hours in the kitchen today braising chicken and dicing vegetables so you two would have decent, hot meals when you finally drag yourselves back from that depressing hospital. You should be thanking me.”
“Thanking you?” The words tasted like acid in my mouth. I stepped between her and Micah. “You threw away one hundred and twenty bags of my daughter's milk.”
Sharon waved a dismissive, manicured hand. “Oh, stop catastrophizing, Amanda. It was taking up the entire freezer! You had bins and bins of it stacked like bricks. It wasn't natural. I couldn't even fit a loaf of bread in there.”
“It was Romy’s food!” I yelled, taking a step toward her. “She was born at thirty-one weeks! Her intestines can’t process cow’s milk formula! Kim told you that. Micah told you that!”
“Kim is a nurse, not God,” Sharon snapped, her sugary suburban facade cracking just enough to reveal the cold concrete underneath. “And I raised three children without a plastic pump hooked up to my chest like a dairy cow. Formula is perfectly fine. Millions of babies drink it. When you bring that baby home on Monday, she needs to be drinking fresh milk, or a good, fortified formula like Similac. Not something that’s been sitting next to frozen peas for two months gathering freezer burn.”
“It doesn't get freezer burn in deep-freeze bags!” Micah shouted. His voice broke, cracking open completely. I had never, in the eight years we had been together, heard him raise his voice at his mother. “Mom, that was forty-two days of Amanda’s life! Do you have any idea what she went through to pump that? The alarms every three hours? The infections? The mastitis?”
Sharon’s eyes narrowed. She didn't look at Micah; she looked at me. It was a cold, calculating look, the gaze of a woman who had decided weeks ago that I was an obstacle in her grandmotherly fantasy.
“She’s obsessed, Micah,” Sharon said softly, her voice dropping into that poisonous, reasonable cadence designed to make anyone who opposed her seem insane. “Look at her. She’s hysterical. She’s running herself into the ground over ounces and milliliters. She’s not bonding with the baby; she’s bonding with a machine. I did what a mother should do: I forced a clean slate. You'll thank me when you're not chained to that schedule.”
“Give me the key,” I whispered.
Sharon blinked. “What?”
“Give me the house key. Right now.”
Sharon laughed, a high, musical sound that made my skin crawl. “Don't be ridiculous, Amanda. This is my son’s house.”
“It is *our* house,” Micah said, stepping shoulder-to-shoulder with me. His face was stark white, but his jaw was locked. “Mom. Give her the key.”
Sharon’s smile vanished completely. The sweet mother-of-three mask fell away, leaving behind the bitter, controlling matriarch who had spent the last two months telling everyone at her church that her daughter-in-law was failing to carry a pregnancy to term.
“You’re taking her side?” Sharon whispered, her eyes flashing with cold fury. “After everything I’ve done? After I cleaned your bathroom? After I bought your groceries?”
“You threw away our daughter's lifeline because you wanted room for chicken and rice!” Micah roared. “Give us the damn key, Mom!”
Sharon stared at him for five long seconds. Then, slowly, with deliberate malice, she reached into her pocket. She slid our brass front-door key off her gold keychain.
She didn't hand it to Micah.
She let it drop into the gravel at my feet.
“You’ll call me by Sunday,” Sharon said, her voice chillingly calm as she adjusted her quilted vest. “When you realize that baby won't latch, and your milk dries up from all this silly stress, you’ll call me to bring over the formula I already bought. You mark my words.”
She turned on her sensible heel, climbed back into her Buick, and slammed the door.
The engine roared to life. She backed down the driveway without looking back, her taillights leaving bloody red streaks across our dark street.
May you like
I stood in the gravel, shivering in the October wind, staring down at the brass key lying in the dirt next to my husband’s milk-stained work boots.
***
