“if you can’t drink milk you have to go back”

“if you can’t drink milk you have to go back”

in response to Monica’s “Leave Genetics Out Of It”

I

Mother may I leave this room before my Dixie cup is empty? 1% being the gatekeeper between me and my small freedom. My mother dispassionately at the other end of the table, tired eyes locked with mine. My body bears resignation as I, fingers pinching my nose, take three sad gulps.

Fridays after work my mom will still drive 35 minutes to pack her minivan full of discount milk she bought on sale from ALDI. The minivan she’s perpetually behind on payments for. She will still complain about the price per gallon. And she will drive back home, unload her bounty, and crawl into bed, falling asleep to Extreme Makeover: Home Edition — Ty Pennington’s voice like the prayer she was too tired to speak.

II

America drinks milk straight from the gallon. Proud gulps for the liberty bell. Milk dripping from the corners of his mouth. Running down his neck like tears. America left the refrigerator door open, cool air pouring carelessly into the kitchen. America does not wipe his mouth clean, nor does he replace the empty gallon, but he says “Upon this industry, depends the very growth and virility of the white races” (President Hoover, 1923).

III

Who is milk to me? Milk is my mother’s maiden name going up in flames, written on a government document, as she stands back watching her debt grow. Because milk is the “perfect food,” the sliced bread of the federal dietary guidelines. The glorified pyramid, each triangle funded by the FDA, WDC, NRA. In fact the mechanisms supporting milk have not always been so wholesome. With our bread white and our milk whiter and our federal dollars that bring us food stamps my mother’s too proud to collect.

IV

But I choose to be the sweetened condensed milk poured with guilt into my father’s morning coffee. I choose to be my father’s stomach aching from the milk he cannot digest. I choose to be the dairy farmer’s tear that falls into soil– because he never wanted milk to go this way. I choose to be my mother on the other end of the table, eyes locked in protest.

EG