Ser La Leche
Clayre Benzadón
Gutpunch as soon as the soap-sour aroma touches the two front teeth, buoys creamy, full-bodied, at the roof of the mouth, gurgle-clogs the throat with foam.
O se, mala leche. Si tomas leche así, del carton, y sabe podrida: mala suerta, sabes?
As in, I am the milk, like I am the shit, sick, in liquid form—take me as I am.
Cuando te doy una leche—it’s a gesture towards sweetness, sis. I’m thinking of the juxtaposition of the phrase “don’t cry over spilled milk,” and how the tongue is naturally more sensitive to dulce (de leche) when things are hotter (like me, when I want to be).
I’m thinking more of the spilling as useful, a tactic, pouring a glass of it over your head: here, have this milk, drink it, bit(ch) of milk magic (like Milk Bar, or the makeup company).
Sometimes, the sourness begins to froth when mom or dad tells me, “estás de mala leche hoy,” or especially when remembering the taste of the off-white liquid protein substitute they used to make me gulp down—I’d hold my nose every time I had to ingest a tablespoon of artificial lemon, a toxin I’d almost puke back into the amber bottle—
For dad, the most important part of a child’s growth involved strong bones: his reminder—proteina!—sounded like the got milk? campaign, but to advertise Cola Cao Chocolate Drink Mix instead; worst would have been to have a son who ended up enclenque, weak, feeble, lanky . . .
I lap up what I can get, I guess; see, I am the milk because the body inhabits what it’s most averse to. Milk is the food of the gods, the first human diet, yet galactosemia means something else: galactose + blood, or the accumulation of galactose in my blood, the inability to properly metabolize sugar into the galactic—in this way I unshapen, travel all the way down to the gut, then eventually collect in the liver.
Sí, soy la leche. Maybe I’m milking it, but my instincts tell me I’ve been that lost boy on the milk carton for so long, people finally know who I am: except I’m not the proud son, I don’t have the muscle for it. Sometimes it meant I was the schoolkid without a proper birthday party (I couldn’t have my cake, and I couldn’t eat it either).
Women tend to have smaller, thinner bones than men.
I’m trying to metabolize this fact. I’m churning it. No matter what form the milk surfaces as, maybe all I’m reaching for, wading towards, is to reach kin above the milk skin, to form into nata, a delicacy soft to taste, melt-in-the-mouth digestible.
What it really boils down to is this:
more than I try to skim
/ the girl out myself,
more than anything,
I’m the (m)ilk
/ of my mother.
