Chapter 4: Tuesday

"She had a baby?" I'd just started to fill in Nikki on the Carmen story daddy had told me the night before. I kept talking in spite of her question. We were in the cafeteria eating lunch.

"No wonder they're so big," she said when I got to the fact that she was still lactating. I saw the next question spring into my friend's eyes. But I forestalled it by telling her about the rape. She was as shocked as I'd been.

"What pricks," she hissed when I told her how the men had probably drugged her and then taken turns.

"Somebody should kill them," she said when I told her she'd woken bruised and broken in a strange apartment.

She listened quietly as I told her how she'd arrived months later at dad's office door. Of how he'd helped her. Of how daddy had helped arrange the adoption. Of the breastfeeding. Then I told her that Carmen was still lactating.

"Huh. I thought you said she gave the baby away three months ago?"

"There's another hungry baby," I told my friend.

"Another baby? Who?"

"Well how do you think she's paying daddy's bill?" I said conspiratorially.

"WHAAAAAAT!" Nikki screeched. I just smiled. "She lets your dad--" For a sec Nikki was at a loss for words. Which was very, very unusual.

"He sucks them," I finished for her.

"He can't!"

"Then they make love," I said.

"Your dad told you he sucks milk from Carmen's breasts and then he fucks her."

"He didn't say he fucked her."

"But isn't that unethical? I mean your dad is a member of the bar."

"He said it's okay to go out with a client once the case is finished. Anyway she's leaving town soon."

"She is?"

"The couple that adopted the baby gave her enough money for two years at cooking school. In Miami. She's leaving in two weeks."

"Does your dad want her to leave?"

"I don't think so but he knows it's best for her. He said he's going to have to find another girl to milk."

"He did not."

"He says he's doing it for the environment."

"Bullshit!"

"It's true. For Earth Day he wants you to consider using your breasts to help feed the poor."

"You've made this whole story up haven't you? He's never milked Carmen."

"It's true. And you've had some too. So have I." I winked at Nikki across the table.

"Had what?"

"Carmen's milk".

"No way!"

"You know that ice cream churn he sometimes uses? Guess who provides the milk when daddy wants to make homemade ice cream for our banana splits." Nikki's eyes opened in dawning realization. "He's also used it in other stuff we've eaten."

"How much milk can she make?" She still wasn't one hundred percent sure I was telling the truth.

"It depends on how often she's milked," I answered. Nikki had no idea how much milk a women could produce and I knew it. "Gallons a week," I whispered in her ear.

"Really? So your father hasn't been sperming us after all?"

Well that was another story. And in the last couple of days I'd actually come to believe that he was. But why would he be? But I didn't tell Nikki my doubts. Instead I figured I'd get her going a little more. Heck it was usually her who was trying to trick me.

"Daddy now believes all young women should be lactating."

"He does not." I just nodded yes. "What, he even wants his daughter pregnant?"

"You don't have to get pregnant to start lactating. There are other ways."

"What other ways?"

"Daddy says that there are almost two billion women in the world who could be producing milk if it could be organized. Just imagine how many gallons of milk that would be!"

"He's crazy. You're crazy," Nikki accused.

"He's going to talk about it with us on Saturday when we celebrate Earth Day."

"We're not going to help clean up the riverbank this year? Or plant trees?" my friend asked. Every year for the last four my dad had insisted we'd accompany him on some Earth Day project.

"Un uh." I shook my head no. "The Earth Day foundation wants everyone to celebrate it this year by making individual earth friendly commitments. Their goal this year is a billion small commitments from people around the globe."

"No one is drinking milk from my breasts," the Nikkster promised.

"What if daddy wants to suck them?' I asked.

"Do you think he wants to?" In answer I held my hands even wider apart than I had the day before.

"I think sometimes Carmen sprays dad's penis with milk before they--" I didn't finish my sentence. Instead I stood up and walked away.

"You are such a liar," I heard as I retreated. But as we learned later Carmen had done exactly that. And she'd put her milk other places too...

Daddy and I didn't say a word that evening about where we were going to sleep that night. Not during dinner. Nor later after I'd finished my homework. Nor when we watched the eleven o'clock news together. But I knew who I was going to sleep with that night. And I'm pretty sure so did he.

So, after I'd taken a quick shower and had dabbed a touch of perfume behind my ears, and after I'd slipped into a spaghetti strapped chemise that only came down to my mid thigh, I didn't jump into my bed. Instead I drifted down to daddy's room. I also accidently forgot to put my panties on.

"I have more questions," I whispered. I had arrived in his bedroom just seconds before. He hadn't said a word when I'd slipped under his top sheet. I'd nestled up against him. Daddy was naked! Where were his pajama bottoms I wondered? Had he been expecting me? Hoping that I'd come? I suddenly knew that he had.

"What?" he finally asked.

"It's about boys. Boy things."

"Is it?" he asked dubiously. But that didn't stop him from putting his arm around me.

"I don't know anything about boys. And Greg never answers any of my questions."

"What kind of questions?" Still dubious. But his body was so warm.

"Daddy, did you masturbate when you were a boy?"

"You asked him about--"

"The Internet's okay for learning stuff but--"

"Maybe you should talk to your mother," dad suggested. In answer I leaned over and turned on the light.

"Mom's hopeless talking about sex," I said. "And what would she know about male masturbation anyway? You'd have stopped by the time you got married."

"Stopped?"

"Well once a man gets married he must stop that other stuff," I said innocently. I perhaps knew a little more about it that I let on – I'd spent my last period Math class surreptitiously surfing the net on the subject of masturbation. "So did you? When you were a boy? And when did you stop?"

I don't think my father would have answered my questions except for the preposterousness of them and the ignorance about human sexuality I was demonstrating. I'm pretty sure that he instantly rationalized that it was better to fill me in on some of these things than it was to send his almost nineteen year old daughter off to college totally ignorant of male sexuality.