Even in the last weeks of her pregnancy, just before Christmas, she had floated like a large helium balloon over tender images of mothers in pastel pajamas, of contented sucklers peacefully sleeping on the breasts of their content feeders. There were also images of pregnant women eating smaller but more frequent and healthier meals, colorful and harmoniously arranged on large plates; doctor’s offices in dazzling white where both the consulting doctor and the consulted couple appeared to be levitating in some kind of spacecraft. Then there were images of mildly frowning pregnant women giving birth and holding onto their big bellies, images of newborns stylized like elves on little plush blankets, their little heads wrapped in cabbage leaves or flower petals. At the very end were images of handsome, self-sacrificing, and proud fathers, images of grandmothers and grandfathers, in sportswear and in shape, whose only dream in life was to devote themselves to their grandchildren. No one, not one person, talked about the blood. About how two packs of cotton pads weren’t enough to absorb the bloody torrent that flowed from a woman in the first twenty-four hours after childbirth when half of her genitals along with her large intestine bulged out in swelling, no one, not one person, talked about the deafeningly sharp pain when a doctor grabs you down there to check how far you’ve dilated, no one, not one person, ever talked about the enema administered before childbirth or that breastfeeding was in no way a spontaneous, meditative act, or how the fatigue that struck a woman after childbirth resembled an asteroid impact on Earth. No one ever mentioned that the husbands, if they were honest, would rather leave everything to the mothers and go hunting or fishing, while the grandparents were either seriously ill or dead or simply looking to keep their hands unoccupied with the time they had left.
That’s how it was when Lea and Tea were born, and a week after giving birth she ritualistically threw out all her breastfeeding manuals, her books on pregnancy and child development, brochures of all sizes she had collected at various ob-gyn offices where the crowds were endless, the seats carved with scribbles of penises and Croatian fascist symbols, and where the women sat side by side, bloated, silent, and enclosed in their own worlds as though in some invisible capsules. She had sat in her fair share of waiting rooms during insemination, and then waited in line for in vitro fertilization in her late thirties. Fertilization had succeeded so well that she was eventually met with two embryos. Actually three, but one leaked out of her as a bloodstain in the third week. A multifetal pregnancy resulting from infertility treatment is considered a medical failure, they explained to her. The first time she left the apartment with the twins, crammed into a stroller as big and heavy as a coffin, she heard a twenty-something girl quietly tell her boyfriend that she’d kill herself if that happened to her. She hadn’t said it quietly enough.
During those first days after the twins came into the world, it was of utmost importance to establish a breastfeeding routine, produce and retain milk, with everyone cheering loudly on the sidelines—the visiting nurse, husband, one set of grandparents, the second set of grandparents, extended family, and friends.
“Hey Mama, how many feedings did you get in today?” the visiting nurse would ask with a penetrating look at her cleavage, unimpressed by the state of the milk factories. Just in case, a package of formula lurked on their kitchen cupboard like an inverted cross. If she failed, everyone would be disappointed, and the twins’ eventual allergies and malignant diseases would be her fault. She felt like the decisive penalty shooter at the World Cup, and in fact she was expected to be a nursing Madonna, mystical and calm like in those little pictures the parish priest handed out while blessing people’s homes. All the while, they, the public, were dispensing advice, chock-full of it like those brochures. Drink plenty of fluids, sugary foods are good for milk production, don’t drink sage tea, quince compote will do you good, sleep, rest, and don’t worry, no one shall be more important to you now than your two children—the two children that God has so generously bestowed upon you. She also received all kinds of tinctures and beverages, teas for breastfeeding, fresh-squeezed juices—she wasn’t allowed to drink tap water and was brought packages of Jana spring water because God only knows what one might discover in our tap water. Out of all the possible forms of help, only gallons and gallons of fluids were offered to her as though she were a relief agency in some Middle Eastern desert. The whole pantry was packed with bottles of Jana. She looked at those bottles during the first few days after giving birth as if a cataclysm had hit the earth and she would survive only as long as there was water in those plastic bottles. And then somehow they became an integral part of her. She would drain the bottles, Tea and Lea would suckle her, and so on, no end in sight. A human organism consists of ninety percent water. Sort of like a cucumber. Sort of like a watermelon. Bottles of Jana—full, empty, half-full, half-empty—were all over the apartment. On the nightstand, five of them would huddle together by the lamp like penguins with blue labels on their bellies. Some liquid remained at the bottom of these bottles, while others were now filled with tea. They lay overturned on the bookshelves in the living room. They banded together on the floor in large groups like bowling pins. More than once, delirious from sleeplessness, she would inadvertently kick them and they would scatter across the apartment with a dull crinkling sound.
And these were no ordinary bottles. These bottles had messages written on them. Nice messages. She would always make sure to read them. Truth be told, it was the only thing she could read between one, two, three breastfeeding sessions, diaper changes, pumping sessions, the plugging of one youngster then the other into her breasts—amid a chronic lack of sleep interrupted every forty-five minutes, the time it took for one and then the other newborn to get their fill. A message for you. Happiness is the decision to silence negativity. And she tried that. When you are happy, even the sun breaks through the clouds to show its smile. Happiness was supposed to flow like water from the mouths of the plastic bottles. According to Jana. She should have felt happy as a mother, as a wife, as a daughter-in-law, and as a feeder—doubly so. But all she felt in those first days was worry and fear of losing her milk, of crushing or starving those itty-bitty, fragile bodies that cried and lay helpless like insects rolled on their backs. Her sleep became a ping-pong ball in a match between Tea and Lea. Fatigue and fear were all she felt, overcast with a cloud of guilt because immediately after giving birth she hadn’t been hit by a meteor of endless love and tenderness for her two newborn babies.
Her husband would disappear and reappear as the routine of his workday dictated. Gone at nine, back at five. He would miss several cycles of feeding, sleeping, and wailing and slip into the house during the evening idyll. The apartment would usually be in disarray, as though there’d been a break-in. Midway through her pregnancy, her own mother had announced to her that she would be alone through it all, that she’d need to rely on herself and her own strength because her mother would not be able to help her and it would simply be foolish to expect much from men. She’d already given so much of herself to her three children that she had no more strength left and, come on, twins weren’t exactly an atomic bomb—there could have been three, or more for that matter. That’s what you get when you wait too long to have children. She clearly remembered those words which for months had fueled her rage. She’d prepared for labor like a skydiver. And then jumped.
The bottles accumulated, the apartment looked like a recycling yard, a dairy, and a water-bottling plant rolled into one. Between the clothes, the diapers, and the ironing boards, they sprouted and spoke their own language. Happiness is the highest form of success. The water she drank from all those bottles turned into milk. Like water, happiness must be given room to flow. Don’t worry, if you let it flow, you will still be its source. Pure love and pure water alone can sustain life. The factory was up and running. The milk was rushing out. Welling in her breasts. They would fill up with little lumps every hour, in time for the next feeding cycle. Crying from hunger, Lea and Tea would then hook onto her nipples, suckling and rotating in rhythm. And so on to infinity. The babies grew stronger while her strength irretrievably, endlessly, dripped from her with each drop of milk. The people around her were pleased. Every child beautifully and harmoniously flourishes. As a feeder, the happy mom nourishes.
On one occasion during the first three months, she tried to meet friends for coffee at a neighborhood café. They had secretly organized a get-together for her. They wanted to take her out so she wouldn’t forget life before Lea and Tea. The whole time the twins screamed like a cat being slaughtered with a blunt knife. She spent most of that time inside the tent fashioned from her nursing cover, adjusting their mouths on her nipples. Eventually, she gave up. She occasionally heard from her friends over Viber video because they wanted to see how the babies were coming along. No one wanted to visit her, in a distant neighborhood, in her small messy apartment with her two babies and bursting with bottles of Jana, since she would spend the bulk of the time breastfeeding anyway. Promises would dissolve, agreements would wither over time, as though she lived in a war-torn village in the mountainous Croatian hinterland where no one had set foot in ages. The only outings from the apartment during those first months were the fifteen-minute trips to the nearby DM for household and hygiene products. It was the nearest neighborhood store that she fled to every time she got the chance. Here—I am human, here—I shop. Here I escape to and rest. Here I can recall what it means to be a woman without breasts bursting with milk. But not for long. Halfway through the aisle of diapers, baby lotions, powders, and bath products, she would feel her milk welling up, from somewhere in the middle of her back, moving through indented little canals and spraying the pillowy lining of the nursing bra. She’d fly through the makeup aisle and make an emergency landing at the checkout. She would search through her wallet containing an entire library of various discount and reward cards, cards for diapers, cards for breastfeeding mothers, promotional vouchers for mothers, discounts for twins for up to five percent off the total price of essential newborn gear . . . She would stuff the box of diapers into a tote bag with the image of Ruđer Bošković on it and hurry back to the high-rise where she lived.
On the other side of the neighborhood stood an identical skyscraper. A few months earlier, from the sixteenth floor, a woman with a baby in her arms had jumped. People said her husband had been cheating on her since she became pregnant. They were all shocked and appalled, and they buried that woman many times over with their words, deep, deeper than the Earth’s molten core. Whenever she thought of the woman, that blunt little knife used for slaughtering cats would nick her gut. Milk throbbed in her temples. She clawed the air, her heart pounding and her hands clenched like talons. She circled above neighborhood cafés where people were chitchatting, calm and relaxed. As soon as she entered the elevator, she would start unbuttoning her shirt, and then, her breasts spilling out, dash free of the tight space. She could instinctively hear the muffled sound of crying. As she opened the door, the cries intensified. With a sigh of relief, her husband would hand her a screaming bundle swaddled in a white blanket and attend to his smartphone. The mouth of the hungry mammal would plug in and suck out the streams, rivers, and rivulets which flowed through the tiny canals. One, then another. She would then lie stiff for hours next to these huddled mammals attached to her body. Like little vampires, they charged up on the fluids and heat she supplied. And so on without end. Self-love is the highest form of love. Safeguard peace in difficult times, said Jana.
They said the first six months were the hardest. Then children purportedly started acclimating to other foods apart from her own body. But Lea and Tea had only tasted that other food to conclude that they’d rather continue drinking mother’s fantastic milk. They would lustfully pant as she unbuttoned her shirt. When they settled in, the nipple game commenced. As if they were chewing gum. It hurt so much. She had to forcibly unfasten them and put her fingers in their mouths so they would stop biting her. Their demand generated and intensified production. Her breasts were bursting with business. She wished such prosperity upon her own country. All things considered, it seemed like breastfeeding would go on indefinitely.
Only here and there would she hear the sound of a Viber call. Her friends. None of them had children. Each sucked their own bottle of Jana, its every message strengthening their self-love. She yearned for their freedom. She longed for their self-love time. She wanted a beer and a cigarette. Instead of reading Jana’s messages, she wished she was reading warnings on cigarette packs about the fatal effects smoking would inflict on her and her loved ones. She was afraid to admit it to anyone. They would crucify her. In the meantime, a chasm formed between her and her friends. They no longer had anything to talk about. As if they had parted long ago on rails that led in opposite directions and they no longer spoke a shared language. A quiet rage would come over her when they droned on about their cuticles and blackheads, about the annoying colleague who repeatedly asked them out, about workplace adultery and intrigue, late eBay orders, fake eyelashes that lasted only a week, lame concerts, and—imagine!—the gin and tonic being insufficiently fizzy . . . Shame would quickly overcome her and her rage would die down. She had chosen this for herself. She looked at her miniature image in the small square on Viber below the larger one of her friends. Her friends were so fresh and shiny, you could almost smell them through the phone. The dark circles under her eyes, her robe smelling of curdled milk, her stretched pajamas, her belly spilling out in waves, at least one baby on her breast at all times, the double chin, bloated like the right-wing politician Željka Markić, she looked at least fifteen years older than her peers. These conversations would drain what energy she had left, and she would tumble down from the chair straight into bed. The happiest moments are hardest to describe. It’s why we often say beauty is indescribable. She would lie down and stare at the eternally accumulating things. Towels, cotton pajamas, stretched sweatpants, nursing bras, laundry that should have been washed two days ago but hadn’t been and probably wouldn’t be for days, Pavlović baby ointments, promotional Sudocrem samples, diapers in plastic packaging from which an enormous leathery baby stared out at her. From certain angles, the baby in the picture sent chills down her spine, its face unusually stretched and one-eyed. All that remained of the outside world was a helium balloon shaped like a penguin, a gift from her friends back in December. It had been quietly deflating and now waddled wearily around the bedroom.
The days passed, a river of diapers flowed through their apartment, bottles of Jana rolled about, milk watered the creatures who grew like weeds and soon outgrew their clothes. Onesies and jumpsuits could no longer be pulled up over their legs, the skin of them flowing over four chubby thighs. Little Michelin girls, as their parents called them. Together they could carry a car on their backs. Her husband suggested wrapping them in newspaper, given how fast they were growing. Oh, how hilarious. Everyone, from the pediatrician to the family, was pleased with how Lea and Tea were developing. Her breasts filled up and then drained, filled up and then drained, with no end in sight. The children grew. And already they were rolling over, lifting their heads, picking through toys and other objects. Stuff. Our need for stuff is so innate, she thought every time she watched them flipping out over little rattles, teethers, and hanging mirrors—all those buzzing and flashing things. They touched them and feverishly shoved them into their mouths. Sometimes simultaneously. Things went into them and they got into things. The more bulbous and loud, the better. And when she thought a toy had grown out of favor, she would notice their newfound fascination with the fabric care tag appended to the toy. She once found Lea sleeping with a price tag sticking to her sweaty forehead, which she had forgotten to rip off a plush toy from her mom. Her mom tried to redeem herself with those gifts, because she was not and would never be the grandmother from the brochures. She would drop by in her chic clothes like some Josipa Lisac visiting a stable. The cumbersome heads of the two mammals would turn, like sunflowers toward the sun, in the direction of colorful little plush balls, their arms would stretch out for rattles and mirrors, their legs gently push them along as they crawled toward the electric outlet. But most of all, their heads turned toward her enormous breasts, from which, under great pressure, milk squirted out in thin jets.
June came and, in that sixth month of the twins’ lives, she expected something to change. She hoped the breastfeeding time would become shorter, and sleep time longer. The brochures had prophesied as much. Well, none of that happened. Lea’s and Tea’s bodies padded out, becoming soft and meaty. The pumps were running, the fuel was thinning, sleep came in fits. She never thought she’d transform into one of those mothers who breastfed indefinitely, but it was happening against her will. How could she even think of stopping, when withholding even a single drop incited the rage of the two-headed mammal? Besides, milk squirted out of her breasts like a garden sprinkler with an abundant water supply. It sprayed from one breast while the other was emptying. On the walls, she wrote Jana’s messages with her milk, the letters dripping like fresh white paint. Then she was rebuked for foolishly squandering her excess rations. The milk police kept a close watch. She began to collect the surplus. While one breast was being suckled by a head, the other breast jetstreamed milk into an empty Jana bottle. And so on to infinity. The messages on the bottle filled with milk. The white background made the letters of the messages seem even more fatalistic. The word impossible has no entry in my dictionary. Night and day became one moment with no end in sight. Everyone told her to be patient. While she no longer knew whether she was awake, asleep, or dreaming. The world around her was becoming a giant, wet impressionist painting. She no longer remembered who she was or what she did before giving birth. She felt like a sluggish and slimy queen bee, an enormous milk worm. Her friends became moths. Ruđer Bošković on the tote bag looked like he was sprouting vampire teeth. Like a withered plant, she stared at the wall while breastfeeding, at the palimpsest of milky messages she had personally composed. Oh fuck off, all of you, you motherfuckers!
One June afternoon, when her husband came home from work, she decided to put a stop to the unending cycle. She left them all together with a Jana bottle full of milk and went out of the apartment. She looked out at the neighborhood. She observed the world around her as if she were seeing it for the first time. She noted details she had missed during her quick flyovers. She noticed a pigeon carcass lying stiff in the parking lot. She noticed a granny with bright pink hair crossing the street with a walking stick. She saw the ground in front of the bakery kiosk plastered with chewing gum. A sick crow sitting on a little bench, completely unafraid of her. The street smelled of linden trees in blossom. She saw another crow pulling a bakery wrapper out of a trash can. She saw a faded ad about a woman who had gone missing. The notice was already torn in half, sun-whipped and softened by humidity. A neighbor had mentioned in passing that the woman had already been found, drowned in the Sava. The torrent had taken her all the way to Sisak. No one knew what had happened to her. Maybe she killed herself.
Her phone was ringing. Her husband was calling her to come back. Lea and Tea had already finished the bottle of milk and it wasn’t enough. She heard them screeching in the background. She hung up. She roamed around the neighborhood like a zombie and, for the first time in six months, she stopped caring. All sense of responsibility dissolved like a packet of frozen milk and the precious liquid now flowed drop by drop. She ignored the endless sound of the ringtone. Her husband and children were trying to summon her, while the Christmas compilation provided background noise for the June afternoon. The pop idol Saša Lozar was singing Last Christmas I gave you my heart for the thousandth time. But even that wouldn’t calm Lea and Tea, who relentlessly demanded her liquid love. Only a teat would calm them. They knew that themselves. Dad also knew, since he was calling her in a panic. Mom knew, too, and she wasn’t answering. Mom went to the nearest gas station and bought a can of beer. Hey Mama, have you lost your mind, you shouldn’t drink alcohol?! There was no nice message on the can, just the brand Ožujsko. She popped open the can. The phone vibrated tirelessly. She turned it off.
She drank the last drop of beer and headed, even she didn’t know where, along the edge of the expressway leading out of the city. It had been so long since alcohol had coursed through her veins. It felt good. She paused for a moment, intoxicated by the new perspective. The bare turf and the flat horizon surrounded her. She felt loosened by the beer and stumbled lightly by the cars, which honked at her as though at some lunatic. Intoxicated as she was, the road in front of her seemed unending. Suddenly, her breasts became lumpy, firm balls. She thought it was high time that she stopped breastfeeding.
