Milk Fed - Melissa Broder Page 0,43

aunt tried to be compassionate toward her. At the same time, she didn’t want this woman to go to jail for bringing in another kind of tree.”

“Jail?”

“It was serious business.”

“Okay. Keep going.”

“The aunt’s name was Puah, by the way.”

“Puah?”

“Yes. Puah Feinstein.”

“What about the tree woman’s name?” I asked, laughing.

“I don’t know,” said Miriam. “How about Esther?”

“Okay. One more question. Why didn’t Esther just move? To a place where evergreens were allowed and she felt more comfortable?”

“She didn’t want to move. It’s hard for a woman to move, to just separate from her family, stuff like that.”

“Yeah, I guess so. But I mean, how badly did Esther want these evergreens? Maybe rather than risking going to jail, or always being upset that she couldn’t have the evergreens, she could just go somewhere else, to another town, and be amongst them there.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t have made her happy to move to another town, you know?”

“I get it,” I said.

“Anyway, so Aunt Puah decided that she was going to have to find a way to stall Esther on her plan. So she told Esther that she should wait for a sign before she went and dug up a tree and brought it over. Aunt Puah instructed her to go to sleep each night and wait until, in her dreams, there appeared a bull. Okay, I think this is where the animals come in!”

“Okay.”

“Aunt Puah told Esther that if she saw a bull in a dream, and the bull was gentle and kind to her, then it was probably safe to go steal a sapling and bring it back. But if she dreamt that the bull was cruel and vicious, or tried to attack her in any way, that meant it was a bad omen. If the bull was violent, then she should in no way attempt to bring an evergreen tree into the town, or she would surely be punished terribly.”

“Shit.”

“Aunt Puah thought that she was being clever. After all, everyone knows that bulls are never gentle and are always charging at you, on the attack. So she figured that the dream would never come. What were the chances of Esther dreaming of a bull anyway?”

“Probably fairly slim.”

“Yes. Like a fifteen percent chance, maximum.”

“More like ten percent.”

“Right. And you know what? Aunt Puah was correct. Not only did Esther never dream about a bull being nice to her, but she never ended up dreaming about a bull at all. Every night she waited for a bull to come to her in her dream, and it never did. And actually, in doing this, in waiting for the bull, Esther’s interest shifted from evergreens to bulls. And she was set free! She was no longer haunted by the need to have an evergreen. Okay, what do you think?”

“What do you mean?”

“About the story?”

“Wait. That’s it?”

“Yes.”

“That’s how it ends? Esther never goes to get her evergreen?”

“Right,” she said.

“What kind of story is that? I mean, how passionate was Esther about the evergreens if she ended up just forgetting about them?”

“Pretty passionate,” she said. “I mean, she really loved them.”

“She obviously didn’t love them that much.”

“No, she did, it’s just that, you know, she didn’t want to ruin her life for the evergreens.”

“Oh,” I said. “Okay.”

“You seem upset,” she said.

“No, I’m not. It’s just, I don’t know, I was kind of expecting it to end with like her planting an evergreen and everyone in the town eventually coming to love it. Or at least Aunt Puah would see its appeal.”

“The town was never going to love it. Or Aunt Puah.”

“Fine, so Esther should have just left and stayed away.”

“I told you, there was no way she was going to do that.”

“Well, it’s kind of a sad story, then.”

“Not as sad as if she had gone to jail. Or never seen her family again.”

“I guess not.”

“It’s a good ending. Esther has her family and she doesn’t get punished. Oh! And since she isn’t so in love with the evergreens anymore, it’s not like she’s suffering. She got over it. She has bulls now. She can become a bull-ologist if she wants. The town has no problem with bulls.”

“Fine,” I said.

I felt angry. Was I annoyed that Miriam couldn’t tell a good story? Or was I pissed off by the story itself?

“Well, I’m gonna go upstairs,” she said.

“Okay,” I said.

“Sleep well.”

“You too,” I murmured.

After she went back upstairs, I rolled over onto my side and put my hand down my pants. I was still wet. Some of the anger