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Eli grunts toward Marcy, shooting her a two-second glance as he carries in the wooden tray with two steaming cups of tea and two plates of cookies.
It must be five-thirty. We’ve been here longer than I thought.
I don’t need a clock or my phone to know the time. Eli never falters in his schedule, and every day for as long as I can remember at this time, he brings me tea and cookies.
“Time for your tea,” he says, ignoring Marcy as she twists her hair and leans sideways to get a better look at Eli’s backside. “And cookies.”
Marcy screws up her face on a shrug, confused by this monster of a father figure delivering a tray of tea and cookies.
Eli lumbers toward me, crossing the bedroom in three lengthy strides and placing the tray on the dresser next to the window seat. I swing my legs around, lowering my toes to the cool wooden floor, and feel that familiar tingle in my breasts as he hands me the luscious cookie still warm from the oven.
“Thanks.” I raise it like I’m making a toast as his enormous hand balances the porcelain tea cup on his palm like a platter. This is a twice daily ritual, whether I’m here in my room studying, or with Eli in the kitchen playing Spades or whatever.
If it’s seven am or five thirty pm, it’s tea and cookies, without fail.
Marcy pops up off the bed, skipping over to the tray, hitching her hip out and giving Eli a pout.
“Where’s mine?” She reaches for the second cookie on the plate, but instead of letting her take it, he blocks her hand and lets out a low growl, making Marcy lean back onto the dresser.
“Not that one,” he says, a quick snarl following as Marcy swallows, eyes as round as the cookies on the other plate which he shoves her way without ceremony. “These. You can eat these.”
“But, can’t I have one of each?”
“No.” He sets her chipped mug of tea on the crocheted doily next to the bottles of homemade perfume he brews each spring, then tugs the tray from her reach, his black eyes centered on me, nostrils flaring as that tingle in my breasts turns into a prickling warm pressure.
With Marcy here, I fear my secret is about to be revealed in two wet spots on the front of my red and white gingham blouse.
Thankfully I put one of the mini pads I cut in half just for this problem inside my bra when I changed earlier. I work myself to my feet, smoothing down the front of the denim skirt Eli made me out of an old pair of his Levi’s.
He cooks. He sews. He milks cows and plows fields. He chops the wood for our furnace and cans vegetables and fruit from the garden. He keeps the house spotless and never seems to sleep. He’s bigger than life and there seems to be nothing my superman of a stand-in father can’t do.
Marcy slurps down her mug of tea and devours her two cookies while Eli stands like a sentry, watching me.
“Eat your second one.” He hands me the oatmeal and molasses cookie, reaching down to pick up my discarded tea cup with a scowl. “And finish the last sip.”
He holds the smooth porcelain to my bottom lip, while simultaneously gripping my wrist and raising my hand with the cookie to my mouth.
“Which is it?” I say with a frolic in my voice. “Tea or cookie? I can’t do both.”
He holds his scowl, his brow full of furrowed lines like the crop lines in the bean field. The years of farm work in the sun and elements have weathered his face into something so beautiful, it’s hard to look at.
Marcy moves back to the bed, grabbing her backpack. “We’re going to be late if we don’t skedaddle.”
She gives me a wink behind Eli’s back and the warmth in my bra grows as I absent-mindedly hiss at my swollen boobs.
Eli gives me a knowing look, making it worse. My milk production has a direct correlation to Eli being close. I had no choice but to tell him my secret a month ago. Shame had me curled in a ball in the corner of my room when he came to fetch me for breakfast about a month before graduation.
I didn’t know what was going on. My breasts were swollen. Warm. Leaking little white dots of milk. It was just a few drops and I thought it was just some side effect from my period because lord knows I wasn’t pregnant. No boys in school would even look at me and that’s fine because I never looked at them. My cycle has been wonky and painful since it started when I was twelve, so I figured this was just another oddity for me to endure.
I’ve had years of horrible cramps, vomiting and horrendous nausea and Eli took me to the doctor demanding they fix what ailed me every month. It wasn’t me having my period that he minded. When I started, he was bigger than life in the local drug store asking a bazillion question about which pads were the best, did they have organic cotton ones and on and on. Nothing embarrasses him and when it comes to getting me what I need? He’s a Titan. That day, he bought out the entire supply of feminine products as I stood by in stone silence. The problem for him was and is seeing me in distress. It makes him crazy if I’m sick or hurt or simply having a bad day.
I swear, if he had the money, which he doesn’t, he would have flown me to the Mayo Clinic if they could have stopped the unfortunate side effects of my periods. But, old doc Rogers who is about a hundred and fifty years if he’s a day, was befuddled, so the new doctor in town, MaryBeth Lassiter, suggested I start taking birth control.
I thought Eli was going to tear the clinic down, so that idea was squashed. Instead, she prescribed an SSRI to relieve the PMS symptoms and a medication called Motillium to help with the nausea.
It did help. But, it had the side effect of making me lactate. I was scared at first, but I trust Eli with everything and since he does the laundry, it wasn’t long before he knew something was up. That was the day he came into my room to find me in the corner in tears. After a conversation with the doctor, she assured us it was a side effect of the medicine and would go away if I stopped taking it.
But, it helped me with the vomiting and nausea so much, Eli convinced me that the side effects were less of an issue than the distress of being sick. Soon after, the pressure started to build and he convinced me that pumping would make it better, so the next day on the doorstep there was the mac-daddy of breast pumps delivered by special courier.
