Travelogue

I gulped coffee and chatted while everyone was sitting down. Judith was asking me about how I liked Watley now that I'd been here for a little while, and I was telling her about how my parents already loved the ice cream shop downtown, and how I felt like I was adjusting.

"I'd say you are; you already have a girlfriend who adores you!" she told me.

I was glad to hear her say this, but it sort of surprised me; obviously, word had gotten around, and Lila had probably been talking to her sisters about me, too. I guess I should've realized this, but I hadn't.

Judith started telling me about some annual Fall harvest festival in September (she was one of the coordinators). It was mildly interesting, but after a minute, I had to excuse myself to go use the bathroom. Coffee makes me pee.

I had to wait a couple minutes; the bathroom door was locked. It's kind of strange that in such a big ranch house that there were only two bathrooms (one in the main hallway, one in the master bedroom, which was naturally off-limits). Later, I was informed that the bathrooms had been installed when the Summerall sisters were little. Prior to that: outhouse.

By the time the door opened, I was doing a little dance to keep myself from just going right there in the hall. It had been Sarah, Lila's cousin, that I'd been waiting for; she was a pretty, younger girl with wavy mouse-brown hair and nerd-chic glasses. (I figured she had pretty bad vision to warrant having those glasses; the nearest eye doctor was all the way over in Bakerton, kind of a long drive.) Sarah was thin but quite busty, and I always had to make a conscious effort not to ogle her breasts. I mean, I was falling hard for Lila, and I wasn't going to cheat on her with a 15-year-old, but as a guy, I'm pretty much wired to look at boobs. While I smiled back at her and said hello, I was mentally commanding myself not to let my eyes drift downward.

After I peed and washed up, I opened the bathroom door only to stop and nearly shut it again. The bathroom is catty-corner to that one little spare bedroom with the crib in it. The door to the room was partly open, and from the bathroom, I could see right inside. Sarah was sitting half-naked on the bed; she'd pulled the entire top portion of her patterned green dress down to her waist, and her bra was open on one side. Lila had these kind of bras—she called them "nursing bras", a term I hadn't known—where she could easily just pull a bra cup open to get quick access to her nipple, and Sarah's bra (a light green) looked like it was one of those. One of the cups was peeled down, and only a strappy "frame" of the bra remained around Sarah's big naked breast.

I just stood there, hidden, gawking. I wasn't completely shocked by the sight; by this point, I'd been around a fair amount of breastfeeding, so it wasn't surprising to see a woman with her chest exposed. It had become an everyday thing: I'd be in the room when Eliza would casually open her blouse and bra and feed her large nipple to Judith's kid Joshua, or I'd come into the ranch house looking for Lila and discover that she was breastfeeding baby Zack again, or I'd pass the front porch and see Esther sitting there completely topless with a pair of random toddlers nursing from her sizable boobs. Once I even saw Lila's mom, Mrs. Summerall, bare a breast to soothe a crying infant. But Sarah was the youngest I'd seen expose herself like this. I really wasn't sure what to think of all this semi-nudity, whether it was OK for me to feel quietly excited by it. Are they sex organs, or are they for nurturing? Both, I suppose; depends on who's at the business end of them.

Sarah's nipple was dark red and kind of huge—it stood erect in the cool morning air, thick and meaty, impressive. The breast itself was beautiful, too, weighty and round, dusted with freckles and a mole or two. I had a momentary flash of guilt, but I couldn't help staring—it wasn't so much out of lust, but out of the sheer spectacle that made me insanely curious.

I had just started to wonder why she was sitting there with her bra half-open when I heard another voice coming from the room. I adjusted my vantage point, daring to open the door slightly more. I saw that Sarah was sitting next to another girl, Molly, who was about Sarah's age, maybe slightly younger. I knew that Molly had just moved back to Watley after spending most of her childhood in Los Angeles (of all places!), and her accent was 100% west coast, not southern at all, which was sort of strange to hear. She was cute; her blonde hair was short (radical for a girl in Watley!), and she wore glasses, too.

Oh, and Molly was sitting there naked from the waist up; her blouse and bra were dumped next to her in a small heap on the bed. Her breasts were smaller and quite perky, and I could see traces of a bikini tan line around them—a leftover from sunny L.A. beaches. One of her breasts looked like it was slightly larger than the other, I thought. She had tiny, stiff nipples, but her areolas were large pink circles that covered quite a bit of her breast skin. I really liked the way that looked.

There was an infant squirming on Molly's lap, a little girl I recognized as Charity, daughter of some cousin of Lila's. I started to understand what I was witnessing. Molly was picking up the baby, trying to cradle it in her arms, looking slightly uncomfortable as it wriggled. As she moved to adjust her hold, I could see small patches of hair in Molly's armpits; it looked like she'd might have started letting it grow when she moved back to town.

"Bring her all the way up to you," Sarah urged.

Molly brought the baby's face up to meet her nipple, then held the breast with her hand. I watched her rub the nipple and areola all over the baby's lips, a bit awkwardly at first. She seemed nervous. It took a minute, but Molly was persistent, and when the baby finally opened up, Molly quickly pulled its head into her chest. Her nipple (and most of the areola) disappeared inside the little mouth. The baby started to suckle: success.

"It doesn't really hurt this time," Molly said after a moment. "Not as much, anyway." Her voice was more scratchy and sultry than you might expect for a girl her age.

"Yeah," said Sarah. "After a while it starts to feel pretty good."

Both girls giggled a little.

"I can't wait," Molly smiled. She was stroking the baby's cheek with a finger.

Sarah took a gulp of water from a glass on the nightstand next to her, then yawned and stretched.

After a moment, I heard Molly sigh. "I'm just afraid I'm never gonna get milk."

"Naw, it'll happen," Sarah said. "It totally will. Judith always says that if you're old enough to get visits by Aunt Flo then you're old enough to make milk."

Both girls giggled at that.

"Just keep coming over every day," Sarah was saying. "There's always babies and kids here, and there's always another one that needs a nipple. Just keep it up, and keep drinking a lot of water, and your milk will come in. Oh, and you should stay over sometimes and nurse babies overnight, too. You know, they have a nighttime feeding, and then you nurse them for a while, after. And then you go back to sleep until the next feeding. Sucks to be up half the night, but it really helps a lot. Doing it at night makes it come in faster."

"They'd let me do that?"

"Oh, yeah, just ask Esther or Mrs. Summerall," Sarah said. "Or ask Deborah if you can stay over at her place and nurse Charity. I did stuff like that, and it helped me a lot. I used to think I'd never get my milk, 'cause it seemed like it was taking forever, and Judith told me I should stay over for some nighttime feedings, and I started doing it. And I just kept nursing before school and after school, just nursed kids all the freaking time. And then one day this toddler was suckling on me, and she starts telling me she liked how my milk tasted. And I'm like, 'What?!' And I checked, and sure enough, it was in. Never even saw a drop before that. It was just—bam."

Molly nodded, looking earnest and serious. "When did you start?"

"Dry nursing? I had big boobs by the time I was 12, so they started me then. I got my milk when I was 14, just turned 14. Happy birthday to me." Sarah gave a wry smile.

"Um," Molly said. "So, does it matter if you're a virgin or not?"

Sarah was shaking her head immediately. "I don't think so. I mean, I had my milk before my boyfriend and I ever did it, but I know girls who were definitely not virgins when their milk came in. So I don't think it matters." (There was no mention of whether Sarah's boyfriend knew she had milk, but I guess he'd probably figured it out.)

It was several seconds before Sarah gave into temptation. "Are you a virgin?"

Molly shook her head, blushing. "I did it with this guy I liked, right before we left L.A. Please don't tell anyone."

"Oh, I won't, but no one will care. I mean, the adults act like they do, so don't tell them. But no one else cares. Everyone does it with their boyfriend."

After another minute or so, Molly asked, "How long will she stay latched on? I mean, she's gotta figure out that I don't have milk." Molly's eyes were fixed on the baby, who still appeared to be suckling eagerly. She reached over and took a glass of water from a tiny table next to her and sipped.

"Oh," said Sarah, "she'll probably stay on until she maybe falls asleep. Or, she might get hungry again or something. And, you know, if she does, she'll start crying or fussing or whatever. And I'll just feed her again and give her back. You've gotta do this a lot if you want it to come in. Doesn't always have to be for a long time, but you just gotta keep doing it, every day. And it's really good for the babies to have your nipple, too."

The girls sat there for a couple of minutes, not saying much, mainly watching the infant as she suckled Molly.

"I wish I had one of those bras like you do," Molly said, suddenly. "Looks so much easier."

"Oh, a nursing bra? Yeah, I really like them. I hated having to take my bra all the way off just to be comfortable. And I don't really like front-opening bras."

Molly nodded. "Yeah."

Sarah said, "Mavis Beale makes them. She'd make some for you."

"Really?" Molly looked genuinely pleased.

"Yeah, sure, she pretty much makes everybody's nursing bras. She's gonna want to wait until your milk comes in, though, before she does your fitting, 'cause your boobs are gonna get bigger."

"Oh," Molly said, "really? I never heard that. Does that happen for sure?"

"Pretty much. Like, I went up a whole cup size once my milk came in completely. My friend Hannah, she went up like two sizes."

"Wow," I heard Molly whisper.

"Yeah, so I just put up with my front-opening bras a lot until Mavis made my nursing bras." She shrugged and smiled. "You lose weight, too."

Molly looked up. "You do?"

"Yeah, I think most girls do. I lost three or four pounds, something like that." Sarah looked over at Molly, who now looked slightly horrified. "Oh, well," Sarah said, laughing now, "I guess in your case you might not want that."

"Oh my god," grinned Molly. "I'll be skin and bones!"

"Well, you'll just have to eat more, that's all. You have to start eating a little more once it comes in, anyway, just so you can keep producing. For me, though, I needed to lose the weight. My stomach is pretty flat now, and it didn't really used to be. It all kind of happened at the same time: I got thinner, my boobs got bigger, and I got my milk." She let out a tiny snort. "I think that's how I ended up with a boyfriend," she giggled.

Molly was laughing, too. "Well, I don't want to get any thinner, but I definitely want bigger boobs." She shrugged. "I wouldn't mind having a boyfriend, either."

There was quiet in the room for a minute.

"It's slipping out a little. Get some more of it inside," Sarah said. "Otherwise you'll end up sore."

Molly was trying to work more of her areola into the baby's mouth when Judith breezed into the room holding baby Zack.

"Hi girls, how's it going?" she asked.

Both girls just smiled and giggled a little.

"Looks like a good latch," Judith told Molly. She turned to Sarah. "Esther hasn't had a chance to feed him yet, and I need to go; do you think you have enough for a feeding?"

Sarah smiled. "Totally." She reached up while Judith gently passed Zack to her; I could see dense bushes of deep brown hair under Sarah's arms. She cradled him expertly, then cupped her exposed breast and aimed her thick red nipple at Zack's mouth. She tickled his lips, but Zack didn't appear to be cooperating.

"Try expressing a little," Judith told her after a moment. "Just get some on your nipple. He'll smell it and he'll open right up for you."

Sarah started pinching her breast, just behind the areola; after a bit of massaging, I saw little white beads appear around the end of her nipple. Sarah rubbed the wetness across Zack's lips, and after a few seconds, he opened to accept her. She pushed the fat nipple into his mouth, the baby's lips sealed themselves around her areola, and he was suckling.

They all watched Zack as he fed, adoringly.

"Does having milk, like, mess with your period or anything? I heard it messes it up or something," said Molly, quietly.

"Oh," said Judith, "well, it can make it irregular."

"I've definitely had that happen," said Sarah, her voice just above a whisper. "Sometimes I'm late, or I'll even skip a whole month."

"And when it does come, you might notice your milk flow go down a little. But it'll be fine, sweetie. Lots of girls do this."

"Yeah," Sarah chimed in again, "you get used to it."

Another minute went by, and all three women seemed transfixed by the sight of Zack nursing from Sarah's big breast.

"What if," Molly started, "like, you catch a cold or something? Or the flu or whatever? Do you have to, like, stop breastfeeding for a while?"

"No, no," said Sarah.

Judith was shaking her head. "No, honey," she said.

"How come?"

"Germs like that don't pass into your breastmilk," said Judith, "so a child you're nursing won't be exposed that way."

"Oh," said Molly, clearly surprised.

"But," Judith was saying, "your antibodies do get into your milk, so you do help the child's body keep from getting sick."

"That's so cool," Molly whispered.

"Well," Judith said, "God did make a woman's body an amazing thing, didn't He? In so many ways."

Sarah and Molly both nodded along, smiling.

Judith turned to go—I ducked behind the bathroom door so she wouldn't see me—and I heard her say to Molly, "Oh, honey, once Sarah's done feeding him, you should try suckling him to sleep. Charity will probably need a little feeding by that point anyway. Sarah, you don't mind, do you?"

"Nope," said Sarah.

—

When the coast was clear, I quietly left the bathroom and slipped away down the hall. I was lost in thought: did the young teenage boys here really understand what the girls their age were doing with their bodies? Maybe they knew and didn't care. If I was that age and found out that girls were doing this, I would've thought it was beyond bizarre, but I guess if I'd grown up with it, maybe it would have seemed normal.

I was thinking back: when I was 14 or so, girls were babysitting and housesitting and tutoring and doing other responsible, adult-level things. We boys weren't doing anything like that; we weren't considered ready to have jobs and worldly responsibilities. We were still children, whereas the girls our age had become women—young women, sure, but women nonetheless. I mean, they were inches taller than us, their bodies filling out, starting to appear poised and shapely, and meanwhile we boys still looked like silly, scrawny kids. The girls were routinely shaving their body hair; we boys had yet to achieve first growth (anywhere). They were going out with guys who were years older than we were, becoming sexually experienced, while we were left trying to masturbate to what we could find on the Internet.

Heck, in Macon County back home, a girl of 14 could get a restricted county driver's license that allowed her to drive to a job and back; it was mainly so that the more rural areas could have more access to babysitters. That license wasn't available for boys, though. We were stuck riding our bikes. Sometimes a girl we knew would drive by and wave to us.

Katie, my first girlfriend, wasn't even 16 when we started dating, and I was pushing 17. And yet, she was mature enough to be in a sexual relationship with an older boy (me), handling all the emotions and nuances and trust issues that came with that kind of closeness. We didn't fight much, but that had a lot to do with Katie's emotional maturity and the wise way she could handle potential conflict. I honestly don't think I would have been ready for all that when I was 15, but she seemed to handle it effortlessly.

Even now at 18, I sensed a difference between Lila and I. She never accused me of being immature, but to me, she did seem older than I was, even though she was technically younger (by a few months). Lila could act like a kid when she wanted, but she was truly wiser, more self-possessed, more sophisticated than me. In my heart, I sensed that she was ready to take responsibility in situations that would make me throw up my hands and run away.

So, given all of that, maybe this Watley version of womanhood wasn't that much of a stretch from the one I'd known growing up. If girls matured so much earlier, if their bodies were ready, if they were already acting as stand-in mothers, then why shouldn't they use their bodies' full and innate potential? Developed breasts gave them a natural ability to soothe and comfort children. And, if their breasts could be made to provide sustenance, which is their primary purpose anyway—well, then, why not use them?

This all actually making sense to me, although I was quite aware of how strange it might seem to the world outside that region. Where I came from, breasts were private things, and breastfeeding was a private act, and it was something exclusive between a mother and her baby. An outsider giving her nipple to a child would be positively scandalous, appalling.

Here in Watley—not to mention many other parts of the world—no one thought of it that way at all. Once a girl had developed breasts, it seemed completely reasonable that she should use them with children. Once she was able to give them milk, all the better. What an amazing superpower that really was, to make a super-food in your own body and be able to feed it to others. Women's bodies are miraculous things. If men ever faced facts, we'd realize that we are just little boys playing in a sandbox, by comparison.

I found myself sitting back down at the table, alone (Judith was gone). A second wave of visitors had come in, working on plates of food. I ate a helping of pancakes and some bacon, and quietly watched the others at the table. There were some other teens here now, kids I hadn't met. There were a few teen boys and girls sitting next to each other, obviously couples. Most of the girls were clearly younger than their boyfriends, by a couple of years. I observed them, covertly, as they flirted and ate, again wondering how much the boys knew about the girls and their extracurricular activities. Were the boys told about it, even witness to it? Or, if not, what did they think when they discovered that their girlfriends had milk in their breasts? Did they have the impression that all teenage girls could just lactate spontaneously?

"Hey," whispered Lila in my ear; she'd sneaked up behind me. "You're gonna go help my dad? That's so cool."

I turned and smiled at her, my mouth full of pancake. "Yeah," I managed. "Gonna try."

"He'll appreciate your help," she said, sweetly and, I noted, maturely. She smiled. "Oh, hey, maybe we can go out to the lake in the afternoon, after you're done."