The Breast Feeder

It was the middle of the dinner shift when Reggie, the manager, came chugging up to me. The act of standing usually made him sweat. Now his bloated pink flesh looked like monsoon season. He smiled at me and I could tell he was going to ask me to do something unpleasant.

“Some of the guests have been complaining about that,” he said, pointing to a booth where a woman was breastfeeding a baby.

“That’s Travis’s table,” I said. Travis was the other waiter. It was a small restaurant and there were only two of us.

“He asked her to stop, but the gentleman with her grew abusive, and you know how sensitive Travis is. I thought you should handle it.”

“But you’re the manager.”

“Yes, but you’re good at talking to people. Very diplomatic.”

“Yeah, okay, I guess I could.”

“You’re the best.” He clapped me on the shoulder and chugged away.

I had no idea what I was going to say. Maybe I could tell them we didn’t allow outside beverages. I had no problem with breastfeeding in public and wondered who complained. I looked around the tables for a stodgy old dowager but didn’t see one.

At the breastfeeding table, the man and woman were dressed for the beach in bathing suits and sandals. Her blouse was unbuttoned and her bikini top lay next to a half-eaten plate of lasagna. She was petite and looked a little pale. The man with her looked like a linebacker. Not just his frame, but he had black lines painted under his eyes to keep the sun out. He saw me approaching and gave me a knowing glare.

“See here, fella,” he said. “My wife’s not doing anything wrong. It’s perfectly natural.”

“Well, I have had a little work done,” she admitted.

“A wedding gift from my parents,” the man said proudly. “What do you think?”

I wasn’t sure how to respond. I hadn’t expected to be asked to judge her breasts, though it was a nice set of pomegranates.

“You look like a goose just shit on your grave?” the man said. “Didn’t your mother ever breastfeed you?”

“I had a wet nurse,” I managed to mutter.

“Call the cops if you’re going to,” he said. “Law’s on our side. She doesn’t have to cover herself. This ain’t Burkastan.”

“I feel just like those black people at the lunch counter,” the woman said.

They both glared at me like I was a racist pulling black people away from lunch counters and spraying them with a fire hose. And who knows? Maybe there was some civil rights law protecting breast feeders in public restaurants. What did I know? I wasn’t a lawyer.

“I’m not calling the police,” I assured them.

I would have to find some sort of compromise.

“What if I found you a bottle?” I suggested. “Would you use it?”

The woman shook her head. “The breast is best. That’s what I always say.”

“It’s true,” the man admitted. “She says it a lot.”

“Meet me halfway here,” I said. “Could you at least cover up the other one? If you’re not using it, there’s no reason for it to be out and about.”

“Jews milk cows on the Sabbath,” she said.

The worst thing about crazy people is their non-sequitors about Jewish people. I gritted my teeth for an anti-Semitic rant. It didn’t help that her husband was painted up like Mel Gibson from Braveheart. He stared at her, awestruck.

“I always wondered what they did on the Shabbat,” he said with heartfelt fascination. “You’re so smart. How do you know all this stuff?”

She beamed with pride at the compliment.

“They aren’t supposed to work on the Sabbath,” she said. “But they can milk a cow so it doesn’t suffer.”

She gave me a big grin. I worried that she might be retarded. Or maybe she had autism, like Rain Man, only instead of being a math genius, her gift was spouting out annoying bits of trivia. And she was responsible for a baby.

“Heavy saddlebags,” she continued. “If one gets too full, it aches, so I rotate them. If I don’t rotate, I’m like a cow without a Jew.”

“Couldn’t you just put it away until you need it?” I asked.

“I want to have it at the ready,” she said. “Time to change.”

She plucked the baby’s mouth off her nipple. It made the popping sound of a suction cup being pulled off a window.

I thought she was going to switch him over to the other breast, but instead she swept aside her dishes with her arm and lay the baby down on the table on his back and unsnapped his shorts.

“Not here,” I said as she undressed the kid. The dirty diaper sink nearly knocked me over. The kid had something the consistency of Sloppy Joe clinging to his backside.

“I’m calling the police,” I said.

The woman looked betrayed. “You said you weren’t going to call the police,” she said.

“That was totally different,” I said.

She dropped the soiled diaper next to the plate of lasagna where it sprawled out like a dead
raccoon. The baby started emitting piercing banshee wails.

“Now look what you've done,” the man said to me. “You made my boy cry, and when my boy cries, I cry, and then people get hurt.”

He picked up his glass of ice water and threw it in my face. It felt like a thousand needles stinging me. Blood pulsed to my ears. The man just sat there smirking at me while the woman nonchalantly took a fresh diaper out of her oversized purse and searched through the purse for baby wipes. The time for diplomacy had past. Send home the weapons inspectors. There was nothing left to talk about. Now was the time for me to run. Run and hide under a bed.

I looked around for help. Travis was taking drink orders at another table, pretending he didn’t notice. Reggie was nowhere to be seen, and none of the customers showed signs of springing to my aid. Only Mario, the Mexican busboy, came walking up to the table. He wore a hairnet and carried a pitcher of ice water. He walked straight up to the man, took the man’s empty water glass, and refilled it. The man handed Mario an empty breadbasket and asked for more. Mario took the empty breadbasket and walked back into the kitchen.

The woman gave up trying to find baby wipes in her big purse, and she picked up a white, cloth napkin from the table and dipped it in her water glass.

“Don’t do that,” I said. “That napkin belongs to the restaurant.”

But she ignored me and used the damp napkin to wipe up the dark Sloppy Joe from her baby’s backside.

“What is wrong with you?” I said. “Were you home schooled? Don’t’ you know that other people exist? Isn’t there any consideration for anyone? Why can’t you just—DON’T DOUBLE DIP!!!”

Too late. She double dipped. She plunged the soiled napkin deep into her water glass, gave it a little squeeze, and pulled it out, dirty water running down her wrist. Brown tendrils floated in the beige water. It looked like a chocolate lava lamp.

My screaming started the baby wailing again. “Shhh, shhh,” the woman cooed, patting the baby’s bottom with the soiled napkin as if to soothe him. The man dropped a meaty fist down on the table, rattling the silverware.

“She can double dip if she wants to double dip,” he said. “Double dip all day long.”

He grabbed her water glass and threw the tainted water at my face. I ducked out of the way and the dirty water splashed on the white tiled floor. A great hush fell over the restaurant.

The kitchen door swung open and Mario walked out, carrying an overloaded breadbasket in one hand and the pitcher of ice water in the other. He stopped and looked at the brown mess on the floor.

“I’m not cleaning that up,” he said in perfect English.

He then walked up to the table that was being used as a changing table, set down the bread basket, and refilled the woman’s water glass.

I was shaking furiously. As a waiter, you have to take a lot of shit, but it’s usually just a metaphor.

“You two,” I roared, “are the most disgusting pair I have ever had the misfortune to meet. You don’t deserve to eat in restaurants with civilized people. You should eat on the floor, out of a dog dish. Or better yet, go live in the woods. Maybe there you could—DON’T DRINK THAT!!!”

Too late. She swallowed down a long deep gulp of her tainted water and then smacked her lips in satisfaction. Changing the kid had given her quite a thirst. She looked at me quizzically.

“That water’s tainted,” I said incredulously. “You double dipped in that glass.”

“But then he threw it at you,” she said.

“Did you forget that?” the man asked me.

“No,” I said. “I didn’t forget.”

The woman swirled her water around like a glass of wine and inhaled slowly through her nostrils.

“The busboy refilled it,” she explained. “This is fresh water.”

“But there was a residue at the bottom of the glass,” I said.

“You’re a residue at the bottom of the glass,” the man said to me. “You need to stop telling us what to do and stop trying to force your opinions on other people. Don’t tell my wife how to dress. We don’t tell you how to dress. And don’t try to tell us what to eat or drink. My wife can drink whatever she wants. And don’t’ tell us what to do with our son. We’ll raise our child any way we see fit. You may not agree, but we’re not hurting anyone. We’re happy and that’s all that matters.”

To demonstrate their happiness to me, he grasped her face in his hands and gave her a tongue kiss. Long, deep, and sloppy.

“Her mouth is dirty,” I said.

“What goes in your mouth doesn’t make it dirty,” the woman said. “What comes out of your mouth makes it dirty.”

Once again the man grinned at her, awestruck.

“You’re so wise,” he told her. “I’m telling you, one of these days they’re going to give you the Nobel Prize.”

“She’ll never get the Nobel Prize,” I said. “They don’t give them to stupid people.”

“What about Arafat,” the woman said. “They gave him the Nobel Peace Prize.”

The man lowered his head. He was in the presence of greatness.

“Ever since I got you those encyclopedias,” he said.

“Arafat died of AIDS,” she added.

“How do you know this stuff?” he said in giddy amazement.

“Everyone know that,” I hissed.

The man looked at me and sighed.

“Tell you what,” he said. “You give us dessert on the house and we’ll forget this whole thing ever happened.”

“That sounds fair,” I said, thinking of the box of rat poison in the supply closet.

“And you better not spit in it,” he said.

“What would you like?” I asked.

“Since it’s on the house, we’ll have whatever’s the most expensive,” he said.

“Death by Chocolate,” I said.

“Sounds rich,” he said. “But we’ll try it.”

I excused myself, offered my heartfelt apologies, walked around the puddle of shit water, through the swinging doors into the kitchen. I realized with disappointment that I didn’t have it in me to poison their dessert.

I found Reggie hiding back by the freezer.

“I heard it get pretty heated over there,” he said. “Everything straightened out?”

“Yes,” I said. “Her breasts are still out, but we’re giving them free Death by Chocolate now.”

“How did that happen?”

“Diplomacy failed.”

Reggie slowly shook his head and pursed his lips.

“Only managers can comp food and beverages,” he said. “It’ll have to come out of your pocket.”

He was serious. I knew that look on his face.

He saw I was angry so he said, “I’ll let you use your ten percent employee discount.”

I took off my apron and threw it at him.

“I quit,” I said.

“You have to give two weeks notice,” he said.

I turned and walked out the back door into the alley.

“Don’t use me as a reference!” he shouted after me.