My Daughter’s Sweet Milk

Part One

My wife, Amanda and I were sitting on the couch watching some Netflix and finishing some Chinese takeout when I heard a knock at the back door. “What now?” I grumbled as I paused our show and got up to make my way through the house to see who it was. As I entered the kitchen I could see through the window in the door that it was my daughter.

“Hey Jules, what are y…” I started asking as I opened the door for her. As she raised her head, I barely recognized the girl I saw in front of me. Her makeup ran in dark streams down her cheeks, her lower lip was swollen and cracked.

I felt my eyes narrow to dark angry slits as the question I was asking changed into one word, “Shawn?” She managed a small, tired nod and I followed with “Where is he?”

A new voice behind Julie answered that one for her, “Your daughter’s boyfriend is currently in custody, Mr. Jeffries. Can we talk for a few minutes?”

My muscles relaxed a bit as I opened the door the rest of the way. Julie picked up the baby carrier at her feet and came through the door followed by a young female officer. I motioned them into the dining room as I went out into the living room.

Amanda looked up and I said, “You’re not gonna believe this one… Julie’s here, with a cop and busted lip.”

– – –

Julie told us through short bursts how Shawn had come home late from work, drunk and acting like an ass. How he complained about the mess around the house, that there wasn’t anything to eat, that he’d been out freezing his ass off at work all day while Julie just sat around the house doing nothing, and how she obviously sucked at taking care of the baby too because the “damn thing” hadn’t stopped crying since he walked in the door. She had told him if he thought she had it so easy taking care of the baby maybe he should try it tomorrow instead. That was when he smacked her in the face and Cory progressed from crying to screaming. She picked up the baby, ran down the hall and closed herself into the bedroom. Shawn was pounding on the door yelling “Get back out here you lazy bitch! Get out here before I break down this door. If I have to come in there I’m gonna fuckin kill you.” This continued until the police, having been called by someone in one of the joint apartments, came in and hauled him out.

We decided Julie was staying home with us for a few days while we figured out what to do. Julie’s old room was still pretty much the way it always had been, minus some clothes and stuff so she said she just wanted to go get some sleep. Amanda and I returned to the living room but the food and TV we had been enjoying just 15 minutes ago no longer seemed interesting to either of us. We talked for awhile and decided we might as well go to bed as well.

………

I woke up a couple times that night hearing Cory crying but Julie seemed to get him settled and back to sleep pretty quick. I just lay there in the dark thinking of how unfair it all was.

Julie was always a sweet and beautiful girl. Until she dropped out of high school last year she made amazing grades. Her only problem was the taste she had in guys. Shawn was the most recent of three guys who all started off treating her like a queen until they turned out to be complete assholes. He got Julie got pregnant last winter when she was 16, he was 17 and told us how he was going to get a job doing construction with his dad and he wanted to take care of her and their baby. He always impressed us as being responsible and mature, I never imagined things would turn out this way. When he turned 18 he was working for his dad and had a small but decent apartment. By the time Julie should have been starting her senior year she was almost 7 months pregnant and spending most of her time at his place. Now here she was, 17 years old with a baby, back here with her mom and I and her guy in a jail cell.

…….

It’s around 8:30 Saturday morning. I wake up to the sound of pans clattering out in the kitchen. After getting up and voiding my bladder, I wandered out to the kitchen.

“Morning Dad, Mom went to work a little bit ago. Want some eggs?”

I nodded and said, “As long as there’s a huge cup of coffee with ’em.”

She chuckled just a bit and asked, “Cory keep you awake much last night?”

I said it was ok and took my coffee out to the couch. I was happy to get even that small chuckle from her after last night. “She always was a bit of a morning person,” I thought as I started flipping through channels on the TV.

A few minutes later Julie brought in a couple plates full of fried eggs with a couple pieces of toast and sat down across from me at the other end of the couch.

As we ate and made some light conversation I noticed that the swelling seemed to be all but gone from her lip even if you could still see a dark little line of dried blood there and without the mess of makeup she looked pretty much like my daughter again.

She was roughly the same height as Amanda, though considerably skinnier with her mom’s dark hair and eyes that were just a slightly brighter shade of green than my own. She was wearing a thin pair of light blue shorts and matching top with spaghetti straps, clearly all she had here to sleep in last night. I was a bit embarrassed though as I noticed it didn’t quite fit her the same as I remembered because her boobs had gotten so damn big. That shirt was straining to hold em in such a way that I had to try my hardest not to stare at them.

After we finished our breakfast and went through a short list of things we had to get done, Cory woke up and started crying so she left to go take care of him and I got up and cleared dishes. The image of her shirt pulled tight across her breasts like that kept flashing through my mind and I just shook my head silently reminding myself, “That’s your daughter, you nasty old man.