Mammary

by Sumitra Singam

The sac within my body will not expand to hold a baby. A child is born to a woman who cannot mother her, so I become her mother. She has eyes like a long curve of beach when they are closed. When they are open, they are the ocean itself.

When I take my top off the first time with this man, I want to cross my arms. I say, “I feel vulnerable.”. He laughs and repeats the word “vulnerable,” twisting its syllables. I feel that twist like it is a pinch at my nipple.

It is a matter of supply and demand, my friend says, surprised that I, a medical practitioner, do not know this. Haven’t you heard of the story of the Sri Lankan man whose wife died in childbirth who then breastfed his child? He had one engorged breast like an Amazon.

At university overseas, no one to regulate what I wear, I buy a Wonderbra. Black satin, with a jewel nestled between my suddenly voluminous breasts. It unfastens in the front, and I have an image of large, rough hands fumbling eagerly.

I take domperidone at high doses to enhance my prolactin production. It has the side effect of finally relaxing my digestion.

“You only need a handful,” this man says, kneading my breast. He lies on his side, his head propped on his arm. He smiles proprietorially, bends his head to my chest.

The woman, tall, with a halo of curly hair, invites me into her untidy home, evidence of children everywhere—crayon drawings, cracker crumbs, discarded socks. She offers no apology, just points me to the machine, the size of a carry-on suitcase. “This is the hospital grade machine,” she says. When I attach it to my breasts, it feels like it is pulling essence from my marrow. After a week, there are a few drops of milk.

This man ignores my breasts. I don’t even have the time to take my top off. He is urgent, like a child grabbing at the last slice of cake. He slides off me, gets dressed, and mutters a thank you.

This small child nestled in my arms, just the length of my forearm, reaches for my nipple with an instinct she barely understands. She pulls it into her mouth and begins to suck. A storm starts in my breasts—electric thunder.

When I bleed after every embryo transfer, I am sure it is because no baby could ever survive my body—the poison that is its hidden truth.

My breasts chafe, the midwife says, because my daughter’s latch is wrong. I should reach my finger inside and break the seal. Have her take as much of the breast as can fit into her mouth, she says, then she will use her hard palate to draw the milk out, and it won’t hurt.

“Are you sure?” this man says as I take my top off. I am not, but I nod. He is slow and careful. I am not in my body for most of it.

You must persist, the midwife says. She hangs a supplementary feeding bottle around my neck and tapes a narrow plastic straw to my breast. She is trying to trick my daughter into taking my breast while receiving milk from a bottle. The minute my daughter feels the end of the straw, she turns away, her wails filling the small space we are in. “Keep at it,” the midwife says. My body hums with the same distress my daughter feels.

I remember someone taking my nipple in their fingers like it was a doorknob, or a bit of clay. They pinched and twisted. They made me believe that this was a secret they were letting me in on. I was seven.

I settle on the sofa with a book, hold my daughter in the crook of my arm propped up with a pillow. She breastfeeds and sleeps on and off for most of the afternoon. I read, watch my daughter, look out into the balmy, tropical day. There is nothing else to do, nowhere else to be.

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Sumitra Singam is a queer, neurodiverse Malaysian-Indian-Australian coconut who writes in Naarm/Melbourne. Her work has been nominated for a number of Best Of anthologies, and was selected for BSF 2025. She works as a psychiatrist and runs workshops on how to write trauma safely. She’ll be the one in the kitchen making chai (where’s your cardamom?). You can find her and her other publication credits on Bluesky: @pleomorphic2 & sumitrasingam.squarespace.com