Mrs. Pritchett liked to bathe her children in milk. She preferred to do it Friday mornings, right before her young ones left for school. Mrs. Patterson, Mrs. Pritchett’s new neighbor, was not aware of this activity. Weeks had already gone by since she’d moved in. The only odd thing she had noticed about the Pritchett’s house was the collection of ugly petunias that adorned the front lawn.

One fine Friday morning, a cold breeze made its way inside Mrs. Patterson bedroom. It caressed her uncovered body, and slowly started to head north, until it reached her face. Once the bitter air spread and dispersed through her forehead, it came back together and made its way down to her meaty lips, like a snake slithering towards its prey.

The, she woke. Now, fully lucid, she felt the coldness leave her lips and reach down towards her navel. This made her body rattle a bit. She gasped. Mrs. Patterson winced.

She tried to go back to sleep.

She then heard a peculiar sound: it was a loud slish-sloshing noise, much like the sound of a heavy liquid moving to and fro in a container. This was followed by infantile-like happy screams.

She made nothing of it, until she heard the same set of noises again.

She resolved to ignore the racket and enjoy her God-given right to stay in bed. She fought like hell to defend that right. She twisted and turned in place, hoping that her futile jerking and pulling would make all the unpleasantness go away.

Then she heard a shrill scream. Mrs. Patterson lost her breath. She exhaled once she heard a child’s giggle. This combination of sounds confused her.

She leapt from her pillow-ridden king size bed and rushed to her window. She squinted her eyes and moved them from side-to-side, trying to find the source of those god-awful noises. She

visually probed her neighbor’s house from window to window. She started with the small one by the front door, until she got to the one on the far right side of the red brick house, on the second floor.

She sensed a bit of movement there, in the back of the room. Then she saw a small head stick out of nowhere. It was a small longhaired girl, drenched in white liquid. Then coming into view, at the little girl’s side, was big Mrs. Pritchett, wearing a spotted black apron over her loose morning bed robe. Then another small girl appeared. This one was more vigorous than the first. She ran around and refused to hold still.

Shortly after catching up to the small girl, the mother bound both of them with her large, strong hands. She began to signal her two daughters to hold still, while she emptied buckets of pure white milk on their heads. After five minutes of this, she hoisted up the two girls, one by one, out of what seemed like a large claw foot tub.

Then she dried them. Mrs. Patterson was in awe of her neighbor’s strange activity. As she watched, she felt like a peeping tom of sorts.

The pitter-patter sound of creamy calcium-rich droplets falling off the children’s drenched towels, and onto the smooth hardwood floor, enticed Mrs. Patterson to watch closer.

She leaned her old saggy arms on her splintered mahogany windowsill. Curiosity was now her warden, and Mrs. Patterson her prisoner. She had to see more. She opened her window and placed her head outside, to get a clearer sense of the spectacle’s sight and sound. She watched the white creamy liquid being dried off the children, and fantasized of leaving her lonely room, to join her neighbor’s blissful morning ritual. Mrs. Patterson began to wander off and float to a younger yesterday, where milk baths of her own were definitely a possibility. Then she scowled instinctively, as if to say, never! This self-reproach softly broke her daydream into pieces. She came to and found herself still looking through her next-door neighbor’s window. They were gone.

As soon as she tried to find the two girls and their mother, she heard the Pritchett’s front door creak open. Mama Pritchett was shoving her children affectionately to go on and leave for school. The two small girls left in a hesitant rush, barely making it to the large yellow bus that had already waited a bit too long for them.

Mrs. Patterson grimaced and left the window. She stood in her room in silence. She was trying to decide what to do with her newly acquired information.

She called her friends.

She told them to get ready for an early brunch. The plan was laid out: they’d meet in three hours, at Mildred Quilty’s house, the biggest and grandest place there was for gossiping.

Mrs. Patterson was soon conversing about the mega-lumpish Mrs. Pritchett and her queer milk-bath ritual.

Her two best friends, Mrs. Primrose and Mrs. Quilty, shifted their large behinds back and forth in their lawn chairs as they listened to their confidant. They took their hot cups of primrose herbal tea with both hands, and leaned their elbows in towards their stomachs. This position indicated to Mrs. Patterson that her curious friends were ready to hear more, more and more of the wonders she had to tell.

Far away from these three women, was Mrs. Pritchett, shifting flour with soda and salt, getting ready to bake her signature chocolate cake. She stopped to think of her daughters, and smiled. They’d be home in a few hours, and she’d be there to receive them with open arms.

And then Mrs. Pritchett went to get the eggs. She cracked one open, and thought of Mrs. Patterson’s round head. Then she cracked another egg, and she thought of her neighbor’s little round body. She smiled to herself as beat the eggs and formed a yellowish pulp.

Unbeknownst to Mrs. Patterson, a cake was now being prepared in her honor.

As she sipped her tea and gossiped with friends, her neighbor, “Witch” Pritchett, as Mrs. Patterson’s friends now called her unusual neighbor, was busy preparing a scrumptious pastry for her. You see, Mrs. Patterson had been caught in her eavesdropping act the moment she stuck her head outside her bedroom window.

This was now a reality. Both women would meet soon, and the milk bath would be discussed. But there was more to the milk bath than the bath itself.

There was the preparation for it, for starters. Mrs. Pritchett would wake up so early to prepare that strange bath that even her pet rooster would hiss at her when she’d pass him by and wake him with her heavy, grunting steps. He’d strut around the roost, and raise his feathers in a flurry, to show how irked it was that her master had woken first. She would pass the proud animal and arrive to the backdoor barn and grab the bucket hanging from a hook. Then she’d touch the barn’s red wood for luck.

There was also the milking uniform. This was made up of two things: a tough leather apron and some black rubber boots. With these things on, she’d hike up the grassy knoll that rear-ended her home, to head to work. Her large shadow would blanket over her pretty cottage, and Mrs. Pritchett liked this. It made her realize that everything somehow always looked quite right from up there. There, at the top off the grassy knoll, she’d spot a quaint three-legged stool that’d been in her family for years, and with this, she’d support her callous behind to comfortably milk the grazing cows.

She would come back with a full a full two gallons of milk, a bucket in one hand, and one in the other. Soon, these would be emptied into the family tub. The children awake, the milk in its place, and their grand mother ready to bathe.

This was it.

That was every Friday morning. Right now it was Friday evening, and Mrs. Pritchett was now standing in front of her neighbor’s front door, holding a cake with both hands.

She knocked the door.

Mrs. Patterson opened the door with a smile. This soon faded.

“Oh, dear,” said Mrs. Patterson. She gripped a washing cloth she had in right hand.

“I’ve brought a cake,” said Mrs. Pritchett.

“So you have.”

“I believe we have not met, dear neighbor,” said Mrs. Pritchett, “My name is Winifred Pritchett.”

“Lillian Patterson,” replied Mrs. Patterson.

“I bathe my children in milk every Friday morning before school,” Mrs. Pritchett announced.

“My husband had two belly buttons,” Mrs. Patterson retorted bluntly.

Both women stood still in silence.

An unprecedented sense of lightness suddenly surfaced in both women, and they both began to laugh.

“Come in, come in,” said Mrs. Patterson, as she wiped a small tear from her eye.

As Mrs. Pritchett wiped her feet to enter her new neighbor’s home, she thought of how nice it was going to be to have a new friend.