Satire by Carla Chait

“Mother’s M!lk”
             By Carla Chait

With the decimation of the bovine population at the turn of the century, an alternate milk source is sought. Human mothers to newborn babies begin to be imprisoned and their breast milk harvested.

The historical protocol is replicated: women are kept pregnant continuously to keep their milk supply flowing for the market. If the mother rears a son, he is considered to be a waste product in the industry and is either killed with a hammer blow to the head or discarded to die on a rubbish heap. Little girls are kept alive but are not allowed to consume their own mother’s milk, lest it should go to waste on them rather than feeding into the supply chain. The newborn girls are, however, kept near their mothers so that their cries for milk will trigger the mother’s let-down reflex for her to produce more milk.

Udder^TM has taken on the responsibility of gathering, processing, packaging and marketing the harvested milk under the brand name: Mother’s M!lk, known affectionately in industry circles as ‘EmEm’. The image on the M!lk carton is of a dewy, pregnant mom-to-be delicately swinging on a wooden rope swing in a hazy, open field, while lovingly cradling her growing belly. The setting sun in the background casts pastel hues on the phoney Mother’s M!lk subtext: free-range.

Mother’s M!lk is said to contain the ideal balance of nutrients for human consumption. ‘It is no surprise,’ says Udder^TM CEO jocularly, ‘as the M!lk is designed and engineered precisely for human beings.’ This obvious fact has been corroborated by rigorous scientific research. Comprising more carbohydrate and less protein, M!lk has essential fatty acids and key vitamins and minerals absent in the bovine secretion. Part of the campaign is to demonize the long history of cow milk consumption to strengthen the current gentle but necessary transition to Mother’s M!lk. After all, you don’t want your kids growing up to be big fat cows, do you!?

A particularly popular commercial for Mother’s M!lk airing on Apple TV at the moment features an affluent family left over from the old regime. A starched and shiny young boy sits at the kitchen table eating popped cereal. His mother, wearing a red and white checked apron and hairnet (to appeal to the lower classes), carefully pours Mother’s M!lk onto his breakfast cereal. ‘Eric, darling,’ she coos, ruffling his golden hair. ‘Don’t you want to take a dash of sugar with your cereal like you do every morning for breakfast?’ Eric gapes open-mouthed and incredulously at his lovely mother. ‘No ways, Mom!’ he shouts. ‘Mother’s M!lk is perfectly sweet just the way it is. ’Then a jolly-dad voiceover booms from the adjacent room: ‘Now, that’s my boy! Mother’s M!lk has nourished us since the beginning of time’, while mother and son beam their sparkling Udder^TM smiles at the screen.

Women of childbearing age, as young as 12, are mandatorily enrolled in the official government-subsidised M!lk Programme through an identity register. Those who pass the straightforward medical examination will have their noses pierced and pinned with an orange tag displaying their M!lk digits. M!lk Programme figures are kept naked in metal lots and repeatedly and painfully artificially inseminated with an enormous plastic phallic device. The women are fed ground-up human matter to keep them plump and full of hormones until all the life has been sucked out of them and the AI waitrons have squeezed their tender breasts dry, after which they are raped of their fertility through hysterectomies and shipped off to one of the many state M!lk factories to interminably stamp Best Before dates onto polyethylene M!lk cartons.

There is some trouble with abuse and cruelty – we understand that, and we are very sorry about it. But we must rest assured that Mother’s M!lk is biologically, socially and culturally appropriate to feed the ever-expanding consciousness of our highly developed species.

- South African Carla Chait is a dietician, practising macrobiotics. She also has a Master’s degree in English literature and is qualified as an English teacher. She has had poetry and short fiction appear in local literary journals and online. In 2022, she published a novel, Floor 1, which is based on her experience working as a community service dietician in a public hospital in Johannesburg.

Copyright©2024 by Carla Chait. All Rights Reserved.