The pharmacy hummed blue white light. Nervously, Lila checked for any familiar faces. Only a listless clerk acknowledged her existence from the magazine rack by the cash registers. Lila slipped further in to her hoodie. A classical version of an old pop song played as she beelined for Aisle 8.

Towers of disposable diapers festooned with cherubic babies mocked her as she rounded the hairbrushes. Past the wipes, the shampoos, the glistening rows of baby butt paste, they stood behind locked Plexiglass, the formula. Lila’s fingers trailed the bounty of choices. Toddler milk, soy-based, organic, tummy trouble, for Lila each name was another moniker for failure, her failure. Through the thick plasstic, he tapped at the lavendar striped can her doctor recommended.

She had tried everything. Warm and cool compresses did nothing. Her side of the bathroom vanity overflowed with tinctures and balms. She’d rubbed her own milk onto her skin desperate to heal the ache. For six weeks of bleeding nipples, Lila had visited an lacatation coach two towns over. At the last appointment the woman asked Lila to bury her placenta by the light of a full moon and release her resentment towards her baby into the night. When Sean found Lila and Colm crying in the driveway he’d railed against the coach and cared them both into the house.

Lilia reached for the call button and then froze. Domperidone had only caused more tendernes. She’d even endured Michelle’s nana’s god-awful folk remedy root tea for nearly a mouth. But after Colm developed angry pink blisters around his mouth Lila relented and gave up on breastfeeding, She looked down at the peaceful sleeping infant in his car seat. With her eyes and Sean’s rounded cheeks, he had been her dear little man. Colm pursed his lips in his sleep. Rough and cracked, his ravenous mouth made her winch. Lila snatched her hand to her breast. What kind of mother am I?

“Need help, hon?” an older woman pushing a cart of empty cardborad boxes said from the top of the aisle.

Lila hesitated and then gave a small head shake. The woman approached and indicated Lila’s hooded sweatshirt with a nod. Twin blood spots had formed over her breasts. Mortified, Lila covered her chest but the weight of her forearm brushing against her skin hurt. White hot pain sizzled across her sensitive breasts. She cried out and Colm stirred awake.

“Sure you do.”

The clerk unlocked the formula section and stepped aside. Tentatively Lila reached for the doctor’s recommendation. The small cannister was weighty. She turned her failure in her hands, reading the instructions,. With a jumble of kyes, the woman locked up the case and continued up the aisle. Lila thanked her retreating back. Toothless, Colm gnawed at his curled index finger. Thin drool dribbled down his badly chapped lips, His eyes fixed on hers with hunger. Baby formula in hand, Lila headed for the cashier uo fron.