Milk Fed

Rachel, a twenty-four-year-old lapsed Jewish woman living in Los Angeles, structures her entire existence around calorie restriction. She works as an assistant at The Crew, a Hollywood talent management company run by her boss, Brett Ofer, and performs stand-up comedy weekly at a Silverlake show. Every day follows the same rigid pattern: nicotine gum for breakfast, precisely portioned meals throughout the day, frozen yogurt from a shop called Yo!Good, and three hours at the gym most evenings. This schedule eliminates any possibility of intimacy or social life.

Rachel's obsession with food traces back to her childhood in Short Hills, New Jersey, where her mother policed her eating relentlessly, comparing her to thinner girls and weighing her monthly. The more her mother restricted, the more Rachel binged in secret. At sixteen, she began restricting on her own, eventually losing 45 pounds and developing anorexia. When she confessed, her mother dismissed the severity, only acting when Rachel's fertility appeared threatened. A nutritionist helped her recover physically, but the calorie mathematics never left her mind.

Rachel's therapist, Dr. Rana Mahjoub, suggests a 90-day communication detox from her mother. In what Rachel intends to be their final session, Dr. Mahjoub asks her to sculpt, using modeling clay, a rendering of the body she fears becoming. Rachel loses herself in the exercise, creating a large, colorful figure she realizes is not a feared future but a shape that has always lived inside her. When Dr. Mahjoub calls the figure "worthy of love," Rachel cries, storms out, and buries the sculpture in her car trunk.

Rachel's closest relationship at work is with Ana, the office manager, a stylish woman in her midfifties whose sharp humor and exclusive warmth serve as surrogate maternal validation. Rachel recognizes she is physically attracted to Ana and begins allowing herself fantasies about her. Her sexual history with women is limited: a one-night stand with a woman named Zoe in college left her bored, and an infatuation with an activist named Cait dissolved once Cait became available. She has dated men since, finding it easier to fantasize about women while with them.

Rachel's controlled world fractures when Miriam, a pale, blue-eyed, conspicuously fat, strictly observant Orthodox Jewish woman, replaces her brother Adiv at the Yo!Good counter. Miriam immediately overfills Rachel's yogurt cup, ignoring her protests. One day, Miriam persuades Rachel to accept rainbow sprinkles as a free topping. Compelled by a force beyond her control, Rachel devours the entire oversized serving, experiencing pure sensory pleasure for the first time since adolescence. Panicked, she searches her car for the clay figure. It is gone.

On a subsequent visit, Rachel becomes light-headed and has a vision of a giant challah, a braided Jewish bread, seven feet tall and shimmering with honey. When the vision clears, Miriam stands in the challah's place, and Rachel recognizes what she feels is desire. Miriam creates a sundae she calls the Peppermint Plotz and invites Rachel to dinner and a movie.

Their first evening together is transformative. At the Golden Dragon, a kitschy kosher Chinese restaurant, Rachel tastes food she has denied herself for years. At a theater showing Charade, Miriam hands Rachel the last three Twizzlers from their shared bag, and Rachel drives home whispering Miriam's name.

Miriam invites Rachel to her family's home for Shabbat, the weekly Jewish Sabbath. Mrs. Schwebel, Miriam's mother, serves a lavish meal of roast chicken, challah, and apple compote. Rachel eats freely without counting calories and feels a belonging she has never experienced, as though the family loves her simply for being Jewish. Miriam persuades Rachel to stay overnight since she has been drinking, and in the basement by candlelight, Miriam tells her an allegorical story about a woman who longs for something forbidden but chooses to keep her family instead.

Before their physical relationship begins, Miriam confesses that in high school she had a secret relationship with a girl named Bluma Sternberg, which ended when Bluma's mother caught them and beat both girls. Miriam never told her own parents and says she wants to remain friends with Rachel. Later, at a screening of All About Eve, Rachel takes Miriam's hand, and the simple gesture feels more intimate than any prior sexual act. Under a furniture store awning afterward, Rachel kisses Miriam. Miriam kisses back, then pulls away and says they are not allowed to kiss like that. She leaves but returns to Rachel's apartment later that night and initiates a kiss. Their physical relationship escalates over the following visits.

Over seven consecutive nights, Rachel and Miriam grow increasingly intimate. Rachel begins eating more freely, discovering that three meals and snacks feel natural when she stops restricting. Throughout this period, she has recurring dreams featuring Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel, the famous sixteenth-century rabbi of Prague who, according to Jewish folklore, created a golem, an animated being made from clay, to protect the Jewish community. In these dreams, the rabbi offers spiritual encouragement, telling Rachel that just because something feels good does not mean it is wrong.

Tensions rise when Rachel pushes to attend another Shabbat dinner. Mrs. Schwebel's warmth has cooled, and Miriam warns that her mother suspects something. At Saturday lunch, when Mrs. Schwebel praises Miriam's brother Adiv for serving in the Israeli Defense Forces, Rachel challenges the family, raising the Nakba, the term Palestinians use for their displacement during the creation of Israel in 1948. Mrs. Schwebel accuses Rachel of self-hatred. Rachel then places her hand on Miriam's, openly signaling their closeness, and Mrs. Schwebel orders her to leave. Miriam, angry and silent, tells Rachel to go.

Devastated, Rachel cuts her hair short and discovers the clay figure has mysteriously reappeared on her car's back seat. Miriam returns one final time, and they spend a last intimate evening together, sharing breakfast in bed the next morning. Before Miriam leaves for Shabbat, Rachel gives her the clay figure, telling Miriam the sculpture is her. At work, Ana comments that Rachel's new look makes her appear "gay." When Jace Evans, a young actor Ofer manages, pursues Rachel, she sleeps with him, drawn less by attraction than by a desire for this conventionally attractive person to validate her own desirability. The experience feels hollow. Rachel tells Ana about the encounter, but Ana reports it to Ofer, who fires Rachel for an ethics violation.

On day 53 of the detox, Rachel calls her mother and leaves a simple voice mail. Alone on her kitchen floor, Rachel begins a dialogue with herself. She discovers she can be her own daughter, rocking herself, promising never to abandon herself again.

Three years later, Rachel spots Miriam on Fairfax Avenue pushing a double stroller with twin babies. Their eyes meet, and both smile, but neither stops. Rachel now has comedy gigs on the East Coast, and her mother is coming to see her perform. She has told her mother about both a man and a woman she has dated since Miriam. In a final dream, Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel tells Rachel that the word golem means "shapeless mass" in English but "unfinished substance" in Hebrew. He reminds her that she is his creator.