Maria’s voice stayed calm.“Why?”“Because this is a public place.”“Yes. It’s a grocery store.”“You know exactly what I mean.”“No, I don’t. Explain it.”
He looked at me again.
I pulled my flannel closed, trying to hide the stains.Maria noticed.Her expression changed for half a second.Then she looked back at him.“She leaked breast milk through her shirt,” Maria said. “Her baby isn’t even here. So explain what she did wrong.”The man’s face got red.
“Women used to have some modesty.”The mother with the toddler actually laughed.The man heard it.Maria said, “What should she have done?”The man didn’t reply.“You walked up to her and told her to cover herself. What should she have done? Prevented her body from producing milk?”
“She should have noticed.”
“And do what at this exact moment?”“She should go to the bathroom.”I finally looked up.Something strange was happening.For the first minute, I felt like every person in the store was looking at me.Now they were looking at him.
He was now looking embarrassed.He no longer had that initial confidence.Maria wasn’t yelling.That somehow made it worse for him.She said, “So you saw a woman whose shirt got wet because she’s feeding an infant, and your first instinct was to walk up, get in her face, and shame her.”“I didn’t shame anybody.”
