Spilled Milk: Based on a True Story

The family moves to a larger house in a rural area of Pennsylvania. Brooke makes a new friend named Cristin, and Cristin visits one day when Brooke is suffering a stomachache. She believes she is about to experience her first period, but Molly thinks she’s overreacting. Suddenly, Brooke falls, and when she awakes, she is coming out of an appendix surgery. Brooke’s doctor asks if she wants to stay another night, but Brooke opts to go home when she sees her mother in pain after sitting in a hospital chair. Brooke’s father gets Brooke a doll at the hospital, but she is disturbed to find it sings a familiar nursery rhyme: “Hush little baby, don’t say a word” (51). Over the next weeks, Brooke heals, and her siblings and Cristin keep her company. One night while Brooke is alone and still recovering, her father demands she drink some chocolate milk. Brooke reluctantly agrees, and within moments, she is falling unconscious. She is then sexually assaulted by her father; when she awakes in the night, she hears David telling Molly a story about their cat peeing on the bed. Brooke cries herself to sleep, as she realizes the assault was real and not a dream.

Brooke has a new friend named Judd, and she often goes to his house to escape her home life. Both she and Judd eat very little; Judd has emotional struggles surrounding eating while Brooke often lacks food. Brooke and her siblings regularly go without dinner or snacks, and their pantry is kept locked to prevent them from taking food. On nights when the family eats dinner together, Brooke’s father takes charge, often hitting his children when they speak out of turn. Brooke is the only child he does not treat this way, so she often sits closest to him to protect her siblings.

Molly requires another back surgery, and Brooke decides to go swimming with Judd and some of his friends. She meets a boy named Paul whom she develops a crush on, although it is clear that Judd already harbors a crush on her. Brooke returns home to make dinner, and her father arrives, enraged. He throws a chair at Adam for failing to clean up some cups, knocking him to the ground, and chases Brooke and Adam up the stairs. Brooke’s father shoves her for the first time, demanding she clean up the mess, and when David finally leaves, Brooke finds Kat hiding in a corner in tears. She wonders what an entire week with her mother in the hospital is going to be like. Brooke’s father removes the door of her bedroom, and when she is sexually assaulted again, she feels as if she separates from her body and watches the assault from above. She awakes two days later in searing pain. She takes a long shower, attempting to wash herself clean of the events of the other night, and when she sees her father again, she finds herself unable to speak. He once again acts as if nothing happened and tells Brooke that she must have had the flu since she “threw up in [her] sleep” (69). Brooke feels she has no choice but to go along with the abuse in order to protect her siblings.