The novel opens with milkman’s death at the hands of state forces: “The day Somebody McSomebody put a gun to my breast and called me a cat and threatened to shoot me was the same day the milkman died” (1). Amidst many digressions and flashbacks, middle sister then launches into the story of her involvement with milkman—a 41-year-old “renouncer” who is not actually a milkman at all.

One day middle sister is walking along the street reading Ivanhoe when a white van pulls up beside her. Leaning out the window, milkman offers her a ride, which she awkwardly declines:

I did not want to get in the car with this man. I did not know how to say so though, as he wasn’t being rude and he knew my family for he’d named the credentials, the male people of my family, and I couldn’t be rude because he wasn’t being rude (3).

Shortly afterwards, she is approached by her oldest sister (“eldest sister”), who warns her that rumors about her and milkman are spreading. Middle sister suspects that her sister’s husband (“first brother-in-law”) put her up to the conversation and lashes out at the hypocrisy: first brother-in-law began sexually harassing middle sister when she was 12.