369 Miles

After 10 hours of excruciating labor, Mao Tak took her newborn home. Home was a sprawling house, all done up in white to make it look even more spacious, more intimidating.

The first hour back, Mao was in a daze. The fancy white house came with an equally fancy set of servants, one of them being Mao’s own nursemaid Laurie Fields. Mrs. Fields was over the moon about the new baby. She excelled at running the Tak household, but her true passion lay in nurturing children, which she had done for not only Mao, but Mao’s mother as well.

Once Mrs. Fields took the baby, Mao took to her bed for a fitful sleep. This was an unusual occurrence, as Mao lived the sort of carefree life that did not lend itself to worries and their associated nightmares. In her dream, Mao found herself in the crib their footman had assembled for the baby, but the crib had become a grotesque facsimile of what it was in reality, and so Mao’s chief feeling during her nightmare was one of imprisonment. She felt hemmed in and helpless. No, she did not see her baby as a giant smirking down at her in the crib. That might have been almost laughable. Instead, the baby seemed to lurk overhead, not in any tangible form, but more of a haze, a subtle cloud over an already terrifying existence of being an adult trapped in a baby’s bed.

Mao slept for eight hours and woke up feeling, if possible, even more tired than when she first got back from the hospital. She wasn’t too worried, however. She imagined that she could just leave her baby to Mrs. Fields and try to sleep again, hopefully with better results. Unfortunately, Mao was not so lucky.

Mrs. Fields came in hurriedly with a tray of eggs, toast, and orange juice. The food was not garnished as it usually was, but before Mao could complain, as she always liked to make her displeasure known, Mrs. Fields began to plead for the weekend off. Mao could not say no, for Mrs. Fields’ daughter had gotten into a very serious car accident, and Mrs. Fields needed to go down and take care of her. Actually, Mao could say no, but her husband was a steadier, kinder sort of person, almost as though God saddled the two together to cancel out the horror that Mao had become after growing up spoiled by her parents. 

This same considerate husband was the one who insisted that Mao spend some time with their child. Before you cry unfair, Mr. Tak himself had spent ten hours of his yesterday next to Mao Tak as she gave birth to their first child. And he did not receive an injection of pain killers to staunch the physical and emotional abuse at the hand of Mao. Nevertheless, he roused himself after a quick nap to spend time with their child. 

Chief among Mr. Tak’s concerns was that his wife had insisted on being the one to name the child, and until this day still did not have a name picked out for the birth certificate. He was a bit disconcerted by his wife’s indifference to their baby, but he had also read up that new mothers could get depressed after the birth of their child. But try as he might, Mr. Tak could not imagine that someone could look into his new son’s face and not want to spend time with him. After laying their son down next to his mother, Mr. Tak took off for work (his department head laughed when he requested paternity leave, as did the mothers in the room who had barely received a month’s pardon from work to take care of their own newborns).

And so to her horror, Mao found herself alone in their bedroom, also all done up in white, with her new son. Mao stared at her child dumbly for half a minute before turning her back to him and trying to get back to sleep. 

Yet, she could not. It felt to her that her earlier nightmare had come true. She had no one to hand the child off to, and even though she had her back turned to the baby, she felt that he must be watching her, this needy little sack of wrinkles. Mao glared at the baby even though to his credit, he had been quiet for a good hour. Finally, Mao got up and huffed, crossing her arms over her chest defensively.

She felt that the baby was encroaching upon her space. Her bed was king-sized, which was more than sufficient for her and her child, really, more than sufficient for a whole family of five to sleep together in. She wanted more space, but she did not want to lean over and move her son. Instead, she used her toes to nudge the child a little further off. The sense of dread in her chest eased a fraction.

However, five minutes later it was back in full force. She turned to her other side again to look at her son. She was even more angry than before, if that was even possible. She hated how her son was like a stain on her white blankets. An unwelcome blip of color on her white bedding. She felt like she could explode. She felt as though an invasion was upon her. She realized that it did not matter whether she pushed her son to the very edge of the bed, put him in the crib next door, or even exiled him to the basement. He was a bother, and she resented Mr. Tak for not taking care of the child, as well as Mrs. Fields for not prioritizing Mao’s family over her own.

Mao felt like a shower was in order, so without a second glance back, Mao grabbed a new change of clothes, and moved into the bathroom.

For the hour that she was in the bathroom, Mao lost herself in the cleansing ritual. The sheets of water seemed to have an effect that the foot of space on the bed did not. But eventually, the time came. Mao turned off the water, and exited the tub without drying off, not caring about the deluge of water that pooled on the floor. It was not her job to make sure that the bathroom was in order. Mao wiped the mirror to clear the condensation, and looked herself in the face. She looked remarkably calm, her black eyes clear, still, even-keeled. And suddenly, she knew what she had to do. She laughed at the irony. She had been so angry to be left alone with the child, but now, she saw that it lent itself perfectly to her plan.

She got dressed. She bundled the child into her car. Tossed a quarter to pick a direction. And drove. For 369 miles. Her favorite number. Set her child on the stoop of an elegant looking church. Stood back. Sighed in satisfaction at a job well-done. She had not bloodied her hands, sullied her pristine white silk gloves. Laughing, she got back into her car and drove the 369 miles back in the opposite direction.