Some women are not cut out for this job. Some women are incompetent mothers. They just don’t have what it takes. And had I ever really wanted a baby or did I just like the idea of a baby? This was how I talked to myself as I wheeled her down the street. I didn’t know where I was going. I was just walking. I’d walk until I hit one of the main roads and then I’d decide what to do. An idea was taking shape in my hole-filled brain. I could leave her somewhere—a fire department, a supermarket, it didn’t matter. As we wandered through streets with tidy gingerbread houses where all the New Moms lived, I composed the note I would tuck into her blanket—I love her, but I can’t take care of her. I’m sick. Of course, there would be a dozen people who would demand to know where she was, why I gave her away—Joel, my mother—but I didn’t think of them then. All I could think about was sleeping. If I gave her away, I could sleep again. It was the only way.
“You’ll be better off without me,” I said as I pushed the stroller. “Someone will find you a new mother, a real mother. You’ll be happy.” On the corner stood a portly old gentleman in a black coat and hat. He doffed his hat and I saw immediately that it was Winston Churchill.
“Winston!” I cried. “Sometimes a person has to surrender.”
He shook his head.
“I didn’t used to be like this,” I told him. “I used to be a normal person, I used to be good at things. I used to play the flute and balance a checkbook. I had a job where I corrected other people’s grammar. Sometimes I even went on hikes for no reason at all!”
Winston Churchill stroked his chin, nodding as if he understood, as if to say: go on.
“And when I was a girl, I dreamed of having two daughters. Can you believe that? That I used to want more than one? I must have been crazy.”
“Never, never, never give up,” he said, grinning. He was a man. Bombs and battle lines he understood, not bleeding and breast milk. I left him at the corner and walked another block to the firehouse. The windows were dark. I stumbled on. After a while my phone buzzed, a text from Joel: Where are you guys? You left the door wide open. I’m worried.
I’m not here anymore, I typed, right as my phone died.
We ended up at a park. I found a bench under a leafy tree and angled the stroller beside it. The blanket I’d draped over the covering was slipping off. I fixed it and peeked inside. She was still asleep, her little fist tucked under her chin. She was stealing my sleep—that’s what the problem was. She wasn’t even a real baby. She was some kind of changeling that sucks and sucks at her mother’s brain until all that’s left is an empty husk.
Just then, a squirrel danced at my feet. It cocked its head and stared at me, full of expectation. Something was so familiar about this squirrel. I thought I recognized him from a book my mother used to read to me when I was young—it was Squirrel Nutkin, himself.
“What do you want?” I said. “I have nothing to give.”
Squirrel Nutkin didn’t believe me. He paced back and forth, making strange clicking noises.
“I told you I don’t have anything.” But I patted my pockets anyway and found a stale piece of gum with lint in the wrapper. “Here,” I said, throwing it on the ground. “Now go away.”
Exhausted, I stretched across the bench and stared up at the leaves. I didn’t know what kind of tree it was—what kind of pathetic person can’t name a basic tree? I would have to get one of those identification books and start learning the trees as soon as possible. But for now, I closed my eyes. Patches of light played across my eyelids. A group of homeless people, camped not too far away, argued over something.
Nothing separated me from them. Once I gave her away, I wouldn’t ever be able to go home again. Joel wouldn’t want me. My own mother would be ashamed of me. I would be homeless; I was already homeless. A bottle smashed against the ground. Overhead, a crow cawed and Squirrel Nutkin watched me from a tree branch. Then I fell through a hole in my own brain, through all the floors of my mansion, into the dungeon where bones rattled when I landed. I think I fell into a coma.