Secrets-{[}]{~} Chapter Five

Thui waited until only a day before Harold's return. On that day, a mild, rainy, fall day, she wrapped the baby in a piece of cloth, in a way that baby looked like a package of some sort, and walked to the field. She had walked that field so many times that she knew it by heart. She had experienced that if she walked about a quarter of a mile, she would get to a place which many trees would block the possible view of any passer-by, even though she had seldom seen anyone there on her previous walking. In the big bag on her shoulder, she had a shovel, which she had removed the handle of it at home. She walked with the baby in her arms and the bag on her shoulder, as though nothing was about to happen. When she reached to her designated destination, she put the baby down on the wet grass. It was dusk, enough light for her to see. She opened the wrap from the baby. The baby was completely naked; and then she opened the buttons of her shirt. She nursed the baby for the last time. As the baby sucked on her nipples, she suddenly felt ashamed. She had dreaded this baby like a great intrusion to her life. Now she feared her little girl even more. She looked into the baby's eyes and somehow saw that the baby knew what her mother was about to do. Her heart sank by seeing those entreating eyes. She felt almost nonfunctional. The strange knitting of baby's eyebrows, and the stranger puffiness of her eyes bewildered Thui. It seemed as though that little face and that little mouth wanted to say something to her, or understood her mother. But there was nothing about this evil mom then for the baby to see. Thui was pure blank. She was only a big fire of pain herself. She felt, looking in baby's dark eyes, a burden in her heart.

The baby lay in her arms for awhile. The sky was getting darker and darker just as her heart. The baby's deep, black eyes seemed looking up to her unblinking, seemed to draw her most internal thoughts and feelings out of her. That day the baby was three weeks old. She regretted that she had waited this long. She looked at the baby with great anxiety and suddenly felt that she no longer loved that thing. She had not wanted her. The bay was definitely unwanted, and now she had to go. She only wished that somehow she had had an abortion instead of this. But that was not possible. For doing that, she had to go to some back alley woman without any medical experience. She had heard many women had died having abortion that way. She loved life too much to endanger it.

Calmly she put her hand over the baby's mouth and nose and slowly began putting pressure. She felt the baby's struggle for breath. The exertion continued for a short while, and then she realized that the baby was dead. Her lame body remained on her lap for some minutes. She could not even cry. She wrapped the baby with the same muslin cloth that she had carried her, put her down on the wet grass and began digging the earth with the shovel without handle. She dug and dug without thinking. When she noticed that the hole was big enough, she put the baby in the hole and covered it with dirt. She cleaned up after herself; put some branches on the grave of her nameless baby; put her shovel in the bag, and started towards home.

Going back home, the only thing she felt, was relief and how to get rid of the milk in her breasts. At home she automatically washed the shovel, put the handle back in its place, and placed it in the storage room where it belonged. Then she cleaned up everything that showed any sign of her having a bay. She put them in paper sack and burned them in the back yard of the old man's house. It was passed midnight when she finished the cleaning, the vacuuming, the dusting. Everything was back to normal, and ready for the return of Harold, her ticket to America. She was again a free woman.

Sitting in the balcony that was connected to the bedroom, she began laughing, a hysterical, atrocious, and despairing laugh. She already knew what to tell her family about the baby. She just died, very simple. They better not to dare to pressure her for more details, or to tell anyone.

To Be Continued