Nights That Don’t End

by Huina Zheng

At eleven p.m., the baby is still awake, squirming in her mother’s arms. The mother rocks her, pats her back, hums lullabies, but she refuses to sleep. Her eyelids droop, yet she keeps fussing. The father has long since gone to bed, his snores rising and falling. At one-thirty a.m., the baby cries again. She wants her mother, not her father. The mother reaches for the bedside lamp. The father rolls over, muttering in his sleep. The mother carries the baby to the living room. Mixes formula, tests the temperature, feeds her. Still she won’t sleep. She wants to play. She wants books. The mother leans back on the sofa, the baby curled against her chest. Page by page, line by line, she reads. The little bear wet the bed. The little bear is hungry. The little bear has a fever. Two a.m., still reading. Two-thirty, they play peekaboo. The mother hides her face behind the book, then reveals it. The baby giggles. By three-thirty, the baby finally yawns. The mother paces, murmuring Tang poems, singing nursery rhymes, patting her back. Four a.m., at last she sleeps. The mother lays her in the crib. The father has sprawled into the middle of the bed; she nudges him back to his side. The mother lies down. Exhausted, she cannot fall asleep. Seven a.m., the alarm goes off. The mother wakes groggy. The father gets up, too. At seven-thirty, the mother kisses the baby’s forehead and closes the door. Grandma is already awake. The mother leaves, squeezing onto the subway before eight. The car is packed, shoulder to shoulder. She could fall asleep standing, but her heart stays home, with the baby still sleeping. The father, refreshed, boards another train.

Huina Zheng either writes as an admission coach at work or writes for fun after work.