Making Space (The Time Traveler's Passport)

by R.F. Kuang

You can’t just go around touching other people’s children, let alone pick them up.

“Well, that’s just great,” says Chris. “You’ve stolen a child.” 5 “I didn’t steal him.” She’s done the responsible thing. She’s already called her friend Brianne, a social worker. She hasn’t stolen a child.

It was Chris who first wanted to have a child. Jess had never dreamed of being a mother. She liked her freedom, she liked her spare time, and frankly everything she’d ever heard about pregnancy seemed like body horror. But Chris wanted so badly to be a father.

She was so ready to take care of 10someone. She could not explain it in terms other than an intense, irrational craving. She hated it—it seemed to confirm all the essentialist arguments about women. But it was how she felt.

Jess thinks she is experiencing a pleasure that all parents must feel—the privilege of showing their children the world.

These are the unspoken rules of their neighborhood. Drink your vinegar, but pretend it’s champagne.

Call it mercy, call it resentment, or just call it female friendship.

She has become for him a safe harbor, a home that will not be swept away, or burned down, or swallowed into the ground. Isn’t that enough?

she understands her task is to keep Chris distracted, to keep his eyes on her, until Buddy is near enough to bring the bat crashing against his head.