If I hadn't forced the issue—screaming through the agony of my engorged chest—they would have kicked the specialist out.
The woman looked at me with pity. Throughout the massage, she sighed repeatedly, shaking her head.
From the living room, the sound of my mother-in-law slamming objects grew louder. Spencer appeared at the bedroom door multiple times, his face dark with impatience.
"Mom says plenty of women go through this. You just need to toughen up. Why waste money on a stranger?" He crossed his arms. "If you insist on this, you're paying for it. I don't have extra cash for your whims."
I wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn't come.
My heart had turned to ice.
When the specialist finished, she pressed a packet of fever reducers into my hand.
"Don't cry," she whispered. "Your body belongs to you. Take care of it."
Her simple kindness broke me. As the door clicked shut behind her, I buried my face in the pillow and sobbed.
I took the medicine in secret, though anxiety gnawed at me about feeding my son afterward.
From that day on, the atmosphere in the house shifted from cold to arctic.
My fever broke, but I remained weak. My mother-in-law's cooking became even more perfunctory—plain boiled noodles or cabbage floating in gray, tasteless water.
If I frowned at the bowl, she snapped. "Don't want to eat? Fine. Why did you hire that masseuse? We could have used that money to buy good soup bones for you. Ungrateful."
I scoffed. She *did* buy bones—the stripped ones with no meat. The meaty cuts all made their way across the hall to Madeline's apartment.
She did this because she knew Spencer would never stop her.
Since the moment I went into labor, when she opposed hiring a professional maternity nurse, she had vetoed every decision we made. Unless things were done exactly her way, she threw a tantrum.
I suggested to Spencer that we give his mother some money to return to her hometown.
We paid her.
She didn't leave.
Instead, my home became Madeline's personal kitchen. They ate meat; I drank dishwater soup. They ate melons; I watched.
Madeline Miranda took it all for granted. She would drape her arms around her mother's neck and coo, "Mom, it would be amazing if you lived here forever."
Bile rose in my throat.
My mother-in-law's control extended beyond food. She monopolized Little Treasure completely.
At night, she insisted on taking the baby, claiming she didn't want to disturb my rest. From day one, she forced Spencer to buy a breast pump. She demanded I pump every hour, turning me into a machine. The milk went into the fridge, to be warmed up whenever the baby cried.
It wasn't what I wanted. I wanted to bond with my son.
"I can feed him myself," I protested.
"You're weak. Rest." Her tone was sickeningly sweet, but her eyes were hard. "I'm helping you."
I looked to Spencer for support.
He shrugged. "Mom is doing this for your own good. Why are you so ungrateful?"
Madeline chimed in, eager to assert her dominance. "My mom is so considerate. You should be thanking her on your knees."
"Then why didn't you let her raise Stella?" I snapped, patience evaporating.
Spencer immediately jumped to their defense. "That's my mom and my sister! They wouldn't harm me!"
In a marriage, if the man doesn't stand by you, you are nothing.
You are at the bottom of the food chain.
So I became a dairy cow. Pumped mechanically, staring at the wall. When Little Treasure cried, she wouldn't even let me hold him.
Outside, she played the martyr. "I take care of my grandson and cook all day. I'm so exhausted," she would tell the neighbors.
Everyone praised her as the perfect mother-in-law.
I just prayed for the day she would leave.
