A House for Happy Mothers: A Novel

by Amulya Malladi

  “Yes,” Asha said, and shifted to be comfortable in spite of Pratap’s weight on her shoulder.

  “That’s your husband? What does he do?” the woman asked.

  Asha told her and the woman smiled. “Handsome boy.”

  Asha smiled back and then looked fondly at Pratap. He was handsome—with his mustache and rugged features. He was tall and built well, like his father had been.

  When she had first married him, two things had struck her: his size and the smell of turpentine and paint. The first day she saw him come back from work, spattered with paint from head to toe, she had been shocked. He had used turpentine to remove the paint while he bathed with water drawn from the well in the backyard that they shared with several of their neighbors. The well was a bone of contention, and people complained about how much water Pratap used to wash himself, especially in the summer, when the well was almost dry. So Asha had started to hide water, store some away each time she drew some from the well in a big white bucket with a lid she had bought for just this purpose.

  Now she was used to the turpentine and the paint, and even his size.

  The woman and Asha chatted all the way to Srirampuram, and Asha was grateful for the company. By the time they got off, Asha knew the woman and her three children’s life stories. The woman knew nothing about Asha. There was nothing to tell. The most exciting thing that had ever happened to Asha was happening to her now, and this she could tell no one.

  The waiting room at Happy Mothers was teeming with life. Besides Asha, there were three women there. One was about five months pregnant, and two looked like they were ready to pop any minute now. Each of them was carrying someone else’s baby. Some would have white babies, some would have brown babies, and some would have half-white, half-brown babies. Asha had been happy to know that her baby would be mostly Indian. Not that it mattered, but a part of her felt that it made more sense for an Indian woman to push out an Indian baby from her womb.

  Kaveri had not seen her white baby after he was born but had seen a photograph months later when the parents sent her a picture. They were standing in front of a decorated tree, two white parents with a smiling white baby. The card said HAPPY CHRISTMAS as if she were Christian and celebrated the holiday. It seemed impossible that the baby had come out of Kaveri, who was as dark as coal.

  The parents and the baby boy all looked so joyous that Kaveri had had tears in her eyes. “I made them happy,” she told Asha. “It makes it all worthwhile to know that I gave them so much happiness.”

  Asha had not said that the happiness had cost five lakh rupees plus whatever the parents had to pay Doctor Swati for her clinic and services, which was probably a lot more.

  It seemed wrong to do this for money, but Asha wouldn’t do it if their finances were better, would she? If Manoj had to go to a good school in the city, they needed money, and this was an easy—or, say, viable—way to earn it. That had been Asha’s mother-in-law’s argument. Puttamma had moved out of Asha and Pratap’s house as soon as Kaveri and Raman bought their brick flat with a toilet, the kind with a flush that you could sit on like a chair. No more taking a mug of water and looking for a place to go in the bushes.

  Puttamma had been all for Asha and Kaveri renting out their wombs. “It’s for a good cause, and it’s better than selling a kidney, isn’t it?” Easy for her to say, Asha thought. The old woman cannot have children anymore, so she thinks it’s a picnic for us to have one.

  She looked at Pratap, the only man in the waiting room; he seemed incongruous with his tall, masculine frame against the pink and blue walls covered with baby pictures. He had said he didn’t want to put pressure on Asha to do this, but he had put the pressure on all the same. She knew all he saw were rupees in the bank. She, on the other hand, had worried about it, worried and thought and cried about it . . . and then worried some more. She was still not sure they were doing the right thing. But there was no point broadcasting that fact. The baby was inside her. That was the end of the story.

  When Asha had met Doctor Swati for the first time, she had been full of concerns, and the doctor had been kind and compassionate, speaking about the ease of the procedure, the gain for Asha and her family in the end, and the happiness she would give two people.

  “Not many of us get a chance to give such a big gift,” Doctor Swati said. “You have that opportunity. But if you have even a small rice grain’s worth of doubt, you shouldn’t do it.”

  Asha had had a handful of rice grains’ worth of doubt, but she pretended and acted, and Doctor Swati had believed her. It helped that Pratap seemed so open to the idea. The only thing he had a problem with was that during her last four months of pregnancy, Asha would live at a house in Happy Mothers where all the surrogate mothers lived until they gave birth.

  “So many months without seeing my husband and children?” Asha hadn’t liked the idea at all.

  “They can come and visit. You’re lucky because you will be living in Srirampuram. We have women from Hyderabad, Vizag, Warangal, and they come to the house as soon as they conceive. They don’t see their families until they give birth and go back home,” Doctor Swati said. “Even for your own pregnancy, don’t you go and stay with your mother during your last months?”

  “My mother is dead,” Asha told her.

  “Pratap and the children can come and visit every day—unless they’re sick; then we don’t allow it to make sure you don’t fall sick and the other women in the house don’t, either,” Doctor Swati continued. “But besides that, Pratap can come by every day after work and school to spend time with you, Asha. What do you think, Pratap?”

  “Yes, yes,” Pratap said. “It won’t be a problem. My sister-in-law will help with the children when Asha is here.”

  Asha had done that for Kaveri, so it seemed natural she would do the same for Asha.

  Kaveri had said that it had been fun to get away from her house, children, and husband for four full months. She had spent time with other women like her, and they had watched movies together, eaten food that was prepared by a maid, and had done no housework at all. Someone cooked and cleaned for them, even made their beds. She had felt like a queen for those months, and it had been a rude shock, Kaveri confessed, to come home and do everything herself again.

  They’d thought about moving to Srirampuram after they had the baby and got all their money, anyway. They would buy a flat just like Kaveri and Raman had done, and enroll Manoj in a good school in town.

  With this money, Manoj could become whatever he wanted, Asha thought. Maybe he would become a doctor, someone like Doctor Swati who could chatter away in English, so poised and confident. Maybe he would become an engineer, like those they showed on television, the ones who worked for big companies in America.

  “Do you think it’s a good idea to live with Kaveri and Raman? Their flat will become very crowded,” Asha said as they waited to meet with the doctor.

  “It will be good to live with family,” Pratap said. “We will have help and they will have help. Raman is talking to his contractor to get me a job as well. Manoj can already start going to a good school with some of the money we get from Doctor Swati if you’re pregnant.”

  Asha nodded, holding her tongue. He had already decided. He wasn’t asking her for her opinion; he was telling her he had made a decision and they would just have to do what he wanted. She had thought she would be able to exercise more decision-making power, since the money they would be enjoying would come from her labors, but Pratap didn’t seem to see it that way. And what could she say, “It’s my womb, so it’s my money”? No. That wasn’t like her. She had never countered any decision Pratap had ever made. Women like her didn’t do that kind of thing. But it still chafed that he hadn’t talked to her. It was as if she were just a body, not a person with feelings and a mind. It was as if she didn’t exist.

  “It will be nice to live here, in a city, instead of our village,” Pratap continued. He had envied his brother’s fortunes, Asha knew, and now
felt eager to have the same advantages for both himself and his family.

  Before Asha could answer, a nurse dressed in a white dress and a white bonnet called for them. “Pratap and Asha Vardhan?”

  Asha stood up and checked her sari, making sure everything was draped just the way it should be. Pratap had already started to walk toward the doctor’s office. She watched his back for a moment and then straightened her own and walked behind him.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Priya had found out about surrogacy through Poonam, whom she had met at a South Indian cooking class. Priya had always prided herself on her cooking, but then she met Madhu’s mother, Prasanna, who was like a South Indian Jamie Oliver. And Madhu loved his mother’s cooking.

  It wasn’t really a competition, she knew—after all, could Prasanna whip up a coq au vin or bake a chocolate soufflé that melted in your mouth? But still, Priya couldn’t help but want Madhu to drool over her sambhar and coconut chutney just as he did over his mother’s.

  It was a sponsored link on her Facebook page that led Priya to a cooking class at Restaurant Sakshi, owned by Mrs. Sachidanadan or, as she went by, Mrs. S, convenient for the non-Indians who found her last name to be a tongue twister.

  And Mrs. S definitely delivered. She transformed Priya from an amateur South Indian cook to a decent one, and Priya knew that with four more months of classes to go, her chances of acing the dosa, the holy grail of South Indian cooking, were good.

  Poonam took the classes mainly to get away from home.

  “I have two kids and they’re home all the time. My husband travels nearly five days a week. By Friday night every week, I’m ready to slit a wrist. But with this class, every other Saturday at least, I feel like a normal person, not a mommy or a wife or a crazy lady who’s running around her life like a chicken without a head,” Poonam told Priya at their first class.

  Poonam wasn’t the type of woman Priya usually got along with. She was a stay-at-home mom who let her husband run her life. She got permission to go to a cooking class, the mall, the grocery store . . . everything. She would go to the salon and lie about how much it cost, as if her husband couldn’t just check the bank statement. She was the kind of woman who bought something new and, if her husband noticed, said, “This old thing?”

  But Poonam understood the tragedy of Priya’s life. She herself had gone through five miscarriages and three failed IVF treatments before hiring a surrogate through Happy Mothers. Now she had two children who were driving her out of her mind.

  Priya even invited Poonam and her husband, Ranbir, over for lunch one Saturday to help convince Madhu about using a surrogate.

  Of course, Priya had not counted on Poonam’s two kids being an unholy nightmare. Natasha was three and Tara was fourteen months old, and both were walking advertisements for contraception.

  That lunch had been a turning point for Madhu.

  “Arrey yaar! You can adopt, but God knows what you bring into the house,” Ranbir began as they sat on the patio with drinks and snacks.

  “I think adoption is a good thing,” Madhu said as patiently as he could.

  “Good for people like Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, but for people like us it’s a nuisance,” Ranbir continued. “It takes years. It costs so much money. And you don’t know what blood you bring home.”

  “You bring home a kid,” Madhu said, putting down his beer carefully on the wooden garden table. Priya knew his impulse was to throw that beer in Ranbir’s face.

  Poonam was holding Tara in one arm and put a hand on Ranbir’s shoulder. “Come on, Ranbir, we might have adopted if we couldn’t have had these two with a surrogate.”

  Ranbir shrugged. “I don’t think so. My parents once brought this boy home . . . he was about ten or so. This was when we were living in Chandigarh. The boy came from a poor family. An orphan, I think, and we were going to have him do things at home. He turned out to be a total rascal. He stole from us and told stories about us to the neighbors. It was a disaster. We had to send him away.”

  This time it was Priya whose spine straightened a bit.

  Ranbir looked at her and sighed. “I can just see the look on your face. You’re thinking, how could they have a ten-year-old boy servant? Look, that kid would have had a better life with us than without us. Living on the street is not all Slumdog Millionaire; there is no game-show winner at the end of the dark pit their lives are,” Ranbir said. “Those are the facts of India. Just like . . . arrey, Natasha, don’t pull out those roses, beta.”

  Both Priya and Madhu noticed how his tone went from harsh, while talking about India, to honey-sweet when he addressed his errant daughter, who was busy plundering Priya’s well-maintained garden.

  “That’s why surrogacy in India made sense to us,” Ranbir continued. “Those people need the money. Our surrogate has two children and no husband. She lives with her parents. Her father is part of a cleaning crew for offices or some such thing. They have little money. This way she is able to give her children a better life.” Ranbir smiled at his daughters. “And we get joy. Immense joy.”

  Ranbir and Poonam were regular people like them with regular incomes and lives. These were real people, not some couple on a television show talking about their experiences. These were everyday people. And if they could do it, how bad could this be? It was legal. If it were this horrible exploitation, someone would have a law against it, wouldn’t they? It was safe. Thousands of couples around the world had had babies this way. It was affordable.

  Priya didn’t believe in the blood nonsense, but she had heard horror stories about adoption. How you waited for years, and even then you might not get a baby. The heartbreak of thinking you had a child and then didn’t. Or worse, you had to adopt a baby with special needs and the haunting burden of that. Adoption was an option, but less attractive than surrogacy for her.

  With a surrogate they not only brought home their baby, but helped a poor woman lead a better life. Nine months of carrying a baby against a lifetime of immense joy, as Ranbir put it: it was no contest. By sundown, Madhu had agreed to talk to the doctor who ran Happy Mothers. Priya never invited Poonam’s family over again, but she was happy to see her every other Saturday in class and discuss her surrogacy plans without worrying about being judged.

  “Doesn’t she look thinner than she did the last time we saw her?” Priya whispered into Madhu’s ear as soon as the surrogate and her husband walked into Doctor Swati’s office.

  “You’re imagining things,” Madhu said, and held her hand tightly.

  “Look at her; she’s even thinner than me,” Priya said, trying her best not to have a nervous breakdown right there.

  Priya’s whispers were louder than she had expected, and everyone in the room turned to look at her.

  Both Priya and Madhu smiled sheepishly.

  Namaskaram, they greeted Asha. It seemed inappropriate somehow to stand as strangers when this woman could now be carrying their child, Priya thought.

  “Well, the blood test is here and Asha is pregnant,” Doctor Swati said with a smile.

  The air whooshed out of Priya and she gasped. “Thank God.”

  Madhu grabbed her hand and they hugged. He kissed her on the mouth, and they both laughed softly. Magic had happened. When they pulled apart, their act of joy seemed almost vulgar. The surrogate and her husband sat quietly, displaying no emotion at all.

  “Congratulations,” Doctor Swati said.

  Maybe the woman was being forced to have the baby, Priya thought. Maybe that was why she wasn’t happy. But why should she be happy? she thought again. This was just a paycheck baby.

  “This is a very special moment,” Doctor Swati continued. “And I’m sure you have a hundred questions . . . both of you.” She looked first to Priya, then Asha.

  Priya gathered her wits and leaned over to touch the surrogate’s hand. “Thank you so much,” she said in English. Priya understood Telugu fairly well and had agreed to have the proceedings in the clinic conducted in Madh
u’s mother tongue, but she felt lost, unable to find the words that conveyed her joy and gratitude in her adopted language.

  “You are welcome,” the woman responded shyly in heavily accented English, and Priya thought then, happily, that the woman wasn’t really that thin. She could see a nice strip of firm belly exposed through her sari.

  “What happens next?” Madhu asked.

  “Well, in two weeks we do an ultrasound. When we see a heartbeat we know it’s going to be OK,” Doctor Swati said. “I don’t foresee a miscarriage, but you never know.”

  Priya knew all about not foreseeing miscarriages. She had not foreseen three of hers.

  “We understand,” Madhu said, and smiled at the woman carrying his child.

  Priya wondered how he felt about the situation. What did he feel for this woman? Was he attracted to her on some primal level because she was going to give birth to his baby? No. Priya shook her head. These were crazy thoughts. She had no reason to be jealous of this woman. Asha was a surrogate baby maker, not a surrogate wife.

  “Can we be in the room when you do the ultrasound?” Priya asked.

  Doctor Swati nodded. “I have already discussed this with Asha, and she will be happy to have you with her.”

  “Thank you,” Priya said again to Asha. “Thank you.” She knew she sounded silly repeating herself, but a mere thank-you and some money didn’t quite show how grateful she was, not when what they were getting from Asha was so enormous, so life changing.

  Asha just nodded and then stared at her hands that lay on her lap.

  “Thank you,” Priya repeated, this time to Asha’s husband, and he flushed visibly and nodded hurriedly.

  What was his name? Priya tried to recollect, but she kept drawing a blank.

  “Asha, Pratap, do you have any questions for Madhu and Priya?” Doctor Swati asked, and when they shook their heads, she continued. “Then if you could please wait outside. I’ll speak with them and then call you in.”