Priya thanked the couple one more time before they stepped out of Doctor Swati’s office, and Madhu held her hand a smidge tighter. What the hell were they doing? They were handing over a baby, a person, to this woman’s womb, a woman whose husband’s name she hadn’t been able to remember this morning. They would leave for California in two weeks and leave their baby here with someone they didn’t know at all. This was insanity.
“Priya, are you OK?” Madhu asked, seeing her pallor. He put his arm around her. “You should be happy; we’re pregnant.”
“I am happy,” Priya said. “But this baby will grow far away from me, and it’s just . . . it’s scary.”
“Yes,” Doctor Swati said sympathetically. “But Asha and Pratap are part of a warm and loving family. They will take very good care of your baby.”
“He doesn’t beat her, does he?” The words sprang out of Priya.
Madhu gave her a quizzical look.
“No,” Doctor Swati said, looking amused.
“Sorry, I feel so stupid,” Priya said.
“Don’t. You’re not the first mother to have these questions and this reaction. It’s a lot of stress to have someone else, someone you don’t see every day, carry your child,” Doctor Swati said. “But I promise you, this baby will be monitored and so will Asha. And you have nothing to worry about with Pratap. He’s a kind and gentle man.”
When they had first met them, spoken to them, Priya had felt that this was a good couple even though she had no reason to think so. It was a gut feeling, an instinct. And they were such a sweet-looking couple. She was almost petite in front of her husband’s tall and broad frame. He was built like a quarterback. Asha seemed like a good mother who talked fondly about her children and her hopes for them. She seemed sincere when she told them that she wanted to help other people and that was why she had decided to be a surrogate. Still, Priya had felt a slight pinch of worry that this woman was not fully on board. But the husband, the kind husband, the one who didn’t beat his wife, had been convincing.
“Her first two pregnancies were so easy. Even the births and deliveries were easy,” he had said. He told them that he had been in the room with her when their babies were born. This was not the typical Indian husband waiting outside, avoiding the blood and mess with cigars or whatever it was that Indian men gave each other to celebrate the birth of a child.
Priya picked up the blood-test results that were in front of her on the doctor’s table and traced her fingers over the strange numbers and figures and the line that read PREGNANCY = POSITIVE.
“You will make sure she takes her vitamins and all that?” Priya asked, even though she knew the answer. When Doctor Swati nodded, she nodded as well. “And you will see her once every two weeks?”
“Yes, and then every week during her second trimester, and when she is in the third trimester, I will see her every day,” Doctor Swati said. “We have state-of-the-art prenatal care; you don’t have anything to worry about on that account.”
“I know you are very professional. I don’t mean to doubt your expertise,” Priya said apologetically, then jumped to another question before she forgot to ask it. “Do you think it will be OK for us to talk to Asha once in a while?”
“Yes, yes,” Doctor Swati said. “We can set it up so that you can call on the days she comes for her checkup. The nurse will give you an update, and you can talk to Asha as well.”
“Can . . . I don’t mean to be rude, but can we send her some things that she might need? They would be gifts, not part of the payment,” Priya said.
Doctor Swati seemed to think about it a moment and then said, “Some parents have no connection with the surrogate and that is their choice. If you choose to have a relationship with her, that is entirely up to you. I know some parents who send care packages once a month, something for the children and the mother. Things like moisturizer, shampoo, and underwear . . . small basic items. And I also know some parents who don’t want to know their surrogate at all. Sometimes that is easier.”
Priya knew she wasn’t one of those mothers. She needed to know this woman. She needed to have a connection with her. A woman who was a complete stranger had transformed into one of the most important people in Priya’s life, at least for the next thirty-seven weeks. How could she not know her?
“What are you smiling about?” Madhu asked as they drove back to Hyderabad.
“I saw this very, very cute crib the other day at Babies ‘R’ Us . . . I went shopping with Nina—her sister’s having a baby—and I thought that if we ever did have a baby I’d get that bed,” Priya said. “How long do we have to wait, you think, before we can start buying stuff?”
“Ah. My capitalist consumer American wife,” Madhu said cheerfully, but then suddenly became serious. “I’d rather we didn’t buy anything until the baby is born.”
“But then we’ll have nothing when we come home,” Priya objected.
Madhu shrugged. “I . . . I don’t want . . . it’s too hard, Priya. Remember that cricket uniform I bought when you were first pregnant? It killed me to throw it out, but I couldn’t keep it, either. I just don’t want to do that again.”
“So, where will the baby sleep when we get home?” Priya asked.
“Ask Nina or Krysta or one of your friends to start shopping for you after the baby is born. You’ve helped Krysta move, like, a million times, and you’ve spent God knows how much money on Nina’s kids—they owe you, and if not, I’ll get Athar to buy what we need. Farah will probably jump at the idea,” Madhu said.
“No way. I’ll ask Krysta. I don’t want Farah anywhere near my baby’s room,” Priya said. Her friends she loved and trusted implicitly to know her taste, but not Madhu’s. And besides, she couldn’t stand his best friend, Athar, and his wife, Farah.
“As you wish—and I don’t think I’d want Farah decorating any room in our house,” Madhu said. “She has a distinct style.”
“You mean gaudy?” Priya suggested.
Madhu laughed. “I was thinking vulgar, but yeah, same ballpark.”
They drove silently for a while.
“There’s no guarantee, is there?” Priya asked quietly.
“No,” Madhu said, and put his hand on hers. “But I have a good feeling about this.”
“I’m scared, Madhu,” Priya told him.
Madhu didn’t say anything for a long while, and then as he pulled his hand away from hers to shift gears, he said, “I’m scared, too.”
Prasanna was waiting with an open box of ladoos at home. Madhu had called his parents from the road to give them the good news. Prasanna confessed she had bought the sweets the day before and hidden them, just in case. Priya decided to call Poonam before she called her parents.
“See, it happened just like I told you it would,” Poonam said, her voice loud against the screaming sounds of her girls. “Ranbir, I’m on the phone; can you get Tara? Natasha, stop pulling your sister’s hair.” Then there was a pause, and she said, “No, she’s not a doll. Ranbir, can you please deal with this? I’m on the phone.
“Sorry,” Poonam said. “I’m back and now have found sanctuary in the bathroom. Some days these girls drive me crazy.”
“I can’t wait to feel like you,” Priya said, unable to contain her excitement. Usually she would have made a mental promise not to raise her kids like Poonam, but right then she would have given anything to be able to say that her kid was driving her crazy.
“It’s going to happen sooner than you think,” Poonam said.
“But what if she loses the baby? We’ve got no guarantees yet.” Priya voiced her concerns.
First they had needed to get through conception, then the two-week check, then the twelve-week check, then the twenty-week check, then the twenty-five-week check, then . . .
“Indian women are tough; she won’t lose the baby,” Poonam assured her.
After hanging up with Poonam, Priya called Krysta, her closest friend, and then, begrudgingly, her parents. Talking to her
mother when she was this happy was never a good idea; Sush could only ruin it. But Priya had to tell them. They were the grandparents, after all. Still, Priya thought, better to call Dad’s cell phone.
“She’s pregnant, Dad,” Priya said as soon as he said hello. “We’re pregnant. We’re going to have a baby.”
“That’s great news,” her father said. They chatted for a while before he asked if she wanted to talk to her mother.
“No,” Priya said.
“Why not?”
“Because she’ll be difficult about the whole adoption-versus-surrogate thing again,” Priya said. “And I’m too happy to be brought down by—”
“Come on, Priya,” Andrew interrupted. “Sush is happy for you.”
“No, she isn’t,” Priya said, frustrated. She knew what Sush would say, and she prepared herself for the soapbox speech.
“Yes, yes, she is. Here . . .” Her father handed the phone to Priya’s mother despite her protests. He did this all the time, had done it all her life. Andrew was an absent parent—a present husband but an absent parent. He loved Priya, she had no doubt about that, but he had always kept himself out of her relationship with Sush.
“I can have a relationship with you and with your mother, but I can’t broker a relationship between the two of you,” he would say.
Priya had long given up on getting support from her father if her mother was against something. His parenting style was simple: if your mother is OK with it, then OK.
“Congratulations, my dear,” her mother said stiffly. “But you know you have to wait to celebrate for a few weeks to make sure there isn’t going to be a miscarriage.”
“Mum, why would you even say that word?” Priya demanded. “Think positive. No negative vibes, please.”
“It isn’t about positive or negative. I’m being practical here. Miscarriages happen in the first trimester; you know that better than anyone. I just want you to be prepared,” her mother responded.
“I don’t want to be prepared for the worst situation all the time,” Priya all but yelled. “I don’t want to think about the bad things that can happen. Can’t you talk about the baby? Can’t you talk about how wonderful it’s going to be to be a grandmother?”
“There isn’t going to be a baby if there’s a miscarriage, sweetie,” her mother said calmly. “I just don’t want you to get your hopes up too much yet.”
“So, I should just wait to hear the worst for the next nine months?” Priya asked.
She heard her mother sigh across thousands of miles from Seattle. “You’re misunderstanding me and twisting my words, as you always do. All I’m saying is that you need to prepare yourself in these early days of a pregnancy. It’s just like when you were pregnant and you wouldn’t listen—”
“Just because I miscarried doesn’t mean she will,” Priya snapped. “I have to go. Bye.” She hung up before her mother could say one more word.
“Sush was her usual wonderful self, I see,” Madhu said when Priya stormed into the TV room where the sweets were spread out along with some fried savory snacks. Just looking at the food made Priya crave a fresh salad with a simple dressing of lemon juice.
“Sush wanted me to be prepared for a miscarriage,” Priya said, and flopped on a chair beside Madhu.
Prasanna offered a plate with a ladoo, and Priya took one to avoid another “eat something, you’re too thin” scene.
“Your mother is not a bad person. She’s difficult at times, I agree, and this was inappropriate, but you have to let it go,” Prasanna said, and Priya’s eyebrows went flying up.
Madhu cleared his throat. There were rules. Priya could bitch about her mother, but no one else was allowed to say anything about her.
“She just sees things differently than you do,” Prasanna said, and Priya shoved the ladoo in her mouth to keep from saying something rude and unforgivable.
“She doesn’t mean to hurt your feelings,” Prasanna continued.
“She knows, Amma,” Madhu said. “I just called Mayuri and told her.”
Mayuri was Madhu’s only sibling. Two years younger than Madhu, Mayuri was single, lived in London, and didn’t seem to care at all about the rules her parents lived by. Prasanna and Sairam didn’t speak much about Mayuri—they didn’t say it, but it was obvious that they were embarrassed about their thirty-two-year-old single daughter.
“Can’t find a man and don’t have time to have a baby, so maybe this could be an option for me as well. Need to find a sperm donor, though,” Mayuri had said when Priya told her about their last-ditch effort.
Mayuri had struggled in India, wanting to be a fashion designer back when everyone wanted to be a doctor or an engineer. Her parents had been appalled. Not only was she saying no to an arranged marriage, she was also saying no to a dignified career.
But she had made it. Tough as it had been, Mayuri was now working for an international retail chain and thought of herself as a testament to how Indians could have careers outside engineering and medicine.
“How is your sister? She never calls us,” Prasanna said, her attention quickly diverted from evil Sush to evil Mayuri.
“Mayuri is busy, Amma,” Madhu said.
“You’re all so busy. Busy all the time. Just work, work, work,” Prasanna said, and then looked at her husband. “Why don’t you ever say anything?”
Sairam, as always, had his nose in the newspaper and looked up, dazed. He wasn’t following the conversation. He never did. Priya often thought that Madhu’s absentmindedness came from Sairam. As for the rest of him, God knew where that came from. Looking at Mayuri and Madhu, it was amazing that they even had parents like Prasanna and Sairam. They were a relatively conservative Indian couple and had raised their children in this very house with their morals and values: duty was important; happiness was not. Yet both Madhu and Mayuri were seeking their own happiness seemingly without being affected by their childhood. Priya, on the other hand, was bogged down by her childhood and mother. Whether about her career choices or her family planning, Priya had always felt burdened by her mother’s rejection.
“It’s like this,” Mayuri had once explained, citing the several thousand pounds and five years in therapy she had spent to find herself. “You keep going to a bookstore and asking for a dozen red roses. They obviously don’t have red roses and you come home disappointed. That’s what’s going on with your mother. You keep expecting roses and keep getting disappointed. I know not to ask for roses at a bookstore. That’s why I have no issues with my amma.”
“You make it sound so easy,” Priya said.
“I didn’t say it was easy,” Mayuri said. “It took me a long time and a lot of effort. There were a lot of tequila shots, irresponsible one-night stands, and shrinks involved.”
Whenever they came to India, Madhu and Priya always stayed for two weeks at least; their trips were packed with visits to relatives and friends of Madhu’s from college days. Tonight they were off to see Madhu’s friend Jeevan and his girlfriend, Rosie. Jeevan and Rosie were defying convention and living together without the benefit of marriage. His parents were not happy about him living with a Christian girl, and her parents had disowned her for wanting to be with a non-Christian, and that, too, without marrying him. They intended to get married eventually, but for now they were too busy with their careers. Jeevan was a partner in a software consulting firm, and Rosie had her own advertising agency.
They met for drinks at Jeevan and Rosie’s house in Banjara Hills. A mammoth mansion, the home was designed to cause envy. Jeevan and Rosie liked to throw parties that were legendary. Their New Year’s Eve party was one of the best Madhu and Priya had attended, by far.
Jeevan and Rosie had decided not to have any children. It didn’t suit their lifestyle.
“We like to travel,” Jeevan told them. “We like to socialize and we have busy work lives. We don’t have time for children.”
Priya could imagine a man saying that—hell, she could even imagine Madhu saying that�
��but she couldn’t understand how Rosie felt the same way. But for her persistence, Madhu would have been fine without a child. Disappointed, but he would have gotten over it, unlike Priya.
“Don’t you want to feel life inside you? Don’t you want to hold a baby, be a mother?” Priya asked, and Rosie shrugged as she smoked a cigarette.
“And give all this up?” she said, moving her hands over her body.
“You can always get your body back,” Priya said. “I know plenty of women who have children and look amazing.”
“Honey, I can buy my body back if need be,” Rosie said with a laugh. “I just can’t see how a child will fit into our lives. Just last week Jeev had to go to Paris for a conference, and I took a couple of days off and went with him. We had the best time. We couldn’t do that with a child hanging on to my tit.”
Priya wished then that she were more like Rosie, wished that she hadn’t had this burning desire to be a mother that kept her and Madhu from jetting off to exotic destinations.
When Madhu had first told Jeevan about their plan to get a surrogate and asked him to check up on Happy Mothers for him, he and Rosie had thought it was a fabulous idea.
“The only way to do it,” Rosie said now as she served mojitos on the patio with a view over their swimming pool. “Let someone else grow fat.”
“Oh God, that’s not why we’re doing this,” Priya said.
“I know, honey,” Rosie said as she sat down next to Jeevan and lit another cigarette. “But you have to admit it’s a nice way of doing it. If I wanted children, I’d do it that way. Someone else can deal with the blood and gore.”
“But if you don’t like the blood and gore, then what will you do once you take the baby home? There will be poop and gore,” Jeevan said, and Rosie made a gagging sound.
Priya and Madhu looked at each other, thinking the same thing—these two so needed to grow up.
“Ten lakhs doesn’t sound like that much money to us,” Rosie said. “But to them it’s probably a lot.”
A House for Happy Mothers: A Novel Page 4