Pratap brought a sleepy Mohini to Asha. “Hold her; I’ll get her milk ready.”
Asha hugged Mohini, smelled her special smell, and kissed a plump cheek. “Did you sleep well?”
Mohini nodded. “Sleep,” she said, and then laughed as Asha tickled her soft feet.
“Kiss,” Asha said, and held out her cheek, and Mohini half licked it and half kissed it, a real kiss still not part of her repertoire.
Asha kissed her daughter on the nose. “You’re such a pretty girl. Such a pretty girl.”
Mohini turned away from Asha, grabbed the steel tumbler containing milk that Pratap held out, and guzzled it down.
Asha watched her daughter drink with gusto and felt relief. In the past, there were some days when they didn’t have enough milk. But those days were over. They would now always have enough money to buy milk.
The poverty of their past would stay behind them. Each day would no longer be a struggle. They would be able to buy rice and sugar, the vegetables they wanted, and not just potatoes.
Asha used to count the money she hid in an empty steel container in their hut’s small cramped kitchen to make sure there was enough to buy food for the coming day. It was a ritual on the weeks when Pratap didn’t have work, weeks when they had to survive on the meager money they were able to save when Pratap did have work.
Pratap would feel guilty for sitting around the house, so he’d walk around the village, talking to people, seeing if he could find work in neighboring villages or in Srirampuram.
“We can always borrow some money from the village food store,” Pratap had suggested more than once.
Afraid of owing money and being under anyone’s thumb, Asha had always asked him not to do so. It wasn’t as if Pratap listened to her, but he didn’t want to be burdened by debt, either. He had seen his father work his entire life to pay off debt he had taken on as a young man, and that had been a lesson to both Pratap and Raman.
“We’ll make do with what we have,” Asha would say. “There’s enough for the children to eat.” But even as she spoke, Asha would worry about having enough for rent at the end of the month. Manoj went to a government-run school. It wasn’t a good school, but it was a school and it was free. However, there were other expenses, and she knew that at this rate they would never have enough money to pay for a good school for Manoj.
“As long as there is food for the children,” Pratap would repeat, “then we’re OK.”
Those had been difficult days. Impossible days. And there had been no end in sight. But now they would have a home, their own home, and they wouldn’t have to worry about rent every month. They would have savings, so when things got tough they could still survive. She wouldn’t have to go to bed hungry because she had given all the food to the children and Pratap. Manoj could become the man he was destined to be.
Thinking of the benefits this baby would bring calmed her upset stomach, helped the nausea subside. But it was a short respite, and before long she was running to the bathroom again, her stomach churning.
“You should have come to the wedding,” Kaveri said to Asha the night they got back from Hyderabad. “You can’t hide for the next nine months. We’ll just tell everyone you lost the baby, like I did.”
Puttamma was already asleep in the bed while Kaveri and Asha lay on coconut straw mats on the floor, their heads resting on fluffy pillows.
“I’m just not feeling so good,” Asha confessed. “All this nausea. I never had this with Manoj or Mohini.”
“I was also tired a lot more,” Kaveri admitted. “Do you think our bodies behave differently because the baby is not ours?”
Asha thought about it for a moment. “Maybe,” she said. “You really didn’t feel anything, giving the baby away?”
“It wasn’t mine,” Kaveri said. “It was someone else’s. I always knew that. In the last months when I lived in the house, there was one woman who was very upset. She felt the baby was hers and that she would be cutting off a part of her soul. But we sign a contract; it’s our job to be smart and not get attached to what’s not ours.”
Asha hoped she wouldn’t be like that woman when the time came to give up her newborn. She hoped that she would be detached and not feel anything. But as she put a hand on her stomach, she wondered how a woman could not be attached to the life growing inside her.
“But you grow this life in your stomach; don’t you feel it’s your own?” Asha asked.
“You don’t let yourself feel like that,” Kaveri said. “Promise me, Asha, that you won’t. It’s a stupid thing to do. This is not yours. They put it inside you and you’re like a machine; you’re just growing it; you’re not a mother to this one.”
Asha didn’t think it would be that simple. When the baby kicked and she soothed it by stroking her stomach, wouldn’t she feel like a mother?
“Tell me about the surrogate house,” Asha said instead.
Kaveri laughed softly. “It’s hard in the beginning to be away from the children and home, but after a week I didn’t want to come back. Gauri used to take care of us; she herself had been like us, twice before, and now she takes care of the pregnant women. We had a cook, a maid—we didn’t do one thing. We went to this computer room for two hours every day to learn to use the computer. I didn’t learn anything. But this other woman . . . I can’t remember her name, but she did, and they say she got a job in some call center in Hyderabad because of it.”
“Really?” Asha said. Everyone knew that you got paid well when you worked in a call center.
“And they also teach you English,” Kaveri said. “I didn’t learn much. But I can say, ‘Hello, how are you this morning?’”
“What does that mean?” Asha said.
“It’s just asking someone how they are,” Kaveri said. “And you get back massages if your back hurts. Mine didn’t, but I lied and got a massage every day. It was great.”
“And when the baby came out?”
Before Kaveri could answer, Puttamma snapped, “Can you both stop the chitchat and go to sleep?”
Kaveri and Asha fell silent.
Asha closed her eyes and tried to sleep, but it was elusive, like trying to catch soap bubbles when she washed the clothes.
She could remember when Kaveri had left the village; she was just six months pregnant. And then she came back and told everyone she had lost the pregnancy. Everyone had been very sympathetic, and no one had guessed what she had really done.
The next morning, Asha awoke with a flurry of emotions. Raw and confusing. She had dreamed of the baby that night. One with blue eyes and dark hair. For a moment she was holding it, and the next she wasn’t. She had screamed in her dream and had kept shaking her head when a woman in a starchy white nurse’s uniform like the ones they wore at Happy Mothers told her that there was no baby, there had never been one. She had dissolved into tears, and her dream had ended. But the burst of fear still ached within her.
As the dream dissipated, leaving behind the slightest bitter tingle in her heart, Asha rubbed her eyes and rolled her neck in a circle. She was just about to get up when she overheard Raman and Pratap, as always, talking about the money. How to spend the money? What to do with the money? They were so preoccupied with it that they didn’t notice her turmoil.
“Just buy a flat,” Raman was saying.
Of course he was, Asha thought angrily as she got up.
“This is my money,” she muttered as she straightened her sari that had come untangled while she slept. “I’m earning it with sweat and blood and pain and nausea,” she added as she pulled her hair together and rolled it with a rubber band into a bun.
Being able to talk about such large sums of money was such a novelty that Pratap couldn’t stop himself. Raman, for his part, felt that since he’d made such wise financial decisions with the money his wife had earned, he was the best person to offer Pratap guidance.
Guidance, my foot, Asha thought, her hand at the doorknob.
Puttamma and Kaveri had l
et Asha sleep in because the pregnancy was making her tired. Usually, she woke up early to get the children ready for school. She and Kaveri would pack small tiffin boxes, which they’d stuff into the bags the children carried on their shoulders, and run out to catch the green-and-yellow school bus.
But today was a Sunday. Everyone was home except Puttamma, who went to the temple for a good part of the day. She said she went there to pray, but Kaveri suspected that she couldn’t stand having so many people in the house and left to gossip with the other old biddies on the street.
Asha was happy that the children were going to a better school than they had in Srirampuram, where they had just a thatched roof, a blackboard, and a teacher who struggled to teach all the classes.
Asha had been surprised to learn that Raman and Kaveri had none of their money left. They had spent more than two lakhs on buying their flat and had splurged with the rest on buying this and that. Now Kaveri was planning to be a surrogate again so they could save some money for Girish and Sirish’s education.
Asha wanted to save the money for Manoj’s and Mohini’s education first, and once that was settled then they could start to worry about a house. They could stay in a rented place, something small in Srirampuram, or maybe buy something small if there was money left over. She could go back to sewing blouses for women and earn a small living on the side to help Pratap. In Srirampuram there would be more opportunities for tailoring, and she was a good tailor. She made all of their clothes, even Pratap’s shirts, and everyone knew that sewing shirts was not easy.
“Yes, I agree that we should buy a flat. It gives us stability and it’s an investment. That money is only going to grow. You bought a flat a year ago, and it has already appreciated,” she heard Pratap say. She decided to open the door of the small bedroom with as much noise as she could.
They both stopped talking and smiled at her.
“You slept OK?” Pratap asked almost sheepishly.
Asha nodded and walked past them to where Kaveri was sitting.
She wanted to scream, but she knew better than to contradict her proud husband in front of his brother.
“I know,” Kaveri whispered knowingly.
Kaveri was peeling potatoes at the dining table they had gotten for free from Raman’s boss, who had bought a new one. The men were in the adjoining TV room. It was a small flat with thin walls; the two small bedrooms opened into the TV room and the adjoining dining space. Any conversation, even whispered, could hardly be private.
“You know what?” Asha asked icily.
“I know what you’re thinking: that this is your money, and he should at least ask you how he should spend it,” Kaveri said.
Asha didn’t say anything, because no matter what she said it would sound like she was speaking ill of Pratap, and a good wife didn’t speak ill of her husband to her sister-in-law, or anyone else for that matter.
“I felt the same way,” Kaveri said. “Now we have no money left. He spent it all on this flat and on other nonsense. The flat is a good thing. We will always have a home. But we should have been smart about the boys’ education.”
“He bought you that beautiful necklace,” Asha said.
Kaveri shrugged. “Good thing it’s gold; I can at least sell it if I need to.”
“Will you do it again?” Asha asked.
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“Amma, when will the food be ready?” Girish cried out from the TV room. All the children were watching a Telugu movie. It was eleven in the morning and the children had had a light breakfast as they did on Sundays and were now waiting for a full and big early lunch.
“It’ll be ready when it’ll be ready,” Kaveri yelled back. “You’d think we were maids.”
“We are,” Asha said.
“One day we should go on strike,” Kaveri suggested. “Just sit down with our feet up, watching TV all day. That’s what living in the surrogate house was like. I felt like I was on holiday.”
Thanks to Kaveri, Asha was actually starting to look forward to moving into the surrogate house. She’d miss her children, but didn’t she deserve to not take care of anyone for a few months? Imagine having someone to cook, clean, and give massages—what a life!
Due to the cramped housing situation, Asha and Pratap had not spent much time together. Not that they were allowed to do anything even if they could be together. Doctor Swati had asked them to not have sex three months before and during Asha’s entire pregnancy.
Pratap had seemed embarrassed to hear a woman discuss such intimate things, but Asha had been relieved. She didn’t like doing it when she was pregnant. In fact, she didn’t like doing it at all, but then again, not many women she knew liked it. Kaveri was different. She said she had fun, which sounded like complete nonsense to Asha.
Asha wanted to talk to Pratap alone about the money and had planned for them to go and see the latest Chiranjeevi movie, Shankar Dada Zindabad, which was a remake of a hit Hindi movie. Asha had preferred the Hindi version to the Telugu one. She had seen it the year before with Kaveri and the children. Mohini had fallen asleep in the middle, but Manoj had enjoyed it very much, as had Kaveri’s boys. Kaveri had just given birth to the white baby at the time, and she and Raman had just bought their new flat. Strange to think that it was just a year ago that Asha had judged Kaveri for getting pregnant with a white baby, and now here she was, also having to submit to her circumstance.
“What a bundle, complete bakwaas movie,” Pratap said on their way back home. “Chiru is getting too old, and the story was a total waste.”
“Well, he’s what, sixty years old?” Asha said.
“And he’s still playing a thirty-year-old hero,” Pratap said. “I think there comes a point when you have to move on and do father roles like Nageswara Rao did.”
“Ah, look . . . ,” Asha began, and then faltered a little before she spoke in a small voice, her words rushed because of her fear. She had never questioned Pratap before. How would he respond? “Are you going to spend all the money on a flat?”
Asha had been just eighteen when she married Pratap, who was two years older. She had been so afraid when she’d met him that first time, during the bride-seeing ceremony, when he and his parents had come to her father’s house. They had not talked at all before they had been married. All she had said to him was namaskaram, and he had nodded.
Now she had two children with him. She’d slept with him. She’d had sex with him. And yet, Asha was still afraid of Pratap. It wasn’t fear fear—he had never hit her—it was just not being completely comfortable. It was the small things and the big things. Like when she was having her monthly, she would be too shy to tell him why she couldn’t have sex with him; she would let him know with sign language, with a look in her eye and a shake of her head because she couldn’t say it aloud.
She wasn’t like Kaveri, who yelled and screamed at Raman, even in front of their children. Kaveri did it with such ease, like it was nothing. She didn’t seem to think it was strange that she called her husband by his name—“Raman, you whore’s son . . . ,” she’d begin. Asha always called Pratap “yenvandi,” the universal “dear husband.”
So it took an immense amount of courage for Asha to ask Pratap if he was going to use the baby money to buy an apartment. She expected him to get angry about her interfering in money matters, but he surprised her; he didn’t seem to mind at all.
“I don’t know. That’s what Raman wants us to do. But I don’t know what’s right for us. We have Manoj,” he said.
Asha wanted to dance in relief. “And his education is so important.”
“Yes,” Pratap said. “We need to send him to a better place. There is a good boarding school in Hyderabad. He could go there.”
A boarding school?
“But that would mean we won’t see him every day,” Pratap continued. “I don’t know if that will work. Maybe we can find a nice one in Srirampuram. Chinna, this guy I work with, was talking about the one his boss’s son g
oes to, which is supposed to be very good. They wear uniforms with ties and everything.”
“Yes, it would be better if he stayed home with us,” Asha agreed, feeling a load lift off of her. He was thinking about Manoj when he thought about the money. He wasn’t planning to barter his children’s future away to buy them a house.
They walked silently for a while; then suddenly Pratap asked, “Do you think it’s strange that you’re carrying these people’s baby for money?”
“Yes,” Asha said. “Very strange.”
“You know, it seemed OK when we all talked about it, but now that you’re pregnant, it feels . . . it just feels odd,” Pratap said. “Remember how much I touched your belly when you were pregnant with Manoj and Mohini? Now I can’t do any of that.”
“I can’t do any of that, either,” Asha said.
“I don’t know if I’d want you to do this again,” Pratap said. “So I want to be careful with the money we get and make some correct decisions. Raman wants Kaveri to do it again.”
“Kaveri said she wasn’t sure,” Asha said.
Pratap nodded. “Raman told me that after the baby was born, Kaveri cried all the time for a couple of months. They never told anyone about it. But she was very upset.”
Asha felt a shiver creep up her spine. That woman in the surrogate house who got attached to the baby, the one Kaveri warned her not to be like, what if that woman was Kaveri herself? Was that why Kaveri warned her not to get attached? Because she knew how hard it was to let go?
“Do you think it’ll be hard on me to give it up?” Asha asked Pratap.
“I hope not,” Pratap said. “And if we’re careful from the start and make sure that we both know that it is not ours, it should be fine.”
If only he could hear himself, Asha thought. Like it was that simple.
“Yes, we’ll be careful,” she said.
Pratap smiled and put his arm around her, and for that moment, Asha felt safe, forgetting for a few breaths her problems and the strange life inside her.
A House for Happy Mothers: A Novel Page 6