A House for Happy Mothers: A Novel

by Amulya Malladi

  She lost weight, nearly eight pounds in two weeks. She couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, couldn’t feel. She checked her messages, her cell phone, her e-mail, incessantly. He would be back, wouldn’t he? Yes, he would. It was a mantra she repeated.

  In the evenings, she picked up takeout for herself from the Indian place or the Chinese place or KFC. One takeout meal lasted two evenings. She sat in front of the TV and ate, unable to sit alone at the dining table. It felt like a farce to sit there. There was no one to eat with, no one to light candles for. She thought less about her miscarriage this time around. She worried about Madhu.

  He came back on a Sunday, nearly three and a half weeks after he had left. She didn’t even hear the car in the driveway, though she had been listening for it for days now. She had been working, trying to keep herself busy with a design project she’d acquired the previous week.

  She’d had her iPhone earbuds jammed in her ears. She didn’t hear the door open over Maria Callas’s voice.

  She’d been in the study, deep in concentration, her fingers tapping on the keyboard, moving the mouse, her eyes scanning the InDesign file open on her laptop screen. And then she’d smelled him.

  Afraid she was finally losing it enough to imagine things, she turned and saw him standing at the doorstep.

  She wanted to run to him, jump up and down, and cry with joy, “You’re back, you’re back, you’re back!” But she wasn’t sure if he was back to be back with her or just to pick up the rest of his stuff, as he had promised.

  “Hi,” he said. Priya only nodded, unable to get words out of her throat.

  “I’m sorry,” he said.

  Priya nodded again, and when he held his arms open, she walked into them and they both wept for the baby they had lost and for the way they had almost lost each other.

  He apologized for his desertion. He said he would make it up to her with vacations, flowers, presents . . . anything she wanted. He was sorry and Priya had forgiven him. She understood when he told her that he had been frightened. She believed him when he promised he’d never leave again.

  “This baby is important to me, too. So we’ll work on this together. But you have to promise to make room for me, and I’ll promise to make room for the baby,” he had said.

  “When you left, I didn’t even think about the baby,” Priya confessed. “I only worried about you. Without you, there’s no me and there’s no baby.”

  It was the worst thing that had happened in their marriage, and the best thing. The lessons learned were important ones. They didn’t leave things unsaid. They didn’t shrink away from telling each other how they really felt. They didn’t mind disagreeing. They had become a closer team than they’d been before—more honest, more comfortable with the truth. They had seen what life could be like without each other, and they had both recognized how much they loved each other. Maybe Priya wanted a baby more than Madhu did, but he was by her side all the way. And maybe Priya was baby crazy as he accused, but she wasn’t giving up on their marriage or making the baby more important than him, than them. They had gotten better at balancing themselves and accommodating each other. They felt they were on their second marriage, and this time around they were smarter and wiser, healthier and happier.

  Priya had always believed happy couples agreed on everything, but now she realized that healthy couples learned to respect even when they disagreed. It wasn’t how much you fought; it was about how good you were at making up. It was about trusting each other and the relationship to have that fight, to get it out there and have the love to heal the wound, temper the argument, and laugh about it. And they both learned that makeup sex could be an awesome healing thing.

  Transcript from message board www.surrogacyforyou.org

  Trying1Time: My SM has been moved to the surrogate house. She had some bleeding after an exam. It stopped after a day, thank God. The doctor says this is common. Do you have any experience with this?

  NearlyMother: I’m so sorry to hear about this. This is how it started with my SM. We had crossed the twelve-week barrier so I felt quite safe. But then suddenly bleeding began and she had a miscarriage. It was horrible.

  UnoBaby: I’m sorry that this happened to you, NearlyMother, but bleeding doesn’t mean a definite miscarriage. I have friends who have had spotting after a regular exam. It’s supposed to be quite common. Trying1Time, is this bleeding or spotting?

  Trying1Time: It is spotting and it has stopped. But I’m so worried.

  Mommy8774: I don’t know how common it is. When my SM had bleeding it was the bloody show and she went into labor a couple of days later. But I agree with UnoBaby, this doesn’t mean a miscarriage and it’s a good thing she was moved to the surrogate house; they’re safe there. She should’ve been there from the start and most women are, so this is a good thing.

  NobuNobi: I say relax. I don’t have experience with this, but if you think positive then everything will work out. Good luck.

  LastHope77: If my SM had spotting I’d freak out, too. I’d be on the next plane to India. Have you thought about going there and staying for the rest of the pregnancy? I want to, but I can’t quit my job; we need the money. We’re saving up to hire a nanny so that I can continue to work after the measly twelve weeks maternity leave I get.

  CantConceive1970: My SM had all sorts of spotting and the babies came out just fine. So I say relax as NobuNobi says. Be positive. No point killing yourself over this. And I think it’s a bad idea to move to India at this point. You’ll be isolated there, away from your husband. It’ll just make things very hard for you.

  Prietysmommy: Why did your doctor even do an exam like this? How pregnant is your SM? Some of these doctors are just bad. I hope you chose yours carefully.

  Trying1Time: I trust the doctor. She’s very experienced and has a sophisticated clinic. We did our research very thoroughly before choosing her.

  Prietysmommy: I’m sure your doctor is great; I didn’t mean to say she isn’t, just that sometimes these doctors are just not very good and it ends up becoming a tragedy for us.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Asha missed Mohini and Manoj. She missed Pratap. She missed her life at Kaveri’s house. She missed her life back in the village. She hated having this baby inside her.

  There were fifteen of them at the Happy Mothers House, as they called it in English, in various stages of pregnancy. Fifteen women who carried the babies of other people. Fifteen women, and most of them didn’t seem to get along that well with one another. It was understandable. Pregnant women are known to have a bad temper, and having so many of them together only resulted in squabbles, yelling and screaming, and general bitching.

  On her first day at the Happy Mothers House, Asha sat in her room, the one she shared with Gangamma, a twenty-nine-year-old woman who was doing this for the second time. The room was small. It had two beds with thin mattresses and blue sheets that should be cleaned every week but, as Gangamma told her, if it happened once a month that was a blessing, not that Asha cared. She slept on a mat at home, and there were no sheets to clean. There was a small dirty window that didn’t open, making the room stuffy when there was no electricity and the rattling ceiling fan didn’t move the air. If this were her home, Asha would have cleaned the window, done something about the dark patches of dirt in the corners, and she would have asked Pratap to paint over the hideous patch of dampness on the wall by the window. But it was a brick house with two toilets, one with a chair toilet, one with a regular toilet where you had to squat to go. There was one bathroom to get a bath. The house had its own water tank, so the taps worked. The women brought their own soap and towels to the bathroom to bathe. There was a metal stool where the women could sit and take mugs of water from a bucket to wash themselves. It was much better than many of them had at home, where they might have a hut or shack to bathe in.

  There was a sink outside the toilet, and all women had been instructed to wash their hands after they went. It was a rule, and if you didn’t wash
your hands, you’d hear about it from Doctor Swati. Hygiene was important in the house. You had to take a bath every day; you had to wash your hands before and after a meal and after you used the toilet. With one bathroom and fifteen women, there were invariably arguments about who should go before whom, and how much time one woman spent in the bathroom over another.

  Gangamma was the gregarious sort and told Asha about all the house rules. She talked and talked until Asha ached for silence. After just an hour, Asha knew the woman’s entire life story.

  “We’re from Mehdipatnam in Hyderabad, so I don’t even get to see my children,” she told Asha, who was desperately waiting that first day for the clock to strike four in the evening, when Pratap would come with Mohini and Manoj.

  “You get used to being without them,” Gangamma told her. “I have two sons and they are wonderful boys. Jaya is eight and Sri is five.” She had pictures on the floor by her bed, which she showed to Asha.

  “They look like good boys,” Asha said, and then sighed. “I miss my children.”

  “But you’ll see them every day, and once you get settled here, you’ll start having fun,” Gangamma said, and laughed. “You’ll have a lot of fun here.”

  Asha wasn’t sure what Gangamma meant by “fun.”

  The housemother, Revati, was kind and treated all the women like daughters, but she could also be strict, as Asha had already seen. Revati had admonished one of the mothers for not cleaning up the shells of the freshly boiled peanuts she had eaten as she watched TV in the common hall.

  You had to clean up after yourself. You had to eat the meals. If you didn’t like something specifically, you had to tell Revati. You had to attend either the English class or the computer class every day except Sunday, because “you can’t just sit around all day; this isn’t your mother’s house.”

  You had to attend the daily thirty-minute yoga class that was given in the common hall at nine in the morning. If you couldn’t do the exercises, it was OK, but you had to show up unless Doctor Swati said otherwise. In the Happy Mothers House, Doctor Swati’s word was the word of God.

  Asha was also starting to dislike Doctor Swati. A small bleeding that Doctor Swati herself agreed had happened because of the examination that she’d insisted on, and Asha had been asked to move here earlier than planned.

  “For the safety of the baby,” Doctor Swati had said.

  And what about her children? Who would take care of them?

  True, it wasn’t like Asha had left her children on the street. Kaveri was there, and so were Raman, Puttamma, and Pratap. Asha knew she was being unreasonable, but somehow her heart could not follow her mind’s lead on this matter.

  “Trust me, once you get used to someone else cooking and cleaning for you, you won’t want to come back,” Kaveri had told her.

  Asha didn’t believe it. Home was home. No matter what palace you went to, if it wasn’t yours, if your family wasn’t there, it wasn’t better than home.

  Pratap and the children came five minutes after four that first evening. She would have an hour with them. Those were the rules.

  Mohini ran into her arms, and Manoj gave her a hug and a kiss. He looked around at the women in the big hall and then looked carefully at his mother. “Is this a hospital for women who’re going to have babies?”

  “Yes,” Asha said. “The baby will be safer here.”

  “Why? You had both of us and never stayed in a place like this,” Manoj said.

  Asha looked in panic at Pratap.

  “Did you see the ducks in the pond outside?” Pratap asked Manoj, who looked briefly at his mother and then, with childish abandon, ran outside with his father to investigate the pond and the ducks in it.

  “I miss you, Amma,” Mohini said, and slobbered over Asha’s cheek.

  They sat outside on the terrace with a view over a yard where there was a large patch of grass and, in between, a small pond with three ducks. Two steps from the terrace was a tulasi plant, standing almost chest high in a square cement pot attached to the ground. The pot was freshly painted, and the yellow-and-red paint that swirled around the pot gleamed. Revati did her puja, her prayers, there every morning.

  “I read the Gayatri Mantram here every day, six in the morning,” she had told Asha.

  “Can I join you?” Asha had asked. She had always done puja in the morning in her village. She hadn’t had such a nice tulasi plant as this but had shared a small one in an earthen pot right in front of the well with several neighbors.

  “If you wake up that early,” Revati had said. “I don’t wait for anyone.”

  The terrace had several pieces of furniture, chairs, tables, and even a ceiling fan. The walls had recently been whitewashed, Asha had seen when she’d first received her tour of the house.

  The furniture was typical of many Andhra homes. Two plastic lounge chairs. The plastic fabric that went over the chairs was weathered and slightly worn. Once a bright blue with sunny yellow stripes, it was now dull, faded under the sun and with repeated use.

  There was a swing—one of those two-person wooden swings that you saw in the movies that was always used in romantic scenes. The swing was definitely old, maybe even a hand-me-down, Asha thought, because the varnish had chipped, revealing the wood beneath, and it creaked when you rocked it gently with your feet. But Asha liked the sound as it kept pace with the creaky fan attached to the ceiling—when the city didn’t cut the power out, that is. When the electricity was out, everyone gathered outside, sitting on the furniture, the floor, and the two steps that led to the front yard.

  While Manoj watched the ducks, Asha sat on the swing with Mohini. Pratap sat on one of the plastic lounge chairs, and when he realized that it wasn’t quite stable, he got up and sat on one of the old wooden chairs pulled next to the swing.

  Mohini disentangled herself from her mother and joined her brother by the small duck pond.

  When she was out of earshot, Pratap leaned a little closer, inclining his head toward Asha. “I’m sorry,” he said.

  It was almost a whisper. A wisp of air. Asha felt her face burn. She couldn’t look at him, so she stared after Mohini and Manoj. Had her husband just said “sorry” to her?

  They had fought before she had left. They had actually fought. They never fought.

  But she had been upset. After Doctor Swati told her that she had to move into the house a month early, Pratap seemed to think it was for the best. Kaveri kept on as if Asha were going away on holiday. It had infuriated her.

  “No cooking, no cleaning,” Pratap had teased as Asha packed a hard-top brown suitcase, the only one they had. It had belonged to Raman’s boss. It was old and dull, the color faded almost to beige. There were two scratches on the top and a deep gash on the bottom that Pratap had closed with duct tape. But it was sturdy and big enough for Asha to pack her saris, blouses, and petticoats.

  “You’re going to live like a maharani,” Kaveri said.

  Asha had been sitting on the floor, folding and packing saris into her suitcase. Her back hurt. She would need help to stand up from the floor.

  “And we’ll be fine without you,” Pratap continued. “We’ll eat Kaveri’s good food and get fat.”

  “Because my food isn’t good enough?” Asha demanded tersely as she put her favorite pink sari with the green border into the suitcase.

  Kaveri raised her eyebrows and left the bedroom, closing the door behind her.

  “That’s not what I meant,” Pratap said.

  “Then what did you mean?” Asha asked. “Everyone seems happy that I’m leaving.”

  “No one is happy, but we’re trying to make the best of it,” Pratap said.

  “By eating Kaveri’s good food? Maybe if I died while giving birth, no one would care,” Asha said.

  “Asha,” Pratap said sternly.

  “Don’t yell at me,” Asha said, her voice raised.

  You didn’t raise your voice at your husband. It wasn’t done. But Asha couldn’t help herself.
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  “I’m stuck here with someone else’s baby in my stomach because you can’t support us.”

  “No one forced you into this,” Pratap said defensively. “You volunteered. I asked you a hundred times—”

  “No, you didn’t,” Asha said. “You wanted me like this. You wanted the money. Counting money like an ugly businessman. And you know what you sold? Me. You sold me.”

  “Don’t get all high and mighty, madam,” Pratap said. “You’re still my wife, and even if I asked you to do this, there’s nothing wrong with it. Many women do this. It’s you . . . you who are selfish. I work all day and night to make money for us, and you have to do one thing and you behave like you’re carrying the world on your shoulders.”

  In other circumstances, Asha would have backed down. Apologized. But not this time. He would not make her do this and tell her it was nothing. No, he needed to be prostrate, on his belly, crawling on the floor, kissing her feet and thanking her.

  “Get out,” Asha said. “And ask Kaveri to bring the children to the hospital. I don’t want to see your face.”

  Pratap bent and brought his face close to hers. “Don’t think you run this place because you’re making some money. I’ll do what I feel like, and you’ll see my face as many times as I want.”

  For a moment, a small moment, Asha thought he would slap her, and she was prepared for it. Another bruise on her martyred body. But he didn’t. He walked away, slamming the door behind him.

  Raman had carried her suitcase to the auto rickshaw, and Kaveri had come with Asha to the Happy Mothers House. Asha hadn’t seen Pratap since the fight. And even though Asha had been occupied with Revati, Gangamma, and the rules of the house, their fight, their first real fight where she had fought back, had been a worry that tore at her insides.