by Ariel Tachna
“You think I should keep her.” It wasn’t really a question.
Jaime shook his head, trying to frame his answer both truthfully and helpfully. “No, that isn’t my decision to make,” he said after a moment. “If she were my daughter, yes, I’d keep her, because I might not ever have another chance, but my family’s here in town. I have built-in babysitters. And I helped my mother with my youngest brother and sister, so I’m not a complete stranger to babies. Adoption is certainly preferable to abortion, but even so, you rarely see Hispanic babies up for adoption because the extended family kicks in and somebody takes the child.”
“The same is true in India,” Srikkanth agreed, “but I don’t have anyone here. They’re all back in Hyderabad.”
“You could take her and go home,” Jaime proposed. “I know they need web designers in India too.”
Srikkanth smiled sadly. “And if I did, I’d be married off to some poor girl within a month. I’m gay, Jaime. There isn’t a place for me in India any more than there would be for you in Mexico. That wouldn’t be fair to anyone: the baby, the girl I’d end up married to, or me.”
Jaime couldn’t argue with that. His parents knew he was gay, but he also knew they hadn’t told his grandparents back in Mexico. He doubted his grandmother would survive the shock. He wasn’t happy about the secrecy, but it wasn’t like he saw them often enough for it to matter much. Nor was he seeing anyone seriously at the moment, although he had hopes for Randy, the guy he’d gone out with a few times over the past month. It wasn’t like he was actually ready to introduce a guy to his family as his life partner, though, so at least for now, his grandparents could continue in blissful ignorance. That didn’t help Srikkanth, though. Jaime knew what his answer would be for himself, but he couldn’t impose that decision on Sri, not when this had happened so suddenly.
“Do what you think is best for everyone,” Jaime said finally. “Whatever you decide, I’ll support that.”
Srikkanth nodded and headed back upstairs to his room, looking around the small space speculatively. The room was fine for just him, with plenty of space for his bed, dresser, computer desk, and chair, but there was hardly room for a baby’s paraphernalia. He didn’t have any idea how much stuff a newborn would need, but he didn’t see it fitting in here. Jaime and Nathaniel each had their own rooms, but they didn’t have any more extra space than Srikkanth did. Maybe even less, since he had the master bedroom. Maybe they could put some stuff in the corner of the living room, except that wasn’t fair to the guys. The baby wasn’t their responsibility.
She isn’t yours either, a little voice reminded him.
Flopping down on the bed, he stared blindly at the ceiling, anger growing slowly at the thought that he’d gotten dragged into all this. This was Jill’s baby, damn it! Yes, he’d agreed to donate the sperm, but he’d done so on the condition of anonymity, which she’d agreed to immediately. She’d told everyone she’d used a sperm donor. So why the hell hadn’t she told the hospital the same thing? If she had, they wouldn’t have contacted him and he wouldn’t have to deal with this shit. He could just go on with his life, unbothered.
That’s a lie, his conscience insisted. You’d still know Jill was dead, even if you just read about it in the paper, and then you’d wonder what happened to the baby with no way to find out. At least this way you’ll be able to make sure she’s taken care of.
Tears welled in his eyes as he thought about Jill going into labor and giving birth alone, dying surrounded only by medical personnel, with no one there to hold her hand and tell her it would be all right, even if in the end it wasn’t. His thoughts raced and raced along the same unproductive vein until exhaustion finally carried him into sleep.
Chapter 2
On Thursday morning, Srikkanth found his way up to the neonatal nursery and to the office of Ms. Holmes without any difficulty, but he stood outside the door for a full five minutes, reminding himself of all the reasons why this was the right choice for the baby’s future. None of them helped him knock on the closed door.
Finally, telling himself he wasn’t helping anything by delaying, he lifted his hand and knocked.
The woman who opened the door didn’t look all that much older than Srikkanth’s own twenty-eight years, but her eyes were weary, suggesting she’d seen too much already in her life. She summoned a smile for him nonetheless. “Mr. Bhattacharya?”
“Yes,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’m sorry I’m late.”
She shook her head. “It’s not a problem. Come in and we’ll go over your options.”
Srikkanth nodded and followed her numbly inside. This was it. He could do this. He could make these decisions and get on with his life.
The inside of the office, painted a soft charcoal grey, unlike the rest of the hospital’s institutional white, was welcoming, a couch and chairs set up to provide a comfortable place to talk, with the desk unobtrusively against the back wall. He felt himself relaxing as he sank onto the couch. He could do this.
“Can I offer you something to drink?” Ms. Holmes offered. “Some coffee? A glass of water? A Coke?”
“Do you have any hot tea?” Srikkanth asked.
“Black or herbal?” Ms. Holmes inquired.
“Black, with milk, if that’s not too much to ask.”
“Not at all,” Ms. Holmes assured him. “I’ll get some from the break room.”
She returned a few minutes later with a cup of steaming, milky tea. The smell of it, as familiar as his mother’s perfume, settled his nerves a little more.
“How are you doing?” she asked, taking a seat across from him.
“It’s all so unreal,” Srikkanth admitted. “I keep expecting Jill to call and tell me it was all a mistake.”
“That’s a very normal reaction,” the social worker assured him. “And if you were good friends—and you obviously were—it’s a reaction that may take some months to fade. Unfortunately, we can’t wait that long to make decisions for the baby.”
“I know,” Srikkanth agreed. “I feel wrong making those decisions, but I know there isn’t anyone else. Can we go over my options again? I know you told me on Tuesday, but everything from that conversation is a little blurred in my head.”
“Of course,” Ms. Holmes replied. “For a voluntary adoption you’ll need to choose an agency to handle the placement and then you’ll need to decide how involved you want to be beyond that. Voluntary adoptions range from completely open with birth parents getting regular updates and even visits to completely closed with no contact at all. The norm is usually somewhere in the middle.”
“I’m not really prepared to meet anyone,” Srikkanth said quickly. “As I told you before, I wasn’t planning on having any contact with the baby as her father. Jill and I were friends, so I’d have seen her occasionally, but that’s all.”
“That’s entirely your choice,” Ms. Holmes assured him. “The adoptive parents certainly have their preferences, but we generally go with the more restrictive option if there’s a difference of opinion on the degree of openness.”
She handed Srikkanth a list of agencies. “The first step will be to pick an agency.”
Srikkanth skimmed down the list of agencies, finally settling on one. “I’ll go with Catholic Charities,” he said slowly. “The nuns do some fabulous work in my hometown.”
“I’ll contact Catholic Charities in a moment, then,” she said. “While I’m doing that, here’s a questionnaire for you to fill out to help guide your placement choices.”
“They don’t just give her to the next family on the list?” Srikkanth asked helplessly.
“Not anymore,” Ms. Holmes said with a chuckle. “They want to make the birth parents as comfortable with their decision as possible.”
Srikkanth sighed and stared at the questionnaire, with options for race and education and family size. He shook his head. “I don’t know, all right?” he said, his frustration growing along with his sense of helplessness. He checked all the
options for race because the baby was mixed to begin with, and even if she weren’t, race was a question of skin color, nothing more. He wanted the baby to have reasonably well-educated parents so they would value education for her, but he knew that wasn’t any guarantee in either direction. Nathaniel’s parents hadn’t graduated from high school, but they made absolutely sure he did and had pushed him to excel even beyond that. They couldn’t help him pay for medical school, but they encouraged him to find ways to finance his education so he could escape the paycheck-to-paycheck lifestyle they’d struggled with their entire lives. Having grown up with a sister, Srikkanth knew the value and the frustration of siblings, but a part of him felt like he ought to give the baby to a couple who hadn’t had the chance to be parents yet rather than to someone who did, except a family who already had children would know how to take care of a baby.
He hated the indecisiveness he was feeling, hated the entire situation. These weren’t his decisions to make, damn it. He wanted to beat his head against the wall, but it wouldn’t help, so he simply left the options blank.
“Would… would it be all right if I saw the baby?” Srikkanth asked in a rush, the words out before he knew for sure he would make the request. “It might feel more real if I can see who I’m making these decisions for.”
“She’s your daughter,” Ms. Holmes reminded him. “You have every right to see her, although it may make it harder for you to sign the papers.”
“I just want to see her,” Srikkanth insisted. “I need to see if she looks like Jill.”
Ms. Holmes looked like she wanted to caution him again, but she didn’t, leading him down the hall to the nursery. “You’ll need to wash up and put a hospital gown on over your street clothes,” she explained. “Your baby’s healthy, but not all the babies are as fortunate, so they’re relatively strict about hygiene. Leave your jacket here. You’ll be more comfortable without it on.”
Srikkanth nodded, stripping off his jacket and hanging it over the arm of his chair, and followed Ms. Holmes down the hall to the entrance to the neonatal nursery. He stopped at the sink, scrubbing his hands and arms up to his elbows as directed by the placard above the basin. Ms. Holmes gestured to the hospital gowns hanging by the door as she began her own washing ritual. Srikkanth put one on over his shirt and tie and waited for her to finish up. She led him into the nursery and over to a bed marked simply “Peters, girl.”
“Sophie,” he said immediately, unable to ignore the pang at seeing that the baby didn’t even have a name. “Her name is supposed to be Sophie.”
“I’ll make a note of it in her file,” Ms. Holmes offered, “but ultimately, her name will be up to her adoptive parents, although we encourage them to take the birth parents’ wishes into account. Often, they’ll use the birth name as a middle name.”
Srikkanth stroked the smooth beige skin, noticing how much darker she was than any of the other babies in the room, all of whom had about the same coloration as the white blankets swaddling them. She squirmed under his touch, her little hand lifting to brush his fingers as her eyelashes fluttered softly. “She’s a darling baby,” one of the nurses said, coming over to Srikkanth’s side. “She eats like a horse and never fusses.”
Srikkanth smiled. “She sounds just like her mother, then.”
“Here,” the nurse said, scooping the baby up with the ease of years of practice. “Have a seat there and you can hold her.”
Srikkanth knew that was a bad idea even before he saw the frown on Ms. Holmes’s face, but he couldn’t resist. Just once, he told himself. He’d hold her this once and then he’d go back and sign the papers and be done with it. He took the seat the nurse indicated and tried to position his arms the way hers were so they formed a cradle for the baby. “Just support her head and she’ll be fine,” the nurse assured him, placing the baby gently in his embrace.
Her eyes opened as she went from confident hands to more hesitant ones, blinking owlishly up at Srikkanth. “Hi,” he said softly, vaguely remembering his mother telling a young friend that she should talk to her baby all the time as if he could understand her. “How are you, Sophie? I’m Srikkanth. I’m a friend of your mama’s.”
His voice caught, but he swallowed around the lump in his throat and went on. “We’ve known each other since middle school. She was the only person who didn’t make fun of the kid with the funny accent, and she had words with anyone who dared say anything about it where she could hear them. She loved Indian food, you see,” he confided, “and since I was from India, she figured becoming my friend was the perfect way to steal all my mother’s recipes. She could cook even then. My mother loved her. Every time Jill would come to visit, she’d follow M into the kitchen and watch her cook. It didn’t matter to her that M didn’t follow a recipe. Your mama just watched and learned, and then the next time I’d go over to her house, she’d prepare the recipe she’d learned from M. She was my first friend here in the States, my best friend.”
The baby watched him with that serious expression all newborns have, the one that says they’re trying to make sense of this strange new world and not quite succeeding. Srikkanth bent and placed a tender kiss on her forehead as he continued to reminisce. “Everybody thought we were dating, but Jill never pressured me that way. I think she knew I was gay before I did, and when I finally came out, she supported me one hundred percent. We got an apartment together in college, and I think my parents kept expecting me to announce our engagement or something. They don’t know about me, you see. I don’t think they’d understand. Jill did, though. We’d go out together and agree on the cutest guys in the club. Then we’d figure out if they were gay or straight so we could decide who got to hit on them.”
He laughed softly. “I guess I shouldn’t be telling you these things, but you deserve to know who your mama was before you go to another family and a different mama and daddy who can take care of you now that your mama’s gone. You look just like her, you know. Sure, you got my coloring, but the shape of your eyes and mouth, they’re exactly like hers. And I’ll bet you’ll have the same curly hair she had too. It’ll be brown, probably, since her red hair is a recessive trait, but you’ll get her curls. You have to. You’re too much like her not to get that too.”
He lifted the baby so he could rub his cheek over her smooth scalp, taking in the fragrance of lotion and soap and baby. His eyes teared up as he rocked her. “She wanted a baby so much,” he whispered, “but she couldn’t find a man she loved enough to marry. We’d always joked we’d be perfect for each other if it weren’t for the whole gay thing, so when she got tired of waiting for the right man and decided to have a baby on her own, I was the logical person to approach. I didn’t say yes right away. I was actually a little freaked out by the whole idea at first. I mean, what did I know about being a father, but she assured me over and over that she wasn’t asking me to do anything except provide the genetic material. She’d take care of you on her own. She’d raise you and love you enough for two parents and four grandparents and a whole slew of aunts and uncles. And she would have. When she found out she was pregnant, she was over the moon. I’ve never seen her as happy as she was while she was pregnant with you. She never complained, not about the morning sickness or the clothes that didn’t fit or about the swollen ankles or anything else. She spent weeks poring over paint swatches and border patterns to get everything picked out for your nursery, and then she inveigled all her friends to help her get it all set up. Everything was going to be perfect for her little angel. Only now she’s not here to make it that way, and I can’t take her place. I don’t know how.”
He rocked the baby a little closer and wept against her tiny shoulder for the loss of his best friend, soft sobs escaping his throat as they sat there. Her little hand patted the side of his face, and his heart skipped a beat, a sudden, unexpected, overwhelming wave of love stealing his breath. He lifted his head and stared down at her trusting, open face and knew he was lost.
“It’s time for her to ea
t,” the nurse said quietly, coming back to Srikkanth’s side. “Her bottle’s all ready. All you have to do it give it to her.”
“I don’t know how,” he said for what felt like the thousandth time since he’d learned of Jill’s death.
“It’s easy,” the nurse said, handing him the bottle. “Just put the nipple in her mouth and make sure there isn’t any air up against it. She’ll do the rest. When she’s taken about a third of the bottle, call me and I’ll come help you burp her.”
Srikkanth nodded mechanically, tipping the bottle up and placing the teat against the baby’s lips. They parted immediately, sucking on the plastic nipple voraciously. “You were hungry, weren’t you, Sophie?” he asked as she ate. “I’m sorry I didn’t realize. You see what I mean about not knowing what to do. How am I supposed to take care of you when I don’t even know when you’re hungry? You’d be so much better off with people who know something about babies.”
Sophie simply kept sucking on her bottle, sublimely unaware of the conflict going on inside the man holding her. When the bottle was about a third empty, Srikkanth looked around for the nurse, who came as soon as he caught her eye.