by R. R. Banks
“It was just too hard for you.”
I nodded, wiping at my eyes.
“But I should have done it. It was my responsibility. I don’t know why I would think that he paid off that loan. When I got down there the lawyer told me that the payments were behind. I was able to scrounge up enough to pay a couple of months, but I didn’t have much. That’s not all, though. The house itself was in pretty bad condition. The grounds were grown up. The vegetable garden was completely gone. The house itself needs a ton of work. And I’m the only one who can do it.”
“Rue, you hadn’t been back there in years.”
“I know.”
“The only times you even saw your dad was when he came here or when he was in the hospital.”
“I know,” I said, feeling guilt start to creep up inside of me as she spoke.
“You always said that when you were younger, the only thing you could ever think about was how you were going to get out of there and start your life in the city. That once you got out of the holler, you weren’t ever going back.”
“Tessie,” I said sharply to stop her, then softened my tone. “I know.”
She turned to me, reaching up to rest one hand on mine.
“Then why are you so worried about saving it?” she asked. “Grammyma’s been gone for a decade. Your daddy’s gone now, too. Don’t you think that it’s time to just go ahead and let it go?”
I shook my head. The holler that she was talking about was Whiskey Hollow, the tiny valley village where I was born and raised, and then got out of as soon as I got accepted into college.
“No,” I said, struggling to regain control over my voice. “No, Tessie. I can’t. That place is all I have left. I don’t have siblings. I don’t even remember my mama. All I had was Grammyma and Daddy. That’s it. As much as I talk about the bad things about it, there really are wonderful things about it. And that house…I grew up in that house. It was my home. It smelled like the cookies that my grandmother made for me and that I was never able to recreate because she put the recipe aside for safekeeping and we never found it before she died. It was where my Daddy let me try to paint my own room and never even made fun of me when I tried to paint it three different colors and add swirls and it essentially ended up brown. It might not seem like much, but the reality is that it’s everything, and I’m the only one left who can save it.”
“How are you going to do it?” Tessie asked.
I drew in a breath.
“I’m moving back there.”
“What?” Tessie asked. “You’re leaving?”
She sounded crestfallen and I couldn’t even look at her or I would start crying again.
“I have to,” I said. “I can’t afford the payments on the house and this apartment, and besides there’s so much work that I need to do there to get the house and the land back in shape. I can’t be in both places at once.”
“I wish that you would have told us this. We could have helped you. I don’t make a ton, but between me and Christopher I’m sure we would have been able to get together enough that you wouldn’t have to rent out your womb.”
I smiled.
“I know,” I said. “And I love you both for that. I know that you would have helped me, but that’s why I didn’t tell you. I need to be able to do this for myself. I owe it to Daddy and Grammyma. They were both able to get through so much without having to lean on other people. It wasn’t until close to the end that Daddy started to really struggle and let things slide. I want to make him proud of me.”
“He is proud of you,” Tessie insisted. “You don’t have to go through this alone. The only reason that they didn’t lean on other people is because they didn’t have any one to lean on. You do. You have me, and you have Christopher. We love you and we want to be here for you.”
I was suddenly feeling like I was part of some sort of intervention.
“I can’t ask you two to stop your lives just to help me out of this,” I said. “Besides, it’s something good that I can do for someone else. You are always doing good for the world. You do the food drive. The pet food drive. Meals on Wheels. Wheels for Meals, that car donation initiative. If it has to do with food and driving, you’re right on top of it.”
“Sometimes food and driving,” Tessie pointed out. “Don’t forget my Christmas program from two years ago.”
“Oh, yes. Ho-Ho-Homeless.”
“It might have gotten me banned from the development and marketing of any new programs, but they really did enjoy the hot meals and egg nog while they rode around looking at the Christmas lights.”
“They did,” I agreed. “That’s exactly what I’m talking about. You do all of these amazing things for people, and I really don’t do anything. I might not be helping a lot of people, but if they choose me, I’ll get to make a really big difference in the lives of this one couple at least.”
“So, you’re not pregnant yet?” Tessie asked.
I gave her a quizzical look.
“No, Tessie. That’s why I said that I was thinking about becoming a surrogate, not that I was one already. Don’t you think that that’s something I would mention to you before I went through with it?”
“I don’t know,” Tessie said, her voice rising slightly as she tried to defend herself. “You sound so convinced, I thought that maybe you got all swept up in it and just went ahead with it.”
“I don’t think that this is like a drive-thru situation. They don’t order the baby and get it baking on the same day. It takes time. I still have to go through interviews and briefings and meet with the couple and go to the doctor. There’s a lot that has to happen before they even choose me, if they’re going to choose me.”
“Have you thought about how this is going to impact the rest of your life? Forever, you’re going to be someone’s mother.”
“No,” I said, shaking my head. “I won’t be the baby’s mother. I’m just a vessel. It’s like the T-Rex who put her eggs in the nest with the eggs of another dinosaur to be taken care of until they’re born.”
Tessie stared at me blankly for a few seconds, then blinked.
“Yeah,” she said. “And then the T-Rex babies were born and ate all of the other dinosaur’s babies.”
“Well, I don’t have any babies, so I don’t think that the one that I’ll carry for the other couple will be able to eat any of them.”
“But will you always think of that pregnancy? If you get pregnant with your own children, will it not be as special because you will have already been pregnant? You will have already gone through all of those things. You will have already felt a baby kick inside of you and seen the sonograms and gone through labor and delivery.”
“I will have,” I conceded, “but there’s a major difference.”
“What’s the difference?”
“Those babies will be mine. I’ll find out that I’m pregnant with my own child. I’ll feel my own baby kick inside of me and see my own baby on the sonogram and go through labor and delivery to bring my own baby into the world. There’s nothing about this experience that will make having my own babies one day any less special or any less important.”
“And what if they don’t choose you?”
She was putting voice to a concern that was strong inside of me, but that I didn’t want to admit to.
“Then I’ll figure it out then,” I said. “The office gave me a leave of absence. They don’t realize that it’s going to be a permanent absence, but it gives me a few months of partial income. If the couple chooses me, part of the agreement is that they’ll pay my living expenses in addition to the surrogacy fee. I’ll put my paychecks into savings to carry me through later. If they don’t choose me, at least I’ll have that to live on while I figure out my next move.”
“You’ve really thought this through,” Tessie said, sounding completely sad now rather than angry.
“I have,” I told her, reaching out to squeeze her hand. “I’ll be fine. I promise.”
“I�
�ll miss you so much,” she said.
“I’ll miss you, too. But it’s time to go home.”
Chapter Two
Rue
I am a terrible, horrible liar.
I had sat right there, looked directly into the eyes of my best friend, and just lied a blue-fucking-streak. That wasn’t really the intention. I was going to tell her the real story. I actually thought that she was going to laugh about it. But when I told her and saw the look on Tessie’s face, I knew that the real story just wasn’t going to cut it. That’s because the truth was I hadn’t actually planned this whole surrogacy thing at all. I presented it to Tessie as if it was something that I thought through extensively and decided upon based on all of that evaluation, but that wasn’t what happened at all.
Having a contract baby wasn’t exactly on my bucket list. It wasn’t climb a mountain, jump out of a plane, write an epic rap battle retelling of the Iliad and the Odyssey, act as a human petri dish to carry and bear the offspring of a complete stranger. It all started because I needed to go to the dentist. That was it.
I didn’t like my dentist. That was the issue that brought all this about. Just an innocent situation of not liking the dentist that I had and wanting to go in for a little bit of a de-gunk, shine, and polish, and that was what I had every intention of doing that day. I had been complaining about my dentist for months, bemoaning his massive hands and hairy wrists and bad breath. What kind of dentist roams around his office with bad breath? That is simply poor professional form. So, I had been whining about my upcoming checkup and finally Christopher decided that he couldn’t take it anymore. He told me that if I would stop fussing, I could borrow his dentist for an appointment.
This was a momentous moment. Christopher held the identity of his dentist close to his chest in the same way that he protected the secret of his own homemade ranch dressing that somehow reached beyond the deep-seated hatred that I had always held for ranch dressing and burrowed right into my heart. We always heard him speak of this mythically magnificent dentist as he led up to an appointment and then after he emerged all pearly and clean. He anticipated these appointments with great reverence and a level of excitement that bordered on frightening sometimes. According to him, though, this devotion was completely warranted. This dentist was kind and gentle, always wore appropriately sized gloves over his appropriately sized hands, had only a moderate amount of body hair that in no way hindered his ability to perform dentistry, and his breath was always fresh. Sparkly, minty freshness was something that I was very much looking forward to as I tried to follow the somewhat cryptic directions for how to get to the office.
Christopher wouldn’t even let me call the office to make my own appointment. Instead, he called, made the appointment, and then waited until the morning of my appointment to send me a PDF of his instructions for how to get there. If I hadn’t known Christopher for as long as I had and didn’t have extensive knowledge of his personality and his character, I might have been slightly concerned that all of this pomp and circumstance was actually designed to lead me to certain doom. As it was, I was just convinced that he had way too much time on his hands and needed something more to occupy his brilliant, albeit scattered, mind.
That brilliant mind, however, sent me wandering through the city and dipping into areas that I didn’t love being seen in. I was coming out of one of those areas at a fairly fast clip when I must have missed a turn because I soon found myself standing in front of a massive office building that didn’t look like it was included in the directions. I re-read them and consulted the map that was missing small sections like a jigsaw puzzle that didn’t have all of the pieces.
Dammit, Christopher. Why can’t you just be a normal person and send me a map link on my phone?
I looked at the building again and then back at the map and then at the building again. I suppose it was possible that this was the large building in the corner of the map. The sketched one appeared shorter and slightly more square, but Christopher wasn’t known for his tremendous artistic skill, so I was more and more convinced that I had found the right place. After all, this was the fanciest building that I had come across as of yet, and if there was anything that he would look for in a dental practice before he even met the dentist would be the fanciness of the building.
Tucking all of the materials into my purse, I stepped inside the building. There was a decided nip in the autumn air that I had been wandering through for the better part of the morning and the rush of warm air I felt when I got inside was a welcome relief. I was still in the phase that I reached at this point of the season every year when I was still trying to get accustomed to the idea of truly cold weather. Every summer I would bitch ceaselessly about the heat, taking on my very best delicate magnolia blossom persona as though I had never been exposed to such temperatures, even though I knew and those closest to me knew damn well that I had barely actually gone inside during the summers of my childhood. Then the fall weather would come and bring a break in the steaminess. I would hope for cooler and cooler temperatures, wanting to wear a sweater by Halloween, which rarely actually happened. The cold always seemed to hit all at once. It snuck up on me while I was scouring the Halloween clearance racks and talking Tessie down from the teetering pile of volunteer positions she accepted during the holidays.
The first couple of weeks of cold weather usually witnessed a curious reversal in me. The same person who would put on a gaudy glow-in-the-dark sweatshirt in October even if the temperatures were still creeping up far too high just because I felt like it was appropriate, would completely flip and start trying to wear tank tops on days that were clearly so chilly my nipples stood at attention from the time I got out of bed until I curled desperately back in at night. I was just getting over that phase now, donning weather-appropriate clothing and starting to get that warm and fuzzy Thanksgiving feeling in my belly, when I stepped through the reflective glass doors into the lobby of the huge building and looked around, hoping for a massive plastic tooth or something that would direct me to the dentist office.
I hadn’t seen any such indication and was starting back across the lobby ready to call Christopher and shout things that would attest to my holler raising until he told me where the damn dentist was or came and got me to deliver me for my appointment when I heard someone clear their throat behind me. I took a few more steps and heard it again, louder this time. It was that loud clearing that meant that the person was either trying very hard to get your attention while being discreet or dying. I turned slowly and saw a wiry man in a pinstripe suit standing a few feet away. He clutched a clipboard like it held all of the secrets of life and peered at me down a thin nose through tiny round spectacles.
“Were you sent here?” he asked.
I didn’t know if it was meant as an actual question or in an effort to make me admit to some kind of wrongdoing. I suddenly felt like I was back in middle school being brought up in front of the principal for the note that I passed to Mary Sue Griswold during math.
Are you supposed to be passing notes in class?
Do you really think it’s nice to write things like that about your teacher?
While my mind was churning through all the reasons this man might think that I had been mysteriously sent to the building, it suddenly occurred to me that I was. I withdrew the map and instructions that Christopher had sent me out of my purse and tried to hand it to him.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m so glad that I finally got here. I didn’t think that I was going to make it.”
The man made a sound of acknowledgement in his throat, but I saw that his eyes were scanning up and down my body. There was a distinct lack of sex in that glare. Instead, it was sharp with disappointment and scrutiny as he took in my baggy grey sweat suit, pink high tops, and hair knotted onto my head.
Oh, yes. This was definitely who Christopher sent me to see. Judgement was his favorite accompaniment to breakfast, lunch, dinner, and coffee.
“I’m sorry,” I said, br
ushing something imaginary off of my shirt in an effort to look more presentable. “Is there a dress code? He didn’t tell me that I needed to wear anything specific.”
The man shook his head, though the expression on his face suggested to me that it was physically and psychologically painful for him to admit it.
“No,” he said dryly. “No dress code. Though I would think that someone in your position might seek to present herself a tad bit more elegantly.”
Elegant? For a dentist?
“I’m sorry,” I said again, even though I was starting to really dislike this man and the compulsion I had to apologize for and defend myself. “I just wanted to be comfortable.”
He nodded slowly as if that had been the most ridiculous and incomprehensible thing that he had ever heard.
“Comfortable,” he repeated. “Lovely. Anyway, you may follow me. Several others are already waiting.” He took a breath. “We wouldn’t want you to miss your turn.”
I wasn’t aware that there was a dentist Hunger Games going on.
I followed the as-yet nameless man back through the lobby and beyond two sets of glass doors before he directed me into a waiting room. Several other women were sitting, the customary Empty Chairs of Derision between them telling me that none of these women came together for an oral health girl’s day. I looked around and noticed that not only were there several women, but there were only women, and those women there were oddly similar. We were all roughly the same age, height, and weight, though I was a little rougher from that standpoint than some of the others.
Dammit, Christopher. You didn’t tell me that your dentist did profiling.
Putting on an expression that I hoped would tell the women around me that I was fully confident in myself even though I looked like I had just tumbled out of bed, I sat down in the nearest chair and reached for the nearest magazine. That’s when things took a turn.
I had been sitting in the waiting room for only a few minutes when a nurse came around handing registration forms to everyone. I started filling out the questions without reading the entire form.