Tales of Natural and Unnatural Catastrophes

by Highsmith, Patricia

  “Um-m. Yes, why?”

  “She was admitted this morning early to emergency. Second miscarriage and she’s pretty upset. When she’s on her feet tomorrow, I’ll suggest a surrogate. A national union’s a good idea, then we’ll have a list of names.”

  “Calling Dr. Geoffrey Robinson. Dr. Robinson. Please go to Room Five Hundred and . . .”

  Geoff had pushed his chair back. “We still have a date this evening? Seven? Six?”

  “I can make it at six with luck.”

  “And I’ll try. Look for me down in pre-natal.” He flew off.

  Alicia and Geoff made the date, and drove in two cars to Geoff ’s apartment house.

  Geoff made Bloody Marys. “Hey, somebody left a flyer on the desk in pre-natal just now—about what you were talking about. I’ll show you.” He went to his raincoat and took a yellow page from a pocket. “This. Is that the church your folks go to?”

  Alicia looked at the church’s name in heavy black letters at the bottom of the page. “No, glad to say.”

  BABIES AS COMMERCIAL PRODUCTS

  was the heading, followed by a verse from the Bible, which to Alicia had nothing to do with the subject, and then a paragraph about “hired mothers” attempting to organize “in order to raise their fees for their unnatural profession,” from which “certain hospitals” also profited. She read on:

  . . . Women’s bodies are not factories, and babies are not objects manufactured like cars or airplanes. The union of man and wife is a holy one. Interference with God’s and nature’s way, in the conception and bearing of God’s and nature’s fruit, leads only to the misery and despair that come from awareness that one has broken God’s faith in us his children.

  Our church is one of many which protest the exploitation of conception and birth. Speak to your spiritual leader in our or your local church. Let your voice be heard!

  “Gosh,” Alicia said, “they’re even taking a crack at birth control.”

  “Yes, and the bit about organizing—”

  “Steph told me a couple of the girls were journalists and had already written some articles about Rent-a-Womb.”

  “Good,” said Geoff, slumped in an armchair with his drink, while Alicia was just as comfortable on the sofa with her feet up. “Probably more computers in Mighty Muck’s headquarters than in the whole Internal Revenue Service.”

  The next day, when Alicia had the afternoon off and was home by 1, her mother pointed to an item in the Meadsville Sun, and asked Alicia if she had seen it. Alicia hadn’t. It said:

  SURROGATE MOTHERS FORM UNION

  In response to what their organizers call harassment and attempts to lower their unofficial fees, several former and present surrogate mothers have formed a union called Rent-a-Womb. Leaders Mrs. George Fuller and Frances Chalmers of Brookvale say they have over 300 members from all over the nation and more are joining daily. The young women have in the past received about $10,000 as fee, plus expenses for medical care and, occasionally, maternity clothing.

  Rent-a-Womb says that certain “wrongly informed” groups are attempting to halt the practice of using substitute mothers in the case of inability of the true mother to conceive, or carry a baby to term, or infertility when the husband is not infertile, in which case the baby is conceived by artificial insemination of the surrogate. By stigmatizing surrogates as “something like call-girls or at best money-mad and inhuman, some groups are hoping to put us down.” The spokeswoman added, “To be sure, most of us needed or need the money, but we also like children, and couldn’t have got this work from reputable doctors unless we were healthy and normal. Hundreds of happy parents would not have been parents without us.” She said that these “new parents” could help by speaking out against Rent-a-Womb’s detractors.

  “Well—” Alicia began, because her mother was waiting.

  “Not commercial? They’ll be trying to raise their fees next. What else do unions do?”

  “I have seen some happy parents, Mom. Just as it says here. Who’s it harming?”

  Her mother gave a cool smile. “But to try to organize like this—so blatantly!—No doubt these union women are the same types who’re pro-abortion-on-demand. Very rough types, I’d imagine. I have the feeling you’re sympathetic to them.”

  Alicia hesitated, aware that she still lived under her parents’ roof. “Consider me neutral, Mom. There’re two sides to this. It’s the married couples who ask for young women to bear their child.”

  “But what kind of young woman would do this?”

  “Usually poor girls, Mom. You think we haven’t got poor people in the States? Lots of—” Alicia hesitated, then plunged on. “Some poor girls become prostitutes or variations thereof, because they’re broke. It’s not only young blacks who can’t find a job, or who’re short of money.”

  Her mother winced. “Whether people can have offspring is God and nature’s business, dear Alicia, and not the heaviest burden to bear in life. Of course science can cross a chimpanzee with a goat, I suppose. But why do it?”

  Alicia was silent. Her mother had played golf this morning. She was fit and trim and in her mid-forties, yet talking like Methuselah. Or Birdshall. It was usual for people like her parents to say that Birdshall was “really too conservative,” though at the same time they never contradicted anything Birdshall said. “I’d call Birdshit a fossil.” Geoff had once said, “but he doesn’t believe in fossils. He thinks the world was created about ten thousand years ago, four thousand if he’s got his steam up.”

  “Rosemary told me this morning,” her mother went on, “that the American Committee for Loving the Unwanted is planning a mass funeral for aborted fetuses in Los Angeles in a few days, They’ve collected bags of these fetuses from the back doors of hospitals and—”

  “A funeral? You don’t mean it, Mom!” Alicia interrupted. It struck her as satirical, like something she might read in Mad magazine.

  “Of course I mean it. I’ve heard that hospitals usually throw these fetuses away as if they were garbage.”

  “Then you’ve heard wrong, Mom, they’re used,” Alicia said calmly. “They’re very useful for research—developing prophylactic medicines, for instance. They’re not wasted.”

  Mrs. Newton looked blank with surprise. “All the more horrid.”

  The day after this conversation with her mother, Alicia had more news from Steph. The tone of her letter was excited, her writing full of abbreviations. She said Rent-a-Womb was growing by leaps and bounds, but so was opposition in the form of Birdshall’s daily Bull.

  . . . This self-appointed Pope manages to say something against us every day on TV and radio. . . . We have to counter hard and fast, so my branch of Rent-a-Womb with 22 members is coming to Meadsville Fri. for a Sat. rally, because Birdshall is blasting nationwide Sunday. Most of the girls will be staying at Hotel Crown, accom. already OKed and 3 have trailers that can each sleep at least 2. I’m broke now from terrific postage, printing and phone expenses, so I wonder can you put me up for 2 nights, Fri. & Sat.? I’ll be out except for sleeping. A personal appearance in my expanded state will help, I think: once a surrogate, now married and carrying my own child by my own husband! . . . Could you get a list of former surrogates at Frick, maybe from your swain Geoff. If there is no time before rally for me to contact all of them, the list will still be useful in future. . . . Frances Chalmers is great, 22, journalist, has been a surrogate twice, and has small child of her own. She knows of a girl in San Antonio who accepted $8,000 as surrogate with no pre-natal paid for, and F. thinks something must be done. Her latest article appears Sat. in local papers here, also NY Times & in a San Fran. paper. How about that?

  Alicia showed Stephanie’s letter to Geoff, and Geoff said he would get a Frick secretary to make the list Steph wanted.

  “That’s going to be interesting Saturday,” Geoff said. “A Rent-a-Womb rally in Meadsville! Maybe here on the Frick grounds! Ha-ha! Plenty of room out on the lawn there. Maybe some Mighty Righters’ll
turn up too. Did your parents say anything?”

  “Not yet.” Alicia as usual felt a bit ashamed of her parents’ conservatism. “Not sure if they know yet.”

  Her parents knew by that evening. The Rent-a-Womb rally on Saturday was the first thing her mother informed Alicia of, when Alicia came in at 7. Her parents had heard it on the 6 o’clock news.

  “The TV news even said that Frick had done at least thirty surrogate—operations or whatever you call this business,” Alicia’s father put in.

  Alicia had telephoned Stephanie from the Frick, and said of course Steph could stay in the guestroom Friday and Saturday nights. Alicia had found it impossible to say no to an old friend, and she knew she could arrange something with Geoff at his place, if her parents made a fuss. But her parents might not connect Stephanie Adams with Mrs. George Fuller. Friday was tomorrow.

  By arrangement with another friend, to whom Alicia promised to do a similar favor at some other time, Alicia took a few hours off on Friday afternoon, and met Stephanie at the bus terminal. Stephanie had a small suitcase and a larger rope-tied carton which held flyers and publicity material, she told Alicia, and Alicia at once took it from her to carry.

  “Lovely to see you!” said Stephanie, pink-cheeked and beaming. “And have I got news!”

  They decided to have a coffee in a nearby diner before driving to the Newton house. Steph talked like a machinegun.

  “Rent-a-Womb’s the theme of Birdshall’s Sunday sermon nationwide. We couldn’t have asked for better advertising, couldn’t have paid for a minute of it and he’s giving us an hour! Supposed to be a secret but we found out. We have friends, Alicia, you’d be amazed. . . . And how’s Geoff ?. . . . You’re looking fine, by the way, more than I can say for myself right now but my spirits are high! . . . Listen, what’s your parents’ attitude?”

  Alicia told her. “I’d better keep that carton in my room—which you can use, of course, too. I’m out a lot, and there’s a telephone in my room, because I sometimes get calls from Frick at night. You see, my folks don’t know you’re Mrs. George Fuller of Rent-a-Womb. I just said Steph was coming.”

  “I see. Thanks, Alicia. You’re a darling.” Steph chattered on. The Rent-a-Womb girls were already in Meadsville at the Crown or in their trailers, working on publicity for tomorrow. The girls intended to take some photos of Steph outside the Frick Medical Center, and they hoped that a couple of TV crews would turn up Saturday.

  When they got to Alicia’s house, Alicia’s mother was home, and greeted Stephanie, whom Alicia called merely “Stephanie.”

  “Remember you? Of course I do!” said Mrs. Newton, who was in dungarees and had been gardening. “Wasn’t all that long ago. Two years?”

  “Something like that. A lot’s happened, as you see. I’m married and expecting.”

  “Bless you!” said Mrs Newton. “Alicia, there’ve been two phone messages, one for you, one for Stephanie. I left the messages by the downstairs phone.”

  “Thank you, Mom.”

  Alicia took the slips of paper, and went with Stephanie up the stairs, carrying the carton which weighed over twenty pounds. Alicia’s mother wanted to carry the little suitcase, but Stephanie thanked her and insisted on carrying it, saying it was good for her.

  One message was from Geoff, to call him at 5:55 if she could, and the other from someone whose name Steph knew and who wanted Steph to call her at once at the Crown.

  “One thing I must settle,” Stephanie said, groping in her handbag. “I want to leave twenty dollars for my phone calls with your family.—No, no, it’s only normal, Alicia! I’ll feel awful if I don’t. They’ll all be local, I promise. If you don’t take it, you’ll make me have a miscarriage!” Stephanie cried, laughing.

  Alicia reluctantly took the twenty-dollar bill.

  Stephanie made her call from the telephone in Alicia’s room, and promised to meet someone at the Crown in less than half an hour. Then it was five to 6, and Alicia phoned Geoff at the ground floor lab number, the one she knew he meant her to call.

  Geoff himself answered, “How’s Steph? . . . Tell her the union girls have been here already, looking the grounds over for tomorrow’s do. And did you know Mighty Muck’s turning up tomorrow too? . . . What about your mom?”

  “Okay so far. Steph said she’d be out a lot.”

  “Aren’t you on tonight? I’m here till midnight, the way it looks.”

  “Nine to midnight Special Private,” Alicia replied. “Third floor, you know?” She meant Geoff could leave a message with the Hall Attendant on the third floor.

  Alicia went into the guestroom, where Stephanie had opened her suitcase and hung a dress in the closet. Stephanie washed her hands in the upstairs bathroom, and was ready to leave with a bundle of flyers from the carton, when Alicia’s mother called from downstairs: “Alicia? Can you come down for a minute?”

  Alicia went down. Her mother drew her into the living-room, and said she had just had a telephone call from Rosemary who had told her that Stephanie Fuller was head of the Rent-a-Womb women.

  “Is that this Stephanie?” asked her mother. “Rosemary said she used to live in Meadsville.”

  Alicia sighed. “Yes, Mom.—And we’ll take off. I mean—I’ll see that Steph finds a place tonight.”

  “I really can’t, you know, Alicia? I can’t put up people like that in my own house—even if they were once friends of yours.”

  Alicia said nothing, not sulking, but she found nothing to say.

  When she helped Stephanie down with her luggage, her mother was not in sight. Alicia drove Stephanie to the Crown, and said she was sure Geoff could let Stephanie have his place, or put her up in his place on a cot which he could easily borrow from the Frick.

  “Or I can pile in with someone at the Crown,” Stephanie said cheerfully. “The girls’ll finance me for two nights. I should never have imposed myself—”

  “Oh, can it, Steph! You, my best friend in highschool? And even before that? I’m sorry about my folks.”

  “If you think this is a big deal! We’ve been screamed at and even hit by some women—and some men too. Tell your mother thanks, anyway, would you?”

  Alicia remembered to give Steph her twenty dollars back. In the lobby of the Crown, Stephanie introduced Alicia to three or four Rent-a-Womb members. They were all friendly and smiling. One girl was pregnant. It struck Alicia that every one looked cleaner and healthier than the average young woman, but then they were healthier than the average, otherwise they couldn’t have been surrogate mothers.

  Steph had given Alicia four or five one-page flyers which Steph called their “package,” and which Rent-a-Womb members handed out at street corners. Some pages were Mimeographed, others printed. Alicia took a look at them in the Frick canteen, where she had decided to eat her dinner instead of going back to her parents’ house. An orange-colored flyer said:

  WHY “RENT-A-WOMB?”

  After a nearly twenty-year record of healthy babies brought forth by surrogate mothers, and mutually agreed upon contracts between couples and surrogates, some groups within the United States see fit to try to halt surrogate services.

  How? By a verbal campaign implying that our work is mercenary (true, most of us needed or need the money), immoral (how so?), damaging to family life (we are helping to create families), and damaging to the newborn who is taken away from its surrogate mother just after birth. Does anyone remember the seconds and hours just after being born?

  The unofficial fee nationwide for surrogate mothers has been up to now around $10,000 plus medical expenses and sometimes partial financial support in the last weeks of pregnancy, if the jobs of girls were of a nature not to be performed in a state of advanced pregnancy.

  Now certain churches, women’s groups and indeed some men’s are trying to stop surrogate mothers’ services not by going to court and making a specific charge, but by, for instance, pressuring hospitals (to which they may have made donations that they now threaten to withhold or ce
ase) to stop artificial (in-vitro) fertilization. This is an attempt to turn surrogates into outlaws, willing to accept ever lower fees, while for married couples who want a baby, the whole procedure would become more expensive, if middlemen have to be paid. If anti-surrogate people have their way, hospital procedures will have to be done on the sly. . . .

  Alicia took the next flyer and skimmed.

  WHAT’S IT ALL ABOUT?

  Bringing healthy babies into the world . . . The attempt to stop us, to lower our fees, will result in:

  1) making ours a backstreet activity or/and

  2) a luxury, as is an abortion in nations or States where abortions are outlawed.

  Oddly, the anti-abortion people are the ones screaming the most loudly against us. Has it occurred to them that Rent-a-Womb members are producing babies, not killing them?

  Has it occurred to them to ask the opinion of several hundred happy parents? Meet some of us tomorrow from 10 a.m. onward on the Frick Medical Center’s east side lawn!

  Everyone welcome!

  Alicia glanced at the canteen door. Geoff had promised to make a dash down if he could before 9 p.m. He was in the delivery room, so his arrival was a hundred percent uncertain. She looked at a yellow flyer called THE BRIGHT SIDE, a list of eight or ten couples whose first baby had been brought to them by a surrogate mother. The list had a homely and very real look to Alicia.