A House for Happy Mothers: A Novel (2 page)

“
Atha
, I’m really not feeling up to it,” Priya said. Her stomach was churning with tension. “Just coffee today. Tomorrow, I promise I’ll eat.”

When Priya had first met Madhu’s parents, she had called them by their first names, but she was soon advised by Madhu to call them
Atha
and
Mava
, mother-in-law and father-in-law, because that’s what good Telugu Indians did. Priya, for her part, had told him not to call her parents anything but Andrew and Sush.

Priya watched Madhu plow into his breakfast. He missed eating food like this in California. Even though South Indian food was available, this was vacation eating; this was Amma-made food eating.

“Amma, leave her alone,” Madhu said as he put another fresh
idli
on his plate.

“She’s too thin, Madhu,” Prasanna complained. “She must eat.”

“It’s OK if she doesn’t eat one morning,” Sairam said, though he did agree with his wife that Priya was too thin.

“Stick figures might be the norm in America, but here we like our women well rounded,” Prasanna said authoritatively, and Priya all but choked on her coffee.

Madhu looked up from his
idli
and shook his head. “She looks fabulous,” he said, and winked at Priya.

“I don’t understand—” Prasanna began.

“You don’t have to, Amma; she’s my wife,” Madhu said, standing up. “We have to go. Now wish us luck and stop nagging Priya about how she looks.”

There were other husbands, Indian husbands, who always sided with their parents. Priya would hear Indian women, mostly the wives of Madhu’s friends, bitch about how when they visited his parents it was all about them.

“
Arrey
, she tells him, in front of me, what she thinks I’m doing wrong in raising our children, and he just nods his head. It’s so insulting,” one would complain.

“Mine just hates me. Whines about everything I do, and he just sits there and takes it. If my parents said anything about my husband, I’d defend him. Is it too much to expect the same of him?” another would chime in.

Priya didn’t have much to say when their eyes turned to her. They expected her to narrate her own harrowing mother-in-law experiences, but what could she say? Madhu was always on her side.

“Good luck,” Prasanna said, not angrily but in resigned acceptance that Priya would indeed not eat anything. “Whatever happens, Priya, keep your chin up, OK?”

Unlike Andrew and Sush, Prasanna and Sairam were all for having a baby the surrogate way. They didn’t see it as an exploitation of the poor, as Sush did; they saw it as a way for them to have a grandchild while helping another family have a better life.

“You know, you could’ve eaten one measly
idli
and killed that whole breakfast chitchat,” Madhu said as they merged into traffic. At 7:00 a.m., it was already chaos and would only get worse as the day progressed. There was no rush hour here—all hours were rush hour.

“So you prefer a ‘well-rounded wife’ instead of a healthy one?” Priya teased. She didn’t want to fight today.

“Well, what exactly do you mean by ‘well rounded’?” Madhu asked as he honked at a driver not going fast enough.

“Do you really think the guy in front of you can hear your honk over the others?” Priya asked.

The auto rickshaw moved out of Madhu’s way. “In India if you don’t honk, you’ll get nowhere.”

“Now there’s a guy honking at you,” Priya said, turning around.

“God knows who he’s honking at, but it ain’t me,” Madhu said.

Priya couldn’t imagine driving on the roads of Hyderabad. The idea of being in a vehicle here was stressful enough without having to be the driver. The first time she came with Madhu to India, she had insisted that he not drive after hearing all the nightmarish stories about car accidents. But these were his streets, no matter how much they had changed. Madhu said he’d be damned if he let someone else drive him. To his credit, they were still alive and intact—not even a scratch on the car. Well, at least not any new ones.

“So,” Priya said as Madhu managed to avoid hitting a scooter that decided to cut him off with little room to spare. Madhu called them the suicide squad—people he was saving from killing themselves. They were all over the streets—the woman with her baby, the scooter, the moped, the motorcycle, the auto rickshaw—they all merrily cut in and hoped for the best.

“So, what?” Madhu asked. If the driving was stressing him out, she couldn’t tell. He was relaxed as he honked, braked, and changed gears.

“You still haven’t told me,” Priya said.

They had been discussing it for the past few days, and Madhu got squeamish each time she brought up the topic.

“I don’t want to talk about this,” Madhu said, and Priya could see he was embarrassed.

“Come on, did you or did you not need any of the porno movies they gave you?” Priya asked with a smile.

“I don’t want to talk about this,” he repeated.

“You know I would’ve told you if it were me,” Priya said. “And it isn’t the first time you’ve had to . . . you know”—she paused for effect—“masturbate into a cup.”

“And I didn’t tell you then, either,” Madhu said.

They both knew they were talking about this to avoid dwelling on whether their surrogate was pregnant or not. They had chosen this particular woman over two others. Madhu had been drawn to her because of her age. She was twenty-five and had two children. This would be her first time as a surrogate. She came from a good family and had a sister-in-law who had also been a surrogate. Her husband was a house painter, and they lived in a village close to Srirampuram.

The other two women were slightly older than this one and had been surrogates before. For some reason, the fact that they had done this before made Madhu and Priya wary. They should’ve felt surer because the women were experienced, but they still wanted this woman.

And then there was the name.

Priya was immediately attracted to Asha because her name meant “hope,” just as her own name, Priyasha, did. One hope was giving hope to another hope; there was something inevitable about it, as if the universe had planned it.

Swati Gudla, their doctor and the owner of the Happy Mothers clinic, a fertility and surrogacy clinic close to Hyderabad, had been delighted with their choice, assuring them that Asha would make a wonderful surrogate.

Both Madhu and Priya had gotten to know Doctor Swati quite well over the phone during the past few months. There were many, many conversations to be had: about money, legalities, medical conditions, and more. They liked her instantly, from the very first time they had Skyped. She was down-to-earth and talked sensibly about the process, warning them about the emotional and financial toll. Financially, this was a lot cheaper than having three IVFs. Emotionally, they crossed their fingers that it would be less harrowing.

“You know I’d tell you if I had to use porn,” Priya told Madhu in a serious tone. “I wish it were that easy for women. My stomach is still churning, thanks to that extraction business.”

Madhu reached out his hand and touched hers.

“I wish you could’ve used porn, too,” he said. “I know it was painful.”

“But worth it, right?”

Madhu shrugged. He didn’t say it because it would hurt Priya, but she knew that he didn’t want a baby “at any cost,” like she did. He would’ve been plenty happy to live their lives without a child. He would’ve been happier in some ways if they had adopted. It wasn’t like Priya was against adopting, but she looked at it as a last resort. And, as yet, there was this one avenue that was still available to them. If this didn’t work out, then maybe . . .
Oh God, please let this work.

“Do you think the baby will learn Telugu?” Madhu asked.

“Well, if you speak to her in Telugu, she will learn Telugu. If I speak to her in Telugu, she’ll learn crap Telugu.”

Priya always referred to the baby as “she.” She didn’t know why but she was convinced that she was meant to have one.

“Your Telugu, considering the circumstances, is fabulous,” Madhu said. “I still don’t get why Sush didn’t bother to teach it to you. It’s such a waste. It is, after all, your mother tongue.”

“I guess it wasn’t important to her,” Priya said.

Even though she had an Indian mother, Priya’s connection with India had been a fragile one at best. She had visited once as a child but could hardly remember it. There was some Indian food at home, but not a lot and not every day. There was some Indian classical music mixed in with Mozart and Mahler. There were no Indian movies, really. Priya’s uncle, who’d died years ago, had been Sush’s only relative in India besides her parents. Priya’s grandparents had not been gung ho about their daughter marrying a white man and had not visited very often. Priya vaguely remembered them and felt no connection to them.

Priya’s Indian experience really began after she met Madhu. It was a delight to her that he was Telugu like Sush, who was also from Andhra Pradesh. He had indulged Priya by speaking to her in Telugu, helping her rudimentary language skills develop. Now she spoke it half-decently, albeit with a strong American accent.

Before meeting Madhu, Priya had always felt a part of her was missing. She was half-Indian, but there was nothing Indian about her. Having a completely Indian husband who helped her discover her Indianness had made her feel complete.

They fell silent as they neared the clinic, her prayers battling the insidious thought that maybe the surrogate hadn’t gotten pregnant this first time after all and that they might have to try again in a few months, if they didn’t give up altogether.

Madhu parked and they got out. Priya stood by the car, not wanting to walk in. There had been so much bad news for so long that she was terrified to believe that this time could be different.

Her hands started to shake.

Madhu put his arm around her and kissed her lightly. “You need to relax,” he said quietly.

“I couldn’t stand it if she isn’t pregnant,” Priya said with tears in her eyes. “I . . . I don’t know what I’d do. I want a baby, Madhu.”

“I know,” Madhu said as Priya turned in to him.

When she lifted her head, she gave him a teary smile. “I’m such a shit,” she said as she wiped her tears with a tissue from her purse.

He grinned as they started to walk toward the entrance. He leaned down slightly when they stepped into the reception area.

“I didn’t use the porn,” Madhu whispered into Priya’s ear. “I thought of you in that blue Victoria’s Secret number.”

Transcript from message board www.surrogacyforyou.org

NearlyMother: Our surrogate lost our baby. This is such a painful and horrible time. I hear about people who get pregnant the first time and then have a healthy pregnancy and I can’t understand why this can’t happen to us. This was our second time. I think my husband is ready to give up.

Mommy8774: I am so sorry to hear about your loss. It’s terrible. With our first baby everything went well. With our second baby we had to try three different times to get pregnant. So hang in there.

Prietysmommy: We just got through the first trimester. I can only imagine how you feel. I was so scared. And it isn’t easy with us here in Dallas and the baby in Gujarat. Torture.

NobuNobi: My MIL and FIL are against us getting an SM and have been so mean about the whole thing. They’re visiting now and make me feel so bad. I mean they see this as my fault and that it has nothing to do with DH. I mean, DH gave his f****** sperm, didn’t he? I have some uterine problems and that’s why we had to go the SM way. This really hurts. Our SM is doing very well. She’s nearly five months pregnant and we talk every week; I see her belly over the webcam. Anyone else having to deal with family disapproval?

UnoBaby: My friends have been very unsupportive. Now I don’t even tell people. It’s nobody’s business anyway. One of my friends actually told me that I was exploiting this poor Indian woman. But my SM wants to help us and to them the money we give can help change the lives of her children.

Trying1Time: My mother is not very supportive about this either and also accuses me of exploiting the poor people of India. But I agree with UnoBaby that this is a mutually beneficial thing. We’re waiting to hear if our surrogate is pregnant. I have my fingers crossed.

Newbie1209: I’m so glad I found this message board. You all seem wonderful. I wish you the best, Trying1Time. And NobuNobi, I’m so sorry your in-laws are giving you a hard time. And NearlyMother . . . I am so so so so sorry. I really want to go the surrogate route. Any suggestions on how I can convince my husband?

CantConceive1970: My husband flat-out refused, but once I showed him pictures, testimonials, walked him through Dr. Patel’s website, he was all for it. Now we’re working on baby #2 and he’s game for a third one if we want it. It’s a great way to have your own baby when you can’t do it yourself. It’s a gift.

Mommy8774: Just be prepared with facts and proof. I made sure I had all the information when I sat down with my husband. Turns out I didn’t need to, because he had been investigating it himself and was afraid to bring it up, thinking I would be against it! So it turned out really well. I hope it turns out well for you, too.