“It’s inappropriate to touch her like this,” she said. “She isn’t your wife yet, and even if she were, you shouldn’t put your arm around her like this in public.”
Madhu had turned around and looked his mother in the eye. “Amma, we live together; this is way more appropriate than that.”
This wasn’t Madhu’s usual style with his mother, but with the ceremony dragging on, he was exhausted as well. Prasanna had gaped at him and then shut her mouth as if too disgusted to speak.
At some point in the wedding, the groom’s family was supposed to give the bride’s mother a sari. Instead of an elaborate silk sari, which was how it was usually done, Prasanna for some odd reason decided to give Sush a rather plain cotton one. Lalita, Sush’s cousin, had gone berserk. And once that happened, Sush lost her marbles as well.
Halfway through the wedding ceremony, while Madhu and Priya sat in the wedding mandap, a fight broke loose. The main players were Sush, Lalita, Prasanna, and Mayuri, who entered the skirmish when it became obvious that Lalita and Sush were winning the vocal war against Prasanna.
“This is a cheap cotton sari,” Lalita said, holding the sari up to Prasanna’s face. “Is this the respect you show the bride’s family?”
“Respect? You want to talk about respect? We’re the groom’s side, but we’re the ones paying for the wedding. In India, the bride pays for the wedding,” Prasanna said.
“My husband has paid for the wedding,” Sush piped in.
“No, he hasn’t. My Madhu paid for the wedding, and we planned the wedding and did all the work to set it up,” Prasanna said.
Madhu had tried to say, “Actually, Amma, Priya’s father did send money . . .” but no one was listening to him.
“You don’t pay for the wedding, you don’t do anything around here, and then you want a good sari? This is the sari we can give you,” Prasanna said.
Usually a mild-mannered woman, for some reason Prasanna seemed to fly into full bitch mode.
“We paid for the wedding,” Sush said, now screaming. “And we’re letting our daughter marry into a lower social economic class.”
“We’re Brahmins,” Prasanna said. “It’s you who are a lower class with your white husband.”
Madhu had buried his head in his hands then, and Priya closed her eyes. She was too tired to stand up and fight. She looked at her father pleadingly.
He tried to pull Sush away from the fight, but that just made her angrier.
“They say that your being white is a big problem here,” Sush said.
Madhu’s father, Sairam, also got into the action, trying to extricate his wife, but like Andrew, he didn’t get very far.
“My brother-in-law is a doctor; he’s very rich,” Lalita said, and Priya groaned at such blatant snobbery. “You have no money, which is obvious, since you gave Sushila a sari like this.”
“We’re not poor,” Mayuri piped in.
“Mayuri,” Madhu called out, standing up. The ceremony had now come to a halt. Technically, they were married, but the rest of the ceremony had to be performed for religious purposes.
“What? Her family is yelling at Amma, and you’re just sitting there listening,” Mayuri said, flashing angry eyes at both Madhu and Priya.
“Stay out of it,” Madhu said.
“You stay out of it,” Sush said to Madhu.
“Oh for God’s sake,” Priya said. Standing up was difficult, with all her wedding finery pulling her down. “It’s a fucking sari, Mummy. You don’t even wear saris.”
“Don’t you dare use language like that with me,” Sush said, and threw the sari at Prasanna’s face. “This is what I think of your lousy gesture.”
“How dare you?” Mayuri was ready to go to blows at this point.
Andrew and Sairam came and stood beside Madhu and Priya.
“So sorry, darling,” Andrew said.
“This happens in Indian weddings,” Sairam said, looking apologetic.
In the meantime, the women were yelling at one another, and the guests were watching them instead of the bride and groom. Even the priest had given up any pretense of being impartial and was supporting Prasanna against the bad Hindu woman who had married a white man.
“There’s a car and a driver outside,” Sairam said when the discussion went into how long Prasanna thought Madhu and Priya would remain married. She was sure that her son would divorce a daughter raised by a woman like Sush in no time.
“You should go,” Andrew said.
“Where?” Priya asked.
“Anywhere,” Madhu said, and got details from his father about where the car was parked.
So, in the middle of their wedding ceremony, Priya and Madhu left the wedding hall and drove to Birla Temple in the middle of the city. It was Madhu’s favorite place. He wasn’t exactly religious, but it was a beautiful temple with a stunning view of the city, and it was the first place he could think of that would give them some peace.
“I can’t believe Mayuri joined that melee,” Madhu said.
“Your mother doesn’t like me,” Priya said.
“She adores you. She just doesn’t like your mother, and once she gets angry, she has no clue what she’s doing or saying,” Madhu said. “You should’ve seen her with my grandmother. It was mother-in-law versus daughter-in-law, Telugu movie style.”
It was nearly five in the morning, and they leaned against each other as they sat outside the gates of the closed temple, the white Honda Civic with their driver in the background. The driver had chatted with them as he had driven them—the news of the catfight in the wedding hall had reached him, and he was amused to drive a bride and groom away from their own wedding halfway through it.
Eventually Sairam called Madhu on his cell phone and convinced him to come back. The women had calmed down, he’d promised.
When they returned to the wedding hall, Sush and Lalita had left, and Andrew had stayed behind. Prasanna and Mayuri apologized to Madhu and Priya for their behavior.
Mayuri later confessed she didn’t know what had gotten into her. “I guess I just don’t like your mother,” she had said.
Priya had nodded. “I understand. It can happen.”
Since then, Madhu and Priya had kept his parents away from her parents, and Mayuri away from Sush. They didn’t quite know how the chemistry would mix when they met again.
Transcript from message board www.surrogacyforyou.org
Trying1Time: I’m packed and ready to go to India. I don’t know what to expect, but I’m going to go and hope for the best. I’m looking forward to seeing the surrogate house and the SM. And I really want to feel the baby kick. And in two months I’ll get to hold her.
NobuNobi: OMG, you’re really doing it! We just got back with the baby and it’s fabulous, just wonderful. Little Cooper is amazing and I have never been this much in love before. DH and I just sit and stare at him for hours. And my in-laws who were so against us using a surrogate are thrilled to be around him. I couldn’t be happier.
Newbie1209: I’m so happy for you. We’ll be going in a few months, too, to get our baby and I can hardly wait. But Trying1Time, won’t it drive you crazy to be in India for two full months? I mean, you did say that you had family there, but still? Do you intend to stay at the surrogate house with the mother?
Trying1Time: I don’t think they allow that! And I don’t think I’d want to stay in the surrogate house. There’s the language issue. I speak some Telugu but not a whole lot. My mother is coming along with me to India and my sister-in-law will be at my in-laws’ place as well. So I’ll have plenty of company. I think it’ll be fine . . . who knows, maybe even fun.
LastHope77: Just do what your heart says. If you’re miserable, you can always come back and then go again. But if you feel it’s important to see the SM and touch your baby while it’s in the SM’s womb, then do it.
YummyMummy2008: I was there a week before the baby and two days before the due date and it drove me up the wall. All that waiting. Is it now
? Is it now? We waited for the phone to ring constantly and we were worried that the baby wouldn’t be born on the due date—I mean tickets to India and the hotel stay were expensive. But they said they’d just induce if a week passed by. Thankfully the SM went into labor. It’s nerve-racking enough when you’re pregnant and you don’t know when you’ll go into labor—but this was pure torture.
UnoBaby: I told my friends that I might do what you’re doing, Trying1Time, and they said that it would be torture—but it’s torture being this far away, isn’t it? No matter how you do it, this process is painful. I’m tired of feeling this helpless. And I’m angry that this was the only way we could have our own baby. They put a man on the moon—you’d think they’d have found a way to deal with an inverted uterus.
CantConceive1970: Or get men pregnant?
Mommy8774: LOL. I wish both the man and woman could get pregnant—then at least one of us could conceive. But I agree—using a surrogate is so hard and so painful. It puts you through the emotional wringer.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The backache began in the middle of the night.
Asha woke up moaning. She tried to find the best position to sleep in, but the pain was incessant. In the end, she gave up trying to lie down and sat up. She would have liked to turn the light on and read the Telugu book she had borrowed from one of the other mothers, but that would wake up Gangamma, so Asha found her book in the darkness and left the room.
In the dim moonlight the house looked beautiful. You couldn’t see the chipped walls or the uneven cement floors, and even the charpoys that were the furniture of choice in the TV room and hall looked elegant. She was startled to note that the light was not coming from the moon but from the television.
“Who is there?” she heard Revati’s tentative voice call out.
“Asha,” she responded, and found the housemother sitting on one of the charpoys. Now that her eyes had gotten used to the dark, she could see better.
“What’s wrong?”
“My back is hurting,” Asha said as she waddled up to the charpoy next to the one Revati was half lying on with the remote control in hand.
“Come sit.” Revati sat up and gestured to the charpoy Asha was walking toward. “I can’t sleep anymore. It’s the age. I need to sleep because I’m tired all the time, but I can’t, and then I’m even more tired. It’s a curse. Old age is a curse.”
“You’re not that old,” Asha said with a smile. Sure, Revati had gray hair, but her body was still sturdy, her eyes didn’t need glasses to see, and everyone in the house had noted how white and strong her teeth were.
“Old enough that sleep has abandoned me,” Revati said. “Do you want a back rub? Something to eat or drink?”
“I’m fine,” Asha said, and sat tentatively on the charpoy, holding on to the load in front of her as she sank. “It starts now for me, the backache, and it doesn’t stop until the baby comes out.”
“You’ll be done in . . . what . . . two months now?” Revati asked.
“Almost,” Asha said. “Doctor Swati said nine more weeks. I can hardly wait.”
“Was it easy, the labor and delivery with your own children?” Revati asked.
Asha shrugged. “As easy as it can be. You can’t avoid the pain. There is nothing to do about that. It’s just the way it is.”
“God gave this chore to us because he knew that man could not bear such pain,” Revati said. “Our bodies are designed for this. In the old days, women had eight to ten children; now we have one or two.”
“This is my third,” Asha said, and then bit her lip. “Well, this one is not mine.”
Revati nodded.
“What are you watching?” Asha asked.
“Telugu movie songs,” Revati said. “They show old ones at night and I like to watch them. Women used to keep their clothes on then. Now they’re half-naked and shaking their breasts about. It’s not decent.”
“Times have changed.”
Revati shook her head. “Times have changed for those who have money, not for you and me. What has changed for you? Has your life changed a lot because of all that IT business they say India has? Our lot in life remains the same. The rich get richer and the poor stay poor.”
“My sister-in-law lives in a flat now. My children and husband are there with them. They have never lived in anything but a hut in our village. That’s change,” Asha said.
“And what, it came free to her? No, Kaveri sat right where you are and got pregnant with some white people’s baby,” Revati said. “We still have to do work and struggle to get anywhere. The rich, they just sit on their asses and things happen for them.”
Asha had spent time with Revati before and enjoyed her straightforwardness. She was a good woman who fiercely watched over the surrogate mothers and took good care of them. She was polite and gentle but also firm. She was a mother to the core, Asha thought, a strict mother with a big heart.
“You don’t think what we’re doing is a good thing?” Asha asked.
“Good thing for whom? The white people and the rich people? Sure. Is it good for you? I don’t know,” Revati said. “You have to sell your body and have a baby. I understand it’s a gift you give to a barren couple, don’t get me wrong. And I understand that it helps you live a better life, but . . . they get a baby; what do you get? Hemorrhoids and a sagging stomach.”
Asha laughed.
“Oh, you get the money,” Revati continued. “But it’s not going to change your life, is it? That’s why women keep coming back here. They have one, two, three children like this to make more money while their no-good husbands sit at home, doing nothing.”
Asha had never realized that Revati didn’t approve of surrogacy. It was a strange role she played as housemother when she disapproved of the process, and Asha told her so.
“No, no,” Revati said, waving her hands. “I don’t disapprove. You misunderstand. I think it’s wonderful. I just think . . . well, I think the mothers should get more money.”
“We get what we get, and it’s more than we ever had,” Asha said. But the women did talk about it. How they got just five lakh rupees while Doctor Swati kept ten or more; no one was sure of the exact figure.
“But it’s such a big sacrifice.”
“Not really,” Asha said, not wanting to believe that this was bigger than it was. It was important, she told herself, not to use words like sacrifice. “We’re like coolies, carrying someone else’s load for a while,” she said, borrowing Keertana’s words. “Once we’re done, we hand over the baggage and it’s over.”
“You really think it’s that easy?” Revati asked.
“I hope it’s that easy,” Asha said.
“Well, then, I’ll pray for your sake that it is that easy,” Revati said.
They watched television for a while after that, and Asha fell asleep on the charpoy, waking up feeling sore and very tired.
A few days before the mother was supposed to come, Asha read a story in the newspaper on the computer about a Japanese couple who had used a surrogate in Gujarat. Apparently the couple had gotten divorced, and now the mother didn’t want the baby but the father did. However, in India, a single father cannot adopt a baby, and since he needed the permission of the Indian authorities to take the baby out of the country, there was a problem.
The surrogate who had given birth to the baby didn’t want the baby, either, so the baby’s Japanese grandmother was taking care of it, hoping to get all the legal things taken care of so she could take the baby back to Japan.
Asha couldn’t help but wonder if she would get the chance to keep the baby if her mother and father got divorced in the next couple of months. Was that why the mother was coming early? Because things weren’t working out between them? Maybe if they got divorced she wouldn’t want the baby anymore and then Asha would get to keep it. That could happen. Everyone knew that these foreigners didn’t have good family values. They got married many times, divorced many times; it happened all the time.<
br />
It was a regular checkup. Doctor Swati checked her blood pressure and her temperature, and they took her urine in a cup.
Asha wondered if she would have to lie down today on the bed Doctor Swati had in her checkup room and wait for the cold jellylike thing to be put on her stomach before Doctor Swati used the plastic thing that helped them see inside her womb.
Asha loved this part. She would see the baby and feel anew the surge of love she felt for this life growing inside her.
“Should I lie down?” Asha asked expectantly.
Doctor Swati shook her head. “No, no, not today. We’ll do it next week when Priya and her mother are here. You don’t mind, do you?”
She did mind, but what could she say?
“When are they coming?” Asha asked, trying to keep the irritation she felt out of her voice.
“This Monday. Around noon or so, after lunch,” Doctor Swati said. “I couldn’t ask them to stick to the visiting hours, you know. They’re driving all the way from Hyderabad. And she’s come all the way from America. We have to give them some concession. And since your family comes during visiting hours, it seemed like the right thing to have them come earlier.”
Suddenly everything felt like too much. Asha wanted to scream.
“Are you OK?” Doctor Swati asked.
“I have a headache,” Asha said, her voice snappy. “Are we done?”
Doctor Swati put her hand on Asha’s shoulder. “Something’s wrong,” she persisted.
“I . . . I just get a little moody when I’m pregnant,” Asha said, almost mumbling the words. The doctor’s concern was making her feel guilty for her behavior. She was acting like an idiot, like a child—she should behave herself and not throw tantrums like Mohini did when she didn’t get what she wanted.
Doctor Swati smiled. “Most pregnant women get irritable at some point or other. No surprise there. I just . . . you always seem so calm that I never expected it of you.”
A House for Happy Mothers: A Novel Page 20
