A House for Happy Mothers: A Novel

by Amulya Malladi

  “This is for his own good, for his future. I hate it, too, but . . . we have to do this,” Asha said. “Maybe I should ask Priya to talk to you.”

  “How can you even think about sending him away?” Pratap asked. “You couldn’t even imagine not seeing him every day while you’re here.”

  “I know,” Asha said sadly. “But we have Mohini to think about as well. We can’t just move to Hyderabad and ruin Mohini’s chances for a stable life. She’ll have a home with us here, a permanent home, a flat. And . . . Hyderabad is just three hours by bus. We can go see Manoj all the time.”

  “So you want to buy a flat now?” Pratap asked.

  “If Manoj gets a scholarship, we should, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” Pratap said.

  “He’s really smart, they say,” Asha said, and smiled. “And Manoj can’t stop talking about the house he stayed in. It was full of servants, and he got to eat chicken curry with rotis, not rice.”

  “And he got chocolate ice cream,” Pratap said. “He’s been talking nonstop about it at home, too. Priya’s much nicer than I thought she would be.”

  “She is,” Asha said. “She’s so determined to make sure Manoj’s future is secure. I didn’t think she would care. I mean . . . all I thought she cared about was the baby.”

  Asha hadn’t wanted to like Priya. But she was impressed with her dedication toward Manoj. She was impressed with how she had gathered her rich friends to help her child. How could she dislike someone who was trying to save her child?

  They watched Manoj help Mohini shake the dirt from her hands outside before coming to sit by their parents.

  “Did you like the people you stayed with?” Asha asked Manoj again. She wanted to make certain; he would go again next week with Priya to be interviewed at the school for children like him who scored high on the tests.

  “They were so nice, Amma,” Manoj said. “And the woman there, Mona, she and Priya took me to see the school. I could go to that school. It was so great, Amma. They had computers everywhere and flowers and gardens. They had horses in the school, horses to ride on. All students can learn how to ride, and there was a big swimming pool to learn swimming. They also had rooms for students to live in. I’ll live there if I get in. For boys my age, there are four boys to a room, but the rooms are big, bigger than Kaveri Atha’s whole flat.”

  “So you would like to live there?” Asha asked, her voice constricted.

  “I’ll miss you and Nana and Mohini and Kaveri Atha and Sairam Mava and Sirish and Girish Anna. Will you be very angry if I say that I would like to stay there?” Manoj asked.

  “No, I won’t be angry,” Asha said. Priya was taking this baby inside her away, and now she was taking Manoj away, too, she thought, just for a moment, before the thought passed like a cloud on a sunny day.

  “Then I want to stay there,” Manoj said. “They have these big classrooms and . . . they have chemistry labs where they mix things and make new things. And . . . Amma, they had a biology lab where they cut frogs and mice to look inside them. I want to be a doctor, Amma. I want to operate on people’s brains and make things right when they’re wrong. They call such people neurosurgeons. Mona’s husband, Vikas, he is a colonel in the army, and his brother is a neurosurgeon in New York.”

  He said the word neurosurgeon in English, and Asha couldn’t even repeat it properly.

  She hadn’t seen him this excited in a very long time, if ever.

  He had such a great need to absorb new things. She couldn’t stand in his way, she realized. She would have to send him away.

  Even when Manoj was just two years old, they had known that he was different. When he made drawings, he would make them neatly and then color them neatly, like he was ten instead of two. He had great command of the pencil, and by the time he was three, he could write his name on the pictures. They had been proud, Asha remembered, but also scared. He was so mature for his age, understood so much about his surroundings that Asha sometimes forgot that he was just five years old.

  He was just a little boy. And he wanted to go away and learn.

  Priya came again, and this time with the father’s sister. Mayuri was very pretty, with long, straight hair. She wore tight pants and a bright-blue kurta. She wore beautiful, bright-blue slippers with golden designs on them. Her Telugu wasn’t as good as the father’s, but it was better than Priya’s.

  “You’re so beautiful,” she told Asha. “You have that pregnancy glow.”

  “It is what it is,” Asha said.

  “So your son is very smart,” Mayuri said. “I mean, a one sixty IQ is stunning. Are you excited about sending him to a new school?”

  “Excited and scared,” Asha had answered.

  “Don’t be scared,” Priya said then. “Don’t worry about anything. The school is very good, and I think Manoj will be accepted after the interview. His test scores are so high that Mona thinks it won’t be a problem. And she’s setting up a scholarship for him.”

  “They must be very wealthy,” Asha said.

  “They are, but schools like this also subsidize . . . give a discount, when the child is as smart as Manoj,” Priya said. “And they all loved Manoj. He’s so bright, so clever. It was wonderful having him with us.”

  Manoj had talked more about the room he shared with Priya. He said that it had a big bed, but that everything in the house was big and smelled like sandalwood. He promised Asha that when he became a doctor, he would have a big house, too, and she could stay with him there, she and Pratap and Mohini.

  “When will you take him for the interview?” Asha asked Priya.

  “Today,” Priya said. “It’s at nine tomorrow morning. He’ll stay with me at my in-laws’ house. It isn’t fancy like Mona’s house, but he’ll like it, I think.”

  “And we’ll take good care of him,” Mayuri said.

  Asha felt strange handing over her child to another perfect stranger, but there was also a rightness to it. Priya and the father had handed over their child to her, and now she was handing over her child to them. Even though they didn’t know each other well, there was a bond of trust between them, wasn’t there?

  “It’s all happening so fast,” she said.

  “It’s going to be fine,” Mayuri said. “You’ll see; it’ll all work out. You’ll buy a nice flat; your son will go to a lovely school.”

  Asha smiled unevenly at Mayuri. All these people had become a part of her life, the most unlikely people, but because of this baby, these people were here, helping her.

  “Thank you, Priya,” Asha said. This was the first time she had spoken the mother’s name, and it made her feel good to say it.

  “It’s nothing.” Priya looked a little embarrassed. “You’re helping us and we’re helping you. That’s how the world goes round.”

  Doctor Swati talked about the school during the next exam that afternoon. Priya and Mayuri had left with an excited Manoj. He was already asking for the pad thing with the games from Priya as he got into the big black car with the driver.

  Asha had been nervous about this conversation. She had expected Doctor Swati to be upset with her for choosing another school over the one she had recommended, and, sure enough, she had been right. Doctor Swati was annoyed that all the effort she had put in was for nothing.

  “I was only trying to help you,” Doctor Swati said. “I know you believe that Priya is helping, and I’m sure she is, but . . . your son will be fine in the school here.”

  “But Manoj is very smart,” Asha said.

  “Of course he is,” Doctor Swati said. “But—”

  “He has an IQ of one sixty,” Asha said, even though she had no idea what that really meant. Mona had said something about it being a measure of intelligence, but Asha couldn’t understand how something like intelligence could be measured in the first place. She had asked Manoj about the test, but he had been vague, saying something about boxes and colors and shapes.

  Doctor Swati raised both her eyebrows. “One s
ixty? Really?”

  “Yes,” Asha said. “Priya took Manoj with her to be tested at some men . . . menses . . . I don’t know. She’s taking him today for an interview at the school. And they even found a scholarship for him. If it all works out, he’ll start school this September.”

  Doctor Swati didn’t say anything, digesting the information.

  “That’s a very high IQ,” Doctor Swati said. “I didn’t realize that he was such a smart boy. You must be very proud.”

  “Pratap and I are so happy,” Asha said. “I can hardly believe it all myself.”

  “So the school thing is settled?”

  “Almost, but . . . it’s a boarding school. The school is in Hyderabad. And that will be very hard for us, but it’s for Manoj’s own good,” Asha said.

  “Well, I’m happy for you. Carrying their baby has really worked out for you, in more ways than one. I just hope the other mothers don’t think things like this will magically happen for them,” Doctor Swati said with a tight smile.

  Keertana didn’t like Priya one bit. She was one of those do-gooders, Keertana told Asha, and she didn’t trust her. The other women in the surrogate house agreed that Priya was going above and beyond to help Manoj, and they couldn’t help but be a little envious of Asha’s good fortune. Even Kaveri chimed in on one of her visits.

  “I’m so jealous,” she said honestly to Priya. “First the gods smile at you and give you Manoj, and then they give you Priya.”

  “In a way, it’s become harder because she is so nice,” Asha told her. “Before it was easier to hate her.”

  Asha had told no one that she sometimes fantasized that the baby was hers. She would stroke her belly and think about putting the baby to her breast when she was born, feeling that ache in her breasts when the milk burst out of them. She would soothe this child—and would take her home to Manoj, Mohini, and Pratap.

  Asha didn’t have to voice it; Kaveri knew. Kaveri had felt the same way.

  “Next time when I do it, I’m telling Doctor Swati that I don’t want contact with the parents,” Kaveri said.

  “So you are doing it again?”

  Kaveri nodded. “We have to. Raman wants to start his own business. By then you will be back and you can take care of my boys.”

  “Have you talked to Doctor Swati?”

  “Yes,” Kaveri said. “And she said something should happen soon.”

  “Kaveri, if you don’t want to do this, don’t,” Asha said. “If you feel so bad about it, if it weighs so heavily on you—”

  “I don’t have a choice, Asha,” Kaveri said. “We need the money. If Raman has a business and regular income, then the boys can have an income, too, when they grow up. It’s the right thing to do.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “After the baby was born, I promised myself never again, but then time passes, you forget what it was like, and you think it’s OK, it’ll be OK,” Kaveri said.

  “I don’t know what it will be like for me,” Asha confessed. “But I will have to be OK. I’ll have to go home and be Asha again.”

  “Just because you’re carrying this baby, you didn’t stop being Asha,” Kaveri said.

  “Yes, I did,” Asha said. “I became someone I don’t like. I have bitterness inside me. I feel there’s a rot inside me, spreading. I argue with Pratap, which I never did before. I think mean thoughts about the mother . . . about Priya. And she’s turned out to be so nice. You wouldn’t believe the thoughts I’ve had about her taking my baby.”

  “Not your baby, her baby,” Kaveri said. “You know that, don’t you?”

  Asha nodded. “I know.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Priya went to the airport alone. She didn’t want to share Madhu with anyone. They had never been away from each other for such a long time, nearly seven weeks.

  The sight of Madhu with his backpack slung on his shoulder and a suitcase rolling next to him made Priya promise to herself that she’d never stay away this long ever again.

  He dropped his bag, let go of his suitcase, and hugged her.

  “God, I missed you,” he said into her hair. “This was way, way too much.”

  Priya’s heart stumbled. She had him, she thought. Why had she ever clamored so for a baby? He was enough.

  On the drive back, Priya filled Madhu in on all the latest with Manoj’s schooling.

  “The boy is a miracle. Both Mayuri and I are in love with him.”

  His first day with them, Manoj had confessed to them that he had a girlfriend.

  “Her name is Shilpa,” he said. “And she’s very nice.”

  “Is she now?” Mayuri said.

  “She likes it when I kiss her feet,” Manoj said somberly. “And I told her that I don’t mind kissing her feet, but I wasn’t going to marry her.”

  Mayuri and Priya had burst out laughing. “This kid has already figured out the whole male-female relationship,” Mayuri said.

  Priya had given Madhu detailed reports about all the work they were doing for Manoj, and he had worried that Asha might misunderstand and think they were taking Manoj away from her.

  “You think so?” Priya had asked; the thought hadn’t even crossed her mind.

  “She might feel that way,” Madhu said. “After all, you’re helping him go to a boarding school. Would you be able to send your child away like that?”

  “No, but then we have the means to be with our child in such a situation,” Priya said. “They don’t.”

  “It doesn’t seem fair,” Madhu said.

  Before Sush left for home, Priya had had the same conversation with her mother, who agreed it wasn’t fair, but this was India—an unfair and difficult place for the millions who were poor.

  Priya had confessed to her that after being here in person, she could see how her mother could see surrogacy as an exploitation of sorts. But she also admitted that, even knowing all she did, she would still do it again. “Plus,” she added, “I’m helping Manoj; we got him a scholarship and admission to a great school. He would never have had a chance if he didn’t meet us.”

  Sush had looked at her pointedly. “You have a good heart, Priya. I have never doubted it. But you’re helping the boy to assuage your guilt as well. It isn’t exactly a selfless act.”

  “Come on, Mummy, I’m doing all I can,” Priya had said.

  “But maybe you feel bad about using a surrogate, and seeing her, you worry about her feelings now,” Sush said. She wasn’t accusing; she was being supportive and understanding. She understood how Priya felt—a mixture of guilt and responsibility and striving to show that she was a good person. She was a good human being. Yes, she was using Asha, but she was also giving back. Were the scales even now?

  “She walked into this with her eyes open,” Priya had said.

  “But did you?” Sush had asked, and Priya didn’t have an answer.

  She had to let go of Madhu when they got to his parents’ house. Prasanna hugged him and made him sit down in front of her as she always did when she saw him.

  “It’s too long since we saw you,” she said with tears in her eyes, holding both her son’s hands in her own. “And you look tired.”

  “Amma, I have been on a plane for twenty hours. I am tired,” Madhu said kindly. “But one of your good meals and I’m going to be good as new.”

  “You know I didn’t get this treatment when I came back,” Mayuri said then. “I got grilled. ‘Did you lose your job? Do you have a boyfriend? Is he white? We’re going to arrange your marriage this time. No discussion.’ She didn’t hold my hands and say I look tired. And I was knackered.”

  “Oh shush,” Prasanna said. “You did lose your job. You have no prospects right now. It’s the best time to get married.”

  “I don’t want to get married,” Mayuri said.

  “You’re nearly thirty years old; if you were going to fall in love, you’d have fallen in love by now,” Prasanna said. “We’ll find you a nice Brahmin boy. A doctor, living in London. Wil
l that work?”

  “I can find a nice doctor in London if I want,” Mayuri said, and looked at her brother. “Help me out here.”

  “I know some single Indian doctors in California,” Madhu said, grinning. “Nice boys. Little pappu types with coconut oil in their hair, but excellent doctors, making tons of money.”

  “So, I should just sell my soul?”

  “Nothing wrong with that,” Prasanna said. “And you wouldn’t be selling your soul, just marrying someone with a future. Which you don’t have. Your fashion this and fashion that didn’t work out.”

  “I was a designer for a major global retailer,” Mayuri said, horrified.

  “And now you’re jobless,” Prasanna said.

  Priya looked on at the family and couldn’t wait to have her own family with her child. Would they banter like this? How would their daughter be as a grown-up? Would she be a designer? A doctor? This was everything she had always wanted. Everything.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  We’ll go to the village, Asha thought. That’s what we’ll do. We’ll take the baby, Mohini, and Manoj and go to the village. No one will be able to find us there. And then the baby will really be mine.

  As the days got closer to her due date, Asha woke every morning to the same thought. She wasn’t as irritable as she’d been, but still her sadness was growing inside her, as big as the baby, as palpable. And then there was the guilt, just as big. This was Priya’s baby. The good Priya who was helping her family, and she was thinking of stealing her baby, her happiness, and her future from her.

  She didn’t want to think these thoughts. She was a good woman. She wasn’t a mean person. But her mind had a mind of its own, and Asha realized that she couldn’t control her feelings. First, it had just been random thoughts—What if the baby could be mine? thoughts . . . by accident, that is, just by a miracle. Now she wished she could do something to make that miracle happen.

  It made her irritable. This push and pull inside her. This large unhappiness. This melancholy she couldn’t shake. It was almost time. She should be celebrating. Now she could go home and be with her family, finish this duty. She should be like Keertana, waiting to get that baby out and be on her way back to her life. Instead she was moping. She was making herself sick of herself.