by Sadie Sumner
Rufus watched a bearded man on a stripped-down bike dart past the bollards in front of a crossing. “I have to move to this part of town. It’s much cooler than downtown, don’t you think?”
Monica took his arm. “Rufi, answer me honestly. Is this sari inappropriate?” She did a little twirl.
They arrived at the clinic, and Rufus locked his bike. Monica pressed the buzzer, and the door swung open. She clasped her drink as Antoinette greeted them.
“This is Rufus, my business partner. And our best friend of course.” She smiled sweetly at Rufus.
Antoinette looked askance at Puffy. “Hi. How’s the coffee?”
“Oh, it’s not coffee, it’s a gojichino. Sorry, I should have brought you one.” Monica felt her face redden.
“Would you mind waiting out here,” Antoinette said to Rufus. “We are quite mindful of sensitivities. Best if just the parents engage with the surrogate.”
“I should go anyway,” Rufus said to Monica. “New clients. The couple you met last week. I forgot to tell you. They want matching gowns.” He played with Puffy’s fur. “I need to get the sample fabrics ready.”
Monica grabbed his arm. “No.” She spoke too loudly. “I want him with me. I want you. I need you.” A fresh panic tightened her throat. The sun slanted in through the white wood blind, and the phantom baby popped up on the reception sofa. It swayed as though in time to the music and Monica was sure it had Dotty’s features. She rubbed her eyes furiously. “Fuck off,” she said under her breath, and it disappeared.
“I’m not sure I know how I’d introduce you? Indians are very traditional.” Antoinette stared at Puffy.
“Not that traditional,” Rufus replied, “She’s having a baby for money after all.” The rabbit pricked up its ears.
“We don’t see it that way,” Antoinette said coldly. “She is helping another couple to experience the blessing of a child.”
Rufus put Puffy on the ground. “She tunes into all our wavelengths. Did you know rabbits pick up fluctuations in people’s heartbeats? It makes them exquisitely sensitive. You don’t mind if she runs around a little. She gets tired being in the sling.”
Antoinette smoothed the front of her yoga pants. “Yes, I’m sure she does.”
“Can I ask you a question?” Rufus bent down and stroked the rabbit.
“Of course. But we should get back online. Kavitha will be waiting for us,” Antoinette said.
“Could you recommend a good yoga teacher?” Puffy jumped away, and Rufus went after her.
Antoinette pursed her lips “I’m not sure sarcasm is helpful for ‘team baby’ and our intending mother.” She tucked her cropped hair behind her ears and turned on her heel.
Monica punched his arm. “Shut up. You’re supposed to act like my best friend.”
“Okay, I’m sorry.” He picked up the rabbit. “We’ll stay out of her line of sight, won’t we, Puffy? Problem solved.”
They followed Antoinette into her office, and she closed the door behind them and moved a chair for Rufus.
Dr. Devi answered on the first ring.
Kavitha sat in the center of the screen. “Hello.” Her voice was tentative.
“How are you feeling?” Monica felt stupid.
“Not so bad. I am over the worst. Thank you for asking.” Her head moved in the Indian fashion, and her perfect English struck Monica again.
“I’m sorry if I embarrassed you.” Monica suddenly wanted to make a real connection with Kavitha. She wanted to know all about her.
“Kavitha would you mind?” Antoinette said. “Monica would like to see your tummy. Just for a moment.”
“No, no. You don’t have to. I should not have asked.” Monica could see how tired Kavitha was and the effort it took her to appear composed.
Kavitha dropped her head slightly. “Yes, it is okay.” She stood up and stepped back from the camera and lifted her tunic.
Monica saw the dark seam that ran over and down her belly and gasped. When Kavitha turned on her side, she saw long pale stretch marks that spread out like the fine roots and tendrils of a plant. She reached her hand towards the computer, and it felt like the belly swelled to the edges of the screen and flowed beyond until it was larger than the room. Monica gripped the edge of the desk. She felt herself smile and heard herself thank Kavitha for her understanding and kindness, and then she pushed herself away from the screen and dropped her head between her legs and calmed her breathing.
Rufus patted her back and made the same small noises he made with Puffy. Antoinette finished the call and waited in silence while Monica gathered herself.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “Something came over me.”
“It’s very natural.” She stood up, and they followed her back to the foyer. Monica sat where the phantom baby had rocked itself earlier. She breathed in through her nose.
“So how was that?” Antoinette asked brightly.
Monica imagined her breath expanding her third eye and filling her body with warmth. “I don’t know what I feel.” The women on the wall smiled at her from their happy family photos, and she noticed that each woman had a perfect manicure.
“My advice?” Antoinette said. “Go to work and the gym, yoga, whatever. Decorate a room for baby. Buy cute clothes and bottles and diapers. Just be normal.”
“Hear that, love, just be normal. And you could do a blog. I just thought of it.” Rufus held Puffy up to look at the photos. He smiled at Antoinette as if daring her to comment.
Antoinette ignored him. “And of course, be thankful someone else is doing the heavy lifting. Trust me. Surrogacy is the very best way to have a baby.” She glanced up at the photos and smiled at them. “Some of my best work, right there.” She turned to Monica. “Before you go, more paperwork I’m afraid.”
Monica read the itemized account and took out her card.
“Monica!” Rufus was shocked. “You absolutely cannot put your baby on the company credit card.”
Monica felt her heart speed up. “It’s just for a few days.” She matched his incredulous tone. “You know this amount will explode my personal card.”
“But there is no way on earth I can make this look like a business expense.”
Monica flapped her fingers. “Can’t you call it research? You always think of something.” She watched as Rufus stuffed Puffy back in the sling. “So does this payment cover the tickets to India and the accommodation?” Suddenly she wanted to be there, wanted to be part of all that she imagined India would be. And she wondered if Kavitha’s belly would be warm to her touch and if the baby would recognize her.
“Yes,” Antoinette said. “And medical visas. Also, the certificate that says you and your husband are the biological parents of the child.”
Monica felt a flush of anxiety. “Okay. But…” she touched her eye patch.
Antoinette smiled. “I know it’s confusing. We always say our intending mommies are the biological mothers. They never check. You just need to show them this certificate.” She peered closely at Monica. “We have an excellent genetics counselor. Would you like to talk with her? I can make an appointment for you.”
Monica shook her head. “Are the tickets booked?” She saw herself already in India, her hand on Kavitha’s belly as the baby shuddered against her palm.
“They are. Three weeks from now. We advise you arrive a week before the due date,” Antoinette said.
“I’d like the tickets now. Something tangible, you know, to make it more real.” Her voice came out barely more than a whisper, and she was surprised at how meek she felt in the face of the pregnancy.
The travel agent was across town. Monica drove there immediately and refused their offer of an E-ticket. She wanted the paper, in her hands and waited until they were printed out.
At home, she poured herself a glass of wine and left Gil’s ticket on his bedside table and took hers into the bathroom and propped it up. She took off her eye patch. The oculist was right. Her prosthetic eye looked no differen
t. She studied the ticket. Her past, before the baby, would become an actual past, a time before, instead of an endless now. As for her future, gestating in India, Monica could barely think beyond the feel of the baby in her arms. She sipped the wine and bobbed her head in time to The Civil Wars on the sound system. It seemed the most appropriate, given the state of her marriage. Kavitha’s ripeness haunted her, and she closed her eyes and saw the silhouette and the way the light washed away her features, leaving just her immense belly with its surprising seam of dark hair. She thought of the wall of happy family photos at Planete Bebe, all the new parents holding perfect, shiny babies. Fake as wedding photos, she thought. People can’t be that happy. She held the wine in her mouth and shivered. “I’m going to India,” she said to herself and picked up her phone to call the airline to change her booking. “I’ll be a fabulous mother,” she said to her reflection and reassured herself that Gil would come round once he held the baby, his flesh and blood.
It took a while, but they found her a seat on a flight the following day. The brochure she’d picked up at the travel agency lay on the counter, and she went online and booked herself into a yoga retreat. Then she called Gil, even though she knew he would not pick up. “Come to India,” she said to his message. “It will be like a holiday. Get us in shape emotionally and physically.” She put the brochure beside his ticket and got into bed. But sleep would not come. Their business credit card was maxed out, and there were two more payments to make. She had no idea how she would pay the cost of the baby. As she pulled the quilt up under her chin, she saw Gil had changed the old photo of trees in winter for the one of Dog beside a pile of twisted corrugated iron in an old factory compound.
The morning started early, and she stood in her quiet kitchen and looked out at the tiny park across the road. On a windy day, she could smell the sea. Gil had taken their main travel bag, but she found Dotty’s favorite India bag, tattered with peeling stickers from another time. She threw every piece of clothing that mattered onto her bed then discarded each one until she had a core wardrobe, including a set of new yoga clothes she’d bought but not yet worn.
At work, she called Chloe into her office.
“How much do you need to pay a full-time nanny?” she asked.
Chloe slumped in her chair. “Why?”
“Because you’re the head designer for the next six or eight weeks, and I’ll need you in the office every day, without fail.”
They agreed on a price and Chloe smiled. “When do I start?”
“Today.” Monica ignored her intake of breath. She set her laptop on the treadmill desk and switched it on and changed her shoes.
Rufus arrived mid morning, bleary eyed and hung over.
“Chloe’s now head designer, and we’ve increased her salary so she can pay a nanny.”
He groaned and dropped his head into his hands.
“Where’s Puffy?” she asked.
Rufus patted his chest then looked aghast. “Oh fuck, I’ve left her.” Monica watched him run out, then scrolled through her pending designs and printed them out. On each one she scrawled notes and left them on her desk for Chloe.
In the taxi, on her way to the airport, Rufus called in a panic. “I can’t find Puffy." His voice was high and frightened. “Please, don’t leave. At least let me find a new pattern maker.”
“This is your big chance Rufi,” Monica said and hung up. She needed him to run the business, but the weight of his self-doubt sucked her energy. The ticket change had energized her. She loved the rush and the clarity of mind it brought. As they drove over the bridge near the airport, Monica looked down at the Fraser River. She was a planet released from gravitational pull. Nothing can stop me, she thought, and realized everything she’d ever done was in preparation for this moment.
Seventeen
There was a stopover in the air-conditioning of Amsterdam and another in New Delhi, where a wall of huge Buddha hands confounded Monica with their raised palms, and middle fingers touching thumbs. It had to be at least 26 hours since she’d left home. Everything that mattered was now fuzzy, and it felt like she’d run away from her life.
And then she was in Kolkata. She expected a small airport, something rural and rough, the way Dotty described her travels in India. But the concourse was all marble. There were high ceilings inscribed with flowing Sanskrit letters that resembled the henna painted onto women’s hands. Soldiers in beige camouflage patrolled through the travelers.
Her limbs were heavy, and she felt helpless, a child pummeled by waves on the beach Mitchell and Dotty took her to so long ago.
She let the crowd carry her forward on wafts of incense. They laughed and switched lines and pressed into her personal space as she held her bag tight to her body.
The customs officer asked about her flight and watched her closely.
Monica felt a bloom of anxiety. “Very long,” she said and was aware of her accent. He opened the file she gave him and studied her medical visa and marriage license and asked her to remove her eye patch.
“And where is your husband?” He peered into the crowd.
Monica looked around as if she expected to see Gil in the crush. She told the officer her husband was coming and wondered what would happen if he changed his mind.
“Are you the mother of this child, still to be born?” the officer asked.
Monica felt the sweat trickle down her spine, and she willed herself to smile. “She will be my daughter.”
He bobbed his head. “And you will take her back to Canada?”
Monica nodded and scratched at her scalp.
“You will need correct exit documents before you leave and your husband must be with you.” He smiled with yellow teeth and stamped her passport.
At the baggage carousel, Monica found a seat and took out a disinfecting cloth. There was an army of women with wide dust mops skimming the shiny marble floors. Families greeted each other while small children ran free. Monica watched them with a mixture of amazement and fear they would be lost or abducted behind their parents’ backs.
She took out her patch and slid it over her eye then changed her mind. It made no difference to Mr. Bonnet’s phantom baby.
When she looked up the conveyor belt was empty, everyone from her flight gone. Monica stood with a sigh, wobbly with jet lag to look for an office to make a complaint when she saw a security guard pull up the handle on her bag and wheel it away. She chased after him, prepared for an argument, a show of documents, the grind of security regulation, but he handed it over and waved to her as she exited the terminal.
Outside she walked into a wall of heat, thick as a velvet curtain. It made her cough, and she wiped the sweat from her face as a group of men swarmed her, yelling ‘taxi, taxi!’. All she could think was that Dotty had been here, in this airport. It was enough to ground her, and she willed the phantom baby to appear, to wave mockingly at her, and there it was, atop a yellow taxicab far down the rank. She pushed through the waving hands of the drivers and headed towards it. A boy leaned against the car. He threw his cigarette away and took her bag and held the door. From the back seat, she handed him the yoga brochure, and he moved his head and clicked his tongue, leaned on his horn and pulled into the traffic without looking.
Monica lay back against the cracked vinyl. They drove for a short while along a modern highway, then turned onto a road that crawled past low-roofed hovels, stranded in seas of rubbish beside a river of debris. Whenever they slowed, children swarmed the car. An old woman with a red slash of a mouth, her sari torn and soiled, tapped on the glass. Monica fanned her face with her documents.
In the moist heat, her hair became a tangled mess, and she tied it back, then took out her phone and called Planete Bebe and left a message telling them she had arrived early and was ready to see Kavitha. Then she gripped her purse and closed her eyes and gave herself up to the heat and the cacophony of horns. The sun was setting when they pulled up outside the yoga retreat. She had forgotten to change money and
looked into her purse as if its contents were mysterious and pulled out a handful of Canadian notes. The driver selected a twenty-dollar bill and closed her hand over the rest. “Be careful, Madam,” he said and jumped out and helped her with her bag and rang the buzzer in the center of the large wooden door.
A novice yogi complete with shaven head and shapeless blue robes greeted her. The girl was no more than 25, her accent American. She smiled blissfully as though her inhibitions were left behind in another life. “How much did you pay?” She indicated the driver. When Monica told her, she shook her head. “I was like that too,” she laughed, “an easy mark. They will steal your child if you let them.”
Monica watched the taxi drive off. Her phantom baby was on the roof and she was embarrassed to have called it back into being, deciding it would never return.
The novice slammed the heavy wooden door, and the noise of the city receded. Monica followed her, through a labyrinth of white painted brick corridors, wafted along by the sweet smell of unwashed clothes and body odor. The girl showed her the bathroom then further along she opened the door to a small cell-like room. “Breakfast is at six. The next class is at seven.” She instructed Monica to follow the blue line painted along the edge of the tiled floor.
The room was spartan. No more than a bed with a thin mattress on a wire frame, a bedside table with a glass jug of water, a cup and a plate of sliced mango. Monica lay down on the narrow bed and imagined herself at home, propped against pillows with her down comforter and organic latex mattress. She wondered if Gil had fed Dog and if Chloe would finish the new gown and the silly frills the clutch of bridesmaids were wearing.
When she woke, it was dark, and she was thirsty and hungry. She gulped the warm water. The mango swarmed with ants, and she shuddered and brushed them off and ate it all. She checked her phone and saw a message from Antoinette. Later, she thought and went into the silent corridor that led to a communal kitchen with bowls of legumes soaking on the counter top. She opened the fridge and found nothing but vegetables and yoghurt in tall glass jars. There were no crackers or snacks. The kitchen and dining room opened onto a dark, walled courtyard filled with potted trees and plants. The walls hung with vines festooned with flowers. She sat at a picnic table and let the fragrance soothe her under the muffled sounds of the city at night.
