The House of Hidden Mothers

by Meera Syal

  Nine days after she had been admitted, Mala was well enough to be discharged. Though it hadn’t been a holiday of any description, she looked better, rested; her colour had returned, along with the fresh openness of her face. A kindly orderly had sponged the mud off her maternity trousers. The coat would have to be dry-cleaned.

  Despite Dr Pardew’s assurances that they could send the test results to London, Toby insisted they would wait for them in Suffolk. If it was bad news, he wanted to be standing on his home soil, pathetic as that sounded. He took Mala back to the nearby hotel where he had been staying, a cheap and cheerful popular chain, clean, no frills, cooked breakfast included. His family farm was less than an hour away. It could have been the other side of an ocean. He tried to imagine Matt’s face if he turned up with Mala in tow. He fleetingly wondered when he’d ever be able to pay back that advance.

  It turned out that there were no other free rooms on Toby’s floor and he worried about Mala being too far away if anything happened in the night. As he had a twin bedroom, he paid a supplement and they stayed in the same room. Only a week ago this would have been wildly inappropriate, but in this strange limbo period it became just another new version of reality. He left the room whilst Mala changed and showered, shivering in the car park as he left another message for Shyama, hoping that this time she would relent and take his call. Mala was asleep when he crept back into the bedroom. She snored gently, while he lay wide awake for most of the night. Once, in the blue light of his phone screen, he saw his child ripple its presence across Mala’s stomach. All Toby could hear in his head was, There were three in the bed and the little one said, ‘Roll over, roll over’.

  They got the call to come back in the next day. Toby noticed that Dr Pardew was wearing exactly the same style blouse as when she had discharged them the day before, but in a different colour. It probably saved time, he thought randomly. His knee shook a little as he shifted in the hard plastic chair.

  Dr Pardew pushed her glasses on top of her head and smiled. ‘Well, I have good news. Firstly, we found the translocation in you but not in Mrs Shaw, so the baby is healthy. There’s no abnormality.’ She faltered in the ensuing silence. ‘Mr Shaw? You do understand, I hope, that the worry is over. I’ve already let Mr O’Connell know. Horrible that you had to go through the uncertainty, but at least—’

  ‘Sorry,’ Toby interrupted. ‘I have to tell you something … The tests may not be accurate, because …’ He trailed away. Once said, this changed everything. He looked at Mala, expecting her frightened face to be staring back at him. Instead she seemed at ease, prepared. She laid a firm hand on his knee to still its quaking. He swallowed and continued. ‘You see … Mala is a surrogate. This child, it’s my sperm and a donor egg. From a clinic in India. My wife’s out there now, but she wasn’t able to find out anything more about the woman whose egg it is, but—’

  The doctor raised her fingertips, requesting a pause, looking concerned.

  ‘No, can I finish?’ Toby ploughed on. ‘It means these tests – they’re worthless, aren’t they? I should have said. I thought … well, I thought you should know.’

  Dr Pardew took a moment to scrunitize them both, shuffled her notes and then said, ‘I’m afraid that’s impossible, Mr Shaw. I won’t muddle this with medical terms, but what the tests do show without any doubt is a genetic link between this baby and Mrs … and you.’ She nodded at Mala. ‘It was your egg that grew this child.’ She turned back to Toby. ‘And as you said, your sperm. You are both its biological parents. One hundred per cent.’

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I THINK I have always known. He is mine. This was Mala’s single thought throughout the fog of the next few days. Throughout all the shouted phone and Skype calls, hai, such a garbard of slamming doors and Toby stamping like a balloo, bear-feet up and down the stairs, throughout the days where she struggled downstairs to make her meals, theklo, I am always leaving enough in the pan for him, always finding it uneaten. So much to do now with the sorting of my baba’s clothes and toys, working out how to make the seat that goes in the car into a pram, nahin, bug-gy. Bug is also an insect, and he will look like a caterpillar wrapped in layers of blankets, a small cocoon with a face peeping out. And yet she couldn’t sleep. Every time I lie down, why do you wake up for a dance? But now you are dancing for me, so I will put the second pillow between my thighs, so heavy down there now, you are pressing on my bones, you are coming soon. And she would say it to herself, sometimes silently, sometimes out loud in both Hindi and English. He is mine.

  She was standing in the garden one morning, watching the steam from her chai curl in clouds through the cold air, when Toby joined her. Someone else also wasn’t sleeping: he had red eyes like a night jackal and a smell coming off him like rain-soaked hay going rotten. He carried a bundle of papers in his hands.

  ‘Mala …’ he began.

  ‘I cannot pay any money. I have to give back. I cannot go back to India alone with a baby. I only know all the things I cannot do, Toby.’

  Toby nodded resignedly, unconsciously crumpling the sheets in his hand. ‘Shyama,’ he began. It hurt him to say her name. ‘She’s not coming back yet … Sometimes she blames Dr Passi, sometimes … us.’

  Mala nodded. Leh, what woman would not think what she was thinking? Maybe this was what happened when people tried to cheat Nature, or maybe it was just that hard-faced doctor who was an A-One cheat all along. They would never have known any of this if Mala had not slipped on the ice. She had never paid much attention to her religious studies in the under-the-tree school in her village. Master-ji seemed to favour any story that warned girls about bad behaviour and the consequences of disobeying their men: Sita kidnapped by the demon Ravan after stepping out of the golden circle of protection drawn for her by her husband, Lord Ram, was one of his favourites. Yet one story had stuck with her. How could it not? That doctor woman had recited it to all the Hindu women who entered her doors.

  ‘Surrogacy is even blessed by our holy book. You have heard about Lord Krishna’s own brother, Balarama? He was transferred from the womb of Devaki to the womb of Rohini to ensure his safe birth!’

  When Mala had asked why, Dr Passi had given her an impatient look. ‘Look it up,’ she said, ‘and remind yourself that what you are doing is approved by the gods …’

  But we are not gods, Mala thought sadly, just men and women, and you only need one man and one woman to end up like this.

  ‘I have to ask you something.’ Toby broke into her thoughts. He sat on the small garden wall, his eyes crinkling as he looked up at her, the tentative sun behind her like a halo. ‘Would you consider keeping our bargain? We will give you double what we agreed.’

  ‘We?’ Mala asked. ‘Shyama Madam wants this? Is it what you want?’

  He did not answer. He could not meet her eyes. She felt a cold fury rising from the soles of her feet, suffusing her whole body.

  ‘All my life I am a thing bought and sold. I thought this is all I would ever be. But you and Shyama Madam have shown me another kind of life. Where honey costs more than gold …’ Her mother’s words came back to her; she wished she could be here to see her now, remembering them – and in English, too. ‘You won’t believe me when I say I don’t care about the money, because that is what you think I only understand. Here I can be someone. And so can my son. You have a price for that?’

  Mala took his hand. She ran her fingers over his roughened palms, she felt the weight of his head bent like a tree against the wind. ‘You have given me so much. But now we are equal.’

  I think I have always known. He was never mine. This was Shyama’s recurring thought after that phone call from Toby, the only one she had finally chosen to accept, ready to hear the test results, whether good or bad. Beneath the shock was a jolt of recognition, almost déjà vu, the coming together of something inevitable. It walked alongside her in the hospital grounds, in her uncle’s house where her parents now stayed as her father recuperated, in the room of t
he small hotel nearby which had become her refuge. She told the family she needed the space to work, she had some business plans, she may be staying longer than expected. She booked the room for a month.

  She wondered if marrying Toby would have made a difference, but she suspected not. She wondered how differently she would have felt about ageing, about having another child, if she had been with a man her own age. His muscles would be softening at the same rate as hers, their temples turning silver together, spidery veins appearing in hidden folds of skin. Keeping up with Toby had certainly kept her looking and feeling young – she’d always enjoyed the surprise on others’ faces when they dared to ask how old she was. And it wasn’t as if she’d had to go clubbing with him regularly in a mutton-dressed-as outfit or had required the use of an inhaler to beat him at tennis. Their life together had been, in essence, quite staid: good food, supper with friends, cinema, walks. His connection to animals and the land, the fact that he was a country boy at heart, had given him a maturity beyond his years, a solid, old-fashioned air. Even now, she knew he loved her.

  But some things are more powerful than love. Just as water always finds an outlet, the same could be said for the urgent desire to procreate, thrusting its roots through propriety and common sense like weeds through paving stones. Shyama remembered those feelings: they had led her to this place, this moment, filling her body with that consuming need for a child, a piece of them both, flesh of their flesh. But it was Mala and Toby who had created a life together, and now that information was no longer a secret, they would share that connection for ever. Oh, she could get Toby back, she was sure of that – his own guilt and sense of duty would keep him with her for a while. But no matter where Mala ended up, no matter who claimed the child, they would be indivisible in thought and memory and longing for what might have been. Mala, Toby and their son.

  Mala defied the statistics and went two days over her due date before her waters broke without warning as she was making a third round of buttered toast. Toby’s first thought was there must be a leak under the sink. And his second that they had better get a move on as it was rush hour. As he waited outside Mala’s door, hearing her gasps as she changed out of her wet clothes, refusing his offer of help, he texted Shyama: ‘Mala’s just gone into labour. You know where we will be.’

  Shyama received it just as she was washing her hands in the cramped bathroom of her uncle’s extension, about to watch a late-night movie with her parents, who were curled around each other on their bed like speech marks.

  Around the same time, less than three miles away from Shyama, a young woman was boarding a bus with her male companion. He was a software engineer, she a physiotherapy student. Her father was an agricultural labourer who had sold land to pay for her studies and worked double shifts to sustain them all; she was the first in her family to attend college. Later her father would say it had never crossed his mind not to educate his daughter as well as his sons, for who could deny a little girl who loved going to school? The two young people had just seen The Life of Pi at a cinema complex and boarded a virtually empty bus, their only companions five men and the driver.

  Shyama sat on her half-packed suitcase in the darkness of her hotel room, her passport in her hand, unable to move. By then, Mala had reached the hospital, been admitted to her bed, given a hospital gown and attached to a foetal monitor. During the next hour, the young woman on the bus would sustain a gang rape of such brutality that afterwards her intestines were seen looping out of her body. The iron rods used to penetrate her were also used to knock her companion unconscious; he was then bound and gagged as the attack continued. By the hour’s end, Shyama had still not moved from her seat in the dark, except to switch off her phone. Mala’s pains had begun in earnest; held in the grip of a giant fist, she clenched her teeth so hard that she tasted blood. The midwife urged her to relax and breathe through the pain, as it was only just beginning. At that moment the young woman and man were thrown out of the bus on to a busy roadside; he just managed to pull her body away as the driver tried to reverse over her, before speeding off. It took the young man several attempts to flag down a passing car to get someone to assist them. They were both partially clothed and the unconscious young woman’s body was covered with bite marks. By the time she had been put on a life-support machine in Safdarjung hospital with irreparable damage to her womb, intestines and internal organs, and reports of the assault had begun to filter through news and social-media networks, Mala held a son in her arms. He had her eyes and his father’s chin, and neither of them could look away from him for a long time.

  Tara burst into the room, surprised to see her mother lying on the bed in the same clothes as the night before.

  ‘Have you heard?’ was all she said, before she grabbed the remote to switch on the small portable television perched on top of the chest of drawers.

  For a few seconds Shyama thought, Toby must have called Tara when he couldn’t get hold of me. Maybe he’s sent a picture. I have to tell her I would rather not see it. Then the screen blared into life – her parents always had the volume up far too high – just as the headline appeared: DELHI BUS RAPE. The two women said nothing throughout the report, watching with a growing sense of horror and disbelief as the details emerged. There were experts of several kinds, discussing the rise in attacks nationwide, police ignorance and inefficiency, and low conviction rates; politicians supplied soundbites saying that more would and should be done and that the perpetrators would most definitely be caught. And then a short-haired woman talked straight to camera, barely controlled fury spitting through every word.

  ‘You could argue the reason this case has become headline is because the victim is seen as a respectable middle-class college girl, when hundreds of poor and Dalit women, brutalized every day, never make the news. Firstly, every woman should be counted, no matter where she comes from. Second, even I, who have worked for so many years in this field … what happened to this woman …’

  She paused here, struggling to find her flow again – there were no words for what had happened. ‘Are we less than human now? What have we become?’

  ‘That’s my boss, Kavita,’ Tara said quietly. The report ended and Tara switched off the television. Time seemed to have stopped; the silence in the room hung thickly. Shyama had the sensation of being suspended and weightless, looking down at herself looking at her daughter. Her darling daughter, who did not weep or lash out as she would have done not long ago, but who looked back at her steadfastly, her heart wide open, and what Shyama saw there almost made her buckle. She was reminded of a Frida Kahlo painting in which she had painted her body as if split wide open for an autopsy, as exposed as a dissected frog in a school lab. Frida’s face held her usual knowing, mischievous look, eyebrows and upper lip defiantly untended, staring straight out of the canvas and right into your soul. Yet her anatomically detailed torso revealed the secrets you would never guess from her expression: the smashed bones, the battered heart, the empty womb. Tara’s eyes told Shyama what she should have known – what she would have guessed, if she hadn’t been so enveloped in her own blind desires. It wasn’t just ideology that had brought her girl to this place; there had been something else, something that had left damage and determination in its wake.

  ‘I can’t bear this any more,’ Tara whispered, her hands clasped around her body, trying to quell the quaking of her bones, her ragged breath. She managed to make it across the room in wounded, weary steps before she broke on the rocks of her mother’s arms. As the sun moved across the room, they talked, their shadows marking out the day like a sundial, every shade and dip of emotion, from grief through fury to an exhausted, tender calm. Shyama could not help touching her daughter, she had to hold her, press into her limbs, bury her face against her chest. She wanted to reach inside and remove every trace of what had hurt her baby, eat it, take it inside herself as punishment, penitence. She would do anything to make her whole and happy again.

  ‘Do you remember,’ Shyama
asked some time in the late afternoon, ‘that time when Uncle Yogi and Auntie Neelum came to visit us? You were about twelve.’

  They were both lying on the bed in a nest of damp tissues and empty biscuit packets. Neither of them had wanted to leave the room, so they had simply eaten their way through Sita’s emergency snack bag.

  ‘I was thirteen,’ Tara said, curling into Shyama’s side. ‘And how could I forget, such a happy family summer that was …’

  That had been Yogesh and Neelum’s only British visit, and naturally Prem had insisted his beloved brother stay with them, in the days when the illegally occupied flat was an embarrassing no-go conversation topic rather than the brotherly betrayal it eventually became. Shyama had given up her bedroom and shared a bed with Tara for a month, whilst her parents ferried Yogesh and Neelum around various tourist attractions and kitty parties, one day insisting that they visit the area where Shyama would eventually open her salon. Prem had been keen to show their Indian family how London embraced all their needs: no more driving miles to root out a clove of garlic or a green chilli as they had had to do in the seventies, behold the pukka desi market in all its noisy glory. Yogesh had beamed and nodded enthusiastically as Prem had walked him past the bustling pavement stalls, all lit up as the dusk crept in, the street-food vendors shouting out their wares.