You Got Anything Stronger?

by Gabrielle Union

  But I loved him. As our relationship went in and out through the years, the times when it wasn’t even about romantic love, I always loved him. Each day, he had worked to be forgiven, and I had chosen to love him and forgive him. And part of this journey of making peace with our love is also making peace with ourselves. I had come to accept that without that awful collision in our lives—this Big Bang moment in our relationship that set our galaxy as we knew it—he wouldn’t have become the man he desperately wanted to be, and I would not become the woman I dreamed of being. The astrophysics of love creates a dizzying paradox: The me of today would not have stayed with him, but would I be who I am now without that pain? That fiery explosion that created life and light? The advice I would give myself now would be to leave. “You don’t have to do this. You don’t think you have an option, but you do. Save yourself.”

  I remember a small voice in my heart saying just that. My fear of public humiliation was so great that I didn’t take my own advice. In the aftermath, I invested so much time in making peace between us that I gave myself absolutely no self-care. And now there I was, still putting my life secondary to some shared mission. Why was I so willing to risk myself for a chance? If there was another way for me to bring my baby into the world, and have my health, why was it so hard for me to make peace with that?

  Meanwhile, because I’d been public about my fertility issues, every interview eventually got to my miscarriages. One journalist asked me if I had learned anything about resilience from the experience. “I think I’m trying to learn the difference between resilience and neglecting my emotional reality,” I said. “They can feel the same. One sounds empowering and one is not helpful at all. I haven’t been able to figure that out consistently.” What was me proving my strength, and what was me dismissing the glaring truth of my pain?

  I chose not to do the Lupron and told Dr. Baek I wanted to use a gestational carrier. Finally, I had to walk away from home plate, dragging my bat behind me. Take a seat on the bench so I could watch everyone cheer for somebody else.

  We had three healthy embryos left. “They’re a hundred and ten years old,” I told Dr. Baek. “My eggs are like the Dead Sea Scrolls. You’ll have to bring in an archaeologist to certify their authenticity.”

  We chose the embryo to transfer, a girl. Now we needed someone to carry her.

  * * *

  For weeks, I went down a rabbit hole of books—both fiction and nonfiction—surrogacy message boards, and conversations with our fertility agency. I was struck that even in the ostensibly feel-good industry of having wanted babies, racism showed up. You again? I thought. I know I can’t escape you, but really? Even here? Let me take you on the journey: At the top of the surrogate food chain were married white American women who have their own kids. The belief is that if they are married, they have a built-in support system, and if they have more than one child, there’s proof they can do the job. There’s extra credit if they have been a surrogate before. They know the ropes.

  On the message boards, people can be anonymous, so they rank surrogates by race. I got the sense a lot of white families-to-be were more comfortable with brown people as surrogates—Latina and South Asian—who were often classified as “breeders.” Now, I am Black, and I am used to hearing how people speak of women of color, but this was some Handmaid’s Tale shit, and I stopped watching that after the first season. The pervading message was that if you were trying to be economical with the surrogacy journey, just find a womb housed in a brown body. They were literally lower-priced, and tended not to have the protections or fees of high-priced lawyers.

  And the rate was indeed sliding. For a fee, there were people willing to let you dictate what the heck they eat, what shows they watch, what music they listen to, how much activity they do . . . So, I was this Black woman unable to have a child through my body, and here I was in this racial and ethical . . . does the word “quandary” even cover it?

  We chose the most ethical agency we could find, and answered most of their questions about prerequisites with “We don’t care.” Religion, active lifestyle, diet . . . “Whatever you eat to have a healthy birth is fine with me,” I said. Why would I, a failure, fix my mouth to give advice to someone who was clearly a pro?

  “What about race?” they finally asked. “Is finding a Black surrogate important to you?”

  “But it’s the womb,” I said. “If there’s no genetic tie, what difference does it make?”

  “Welllll, it matters to some people.”

  “Hunh,” I said.

  Here’s the power of a book: As we were starting the interview process of finding a surrogate, I read Little Fires Everywhere. We were in Cleveland, where Dwyane was playing for the Cavaliers, and I went to the Barnes & Noble to buy that book the day it came out. It spoke to me because it has a surrogacy storyline and takes place in Shaker Heights, an affluent suburb of Cleveland. We had considered getting a place there, and I found that Shaker was all the things Celeste Ng talks about in her novel. That accuracy added credibility to how she presented the surrogacy experience. Skip to the next paragraph if you haven’t read the book. A married couple asks one of the main characters, Mia, to artificially inseminate herself with the husband’s sperm because she is such a look-alike of the wife, who is unable to carry a baby. Once she is pregnant, Mia reneges on the deal, takes off with the baby, and raises her child with no knowledge of her origins.

  The book is so well written that it did not matter how much this scenario was unlike any surrogacy agreement we would enter. We’d have a gestational carrier carrying our embryo, and eventually a baby with no genetic tie to her. I bought right into the pop-culture story of the runaway surrogate. We felt that we could minimize that risk and fear by choosing a white surrogate. Because if she ran off with a Black-ass baby, people might be more inclined to ask questions. The fact that I was thinking about that shit tells you a lot about the emotional daze I was in.

  Our agency began interviewing potential surrogates, and we got a hit in October with a woman who had multiple kids and had been a surrogate before. The agency does background checks, not just on the potential surrogates, but their spouses and anybody who would have any interaction with her as a pregnant person. Oh, that’s deep, I thought. And kind of Big Brother–ish. As a Black person who is so surveilled in America, that threw me. Could I ask someone to submit to passing a test I wasn’t sure my own extended family would survive?

  In the vetting process, this person didn’t disclose that her brother-in-law had been arrested for something. Someone from our agency acted personally offended, and though I was not, I did find it ironic that white surrogates had been prioritized and she was the one who lied about having a family member in trouble with the law. The agency was adamant that I move on. “We can no longer trust her,” I was informed. So, it was back to the drawing board.

  Two months later, in early December, we were presented with a surrogate who seemed to check all the boxes. We were introduced over the phone, but the conversation I had with her and her husband was made awkward by the fact that we couldn’t reveal our identities to initially protect the anonymity of both parties. She said all the right things about how she had experienced the gift of life having her own kids, and wanted to give this gift to others. But I was cautious, having done so much research that I wondered if people were prepped to say that. Nobody’s going to say, “I need this money, so take my uterus.” That’s not going to feel good for anybody.

  After she was cleared by Dr. Baek, who did her own interview and medical workup, we agreed to meet in person in her office. As I got dressed that morning, I realized this was like the best and worst blind date ever. I wondered what outfit said, “I’m grateful, but I’m also not a loser. I’m an actress, but I’m not Hollywood. I’m not some Hollywood actress, you know, farming out her responsibilities.” I wish I could tell you what I chose, but it’s been blocked out by that oppressive fear of being judged. I was not comfortable in what I saw as my failure
, but I also did not want to fail at this, too. Because this woman and her husband had the power to look at me and say, “Ennh . . .” I desperately needed this person to like me and accept me. Accept us, since I was standing in also for Dwyane, who was in the middle of the season. I was very aware that the surrogate and her husband didn’t know we were Black.

  I got there early because I am psychotic and early for everything. Dr. Baek put me in a small office, and the liaison from our agency arrived. “Are you okay?” she asked. “Are you comfortable?”

  I smiled and nodded, unable to put words to the feelings. There had been so much fear and failure, but now there was a vague relief that I was finally here. And something else: anticipation. I had not let myself have that for so long that I had difficulty recognizing it.

  The door opened.

  Like a blind date, you look everywhere at once, knowing you are being looked at, too. The first thing I noticed was a nose ring. Oh, I thought, she’s a cool-ass white girl.

  And then I noticed her notice me. Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh, ho ho ho,” she said. There was an excitement to her voice and I smiled. “This is such a trip. I have your book on hold at four different libraries.”

  And I knew (a) she was a reader and (b) she frequented libraries. I have never been done wrong by readers. I started laughing, and we hugged.

  “So, I guess now I can get a copy, huh?” she joked.

  “Yeah,” I said, meaning yes to everything. Her name was Natalie, and when her husband came in I saw they matched. Earthy free spirits with an aura of goodness to them. They had an easy rapport and were openly affectionate with each other. I hadn’t known that would be so important to me, knowing that she had a partner in this. I called D and put him on speaker, and as they directed their attention to the phone, I looked up at them. I don’t know if I would have trusted everyone’s explanation for why they wanted to be a surrogate. It might even be more comfortable for some people if it was clear that this was done for financial reasons. But these guys were legit. You’re those people, I thought. You really want to help others.

  I was very aware that we only had three embryos. If I was going to trust one of those prized embryos to someone, I felt like I could trust a reader.

  “She has a nose ring,” I told Dwyane when I called from the car after. “I don’t know why that makes her even more trustworthy . . .”

  “This is good,” he said.

  “Yeah,” I said, scrunching my eyes into a wince. “Yeah.”

  * * *

  We were back in Dr. Baek’s office in February, this time in an exam room for the embryo transfer. Natalie lay on the table, knees up with a sheet covering her, and her husband and me on either side of her. I went alone, because Dwyane was still playing.

  The room was darkened to better show the ultrasound Dr. Baek used to guide the catheter into Natalie’s uterus for the transfer of this tiny embryo. The embryo that would become our daughter. The lower light added to the feeling that this was something sacred, and on-screen, we were able to watch the catheter go into Natalie’s uterus as Dr. Baek narrated everything we were seeing. When I am nervous, I usually crack jokes to put myself and other people at ease. But I was quiet.

  The moment she pressed the plunger to transfer the embryo there was this bright burst of light into the void. It was like watching the birth of a star. I gasped, unable to help myself, and Natalie smiled. We knew we would have to wait two weeks for a pregnancy test, but for now we all kept our eyes on this starburst. We just had to hope that the light stayed bright and was not extinguished. As it had been so many times in my body.

  As we waited those two weeks, there was a sense of angels surrounding Dwyane and me, and now this baby. His longtime agent Hank Thomas had died in January, and he was more of a father figure to Dwyane than an agent. It was at his funeral that D mended fences with Pat Riley, the Miami Heat’s team president and his former coach. It felt like a righting of wrongs and a new beginning. And it signaled his return to the Heat on February 9, 2018. Five days later, seventeen-year-old Joaquin Oliver was shot and killed outside his creative writing class at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. He was among the fourteen students and three staff members murdered that Valentine’s Day. Joaquin was such a huge fan of D’s that his parents knew he would want to be buried in his #3 Heat jersey. D had always been conscious of his impact outside basketball, but in that time, I watched him become clear about his responsibility as a leader in society, in culture, and in our family. At the first home game after the shooting, Dwyane wrote Joaquin’s name on his sneakers and hit an impossible game-winner in a 102–101 victory. He scored fifteen of the final seventeen points, and the feeling in the arena was that Joaquin was there.

  In this surreal four-week span, Dwyane and I had seen death and created life. When we got the positive pregnancy test, my first thought was “Wow. Shit. This is really happening.” The due date was Thanksgiving. A little too on the nose, but there it was.

  In the midst of this, I had started filming the pilot for L.A.’s Finest, a series I would star in and executive produce. I’d built the production around the idea that with proper planning and communication, a boss can prioritize parenting for employees and employers, and still run everything efficiently. When I’d asked Jessica Alba to be my costar, she didn’t think it was possible.

  “I just gave birth,” she had said. “I’m nursing.”

  “I got you,” I assured her. “This makes you the best person for the job. You’re somebody who best knows how to use time. If we run a great production, you will have all the time in the world to nurse.” I believed that if we planned it right, we could change the mentality surrounding working mothers and active parents in the industry. Just by welcoming breastfeeding in the workplace and bringing kids to the office, we could signal a slight change in perspective to show people that nourishing a child is not a nuisance. Communicating and planning—the things we don’t do well in Hollywood—were what we needed to attract people who actually wanted to get home for bedtime and feed their kids.

  From that first pilot, it worked. We created what we had never seen, and I could see it in the way Jessica was able to do her work and parent with the help of our crew. I didn’t tell anyone that I created a world for her that I was hoping to have for myself. Natalie was still only in the beginning of her first trimester, but things were going well. I pictured taking my daughter to the set and having a crib in my trailer. If it took a pinch hitter to have that dream, hell, I’d cheer her on, too.

  We’d even begun to pick out names. When I was in my twenties and thought my life was going to be a little different, I’d begun keeping lists of baby names. There was one name I saw at the end credits of a TV show or movie: Tavia. Well, that would be pretty, I thought, with a K. Kavia. That name made it onto every new, hopeful list I kept.

  Dwyane knew the list by heart, too, and we both felt it. This hope, this starburst, was her.

  I was in a production meeting for L.A.’s Finest when Dr. Baek called. I stepped out of the room as soon as I saw her number. With remarkable care and directness, she told me Natalie was spotting.

  “Oh,” I said. This was always the first sign I was miscarrying. “Oh,” I said again, meaning, “Fuck, come on. No. Come on.”

  There was an issue with her cervix. Dr. Baek said Natalie would have to go on bed rest right away.

  “So, it’s not a miscarriage,” I said, adding a quiet “yet.”

  “No,” she said, with kindness in her voice. “But there is a fifty-fifty chance that she will miscarry.”

  All the joy, the euphoria, that I had felt watching my starburst of a daughter be shot into the womb . . . I let it go. Within seconds, after years of loss, my mind knew just how to keep this at arm’s length. If I connected to this baby, she would be taken from me at any moment. I cursed myself for getting comfortable. And in those seconds, there was another thought: my baby was rejecting somebody else for once. My embryos didn’t
just find me unworthy, they even refused to thrive in this perfect, proven winner. Even the pinch hitter struggled. It wasn’t just me.

  I had to deliver this news to Dwyane, after being the bearer of this kind of news so many times. Oh, God, here comes the fucking Grim Reaper again? I was always crushed first by my own realization, and then again seeing that pain and disappointment in his face. Now, Dwyane had so much going on that he was not emotionally fragile, but open. He’d lost his father figure, and was handling all of the love, and also the responsibility, that came upon our return to Miami. And he was playing incredible basketball. In the midst of this wildly heartbreaking and high-stakes time in his life, I was very aware that the positive pregnancy test—knowing our daughter was coming—was something he held on to with everything he had.

  And now I had to take it away. I hit his number. “She’s spotting,” I said. He knew exactly what that meant. “It’s fifty-fifty. She needs to go on bed rest.”

  “Fifty-fifty,” he said.

  I left my body, floating over myself. And I stayed there. I watched Dwyane and Natalie, and her husband, become very present in how they approached this moment. Natalie went on bed rest, and I knew what an added hardship that was on her and her family. A stranger had committed to this, knowing this was a possibility in theory. But life happens. Life is the doing.

  D prayed. It was near the end of the season, and Dwyane began to secretly write our daughter’s name on his sneakers for games, the same way he had done to honor Joaquin. No one knew what it meant. She was with him, no matter the space or risk between them.

  Me? I continued to float just above the scene, very aware that I was a balloon that could drift away at any moment. In exploring the dark parts of myself, I understand my version of dissociative fugue, a disappearing act I do under stress that can involve literal fleeing or, in this case, an emotional departure from my surroundings and circumstances. I fought it, trying to get back into this experience. I needed to tie myself to someone’s wrist, but I was not ready to tether myself to this embryo. My attachment could only bring harm.