The Carrier

Floodlights had been dimmed. The crisp air blew the sweat beads off my forehead, and I floated, weightlessly in a puffy, pink cloud, caressing soft supple skin, a little slimy but butter between my fingers. My heavy eyelids trying hard to focus on little curves gyrating to each rapid breath of the body, fluttered little teardrops.

“Just for a little bit longer, please?” I begged the nurse.

“We have cut the cord now; the mom is getting impatient. I am sorry,” the nurse said as she plucked my newborn, leaving my punctured arms in an empty prayer.

My heart sank to the pit of my stomach punching additional blows to my body reeling from the shock of birthing the baby I had contracted to give away to her real parents.

I roared when she pulled the curtain dividing the mother and me but birthing the placenta was blamed for my excruciating outburst.

Afterall, I was only a surrogate. Only a carrier.

Sharing the room was not my idea. Carrying their baby was not really an ‘option’. I had needed the money for my family so this was the best barter deal I could crack.

My eyes pooled as I heard congratulatory messages coming in from the other side of the drawn curtain.

‘Aw, she looks just like you.’

Impossible. If she didn’t look like the father, she would look like me. It was my egg. I was not even given a second to confirm her appearance.

‘You’re a superhero!’

Really? For waddling around with a specially designed prosthetic bump for five months as I dealt with constant nausea and vomiting throughout the pregnancy?

“All done.” The Obstetrician declared as she snipped the extra thread of the last stitch bridging the gaping birth canal.

My petite virgin body had taken a hit from the nine-pound baby. It was from her father’s side, for sure.

Two nurses helped me up as I diapered and dressed up in the Burberry nursing wear, gifted by my baby’s mother who happened to be my filthy rich employer. She wanted me to look perfect after the delivery. We had a story to narrate to the swarm of relatives, crowding around her bed, and I couldn’t ‘for the love of God’, as she put it, come shabbily dressed.

Even my custom-made maid uniform was silk with gold embellishments and a diamond studded name tag – the standards must always be maintained.

Concerned faces blinked in unison as I limped across to the other side of the curtain, still holding on to my sore uterus.

“I had to have her here. She has been by my side throughout this pregnancy despite that massive fibroid.”

The mother was quick to highlight her philanthropic nature. She couldn’t see her loyal maid with a humongous fibroid which had to be operated on the same day as she apparently delivered her baby, in another room, let alone in another, cheap hospital!

It had taken her a fake collapse, acting out intense premature labor pains and a staged vomit from a food poisoning scare to convince her over-intruding extended family to let her (which meant I could) give birth in a hospital setting.

My curved mouth reflected the satisfaction of not having to answer any further questions.

“Uh-uh, not like that. Hold gently,” an aunt of the newborn said as she adjusted the baby’s neck, while instructing the mother to not give skin to skin as it could expose the baby to the mother’s germs.

Wow, educated morons, I almost said out loud.

“When are you going to give her the nipple?” enquired another.

As if on cue, a nurse, who had been given a hefty share of compensation, commanded everyone to leave the room to give the new mother some privacy. I was asked to stay back, of course.

I floated on cloud nine for the meagre ten minutes awarded to feed colostrum to my baby despite my nipples being assaulted by an unbelievably strong latch.

The mother kept saying things to me, but I heard only bits and pieces of ‘…going to happen?’ and ‘… You’re ready to pump, right?”

The doctor and nurses had left the room, for the said privacy but the aunts, grandmothers and other hardly-seen-before female relatives, who had been waiting outside, couldn’t hold on any longer.

Luckily, I was in the middle of handing my baby over to the mother as they walked in.

“Did she eat well?” enquired an aunt.

“Here, eat this.. no, no it cannot be cold,” a grandmother insisted, stuffing a hot, disgusting looking concoction into the mother’s mouth.

Another aunt grabbed my baby off the mother and pulled the latter like a sac of rice laying on the bed. The mother hesitated. She stretched her arms and barely mouthed ‘but I need to hold her’ to everyone else’s deaf ears.

An old, hefty lady – probably the father’s mother, unwrapped my baby and shoved her under warm water spluttering from the tap in the room’s only sink.

“Don’t you want to wait a few hours?” I mustered up the strength in a bid to preserve the highly beneficial vernix on the baby but that too did not land. I desperately looked at the mother, but she pulled her eyes away.

The father walked in with a folded paper in his hand. He walked straight up to me and discreetly slipped it between my fingers. He did not thank me. He had never shown gratitude, not once, throughout our IVF journey together.

“Can I hold her?”

“Not till day after”

Absolutely ridiculous, I thought. The father’s mother did not budge. She flat out refused to have her son anywhere near the newborn and commanded him to leave the room.

“You cannot see your child till we finish the cleansing rituals.”

Grandmother announced as she triple-wrapped the baby’s body with muslin blankets.

She then proceeded to inspect the mother’s ‘downstairs’.

I saw the mother’s soul leaving through her eyes, but she was dumbfounded. The weight of coercive control strangled her, so she screamed for rescue.

Two nurses rushed in and grabbed grandmother’s hands already lifting the purposely soiled sheets and the mother inhaled her soul in spurts and hisses.

Against all medical advice, handed to the doctors as a professional drama script, the relatives forced the little family of three to recuperate at the paternal grandmother’s home.

The mother tried to act out pain and discomfort but that only confirmed the extended families’ decision of not leaving them in the hands of ‘incapable hospital staff’ any longer.

I wanted to stay back. My uterus and body needed medical attention. I looked at the cheque with only fifty percent of the agreed amount and quickly followed suit.

A big palanquin shadowed the entrance to the grandmother’s palatial home. The father lifted his wife out of the car and placed her right in the center seat. Four curled moustache clad men carried the palanquin into the living room through a foyer which could easily fit my entire apartment.

Chitter chatter echoed in the room with sky high ceiling and black and white checkered pillars held the weight of a massive diamond studded crystal chandelier reflecting rainbow prisms on the walls and three large Palladian windows across.

“Your Highness!” a bespectacled journalist nodded for permission, then continued, “You are so brave. Truly, a Queen!

The other twelve journalists in the room approved with thundering applause.

The mother smiled. “I am grate…”

A grandmother’s hand weighed so heavily on the mother’s shoulder; the only movement of her mouth afterwards was a quiver.

“Princess Aria is not going to answer any questions in my house. Please take pictures only.” The grandmother’s smile dripped condescension. “And please, don’t forget to feast on the spread before you leave with your gifts.”

It was like a blow to my head. In that moment I realized how happy I was not to be in the limelight. How fortunate I was to experience my life unshackled. Of being able to go unnoticed by others but preserve my sanity without the burden of other people’s interference and expectations.

Princess Aria had carried the legacy of highly fertile women. When she learned of her own inability to procreate, it was a shame she could not reveal to her own family.

I was only seventeen when the Princess hand- picked me to be her damsel. This was right after she got married to her own half-brother.

She couldn’t escape prying eyes and controlling walls of her palace. Every year, there was a demand for a child. Apparently, time was running out for her at the ripe age of twenty-four.

Princess Aria had always been brilliant. She connected extremely well with her subjects. She was a star jockey and ran numerous charities, but she was still not a hero amongst her family members and she craved the attention; the celebration.

I can never forget the day she soaked my silk skirt, begging me to have her baby. Before my brain could even process the possibility of carrying someone else’s child when I had been a celibate all my life, she promised me a hefty sum in return for the favor.

“It will get you out of your shabby pod and cover prosthetics and more in your mother and sister’s treatment.”

Their wheelchaired bodies had morphed into running towards me with their shiny new prosthetic legs. It was enough. I was ready, mentally at least.

Pregnancy was hard on me. I wanted to take credit for what was happening to me for someone else’s baby and when I gave birth, my maternal instincts made me even more possessive. I thought it was my baby and I didn’t want to part with her.

That feeling did not take much time to take its duly leave.

I was always a carrier of another woman’s ecstasy. I may be a hero to spurt out a big baby, naturally and without any medication but I am more than happy to stay away from the limelight, especially as stifling as it was in this case.