Olivia’s firm stomach rested on her thighs, her forehead pressed against the mat, palms turned upwards, poised to receive the universe’s bounty. Balasana, child’s pose. “Breathe,” the instructor said, walking between the mats and exaggerating her own breath until it sounded like surf roaring against a rocky shore.
Olivia inhaled the rich, mossy scent of sandalwood essence and sweat—no, she corrected herself, glow. They were glowing, all of them.
“Breathe with intention as you push into downward dog.” A month ago the instructor had advised Olivia to visualize her breath flowing out through the open window, coasting across Quebec, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, cooling as it crossed the Atlantic and warming again as it gusted southward until finally it drifted through open lips and slid sweetly down an umbilical cord into her babies. Olivia tried but was distracted by the woman in front of her whose tattoo-garlanded arms shook with the exertion.
“Good job, mommies. Three more seconds.”
Olivia attempted to ground herself with self-talk: Through our yoga practice all of us are connecting to our unborn children who are growing strong in the wombs of the Gujarat women. All of us except for that woman whose ripe belly presses against her black top.
Chris was the only one in the prenatal yoga class who was physically pregnant. But she didn’t mind. She liked being the most extreme person in the room. That’s what led her to become a surrogate in the first place. For Chris, surrogacy was a form of self-binding, a technique she’d read about in Psychology Today magazine. The idea was that people had multiple selves competing inside them, some of whom wanted destructive things, so when the good self was at the helm of the mind it made an executive decision to defy the other wayward selves. For example, the good self hid the video games in a weird place in the basement or it told its friends not to let it bum cigarettes no matter how much it begged. Or, in Chris’s case, it decided to rent out its uterus to a baby, forcing the other selves to stop boozing.
At first Chris worked for a surrogacy agency, but they took too big a cut of her income, so she decided to work for herself. She hired someone to make her a website. Her profile picture showed her decked out in a housedress and frilly apron, red lips pulled into a campy smirk as she removed cinnamon buns from an oven. Within a week she was swamped with requests from the upwardly mobile. She was part of the local pregnancy movement, composed of Westerners who wanted to reduce their ecological footprints by using surrogacy services close to home. Local surrogates were more expensive than Indian and Guatemalan surrogates, but clients were willing to pay for the ethical capital, and to avoid travelling.
During the final meditation, the students all lay on their sticky mats while the instructor closed the blinds and played a remix of whale music, a series of grunts, moans and squeals buoyed by an electronic reggae beat.
“Take a moment to congratulate your body internally.”
Chris’s body took this advice literally and tooted its own horn. Luckily the sound of the fart blended into a humpback’s screech, but the smell of rotting cabbage didn’t have a corresponding subterfuge and many women scrunched their noses, some going so far as to pinch them and fan their hands back and forth across their faces, as the instructor continued.
“Imagine yourself back in the womb, safe and warm in the waters of the mother, life-giver.”
More like gas-giver, Chris thought to herself. These women should try actually being pregnant and see if they can stop themselves from breaking wind every two minutes.
“I want you all to give yourselves a pat on the back when you leave the studio today.” The instructor pressed the Stop button, cutting off a whale mid-Lamaze wheeze. “Good job. Namaste.”
“Namaste,” said everyone.
From her vantage point on the floor Chris could see all the pedicures and shapely calves headed for the change room. She was struggling to sit up when a hand shot into view.
“Let me,” a woman said. The woman had curly, light brown hair cut into a bob and was wearing a turquoise sports bra and black shorts with matching turquoise racing stripes up the sides.
Chris accepted the hand. Amazed by the ease with which the woman was able to hoist her, she nearly fell forward but the woman in turquoise steadied her.
“Thanks,” Chris said, wrapping her hands around her incubating belly.
“I’m Olivia.” She extended her hand and Chris shook it.
“Chris.”
Chris gulped down some water as she and Olivia headed over to the change room. She checked her phone and just as she suspected her inbox was crammed with text messages from Beth. “rem 2 take ur vitamin!” “drs appt on wed!” “hope u 2 r having a gr8 class!” Chris dutifully moved her thumbs around on the keypad. “thnks, see you wed!” The Blackberry, like the yoga class, was micromanaging disguised as a gift from Beth. The Blackberry was vintage and it cost a fortune every month. Most people could receive messages cognitively, but Chris had never had a system installed—one of the main reasons why she was so popular as a surrogate: lower risk of side effects.
“Let me guess,” Olivia said as she peeled off her sports bra. “Your husband.”
“No,” Chris said, trying not to stare at Olivia’s nipples, which were tiny, fawn-coloured and smooth unlike Chris’s pink saucers fringed with coarse hairs that she didn’t pluck, because why would she? “I’m a surrogate. It was the mom.”
“How interesting.” Off came the short shorts, revealing not a single hair down there, same as all the other women in the change room. “We would’ve loved to hire a local, but we didn’t have enough…” Olivia rubbed her fingers together to indicate cash.
“Right. Cool.” Chris turned to the wall and removed her tank top, surprised by her uncharacteristic modesty. What did this woman want? Normally none of the other women talked to her. While it was fine to hire a surrogate, it was still a tad unseemly to be a surrogate, and Chris wasn’t about to let someone test out pseudo-tolerant views on her. “Let me guess,” she said snidely. “Gujarat. Twins. One boy and one girl.”
“Guilty!” Olivia said. “Boy, am I predictable or what?”
“Um, well….” Chris, still facing the wall with its lotus-flower mural, pulled on a pair of wrinkled linen pants. “Don’t worry about it?”
Just why aren’t I having my own baby? Olivia wondered, sipping on her matcha latte as she walked toward her loft apartment on King Street. No one with money gave birth anymore. Hadn’t she read a study just recently proclaiming that only 1 percent of university-educated couples were having their own babies now? But it was a moot point. Not only was she over forty, but she’d also had her first microprocessor installed in her brain a decade and a half ago, and the early models, as well as many of the new ones, were known to cause infertility. It was in that first epidemic of infertility that maternity leaves had all but disappeared from benefit packages, though they’d been drying up well before then. Now most of the people who Olivia worked or socialized with got their twins from Indian surrogates and their live-in nannies from the Philippines.
The following week Beth drove Chris to class in her gleaming SUV hybrid.
“You’re so lucky,” Beth said as she helped Chris step down from the enormous leather seat. “What I wouldn’t give to be going to yoga instead of back to the office.”
Chris knew this was bullshit. Beth loved being an investment banker; loved gripping the trapeze of the market as it swung ever more violently; loved the definitive clop of her pumps down Bay Street and the cleanliness of newly printed business cards; loved the briny taste of a dirty gin martini at the end of a long day; loved it all so fervently that Chris sometimes worried about the baby. Pregnancy was a crucial bonding time and what did it mean that most Western mothers never had this physical connection anymore? Would never feel their babies kick? But whenever Chris started thinking this way, she scolded herself. It was the damn hormones talking. No use getting maudlin over some imaginary connection.
Still, sometimes Chris couldn’t conceal her annoyance with Beth. At the doctor’s last week, Beth had gasped, a nauseated expression on her face, when she saw Chris’s stomach, the bright red stretch marks streaking across her taut skin and the older ones that now glowed silver, all tangled in a mess of faded tiger lily and cherry blossom tattoos.
Chris cringed when she had to confront the images on her belly. They were images that were connected to a time in her life she felt so faraway from that it felt like someone else’s life. As a teenager, she’d been straight edge—no intoxicants, no sex, no meat, no body modifications. She’d worn organic clothing and swigged green tea. Then at some point in college she’d become a raver, living the next few years with a glowstick in her mouth, a pacifier hung around her neck and a mind forever bursting with ecstasy. After this felt old, she’d become a punk—long after punk’s initial heyday. It was during this phase that she’d gotten inked and acquired an affinity for Jägermeister and bourbon. She never mentioned the former substance problems to prospective clients, who would, she assumed, have balked self-righteously, though Chris suspected them all of being addicted to antidepressants, painkillers and anti-anxiety meds themselves.
“If you think my belly’s gross,” Chris said to Beth, “you won’t stand a chance during delivery.” It was funny, Chris realized, that in a way, pregnancy had returned her to her former teenage self. She was rigid about everything that went into or on her body. Sure, she wanted to control her negative impulses, but she also wanted to produce a superior product.
“I don’t know what you mean,” Beth said, staring blankly at the sonogram screen. “I think it’s all so beautiful.”
Half-lotused on her mat, Olivia tried to stop herself from glancing at the door but that only made it harder. Would Chris make an appearance today? Olivia had always looked forward to these yoga classes, a welcome break from her job as a human resources manager, but over the past week the anticipation had become so acute that she’d been forced to take Valium to fall asleep.
The instructor entered the room and Olivia’s heart sank. “Good afternoon, mommies,” she heard as she shut her eyes and pictured, for the millionth time that week, Chris’s pudgy back, the tendrils of green ink curling down her shoulder blades.
When she opened her eyes she saw Chris hustling in, looking frazzled and huffing slightly. How far along was she? Olivia guessed that it was more or less the same as her surrogate in India. Olivia had received the latest ultrasound of the twins that morning. The clinic in Gujarat always used somewhat questionable music to accompany the rotating 3-d images (the sole criterion as far as Olivia could tell was the inclusion of the word baby) and today she’d listened to Britney Spears’ “Hit Me Baby, One More Time” as she stared at the babies with their toes and elbows squashed into each other’s ancient faces. Dutifully she’d sent the file to all her friends, who almost instantaneously posted responses about how much the little aliens—precious darlings, a voice within her admonished—looked like her.
The class was uneventful except that Chris sat out the sun salutations. How Olivia had yearned to stroke her hair and rub her stomach. After meditation Olivia again rushed to help Chris stand up.
Four years ago, after Chris had read the Psychology Today article but before she’d made up her mind to become a surrogate, Chris’s parents had invited her over for a twenty-second birthday dinner at their house, just the three of them. Wine wasn’t poured, but Chris came prepared and took frequent bathroom breaks to swig bourbon from a silver flask embossed with a circled A for anarchy. Post–”Happy Birthday,” Chris sucked butter cream icing off a candle, the wick’s sulfurous plume not yet fully extinguished. Her mother, a petite, bird-boned woman who barely crested five feet, grabbed the candle out of her mouth, so Chris grabbed another, but her mother removed that one, too. As a further precaution, her mother placed the deracinated candles on a plate at the other end of the table from Chris.
“Mom,” Chris said.
“Are you going to cut the cake, precious?” her father intervened.
“Mom,” Chris said, louder this time. “What was it like being pregnant?”
“It was wonderful.” Her mother closed her eyes and smiled. “I finally got to take up some space in the world.”
At the time Chris had found this response vaguely pathetic, but once she’d become a surrogate, she wished she’d pressed her mother for further explanation. How could you possibly feel like a big shot with your head in the toilet? Didn’t the attention freak you out, your body a topic of public speculation? Did your feet swell? Did you wince when the sonographer applied cold gel to your belly? Were you scared? Did you crave pickle juice and vanilla extract? Did you wake up feeling clean every morning, purified by a night of flying dreams and orgasms?
Instead Chris pushed her chair back and made her way to the candles.
“Am I cutting the cake then?” her father said, the knife’s blade already half-hidden in the white icing.
“But what you have to understand, honey,” Chris’s mother said as she watched Chris lick a candle, “is that in those days pregnancy was associated with motherhood. Nowadays people would stare, and not in a good way.”
All through class, Chris had been aware of Olivia’s bright blue eyes gawking at her, peering through her legs or over her shoulder as she expertly contorted her body through all the poses. Maybe she’s interested in hiring me for a third kid, Chris thought. Then: I bet she’ll have the cutest babies, with springy hair like hers. But even if Olivia did just want to hire Chris, it didn’t explain her attentiveness, her hand held out to Chris before Chris even registered that she needed help getting up.
“I think you’re leaking,” Olivia told her back in the change room.
Chris looked down to see twin puddles darkening her shirt. “Damn. And I wore the extra thick sports bra, too.”
“Is it breast milk?” Olivia’s voice grew hushed.
“Yeah,” Chris said. “What else?”
“What do you do with it?” Olivia asked as she stripped. Did Chris imagine the slight gyration of Olivia’s hips as she pulled her shorts down?
“What?”
“Yeah, what do you do with it?”
“Oh.” Chris took off her own shirt before realizing that she was exposing her stomach. “I sell it to the parents. If there’s extra I’ll sell some to other parents, too. Oh, and when they need it I sell some to this restaurant. Apparently breast milk ice cream is the next big thing. They pay out their ass for the stuff.” Chris hadn’t spoken this much to anyone, let alone a stranger, in ages. She lived by herself, she couldn’t hang out with her old friends because they were always bombed and she only spoke to her family on special occasions.
“Which restaurants?” Olivia didn’t look disgusted with Chris’s stomach; in fact, Chris could only describe her expression as aroused, her tiny flower mouth slightly open and her gaze intent.
It was such a pleasantly foreign sensation to be stared at in this way that Chris opted to change right there in front of her, peeling off her bra, nipple hair be damned. She dabbed the thick milk away with her balled up tank top. “Have you heard of Anthony’s?”
“No, I don’t think so.”
Chris extracted a different bra especially designed for lactating women from her bag, snapped it closed and pulled on the same black sweater, made of 100 percent natural fibres, as the week before. “I sold a couple litres to them last week. They’re going to infuse it with vanilla beans or saffron or whatever, churn it into ice cream and sell it for thirty bucks a scoop. It’s kind of silly, but yeah, it pays the bills, you know?”
“Wow, that’s so interesting,” Olivia said, buttoning up her navy blazer. “You live such an interesting life. I admire that.”
The last gleaming button securely buttoned, suddenly Olivia seemed indistinguishable from all the other women who were busy clanging their lockers shut and turning their microprocessors back on, their eyes glazing over as they reviewed their messages. Once more, Chris felt like she’d been had. Here she was talking candidly about selling her breast milk to some high-powered woman. It was ridiculous. It was like a cow telling raunchy jokes to a farmer—no, the CEO of a dairy company—and allowing herself to believe that the CEO was laughing with the cow, not at her. For the first time in months, Chris craved the candied fizzle of a bourbon and Coke. She had to leave. Her compulsion for escape couldn’t be slowed by politeness, and without saying goodbye, she booted it, her swinging gym bag nearly felling two ladies as she stormed out of the change room.
Not even Chris’s abrupt exit could stifle Olivia’s elation at having spoken to her for so long, listened to her husky voice, seen her stomach with its gorgeous tributaries of stretch marks. And of course, there had been the revelation about selling the breast milk. Although she’d pretended otherwise, Olivia did in fact know Anthony’s very well. It was where her husband Michael had proposed over fifteen years ago, right after he’d been made partner. That was probably why he didn’t find it suspicious when she suggested they go there that night.
When they arrived, the decor was slightly different than she remembered it. Gone was the exposed brick and in its place was a wall of moss, real or fake; Olivia couldn’t tell, but either way it reminded her of a jungle, a lush orgy. How long had it been since she and Michael slept together? A month? Two? Before they were seated, the waiter asked them to turn off their microprocessors.
They shut their eyes and logged off—well, Olivia logged off but she suspected that her husband stayed online. Michael had aged so much in the past ten years but was still handsome, his skin leathery from tanning beds, his teeth bleached white and his body, like hers, controlled through a strict diet and exercise regimen.
“I’m not too hungry,” Olivia said to Michael, trying her best not to betray her excitement. “Would three courses be enough?”
“What?” Michael said. “I’ll be back in a sec.”
Michael headed toward the washroom and Olivia scanned the room looking at the other couples in the restaurant: the younger ones leaned toward each other, the older ones laughed. She wondered how many of them had been deemed compatible by information their microprocessors had gathered on them—so much more accurate than those old Internet dating sites that relied on self-reported data—like she and Michael had all those years ago. Michael was gone for so long, or so it seemed to Olivia, that Olivia called the waiter over and ordered for both of them, pointing out random items on the menu. She slurped down half her oysters and glugged down a glass of Pinot Grigio by the time Michael came back. Without comment he tucked into his veal tataki.
“So,” he said, “the big day is almost upon us.”
“Yes,” Olivia replied. In front of her, the waiter set down the second course. A quail stuffed with grapes and foie gras. “A month away.”
“Olivia,” Michael said, a speck of balsamic foam quivering on his lip. “We’re leaving on Saturday.”
“Right,” she said. “Right.”
“Sometimes,” he said fondly, “I swear you’re living in another world.”
Somehow they made it through their scallops and devilled goose eggs, swilling wine as they went over the details of the trip, all the hotels and restaurants their friends had recommended to them. Finally the waiter came over. “Dessert for Madame et Monsieur?”
“No, just the bill.” Michael took Olivia’s hand in his and stroked it, his expression blurred, but whether by microprocessing, wine or love, Olivia couldn’t tell.
“Wait,” Olivia said as he walked away. “Ice cream. Do you have any ice cream?”
“Mais, oui,” he said. “A house specialty. Breast milk ice cream infused with vanilla beans.”
“One for me,” she said.
“Very well.”
“Do you really want that?” Michael whispered as the waiter walked away. “He said breast milk?”
“Oh,” she said. “I think that’s just the foodie way to describe normal milk.”
“Right.”
The ice cream was heavenly, creamy and rich yet simultaneously pure and light. It tasted like late afternoon sunlight. That night Olivia didn’t brush her teeth because she wanted to taste the dense sweetness in her mouth as she made love to Michael.
Chris, sweating and red-faced, was trying to get up from the mat to ease the tightness in her lower back. Where was Olivia? She would surely have noticed Chris’s discomfort and rushed to help, but the other women stared at her as she wheezed, an inelegant imitation of the instructor’s explosive exhales.
“Push from your solar plexus,” the instructor said. “It has to come from the fountain of power within you.”
After much strain Chris managed to stand up, but almost slipped on the water that had poured down her legs and puddled at her feet. It was still too early, she thought to herself, but any residual doubt was squeezed away by the first wave of contractions.
Olivia came back from Gujarat with a jewelled turquoise sari, a sunburn and a pair of babies. There’d been no complications, and they’d given the surrogate a twenty-dollar tip, the standard amount according to the online discussion boards Olivia had consulted. Throughout the trip, Olivia had often thought about Chris, but when she got home she was too busy trying to love the new babies—it was still hard for Olivia to think of them as her babies—to do anything else.
The twins lay swaddled in their crib beneath a lacy canopy. Olivia’s microprocessor collected pictures of them, which Olivia would sort through later, deleting the ones in which the babies were drooling or crying.
“I know an old lady who swallowed a fly,” she sang in her breathy soprano, smoothing down the wrinkled sheets near the twins’ toes. She noticed a yellowish patch of spit-up on the blanket and made a mental note to mention it to Bituin, the Filipino nanny. “I don’t know why she swallowed that fly. I guess she’ll die.”
Following advice from her baby broker, Olivia spent at least three hours a day with the babies, even when it exhausted her. Purple crescents hung beneath her eyes, and twitches had taken up residence on the lower lids. “I know an old lady who swallowed a spider.”
Just then, Michael appeared in the doorway. “What are you doing, darling?”
“Bonding with the babies,” Olivia said. “Ever heard of it?”
“It’s four a.m. The babies are sleeping. You’ll wake them.”
“I didn’t have time today, so I’m doing it now. Three hours a day, or have you forgotten?” Her eyes back on the babies, she began singing, more shrilly than before, “That wriggled and jiggled and tickled inside her.”
“Please don’t do this. I have a meeting in the morning.”
More quickly now. “She swallowed the spider to catch the fly. I don’t know why she swallowed the fly!”
The sound of Michael’s footsteps padding along the hallway was interrupted by a wail. Then quickly, a second wail. “Bituin!” Olivia yelled. “The babies need your help!”
Chris waited for her computer to load. It was already old, but she needed it to keep going for the next few years; it was getting harder and harder to buy hardware or software because just about everyone, not just the rich anymore, had wetware installed. Eventually, when she was ready to start a new life, she might be forced to capitulate and get a microprocessor. But not yet.
After the birth, Beth posted an enthusiastic review on her website. “Chris’s services may seem pricey but they are worth every penny. I’m 100 percent satisfied with my new baby. She sleeps through the night and has a good appetite. Don’t skimp on your progeny; call Chris today!” Ever since, emails from couples had been pouring in at an accelerated rate and Chris was having a hard time deciding who she wanted to work with: the older lesbian couple, both professors of law, or the young hip couple, he a graphic designer and she a PR specialist? And then she saw it. The name Olivia and the subject line: need a hand?
Olivia called in sick to the office and was now waiting for Chris at the Otter, a restaurant with large rough-hewn communal tables and blackboard walls covered in chalked murals of otter couples in Kama Sutra positions. Olivia had chosen the Otter based on a review in the weekly alternative paper. That the restaurant was attached to a hotel had been a bonus. She wore a tight, black turtleneck and slim-fitting jeans, the kind of outfit she would have worn when she was Chris’s age. Watching Chris walk in, Olivia’s heart nearly stopped. Chris was wearing a sage halter dress with the knot clumsily tied at her neck. The dress was tight against her flat stomach. Olivia closed her eyes and launched into self-talk: You knew she wasn’t pregnant anymore. She said so in the text. Push the disappointment away from your heart. By the time she opened her eyes, Chris was sitting across from her.
“Should we get some wine?” Olivia blurted. “And it’s great to see you. I’m so glad you came.”
“No wine for me, thanks,” Chris said.
Happiness gushed through Olivia. “Of course, silly me. You’re pregnant again.”
“Not yet,” Chris said, a tight smile on her lips.
Her stomach may be flat now, Olivia’s mind raced to provide assurances, but remember the belly button pushing out, the tiny heart beating inside that swollen gourd. This woman is an earth mother, a goddess. Olivia decided just to go for it. “But you’re glowing as though you were,” Olivia said.
The blush spreading across Chris’s cheeks allowed Olivia to believe, for the first time, that Chris might truly reciprocate her feelings. “Okay,” Chris said, her hands shaking. “One glass can’t hurt.”
A bottle later and the women were holding hands beneath the table. Olivia showed Chris some glossy photos of her babies—in all of them, the twins were giggling and Bituin, the nanny, had been cropped out. Chris talked about the pregnancy, told the story of her water breaking all over the yoga studio floor. It was this story that made Olivia propose they get a room, her treat. She didn’t even care if Michael saw the bill.
Chris had convinced herself to meet up with Olivia because she was a potential new client but the second she’d seen Olivia sitting at that table, she knew she’d never believed that, not even for a second.
After tripping their way upstairs, Chris leaned on the wall while Olivia swiped the card into the slot and they stepped into the Sea Suite, a campy themed room painted bright blue with stylized seaweed stencilled on the walls and a bedside light shaped like a mermaid.
Chris fell backwards onto the bed, closing her eyes and savouring her first drunk in four years. She felt loose and buoyant. But this isn’t a step backward, she told herself. It’s a step forward. This is love. I’m going to enter the relationship phase of my life.
“Is something wrong?” Olivia asked.
“No,” Chris said. “I feel wonderful.”
“Come here.” Olivia pulled Chris up from the bed and kissed her long and hard, lightly biting her lower lip as she untied her dress from behind her neck.
It’s really happening, Chris thought as Olivia kissed her face, then her neck, then her collarbone, then her breasts, then just above her ribs, then, then, then… Chris yearned for Olivia to continue her path, but Olivia rolled off the bed and was now pacing the room in her bra and panties, a matching turquoise set perfect for the marine theme of the room.
“Did I do something wrong?” Chris sat up.
“No.” Olivia fiddled with the gauzy blue curtains, pulling them together then apart. “Don’t be silly.”
Of course, she doesn’t want to kiss my awful gut, Chris thought. All those stretch marks gashed everywhere, the tacky swirl of tattoos so unlike Olivia’s clean, smooth skin. Chris pulled a pillow over her stomach.
Olivia looked over at Chris, her eyes skimming the hump of blue concealing Chris’s midriff. To Chris’s relief Olivia crawled back into bed and laid her head on the pillow. Chris leaned back. The familiar feeling of pressure on her stomach offered even greater relief, though it hurt a little, too.
“I’ve got an idea,” Olivia said. Through the dim light, Chris could still make out the whirlpool of plaster on the ceiling.
“What?” Chris’s fingers were lost in Olivia’s curly hair. “Anything.”
“Let’s pretend to be mothers.” Olivia crossed her arms and closed her eyes. “You first.”