SPRING OF 2003 UNLEASHED a collective reproductive frenzy in my family. Lori and Nico, Ernesto and Giulia, Tong and Lili, all wanted to have children, but as by a bizarre coincidence none were able to achieve it by traditional methods, they had to call on the discoveries of science and technology . . . very expensive methods that became mine to finance. They had warned me in Brazil that I belonged to the goddess Yemayá, one of whose virtues is fertility, and women who want to be mothers go to her. There were so many fertility drugs, hormones, and sperm floating in the air that I was afraid that I myself might get pregnant. The year before, I had secretly consulted my astrologer because I wasn’t having any dreams. I had always known from my dreams how many children and grandchildren I was going to have, even their names, but now, no matter how hard I tried, I had no nocturnal vision to give me a clue about those three couples. I don’t know the astrologer personally, I only have her telephone number in Colorado, but I trust her because without ever having seen us she describes my family as if it were hers. The only person whose astral chart she hasn’t done is Nico’s, and that because I don’t remember what hour he was born and he refuses to let me have his birth certificate. The woman told me that this son was my best friend and that we had been married in a previous incarnation. Understandably, Nico didn’t want to hear of such a horrendous possibility, and that’s why he hides the certificate. Your brother doesn’t believe in reincarnation because it is mathematically impossible, or astrology, of course, but he thinks it reasonable to take precautions, just in case. . . . I don’t believe every last bit of it, either, but there’s no reason to block out such a useful tool for literature.
“How do you explain that the woman knows so much about me?” I asked Nico.
“She looked you up on the Internet, or she read Paula.”
“If she researched every client in order to fake them out, she would need a team of assistants and would have to charge a lot more. No one knows Willie, he’s not on the Internet, but she was able to describe him physically. She said he was tall, with broad shoulders, a large neck, and handsome.”
“That’s very subjective.”
“How can it be subjective, Nico! No one would say my brother Juan is tall, has broad shoulders, a thick neck, and is handsome.”
In the end, I get nowhere by discussing such subjects with my son. The fact is that the astrologer had already told me that Lori could not have children of her own but that “she would be the mother of several children.” I interpreted that to mean that she would be the mother of my grandchildren, but apparently there were other possibilities. About Ernesto and Giulia she said that they should not make the attempt until spring of the following year, when the stars were in the ideal position; any earlier would have no result. Tong and Lili, on the other hand, would have to wait a lot longer, and it was not certain that the baby would be theirs, it might be adopted. Ernesto and Giulia decided to obey the stars and wait until spring to begin the fertility treatments. Five months later, Giulia was pregnant; she swelled up like a dirigible, and soon learned she was expecting twin girls.
One day Juliette, Lori, Giulia, and I were in a restaurant, and Lori was telling how about half the young women she knew, including her hairstylist and her yoga teacher, were either pregnant or had just had a baby.
“Do you remember when I said I would have a baby for you, Isabel?” Juliette asked.
“Yes. And I told you that I would be crazy to have a child at my age.”
“That time I said I would have it only for you, but I think now that I would also do it for Lori.”
A moment of absolute silence fell over the table as Juliette’s words made their way to Lori’s heart, who burst into tears when she realized what her friend had just offered. I don’t know what the waiter thought, but on his own he brought us chocolate cake, courtesy of the house.
Then began a complicated process that Lori, with her extraordinary perseverance and organization, directed for nearly a year. First it had to be decided whether or not Nico would be the father, because of the risk of porphyria. After talking it over between them, and with the family, they agreed that they were willing to take the chance; it was important to Lori that the baby be Nico’s child. Then they had to obtain an egg. It couldn’t be Juliette’s because if she knew she was the biological mother she would not be capable of giving up the baby. Through the Internet they chose a young Brazilian donor who had a slight resemblance to you, Paula, a family look. She and Juliette had to undergo large doses of hormones, the former to ensure several eggs to be harvested, and the latter to prepare her womb. The eggs were fertilized in a laboratory, then the embryos were implanted in Juliette. I feared for Lori, who might suffer yet another frustration, and especially for Juliette, who now was over forty and a widow with two growing boys. If something happened to her, what would become of Aristotelis and Achilleas? As if she had read my mind, Juliette asked Willie and me to look after her children should any misfortune befall her. We had reached the boundaries of magical realism.