Leela stared at the white plastic stick, silently begging the Hindu goddess of fertility for two blue lines. But once again, Parvati was not playing. Leela pulled down the waistband of her jeans examining her pockmarked belly. Countless tracked cycles and three rounds of IVF, each preceded with the optimism of ‘this time!’ followed by a dream shattered. Grief, despair, jealousy, overwhelm and other inexplicable emotions joining the rollercoaster on each trip.
“This time we’re done” said Rahul, “IVF has decimated our sex life. And in case you’re wondering, I can’t countenance surrogacy, it’s rent-a-womb exploitation on steroids and I won’t be part of it. I’d prefer a puppy, much less trouble.” he concluded.
Four years of trying and he just calls it with a pathetic joke, thought Leela. A Langston Hughes poem she was analysing with her students played in her mind. What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up/ like a raisin in the sun?/ Or fester like a sore – / And then run?/ Does it stink like rotten meat?/ Or crust and sugar over -/ like a syrupy sweet?/ Maybe it just sags/ like a heavy load.
Paradoxically Rahul’s ethics had been part of what initially attracted Leela to him. Now they represented an insurmountable barrier to the baby she was so desperate for. An international human rights lawyer working mainly for NGOs, Rahul’s principles were part of his DNA. They also meant he was highly qualified yet low earning. Leela’s English literature lecturing work paid the majority of their bills; the largest being to the fertility clinic having long since exhausted the single cycle of publicly funded treatment.
Adoption was the compromise which led them to the orphanage in Phnom Penh. For once Rahul had, at least, been realistic about the time it would take them to go through the UK adoption route and called in his Cambodian contacts.
The air was a thick mix of jasmine, motorbike exhaust and hope as they entered the raised bamboo structure to meet the director. Leela felt herself come alive as she crouched on the dusty floor, engaging with the shiny faced toddlers who laughed gleefully but didn’t know how to play with the toys she offered them. What a life we could give them, she whispered to Rahul.
“I just don’t think I can do it. They don’t even look like us” muttered Rahul avoiding eye contact back at their hostel.
Leela was shocked by her sudden clarity. At once she knew she could be with those children. If not as a mother, then as a carer, like the Australian support worker they had met at the orphanage.
Rahul looked on dumbfounded as she silently packed her bag and walked out of their room, and life, together. His eyes watered as recalled the lines Leela had recited in the darkest of times.
This is the way the world ends / This is the way the world ends / Not with a bang but a whimper.
