Swallows, page 3
“Yes, I recall you saying that on your application,” Ms. Aonuma said, glancing at her monitor screen.
“I’m turning thirty next year, and every now and then it just hits me that I’m not young anymore. But nothing has changed in my own life. And I don’t foresee anything changing in the immediate future, either. That’s why I want to do something to help someone else, before I turn thirty.”
“You’re so kind to say that. It makes us so happy to know that noble spirits like yourself want to make the world a better place by helping those in need.” Aonuma-san smiled, the wrinkles around her eyes crinkling.
“Of course,” Riki said, taking a gulp of her Evian water.
“But, to be perfectly frank, we’ve received nearly two hundred applications to be egg donors, and the average applicant is around twenty-five. It’s quite possible that our clients will prefer a donor who’s younger than twenty-nine.”
“I see. So does that mean I don’t have a chance?”
Riki felt dejected. If that was true, she needed to get out of here quickly, so she could get back to work. She had only requested to be off until noon. She regretted spending the train fare to come all the way to Ginza.
“Wait a minute—not exactly.” Riki had already begun to gather her belongings, but Aonuma-san waved at her to stop.
“But my age makes it impossible, right?”
“Not necessarily. Under the right circumstances, some clients might be okay with it.”
“Circumstances?”
“Yes, like your employment history, your family situation, your physical attributes.”
There it was. The grade-A eggs that Teru had talked about. Riki’s eggs were definitely more like the grade-C eggs you’d find at Miyoshi Mart. Who would choose those?
“Well, that doesn’t really help. I don’t have any good qualities like that,” Riki muttered, trailing off.
“Um, excuse me for asking a slightly invasive question, but have you ever been pregnant?” Aonuma-san asked in a hurry. “On your application it says you have no history of pregnancy, but I know applicants often find it difficult to answer this question honestly in writing, so I wanted to bring it up again.”
“I have.” Riki had gotten pregnant once by that guy with the goatee. When she’d scolded him for coming inside her without a condom, he’d lashed out at her, so she hadn’t felt like telling him she was pregnant when they broke up. Of course, she’d paid for the abortion herself.
“And what happened then?” Aonuma-san’s voice was unexpectedly kind.
“I had an abortion.”
“I see. And how old were you?”
“Twenty-six.”
“And was that the only time you got pregnant?”
“Yes.”
Aonuma-san was inputting Riki’s responses into the computer. When the sound of the keyboard stopped, the silence in the room was audible. She looked up from her computer.
“This is just a suggestion, so feel free to say no. But it would be great if you could at least consider it. And, of course, you don’t have to decide today. Please take your time thinking about it,” Ms. Aonuma said; she was obviously leading up to something.
“What is it?”
“Ōishi-san, are you familiar with the term ‘surrogate mother’?”
Riki tilted her head as Aonuma-san took out another pamphlet.
“There are essentially two types. The first is when the eggs of a woman who for some reason or another can’t get pregnant are combined with the sperm of the husband to create a fertilized egg. That egg is then transferred to the uterus of a young, healthy woman like yourself, who then gives birth to the child. The second is when the eggs of a woman other than the wife are combined with the husband’s sperm to make a fertilized egg, and that egg is returned to the uterus of the woman who offered the eggs, who then gives birth to the baby.”
“And does the child then belong to the couple?”
“That’s right,” Aonuma-san said, giving a deep nod. “The husband and wife are the ones who requested the procedure, after all, so they’re responsible for compensating the surrogate mother.”
“About how much does it cost?”
“Nowadays at least twenty million yen. That said, at Planté we try to keep the costs a bit lower, which is why we don’t get many applicants. This is the option we’d like you to consider.”
“Why me?” Riki blurted out.
“I know a couple who would be extremely keen on having you carry their child if they met you.”
Why was she so sure? Riki began to feel scared.
“What do you mean?”
“Because you look very much like the wife,” Aonuma-san said. “You know, the grief of a couple who can’t conceive is something very deep. I really sympathize with them. They want a child so badly that they’re willing to enlist the help of another woman, to use her eggs as well as her womb. The sperm is still the man’s, of course, so, out of consideration for his wife’s feelings, he’s searching for a woman who resembles her as much as possible. That’s why I was so taken aback when I saw your photo, Ōishi-san. You look so much like the wife of this couple that you could almost pass for her sister. I thought it must be a stroke of fate.”
The reason Riki had been upset the first time she got pregnant was because she realized she hated the man and had no desire to carry his child—that’s why she had decided not to have it. But she’d been surprised by the strange changes that had occurred in her body. The smell of rice was suddenly intolerable to her, and one time she smelled oden stew in a convenience store and felt like throwing up. Her abdomen felt swollen, as though she were constipated, just like when she had her period. The strangeness of this foreign object, a clump of life, inhabiting another life called herself! She would have dreams of something bursting out of her belly, like an alien. She’d imagine the cells multiplying and dividing every day, growing eyes and a nose and ears, and feel afraid.
Aonuma-san looked sympathetically at Riki, who had gone completely silent.
“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have sprung this on you so suddenly. Especially since you only applied to be an egg donor. Besides, to be perfectly honest, our company rules state that a surrogate mother needs to have been pregnant and given birth once already in order to qualify. In your case, you’ve been pregnant but haven’t given birth, so it may not work out.”
Aonuma-san sighed as she spoke. She looked disappointed, but it was clear she had an agenda.
“But this couple is really desperate. They’ve already come to us multiple times and have considered every possible method, but have concluded that hiring a surrogate is their only option. Their only hesitation is that most surrogates are foreign women, which would make it obvious that the child wasn’t the mother’s.”
“They’re willing to go through all that just to have a child? Why?”
“Who knows?” Aonuma-san seemed unsure whether to say more. “This is just my opinion, of course, but for a couple with money, who come from good families, have good educations, get along well—in other words, for a couple that lacks for nothing—to be told that they can’t have a child, well, I think it makes them feel incomplete. People want children for all kinds of reasons. Maybe to carry on the family name, or pass on the husband’s genes. But that sense of incompleteness is what’s so hard to articulate. When you have everything in life except a child, I think you become desperate, and feel like you have to do something about it.”
“But will they feel like the child is really theirs if another woman gave birth to it?”
“Of course. Both parents are involved in the child-making project from the beginning. It’s quite amazing. From the moment they find out the surrogate mother is pregnant, they take good care of her. When she’s giving birth, they grip each other’s hands, beside themselves with worry. And even after the child is born, they’ll go and visit the surrogate from time to time, to show her how the child is developing. The surrogate mother is always so happy to see that. The things I witness doing this work are incredibly moving. And as for the birth, well, I think our hearts eventually grow capacious enough to accept the idea. I don’t think you can use common sense to think about it.”
Aonuma-san turned to look at the panel photo on the wall behind her, the one of the mother holding a baby.
“This baby was also born from an egg donor. The mother isn’t biologically related, but it’s as though it were her own child. Ōishi-san, you originally applied to be an egg donor because you wanted to help other people, right? Well, here is a way you could really help someone in need. Please, give it some thought. And don’t worry about the legal issues—you can leave that all to me.”
This is absurd, Riki thought. She’s asking me to be a surrogate mother for some random couple? Just because I happen to look like the wife?
“If I get pregnant, I won’t be able to work for about a year. So what would compensation look like?” Riki asked suddenly.
“You would receive three million yen to start, and all of your living expenses would be covered during the pregnancy, as well as after the birth, at least until your body recovers. There will be other gifts from the couple as well. So it adds up to a decent amount.”
Three million yen. It was a dream within a dream. She wasn’t sure if 3,000,000 yen for getting pregnant and giving birth was a fair rate. But if her living expenses were covered, that meant she could postpone her job search for two years. Besides, it wasn’t like she ever went back home to visit her family, so if she did get pregnant, no one would even know.
“This is all hypothetical, of course, but what about moving costs? The apartment I’m living in now doesn’t get much light. It’s kind of terrible.”
“I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t cover that, seeing as they’d want to provide the woman carrying their child with the best possible environment.”
That was all Riki needed to hear. But instead she said: “I’ll think about it.”
“Of course. Could we contact you in about a week, then? We’ll understand, of course, no matter what you decide. If it’s a no, then I’ll go ahead and start the process for you to become an egg donor. I think it’s a beautiful thing to see what kind of child your own eggs develop into, what couple they’ll end up with, and how happy you’ll make them. All that could change your life, too, you know,” Aonuma-san said, smiling sweetly.
* * *
•
It was twelve noon on the dot when Riki stamped her time card. She made straight for the break room on the basement floor, a plastic bag from 7-Eleven dangling from her wrist. On her way out of Planté, she’d received an envelope marked “train fare.” When she opened it, she found two 1,000-yen bills, which she promptly spent on a Kalbi bento box and a miso-flavored instant ramen. She even bought a tangerine-flavored milk jelly for dessert.
The break room was behind the MRI room. It had a vending machine, a microwave, and an electric kettle. The people who used it were mostly nurses, physical therapists, lab technicians, and some of the office staff, like Riki and Teru. The doctors used the cafeteria upstairs.
“That was fast.” Teru was pouring some hot water into a cup. She turned around and waved, swirling something around in her cup with a spoon. Maybe she was making some sort of instant soup.
“Yeah, barely made it back in time.” Riki put her lunch into the microwave and adjusted the dial.
“How did it go?” Teru whispered quietly, making sure the other employees didn’t hear her.
“I was right—twenty-nine is too old. They suggested I be a surrogate mother instead.”
“Surrogate mother?” Teru asked loudly. The security guards sipping their tea at the next table over glanced in her direction.
When Riki explained everything Aonuma-san had told her, Teru sounded impatient.
“That sounds shady.”
“I don’t know. She kind of sprung it on me.”
Teru’s lunch today was two rice balls from the convenience store and a thick soup.
“I don’t think you should be having someone else’s kid. It seems wrong.”
Riki was surprised by Teru’s stubbornness. Her chopsticks hovered in midair.
“Why?”
“What do you mean, why? You’re not actually thinking of doing it, are you? Don’t you feel like it’ll taint your womb somehow? Some random stranger’s fetus is going to be growing inside of you. Doesn’t that seem gross to you?”
“I mean, I don’t think it’ll feel great, but I don’t think my womb will be tainted, either.”
Teru looked dissatisfied.
“Won’t feel great? What the hell are you talking about? What’s gotten into you, Riki?”
“I don’t know. Why do you care so much?”
“Because a child is a sacred thing.”
Riki stared at Teru in shock. Don’t you do sex work? she thought. She had no desire to see or touch some random stranger’s dick, which made Teru’s insistence on the inherent sacredness of children all the more bizarre.
“So you’re saying, my uterus will become tainted if I do this?”
“Obviously,” Teru said angrily, a piece of rice flying out of her mouth and landing on the table. She picked it up, looking slightly embarrassed.
“But I’m probably never going to get married or have kids. So why not experience pregnancy at least once?”
“Seriously, Riki? I can’t believe you.”
Teru licked her plastic spoon. A couple of drops of soup fell onto the table, but she didn’t notice.
“I don’t get why you’re so obsessed with purity all of a sudden. You’re the one who wanted to apply to be an egg donor!” Riki exclaimed.
“That’s why I stopped halfway through the application process. Something about it felt wrong.”
“But you’re the one who suggested it. That’s the reason I applied. Isn’t it kind of messed up for you to say it’s wrong after the fact?”
“I mean, I guess I could have…” Teru began to say, then trailed off. After a pause, she continued in a soft, dreamy voice: “I want to have a child with someone I love. And I think I’d become emotionally attached to the baby after I gave birth. We all have a maternal instinct, right? When I think about all that, I just don’t think I could do it.”
Riki gazed at the white panel walls of the break room, comparing them to the pastel-pink ceiling, coral walls, and fuchsia curtains in the Planté office. Those syrupy-sweet colors now seemed like an outward manifestation of Teru’s words.
“Why aren’t you saying anything?” Teru demanded.
Riki was thinking about the old people in the elder-care facility where she used to work. She thought about that tiny clump of life growing inside her, passing through her vagina, and being born, and a long, long time passing, until it became someone like Isogai-san, or that old woman who used to play with a ball of her own feces, or that old man who’d put his hand up the skirts of young female nurses. Suddenly it all seemed absurdly funny to her. She felt there was nothing particularly sacred about human beings.
1.3
Motoi Kusaoke had never considered small dogs to be especially cute. He disliked their loud, high-pitched bark, their fragile toylike bodies, their large, cartoonish eyes. There was something crafty and precocious about them, like a chatty child he’d been tasked with looking after. They put him on edge.
Unexpectedly, however, Motoi ended up buying one on a whim, after his wife, Yuko, demanded a dog in lieu of the child they couldn’t have.
She picked out a reddish-brown toy poodle that came with its own pedigree papers and whose mother was a British champion dog. With its curly fur, perfect coloring, and beady black eyes, even Motoi had to admit it was as cute as a stuffed animal.
Motoi named him Mathieu. Yuko wanted to name him “Sky” or “Ocean” or “Dream” or some other sappy name like that, but Motoi refused. Instead, he named the dog after Mathieu Ganio, one of his favorite Paris Opera Ballet étoiles.
Motoi himself had been an active ballet dancer until six years ago. His high jump, good looks, and height made him immensely popular with women. But then he injured his knee while performing abroad, and it never quite returned to normal, even though he’d had surgery after returning to Japan. For a male dancer, losing the ability to do lifts and jumps spelled the end of his career, so Motoi retired.
Now he was teaching ballet at a studio he ran with his mother, Chimiko. He still helped organize ballet performances and invite dancers from overseas, choreographed for other ballet groups, wrote books. He felt fulfilled by his day-to-day life.
* * *
•
Every morning after he saw Yuko off, Motoi would stop by his office at the ballet studio, which was about a twenty-minute walk from his house. Yuko was a freelance illustrator, and had her own studio two stations away.
Today, Mathieu began barking at a large dog they passed but as soon as it turned to face him, Mathieu cowered between Motoi’s legs, trembling.
Evidently, he had felt confident enough to bark at the larger dog after they had already passed each other, not expecting it to actually face off with him. Motoi sympathized. He’d disliked small dogs so much before, yet now he fawned over Mathieu. Having to protect and care for him endeared him to it all the more. How much sweeter it would be if this were his son, he thought with a smile. The plan of getting a dog as a replacement child had backfired. Now he wanted his own child more than ever.
Motoi tugged on Mathieu’s leash and slowly walked the twenty minutes to his studio. “Motoi Kusaoke Ballet Studio,” it said in both English and Japanese. Until Motoi had retired, it had been his mother’s name on the sign, but they decided to change it when they restructured the office.
