Chapter Four

Rue

Dear Baby,

You aren’t there yet. I honestly don’t know if you are ever going to be, but just in case your parents do choose me, I wanted to have a chance to tell you a little about myself and let you know why I’m doing this. It seems so strange to even talk about “your parents” when I might be the one who grows you inside of me. I know that that doesn’t make me your mother. It doesn’t mean anything except that I happen to have a body that does something that’s useful. It sounds so cold to put it that way, but that’s the way that I have to see it. Do you understand? It’s what I have to do to make sure that I can go through with this.

I don’t know if I’m ever going to get a chance to really meet you. I know that we’ll be pretty well acquainted since we’ll get to share the same body for 40 weeks, give or take a couple of weeks. Don’t take too little, though, OK? You need to stay right in there and make sure that you are fully done before you come out. The world is a pretty exciting place and I’m sure that you will have an amazing life, but it’s not worth rushing. I wouldn’t want your mama and papa to have to put you in baby layaway because you get here early. I might need to remember not to call it that if that does happen. NICU just sounds awful to me. Saying that just sounds like you are admitting that there’s something wrong with the baby and it needs to be taken care of, that it might not make it through. Baby layaway, though, that’s just temporary. That’s just like picking out a shirt that you really want for the next season, but it’s not time to wear it yet so you put it in layaway until the weather changes and then you go get it out. They put a baby in the baby layaway until it’s ready to go ahead with life and then their parents can get them out.

I’m going to be meeting with your mama and papa tomorrow to talk to them more about the possibility of me carrying you for them. I just realized that I’ve been calling them “mama and papa” the way that I called my parents when I was growing up. Well, what I called my father. My mama has been gone since I was very, very little. I don’t remember her. I hate to admit that. All I ever heard about her was that she was so beautiful and kind, and that she loved me more than anything in the world. When I turned 18 Papa gave me a scrapbook that my mama had started for me even before I was born. It was full of pictures and doodles and notes. She even included the hospital bracelet from when I was born and a letter that she wrote to me while she was in labor. She had meant to keep building on it as I grew up so that by the time I was grown I would have a chronicle of my childhood. Looking at all of the empty pages in it always made me so sad when I was younger. I knew that I had done things and lived days that should have filled those pages. I just didn’t have Mama around to record them for me. It was almost like they weren’t as real, like they didn’t happen as much because she wasn’t there to see them. Does that make sense? On the front of the book she had written “I love you more than the moon and the sun and all the stars in space.”

I know that your mama is going to just love you so much. I wonder what you’ll call her. Maybe Mommy. Maybe you’ll have a Mommy and Daddy rather than a Mama and Papa. You sure are going to be raised differently than I was. No one who grew up in Whiskey Hollow would be able to afford the surrogacy fee that they are offering. That’s wonderful for you, though, Baby. At least I hope it is.

I never want you to be embarrassed or feel bad about the way that you came to be. It might not be the same way that other people are born, but it doesn’t mean that you are any less important or any less valuable. In fact, you are so very important, so very treasured, and so very loved, already, even now before you even exist, that your parents are willing to go through an unbelievable amount just to give them a chance that they will get to have you. I hope that they make you feel as special as you already are.

I also never want you to blame your mama or feel like she did something wrong for this having to be the way that you came to be. Sometimes the people who want children the most are the ones who have the hardest time actually having them. It’s not her fault. She didn’t do anything wrong and I know that if she had the choice, this wouldn’t be what she would do. I’m sure that if she had the choice, she would be the one who got to hold you inside of her and protect you until you were ready to be born. But she is still your mother. She is just as much your mother as if she did carry you and deliver you herself. Please never forget that. If you get a chance, remember to thank her. She put aside a lot of pride and a lot of self-doubt to bring you into this world, and I’m sure that she went through a lot of people telling her that she was doing the wrong thing. Even if they acted like they were supporting her and would never actually say that they thought that she was doing something that she shouldn’t, she would be able to feel with her heart what they actually thought of her. People have a way of presenting themselves one way when they are really something different underneath. But she went through all of that, she endured all of that, for you.

As I said, I don’t know if we’ll ever get a chance to really meet. I’ll see you the moment that you are born, of course. I’ll even get to hear your voice. But I don’t know if they will ever let me hold you. I don’t know if I’d want to. Those are moments that you should be spending with them, not with me. I’ll have the chance to cradle you, in a different way, for the first months of your existence and that’s something that I’ll always remember. I’ll be the only person who will have ever gotten to connect with you like that, and I won’t forget how significant that is. To be honest, I can’t really think of any situation when they would want for you to meet me when you are older, unless it is only because they want you to know the woman who made it possible for you to be born. That sounds so arrogant when I write it out, like I’m doing something that’s all that big of a deal and not what countless other women do every day.

If we did get a chance to spend any time together when you were old enough to understand who I am, I would want to tell you that what I told the man interviewing me last week was totally true. I really am considering doing this for you. That might not have been the case initially, when he surprised me with the whole thing, but after a few minutes of thinking about it, I realized that as crazy as it sounded, I really did want to be a part of making you a reality. It’s almost like I can feel you waiting, like even though you don’t exist yet, I know that you’re somewhere, just hanging out and getting ready for when it’s time for you to come, and that I might be the one who is supposed to make sure that happens. Does that sound crazy?

What I told Tessie is totally true, too. You’ll probably never have a reason to meet her, but she’s one of the two people who mean the most to me. She’s…well, she’s really hard to explain, we’ll just leave it at that. When I told her that I was thinking about helping your parents have you, her reaction wasn’t what I thought it was going to be. I thought that she would be supportive and think that it was a wonderful thing to do, considering all of the good work in the world that she does. But I suppose when she is doing a good deed for someone it doesn’t involve sacrificing her body for almost a year. I needed to tell her more than just that I wanted to do something good for the world. I needed to explain to her about Grammyma’s house.

You’ll never get to meet my Grammyma. I don’t know, maybe you already have. She’s up there in Heaven where I’m imagining you floating around in some celestial waiting area for a nurse to come call your name and tell you it’s time. Your name. It’s funny, I didn’t even think about the fact that you wouldn’t have one of those when you came. That’ll be up to your parents to decide. It’s like I think that you’re going to show up with a little manual and a name tag, so I know who you are and which parents to give you to when you’re born. Anyway, Grammyma died about ten years back. She was the most amazing woman. Her eyes never looked old, even at the very end. As I got to be an adult, she shriveled up like a little raisin, but her eyes didn’t change. They always sparkled and looked young and full of life. That sparkle was the same one that was in my Daddy’s eyes.

His faded a little, though. He struggled a lot in the last couple of years of his life. I know that he was sick, but I felt like it was something more than that. It was almost like he had been missing my mama for so long that his heart and body just couldn’t take it anymore. Like he had been holding on for me while I was growing up because he wanted to make sure that I had at least one of my parents, and then when he saw that I had gotten there, I was grown, all of the stress and sadness of not having Mama just took over. I wish that it had been easier for him. I wish that I had gone home to see him rather than just bringing him to my apartment. If I had, I would have found out that he had never paid off the loan that he had to take out on Grammyma’s house, the house I grew up in with the two of them, when I was a teenager and his business went bad. I would have found out that he hadn’t been taking care of the house in the years since I had been there and that it was starting to fall apart.

I know it’s just a house, but some day you’ll understand what it is to have a home that is the one place in the whole world, no matter what other types of memories you associate with the place around it, where you feel loved and protected and safe, and as though anyone who you wanted to be was the person who belonged there. At least I hope you do. Sometimes I think that I didn’t really live up to what Daddy really would have wanted of me. Well, I know for certain I didn’t because I left Whiskey Hollow and I’m not married. That doesn’t matter, though, he would have always welcomed me right back home, right back into the kitchen that smelled like cookies and the living room that always sounded like sports or old TV shows. That’s why I have to save it. It’s my responsibility now. I’m all that’s left and I’m the only one who can make sure that my family’s legacy doesn’t disappear from the Hollow completely.

I’m moving back there in just a few weeks. I have to move out of my apartment by the first of the year, but I might go back before that. Christmas in Whiskey Hollow is something. I don’t really know what, exactly, but it’s something. By then, I should be carrying you with me.

I’m going to go to sleep now. I have a feeling I’m going to need all the energy I can get tomorrow. Wish me luck, Baby.

Rue