Written by Mofoluwake Omololu.
Lola woke up happy, but Kola wasn’t in bed, again. At first she thought she had dreamed the day before but then she saw the note he had left on the pillow, “out for a walk, need to think. Please eat.” He’d also brought her coffee and a selection of fruity candy she had enjoyed eating the day they had arrived. She laughed, he was indulging her.
The resort didn’t have anything planned for the day, they said they needed the couples to enjoy the bond they had created the previous day together first of all. It all seemed a bit excessive to Lola but these were their ways and “when in Rome, you become a Romans”. She wasn’t in Rome though, it was Rio. She decided she’ll catch up on her favorite series while she waited for Kola to return. She called for breakfast and was settling in when she unconsciously looked out the window and caught the view of a face cap she knew all too well, she smiled.
Kola had come out early because his mind was unsettled, the night before had been intense and maybe uplifting but it left him with a drowning feeling. What had they committed to? It seemed like an unwelcomed reality just dawned on him and he hadn’t thought anything he had done before through. What was so bad about the surrogacy thing that he had been so touchy on the subject?
The suggested one wasn’t even as bad as what he had heard about when he was in school, they had been learning about absurd African cultures one of which had been some kind of local surrogacy. He couldn’t remember the location exactly but the culture was, if a couple had been married for a period of time without an issue the clan to which they belonged met and sought the reason from their gods. If the wife was the reason for the problem and she found favor with the family, they would bring in a new wife whose first child would be given to the first wife as her child. Where the husband was the cause, the clan sent him on a trip for a few days to two weeks, during which his wife is moved to an undisclosed location. A surrogate was then consulted, he was to go into the dark room where the wife was kept, sleep with her and leave. There was to be no interaction between them whatsoever, and they would not know themselves.
It sounded like an ideal solution and yet sounded like adultery too. Not sounded, it was actually one! Kola was very confused, he needed an answer soon because the longer it took the harder it would get. When he had talked to his doctor friend again the doctor had told him that there were a lot of questions to the process of surrogacy that didn’t have answers but that the process in itself wasn’t strange or new, people were just more comfortable talking about it now. He’d told him that in his own tradition, before the advent of civilization and Christianity, every couple had to surrogate birth their first child. It wasn’t a question of whether or not they could have a child, it was the way things were done before civilization and integration, he didn’t even know who his elder sisters father was but where they were from it wasn’t that big of a deal. If they hadn’t even learnt about the culture nobody would be able to tell that there was such going on.
Kola sighed and lay back on the cool sand, the sun was up but everything was so relaxing. He placed his face cap over his eyes so they were shielded. He was being selfish that was it, he didn’t want to lose eventually and there were so many “what if’s”. What if they went through with surrogacy and had a sick child who eventually needed blood and he couldn’t come through because he wasn’t actually the father?
What if the child grew and became obsessed with details and found out, what would he do then? What if Lara became intrigued by the donor and wanted more?
His thoughts shook him and they weren’t even worst case scenarios, he wasn’t letting himself think that far.
Just then Lara came by and sat beside him. She poked him and he was startled, she laughed, he laughed. He asked why she had come out and how she had found him. She said she’d been bored and finding him wasn’t so hard, she’d bought him the cap he was wearing.
She asked what it was on his mind, he said he had just needed to chill for a bit. He was happy with their resolve the night before. He mentally kicked himself for raising the topic, he hoped she would let it go. She didn’t.