When I agreed to carry a baby for another family, I thought I was helping them build the future they'd always wanted. I never imagined that one decision would lead to a battle that would return into our lives more than a decade later.
The fluorescent lights of the grocery store had a way of bleaching the hours together until a double shift felt like one long, humming day. I was 32 then, still living in a studio apartment where the radiator clanged like it had opinions, still tucking tip money into an envelope marked "COLLEGE" in a shoebox under my bed.
I had aged out of foster care at 18 with a garbage bag of clothes and a bus pass. Fourteen years later, I was still trying to figure out what real life was supposed to look like.
I had aged out of foster care.
My coworker, Marcy, noticed first. She always did.
"Emma, honey, you've been on your feet for 12 hours. You're swaying."
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You're saving for school at $12 an hour. That's not a plan, that's a slow drowning."
I laughed because if I didn't, I'd cry into the produce bins.
***
It was a regular customer, a quiet woman who bought the same yogurt every Tuesday, who told me about the surrogacy agency. She said the compensation could change a life and slid a card across the conveyor belt as if she were passing a key.
