Fallow

Natalie Gallagher has always hated working. Growing up as one of many sisters, she gave her stuffed animals naps while her siblings' toys held careers. After college, she lands at a call center fielding whistleblower complaints, where she befriends a bold coworker named Libby. The job offers flexible hours but no dental insurance, which becomes urgent when Natalie learns she needs four wisdom teeth removed at a cost of thousands of dollars.

Desperate for money, Natalie begins donating plasma at a blood bank where her older sister Phoebe works as a nurse. A phlebotomist named Alma gives her a flyer advertising a position requiring a "healthy lifestyle," "birthing hips," and "discretion." Natalie applies, lying about her alcohol use and a past abortion she always thinks of with a definite article: The Abortion.

Interviews follow at a nondescript building staffed by a receptionist named Astrid and a jovial physician called Dr. X. Natalie undergoes extensive physical exams, sits unbothered with a crying robot infant, and, after signing a nondisclosure agreement, learns the job's nature from Shane, The Company's senior vice president of People Experience. This massive corporation has achieved a majority-female executive suite but struggles with productivity losses from maternity leave. Their solution is Project Genesis: a gestational outsourcing program in which a single surrogate carries babies for top executives.

Selected from hundreds for her ideal physical traits, avoidant attachment style (a tendency to maintain emotional distance), low maternal urges, and lack of career ambitions, Natalie is offered seven pregnancies over 10 years. Total compensation exceeds one million dollars, including a $700,000 completion bonus. She signs without hesitation, viewing the deal as trading one decade of her body for financial freedom.

After a five-day training period in prenatal yoga, breathing techniques, and dietary protocols, Natalie's wisdom teeth are removed and she moves into a Company-provided luxury condo. Her first pregnancy is for Valerie, The Company's chief financial officer, and goes smoothly. Astrid, reassigned as Natalie's full-time minder, monitors her compliance, and the two develop a hostile dynamic. Between pregnancies, Natalie gets 26 weeks she fills with drinking and clubbing with Libby before returning to Dr. X's fertility regimen. Over seven years, she carries four more babies for various executives, consistently earning top performance marks.

In her seventh year, Natalie is assigned her sixth pregnancy for Jan, The Company's new chief executive officer from the Netherlands, and his wife, Anika. In her third trimester, she travels to Amsterdam so the baby, a girl named Lotte, can hear her parents' voices. Anika takes her shopping and to the Van Gogh Museum, confessing that surrogacy is illegal in the Netherlands and that Jan forbade her from becoming pregnant because his mother died in childbirth. When Anika asks if the arrangement is worth it, Natalie tells her it is "so fucking worth it" (92). Anika invites her to become part of the family. That evening, she follows Natalie into the shower and embraces her from behind, cupping her pregnant belly and whispering about her fears.

After returning home, the women text constantly, but the messages stop. Lotte's birth goes badly: Dr. X is absent, and his replacement uses forceps, causing facial nerve palsy that leaves one side of Lotte's face drooping. Anika arrives during the final push, gives Natalie a scathing look, and is hustled out with the baby. Natalie is denied access to the newborn. During her final fallow period, she discovers Anika's Instagram, where the birth announcement presents Anika as though she carried Lotte herself, and selfies texted as new were recycled from old posts. In a blackout-drunk spiral, Natalie bombards Anika with messages and is blocked.

For her seventh and final pregnancy, Natalie is paired with Jackie, The Company's chief marketing officer, who calls her embryo the Bean. Despite Natalie's resistance, Jackie's relentless warmth wins her over. Jackie reveals fibroids that prevent her from carrying and a marriage to a woman named Camille that ended in betrayal. The embryo transfer succeeds on the first try.

Nine weeks in, Shane orders Natalie to terminate the pregnancy because Jackie is being fired, and since the pregnancy used Company-provided sperm, it must end. Natalie takes the pills home but cannot swallow them, paralyzed by memories of her teenage abortion. Days later, Jackie goes on Cable News Network (CNN), exposing Genesis and describing how The Company terminated both her job and her pregnancy without consent. Shane threatens Natalie with photos of her using drugs during fallow periods, photos sold by Libby, a betrayal that devastates her. When she finally tries the first pill, she gags and spits it down the drain. She buries the rest, planning to tell Dr. X the medication failed.

Before she can, Jackie arrives at her office with a gun and marches her to a cargo van. After hours of blindfolded driving, Natalie arrives at Wake-Robin Farm, an intentional community in the woods co-founded by Jackie, Steph, and Frida. Natalie is told she is leverage against The Company. She calls Shane expecting rescue, but he tells her the board has little reason to bring her back and reveals the final pregnancy was supposed to be his child. Days later, Jan and Anika appear on CNN, declaring that Natalie disappeared voluntarily, and Astrid appears onscreen from Natalie's own condo, announcing herself as the replacement surrogate. No one is coming.

Natalie settles reluctantly into commune life, cleaning chicken coops, scrubbing dead bees from hives, and peeling garlic. Her roommate, Magritte, an exuberant French woman who came to America with her sister Camille (Jackie's ex-wife), becomes her anchor through late-night conversations and gossip. Natalie lets the pregnancy reveal itself naturally rather than confessing. At a farmers' market, a Mennonite woman comments on her visible bump, and Natalie seizes the opening, telling Jackie a fabricated story about the pill failing. Jackie weeps with joy. A mediation produces a contract: Jackie will pay Natalie $55,000, and Natalie secures the right to see the child once a year.

Natalie launches the Wake-Robin Petting Farm, rescuing animals including Hilary, a famous donkey stranded on a lake island for nearly a decade. The enterprise thrives. When Jackie announces she plans to leave after the birth, the conversation forces a reckoning; Jackie tells Natalie she spent the past decade "getting pregnant and waiting for something to happen" to her (302). Former blood bank nurse Alma recognizes Natalie at the petting farm and reveals that Phoebe has been searching for her. A furious and loving email from Phoebe follows, revealing their mother is proud, calling Natalie "a radical" (319). The Company sends a formal termination letter; Natalie adds it to the recycling pile.

Mielle Natalia Meyers is born on the hottest August night on record in a bathtub at the farmhouse. Magritte names her Mielle, a feminine form of the French word for honey, and Jackie chooses the middle name Natalia. The baby is 10 pounds, hairless, and not conventionally attractive, but her smell is intoxicating. Natalie holds her briefly, then hands her to Jackie. As Magritte undoes her braid, Natalie closes her eyes and returns to a recurring visualization of a dark field, where for the first time the herd surrounds her. She and the cows low together, held in something that feels almost like emptiness but different.