I watched these girls, now mothers, parading their babies about town and taking roll upon roll of photographs of them, as if there were nothing you could do to use them up, and I consoled myself with the bitterest thought: You could be torn from this child. I thought how careless of them, how indulgent, to let their children out of their bodies, while I kept mine secreted away inside me, deprived myself of them to keep them safe.
