Womb with a view, womb for rent, yeah I’ve heard the all. But the worse nickname is bunnies. As if we wanted lots of sex, wanted lots of babies. Nothing could be further from the truth. I never wanted that life. Out Fenton model bodies were designed to gestate babies. I wanted to be a pilot. I wanted to go places.

But the choices were made all a round me. At the maternity homes, we would wait to be rented crocheting booties and making baby toys while the prospective parents browse. Some studies say powe’re always felt like a bug pinned to a board on display. Even when I couldn’t seen them, I felt their eyes on me.

I was a means to an end, a jewelry box, filled with someone else’s jewels. I remember one of the families had a jewelry box that played a tinkling song and had one of those that plastic dancing figures, a ballerina twirling with no voice of her own. That was I moving from family to family, having children I would never hold. Until Lena.

I don’t know what it was. I can’t tell you what was different with this pregnancy. Maybe it was seeing the parents were having another baby to fix their marriage, or the whipped dog look in the children’s eyes. But at night in my guest quarters when I felt her move in my belly I’d sing to my baby my own lullaby stroking my abdomen. I’d sing until my Lena fell asleep.