The spotless lamb

The child that had just emerged from her womb was the most beautiful creature she had ever seen. Although she had been taught not to get attached to him, Alina's heart broke when he was quickly carried out of the delivery room wrapped in a towel.

The medical team was also trained to avoid as much as possible the contact of the laboring woman with the baby, so they had placed a sheet in front of them as a screen. But providence arranged that, in the movement of the baby's extraction, the midwife also unintentionally pulled the sheet allowing that fleeting glance thanks to which, still exhausted, the mother was able to admire the beauty of that little brown miracle. 

Her other two daughters, who were waiting for her at home, were as blonde as the sun. They were born bald, although they soon grew long manes that Alina took great pains to brush every morning before going to school. How she loved to caress those silky golden strands while she listened to them tell those things that only a mother tells a mother in a family hairdressing session! By the way, how would they be? After two weeks in the clinic for risk of pre-eclampsia, she had forgotten their voices and their smell. 

The agency managing the surrogacy was very concerned about the health of its "associates" and had forced her to go into hospital, so the girls had to stay with their paternal grandmother, the only family they had left in Kiev. The mother-in-law had happily overcome the depression caused by the loss of her only son, Dmytro, on the Donbas front. Her granddaughters and daughter-in-law had been her ladder out of the pit of mental illness. Her meager pension barely gets her to the 7th of every month and now, after the news that Russia recently bombed a queue of pensioners waiting to collect it, she doesn't even dare to go.   

As she was being prepared for the episiotomy, Alina began to have horrible thoughts about the child's future. She knew that the parents who had commissioned him were well off. The 14,000 euros she would receive, equivalent to three times the average annual salary, was only a portion of the total amount of expenses involved in renting their services. With so much money, she was sure that the child would lack nothing materially, but she could not help imagining him being mistreated, abused or unwanted. 

The sharp pain of the first stitch of the suture (anesthesia is rationed in hospitals in times of war) forced her to throw her head back in a reflex action that caused her gaze to cross with that of a Madonna at the head of the bed. It was an icon of Perpetual Help, that image in which the child Jesus, frightened at the sight of the nails and other instruments of the passion carried by angels, runs to seek the protection of his mother. 

-Oh, another stitch, another nail. Help, mother! -Alina cried inside, gritting her teeth and wishing she could hide, like the child, under Mary's mantle. What kind of mother gives birth to a child to give it to others? -she blamed herself. That fat, beautiful child, who only knows me, how can you give him to someone you don't know how he will be cared for? 

But he justified himself by thinking of his two blondes who would not be without a glass of milk for breakfast for years to come.

-Besides, the brown one is not mine," he continued, excusing himself, "it doesn't carry my genes. 

But he was so beautiful! She was so proud to have brought him into the world, and the pain of the separation, which had only lasted a few minutes, kept growing. 

-And how many more times will he be looking for me and I won't be there to help him! Oh, my baby! Oh, my brown one! she cried aloud.

-Calm down, Alina, he is fine," an assistant calmed her down. He is with his parents who are going to love him very much and you are going to see your daughters again tomorrow and take them out for ice cream as you told me yesterday.

Words of consolation were useless, he no longer wanted that ice cream with his blondes. He no longer wanted the "compensation for the inconvenience" as they euphemistically called in the agency the humiliating exploitation of poor women, which is what they really do. His daughters and his mother-in-law? they would get ahead, he thought. 

Looking again at the Byzantine icon, he prayed wholeheartedly: "Mary, you know the pain of losing a son. You too had to give up your son for others. You who saw your spotless lamb led to the slaughter, do not let anything bad happen to mine, give him a mother, the best mother, be his mother. Take care of him wherever he goes and tell your son to forgive my bad head. I am sorry, very sorry". 

She had not finished saying the sentence when the door of the delivery room opened again and the head of the agency appeared, looking as if something was wrong. 

-Hello Alina," the businesswoman approached sweetly, "How are you? They told me it was a very good delivery in the end, despite the high blood pressure and the stitches.... 

-Yes, thank you, this one was quicker than the previous ones," he replied. How is the child, have his parents seen him yet?

-You see, Alina, there's a problem....

-Problem, what problem? Tell me he's okay, please tell me nothing has happened to him.

-It's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay. She just... She has a small defect, something that could not be detected in the ultrasound, a hemangioma on her arm. It's no health problem just a spot on the skin that... Well, it's not perfect and the parents have rejected him because they're embarrassed that the kids are going to mess with him when he goes to school. Besides, they are instagramers and wanted to take a lot of pictures of him and that was not going to be possible. Since they don't have a money problem, they will try again. 

-It's the most beautiful thing I've ever seen!

-Yes, it is, Alina, I think like you," he dramatized. The child is a cutie. You see... It is foreseen in these cases that, when the child has to be offered in a new adoption, the surrogate mother will be asked first. You will receive, of course, the compensation we had agreed upon, with a small bonus that will be charged separately to the parents for the return. Do you agree?

-Do I agree? -she answered with a smile from ear to ear and sitting up as if she hadn't just given birth. Bring me the child right now, he is mine and mine alone and no one has ever wanted him and no one will ever want him more than me. 

With a gesture of relief, the businesswoman quickly left the room, returning immediately with the child in her arms.

As the mother held him to her breast, the baby seemed to recognize her at once and began to shake his head, trying to squeeze out the first colostrum. Alina couldn't stop looking at every crease of his skin and stroking that clump of black hair on his head. And the spot on his arm? On closer inspection, it is in the shape of a star, like the one Our Lady is wearing on her head in the icon up there. 

-This will be your sign, Dmytro," she whispered to her newborn, stroking his spot as she nursed him, "the sign of the mother of another brown child; a little lamb without a spot, whom she had to give up with much pain to save many, but who was then returned to her to live with her forever.