Using the $8,000 to write would justify the ambiguous health risks of selling my eggs, I thought.

* * *

The first morning at the agency I noticed a large framed poster showing a magnified photo of a human ovum repeated nine times in a grid, each one in a different color -- like Warhol's Marilyn, the idolized (and maybe unattainable) thing.

I had an appointment with someone named Dr. Greene who asked me questions I'd already answered in the 30-page written application and the previous week's phone interview. The answers were easy: a small town in Mississippi, then Tennessee, then Louisiana; a B.A. from the Jesuits; an Ivy League M.F.A.; scoliosis, history of anemia, vegetarian, recovering Methodist; siblings, parents, and grandmother, all alive and well; three dead grandparents: cancer, cancer, stroke.

Dr. Greene, as if reading a cue card, said it was her job to make me not want to do this, to outline the risks, physical and emotional. Have I considered the risks?

I said I had.

We moved on.

Dr. Greene asked about my parents' and siblings' bodies: average-height, average-weight, fair skin, and blue eyes, and she makes an approving expression at the last fact. This is like a sunroof on a car you might buy or a washer-dryer in a potential apartment. Grad school is a leather interior, a pool in the backyard.

After blood was taken and a cup peed in, I was sent to an office where I took a personality test and a mental health test (Everyone is trying to sabotage me. Always, often, sometimes or never?) then I met with another female doctor who asked me about my own potential desire to be a mom; I was 23 and had never met anyone I have wanted to make more of, so I smiled and shrugged.

We signed a few papers and I left.

* * *

A few weeks later a woman called to say I had passed all the basic health and genetic tests they'd run and a nice couple was already offering me the job of Ancestor, of Genetic Donor, of Family Member They Need Not Meet. They liked the fact that I am a writer, and were pleased with my score on the Myers-Briggs. And though they hadn't seen a photo of me and never would (the agency's policy) they thought my genes said I looked nice.

I knew what they really meant by this was that my genetic make-up was similar enough to the eggless mother for them to pretend that I never existed, but the agency couldn't tell me anything about the couple (another policy) other than the fact that they were "nice."

Nice.

I imagined the couple sitting in Dr. Greene's office, their hands joined in white-knuckle fist, her eyes glassy, his distant, both of them in suits, maybe even on a lunch break, as they made a choice. Donor number three-thousand and whatever. Her. We'll take her.

* * *

The next day I went to the clinic and a nurse read a contract to me. For the next two to three weeks I couldn't drink, smoke, have sex, or take drugs except for the ones they give me. I couldn't stay up too late or go to bed too early, as this would disrupt my injection cycle. I also needed to avoid jump-roping, pogo-sticking, or jostling up a flight a stairs too quickly, especially toward the end when my ovaries would feel as heavy as navel oranges and tender, like fresh scabs.