The way it happened was we were there in the monkey house and it was Stan and me and Myrrena, who had just learned to sit up. We were reading the sign by the orangutan cage and the orangutan, who was an old female with wrinkled, pendulous breasts, came up to the corner of the cage where we were and she was looking at Myrrena’s feet.

Stan had Myrrena on his shoulder and it was a hot day so there were her bare legs and bare feet sticking out of the diaper and that was all the orangutan could see of her. This lady orangutan had one of the most beautiful faces I’ve ever seen, expressive brown eyes with wrinkles all around so that seeing her face was a revelation of tenderness and passion and sensitivity and she was looking at those feet waving on Stan’s shoulder and her face shone and her eyes burned with eagerness and she pinched up her lips into an “ou” and kissed the air and leaned against the cage bars and her whole face was saying , “Oh, the little darling,” so I told Stan, I said, “She wants to see the baby,” and we like to humor each other, unless we disagree (it tends to make two people doubly effective rather than half as effective), so he promptly took Myrrena off his shoulder and sat her down on the railing facing the lady orangutan and she was delighted, I mean the orangutan was. Myrrena was a little startled and stared at her but the orangutan went into ecstasies and screwed up her face and brought her hands to her face and wiggled her fingers at the baby like little old ladies do on the street when I’d let them see Myrrena and they’d have this exaggerated look of tenderness and she had it too. I never did believe in those old ladies before, it seemed too overdone to believe, but there was this different sort of old lady doing it too and I realized it must be something more than upbringing and presumed expectations, it must be a real feeling, so I watched her carefully then to see if she would explain to me what those old ladies were up to.

She started rocking her arms then like people do when they’re saying “baby” in sign language and then reached her arms out through the bars toward Myrrena and I said to Stan, “She wants to hold the baby,” but he vetoed it and rightly so because you never know with strangers, but I felt a little bad about it because then she got frustrated and I could see it in her eyes a desperation, and she turned away and ran and leaped around in her cage screaming and hollering and beating on the walls and it was very impressive and people came from all over the monkey house to see her, but they didn’t understand what she did after that, because they hadn’t seen what went before.

What she did was this, she came back to us and she stood there and slowly slid her hands down her belly to her crotch and then slowly and gently lifted an imaginary baby out from between her legs and tenderly placed it in her arms and rocked it. Somewhere I have seen or heard of women doing this in tribal dances when they want to have a baby. She did it several times, very slowly with wonder in her eyes mixed with intense passion. Suddenly, she turned again and leaped and screamed and beat on the walls again and then got down on the floor and lay on her back and thrashed and threw her arms around with her legs apart and bent at the knees and I saw her straining and pushing with her abdomen like we do when the baby s on the way out, then she got up and squatted and pissed on the floor and her face was grim and fierce and angry and there was no more she could think of to do but climb up to the highest shelf way in the corner and sit there with her back to us and her face to the wall.

Excerpted from Jane Wodening's book, "The Lady Orangutan and Other Stories," published by Sockwood Press, 2014.

For more inspiration, check out this in-depth works&conversations interview with Jane, "Doors of Perception."