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She thought of the girl Mom had been on this island: her white dress and gloves, her school pictures on the wall.

“It was very difficult for me without my mother and father’s support … I constantly cried like a girl, ‘Mom, it’s hard for me, I’m tired.’”

I suspected that part of the reason I wasn’t attacked was that I was a girl — Mom always said the bonobos had a harder time with men.

“I’m sure Maria is a very nice girl,” Mom said.

It seemed awful that a young girl, Mom's little girl, should have to endure so much, so massive an operation.