Daughter in exchange for grain

Unplanned pregnancy (possibly in a time of poverty) encouraging people to sell their children. In this case to a childless couple.

My grandfather held his youngest daughter in one arm and his eldest with the crook of the other. When he handed over the baby, swathed in threadbare hand-me-downs, in exchange for the grain, his other daughter asked, “When is it my turn to be sold?” My grandfather, more leathery and grayed than he should have been at fortysomething, looked down at her, and at the twin bushels of grain in his other arm, and laughed. And then he wept.