Her grandmother, her father’s mother, had a kind of spiritual guide named Sister Julia. When they’d discharged the baby, her grandmother handed her mother an envelope. Sister Julia had sent it to help the girl recuperate completely. The grandmother spelled out the instructions to her daughter-in-law, very seriously: every time she prepared a bottle, she had to pour the envelope’s contents into the milk. She agreed and put it into her purse. When she got home she took out the envelope and opened it. It was empty. She called her mother-in-law and asked if there was some mistake. The mother-in-law was indignant. The envelope contained Sister Julia’s breath; that’s what she’d had to mix in with the milk.

“How ridiculous,” the daughter said, laughing.

“Yes, I could have just died.”

It seemed the afternoon had gotten a few hours ahead of itself and they were left in shadow. They each took a sip of tea, and stopped paying attention to the TV’s uniform glow.

“What did you do?” asked the daughter.

“I poured the air into the milk,” replied the mother, shrugging her shoulders. “What else could I do?”

It was nearly impossible to imagine her mother young, but she did then. Her mother, who’d always seemed to have such a strong character. More than twenty years ago, this tough and controlling woman had been alone in the kitchen, perhaps a bit confused, pouring nothing into her bottle, expecting the milk to fill up with that nothing. Her mother, obedient, not asking questions, not resigning herself, doing whatever she had to do.

“Your dad told me not to listen to such nonsense, and to throw the envelope into the garbage.”

Your father. Her father. Just like the contents of the envelope. Nothing.

They finished supper and looked at each other in silence, with the dusky light and the dry sound of the TV in the background. Everything waning. And then their eyes had met.

“Sometimes, when you look at me, do I remind you of him?”

That’s what she’d wanted to ask when she saw the look on her mother’s face as she observed her daughter. A sad expression, one she’d never seen on her. So sad. But she was silent, and when they finished eating and the routine of Sunday together was over, she left as always, without a word.

One night, the man she had lived with asked her to tell him a secret. They were lying in the twin bed, still no curtains on the window, the light from outside illuminating the ceiling. The man she loved. He embraced her from behind, brought his lips to her ear, and said, very softly: Tell me a secret.

I was on TV once.