—What does it feel like? To have a baby inside of you that will love you? Dallas felt Hush’s belly on the back of her neck. It was warm and lumpy.

—She might not love me. Look at you and your mother. I don’t even want to think of my mother, who took Oswaldo’s side. I swear, I would never take a man’s side. Especially not over my kid.

—What about me and my mother? Dallas defended herself. She was mad at her. But it wasn’t like she didn’t love her. —Do you think you’ll ever talk to your mother again?

—Not unless she leaves Oswaldo.

—Does it hurt, making a baby?

—It feels like what it is. Uncomfortable, I guess.

—But it’s also like you’ll have something that is yours alone. And no one could tell you what to do with it, because it’s yours.

—You buggin’, Dallas. I should’ve had an abortion. But I waited too long. And then I could’ve gone to college like I planned. You lucky, you could do anything you want with your life. Now I’m stuck with this.

Hush sighed and adjusted the pillow on her back, raising her swollen feet on the coffee table. Dallas wrapped her arms under Hush’s legs. She was the only one allowed to put her feet on the coffee table. Esperanza said that to deny a pregnant woman what she wants will mark the child with patches of desire all over its body.

—Give me skinny braids.

—Relax, you’ll be so cute, you’ll be like, Peter who? And he’ll come chasing after you and you’ll be waving him away. Spitting on the ground and watching him swim in your spit.

Bobby no longer asked Hush about her books. He took the books piled on her left to the library and piled the books she was about to read on her right. He didn’t ask her what she wanted to read. He fed her books in exchange for seeing her thank him with a half smile, as if to smile completely would break her.

Bobby did notice that the book piles he brought home became heavier than the ones he returned. He didn’t understand why. He had never looked into the books before. He took them out at random from the new-books section then returned them. And with time, the weight had such a discrepancy, he wondered if books became lighter after they had been read. The idea seemed feasible. Since a reader did take something away from a book: knowledge, ideas, a story they could tell. Could one reader make all that difference? Would it mean that if enough people read a book, it would have no weight to it at all? That it would cease to exist, or maybe its existence relied on the memories of its readers? At first, this theory satisfied Bobby’s curiosity, but even Bobby knew that he wasn’t a philosopher, that he was a man of matter, of real, physical-world things, and there must be a better reason.