They trade weathered and folded recipes, briefcases, hairbrushes, casserole dishes, dog-eared paperbacks, wedding linens, loose change, throw pillows. The more of themselves they can leave with the others, the more real they all feel.

There is a time when the summer sun is at its peak where Antonia, Sofia, Saul, and Paolo seem to live in two apartments each: their belongings scattered evenly, their sleep interrupted often by the ring of buzzer or trill of telephone.

—

At night Antonia promises with a hand on her stomach that she will do a better job than her mamma did. I’ll take care of you, I’ll take care of you, she repeats as she falls asleep. Antonia makes lists. Glass bottles, stacked diapers, fresh knit hats in a row. A memory that is all sensation, all wordlessness, of Lina cradling her on the couch when she was a baby. I’ll take care of all of us.

With her hands pressed to the cool brick at the head of the bed she shares with Saul, Sofia feels the same as she did when she was six, when she was eleven. She lets fear make a home in her throat, in her chest. It steals her air and chokes her. I can’t even take care of myself, she prays. In response, the animal in her belly presses against her lungs.

—

Sofia wakes in the middle of the night. There is a low ache in her back that pulses in time with her breath. It rises and falls, spreading out across her hip bones and then receding to a bright point at the base of her spine.

She watches the long summer sun rise and glow against the morning clouds. The room around her is painted with shadows. The pain grows. It stretches its arms around her belly and it holds her so she twists the bedsheet between her hands. She breathes. The pain crawls up her spine, around her hips, locks the bottom of her rib cage in its fierce hands. Exhale. The pain fades. The blood pumps in her fingers and face. Sofia, lover of big feelings, is not surprised by the beast of labor. She feels herself swell toward the dawn and then away. Sofia is made of a roaring heat. She breathes the sun over the horizon. And then she wakes Saul. “It’s time,” she tells him.

—

In a private room at the hospital, Sofia wishes she could have brought Antonia with her. She wishes she could smell her mamma’s hair. She wishes she could kneel on the roof of her apartment building and howl. The room is all spinning figures in white, all stainless steel and well-intentioned bustle. Sofia feels small.

Before you know it, a nurse says to her, you’ll have a baby.

There is the needle in her arm. There is the plastic mask descending over her face. Everything narrows to a point. It is impossibly dark.

—