“I love him,” says Antonia. She pushes her thumb into the seedy center of half a dill pickle, making a mushy fingerprint. “But our house is quiet, Sof. I love him, but he’s not happy. I never thought I’d end up in an unhappy house, but I feel like I’ve been in one my whole life, now.” The sadness of hearing this out loud rounds Antonia’s shoulders; her face fills up; her eyes brim over. “I should have married out of the Family,” she says. “I should have listened to my mamma.”

Sofia reaches across the table to hold Antonia’s hands. “Sometimes,” she says, “I think about what it would have been like if I had never become a mother.” Antonia looks up at her. If I can see you, I must be here. “But it doesn’t mean I don’t want to be one, Tonia. It doesn’t mean I can’t do other things.” If you can see me, I must be here.

“I should have gone to Egypt,” says Antonia. “I should have lived on top of a mountain somewhere. Do you remember Mr. Monaghan? That game we used to play, spinning the globe?”

Sofia nods.

“I play it in my head,” says Antonia. “When I feel lost, or restless. I spin a globe and think about where I might go.”

—

No one has asked Sofia when her second baby is coming in a long time, and for this, she is grateful. They are scared of her, or they don’t think she’s a good parent, or both. She’s ascended into a strange in-between world: she’s stayed well within the bounds of the Family, but has moved out of the realm of women, so people don’t know how to interact with her. The girls she went to school with have turned into stiff-nosed women. Sofia passes them on the street, in the market. They are all on their second or fifth baby. The wives of the men who come to Sunday dinner are always pregnant.

Sometimes Sofia remembers how she felt the morning Julia was born, before she left for the hospital. The way she knew—she knew—she could ride the waves of her labor all the way to the top of the world. The power of that, and the simultaneous powerlessness of motherhood, the way she can love Julia and have no control over Julia’s happiness, the way she is reduced to a voiceless decoration once people know she is a parent, even though she contains everything needed to build a world from nothing. There are days she’s sure of herself, sure of her choices, confident that she can point herself in any direction. But in the car back to Brooklyn, Antonia silent in the backseat next to her, Sofia is overcome by a sudden rush of despair.