When it is almost summer Rosa goes away for two days and Rosa’s mamma comes to stay with Sofia. Nonna is a small woman with hard edges and she has strict rules about what little girls shouldn’t do. No running. No loud voices. Wipe that expression off your face. No fidgeting in church. No elbows on the table. For God’s sake keep quiet, keep still. Sofia scuffs her feet across the floor and wishes her parents would come home. She imagines being a boy, but it’s no fun: there’s a void there, something missing. So Sofia stays a girl, but not a very good one. Her shoelaces are untied and she gets a drop of grease on her lap.

Rosa and Joey come back with Frankie while Sofia is in school. When she arrives home her papa opens the door to the apartment and says shhhh, and gestures to the living room, where Rosa is sitting on the couch, her arms around a bundle of blankets. “This is your sister,” says Rosa. Sofia’s eyes get very big, and she turns around and runs as fast as she can down her stairs, out the door of her building, and up to Antonia’s apartment.

“Tonia, Tonia, you have to come,” she screeches before the door is even all the way open. Antonia is halfway out of her school uniform. Her apartment smells like unwashed hair, like ghosts.

In Sofia’s living room, Sofia and Antonia crowd around the baby, Frankie, and pet the down on her head, examine her fingers and toes. And it is not an exact trade, but both of the girls can feel the world shifting: someone taken from their life, and someone given.

“Mamma,” asks Sofia, “where did she come from?”

Rosa gestures toward her deflating belly. “She lived in here,” she says. “Remember? You could see her moving.”

Sofia and Antonia look at Rosa, and they look at Frankie. They look back and forth. “But, Mamma,” says Sofia, finally, “how did she get in there?”

“And how,” asks Antonia, “did she get out?”

Rosa sighs. “You’ll learn when you’re married,” she says. “And until then, you have to be careful.” Her answer is not enough for Sofia and Antonia, who make a speechless pact to get to the bottom of this as soon as possible.

—

It is hours before Rosa rises from the couch and puts sleeping Frankie into the small crib that lives in the spare bedroom in their apartment. Sofia peeks around the corner of the halfway shut door. She tries to imagine that Frankie will live with them forever.