“Not to my breasts—to my breast milk.” Aliyah, though I adored her, had an annoying habit of listening to only part of what I said rather than hearing out the whole thing. “You just have to heat it in a pan, with some water. I put the pan out for you, and the milk is in the plastic bags in the freezer.”

“I’ll just zap it in the microwave,” she said sleepily, picking up Michael from his crib. He stirred restlessly.

“No, don’t do that. It’s not safe. Some study I read about showed that it releases toxins or something. Just use the pan. Are you OK?”

She looked bewildered, standing in her red terry bathrobe, with mismatched socks, rocking Michael in her arms.

“Habibti, I pump my breasts during the day when Michael isn’t feeding—so they don’t stay so full. That’s what that little machine is in the bedroom—my pump.”

“Why don’t you just give him formula?”

“It’s too expensive,” I said, grunting as I lifted a box of John’s books off the floor. “Anyway, our moms breastfed us until we were practically walking up to them and asking for it.”

“That’s true,” she agreed, almost reluctantly. “It’s just funny to think that we’re turning into our moms.”

“I’m trying not to do that,” I’d joked, then paused when I saw her expression—a rolling of the eyes and a slight shake of the head. “What?”

“You’re too hard on your mom—it’s like everyone loves her, except you.”

“That’s fine,” I returned quickly, “because she likes everyone except me.”

Before she could say anything else, I’d kissed the slumbering Michael’s forehead and winked at Aliyah before struggling out the front door with my burden.

At the community craft sale and flea market, I set up most of my items on a small card table and laid out the rest in boxes on the ground. The sale was being held along Locust Walk, which cut through the University of Pennsylvania campus. It seemed as if the whole neighborhood had come out and set up stalls to sell their chipped coffee mugs, five-hundred-piece puzzles, mismatched Lenox china, Ann Taylor tweed blazers, and worn Coach leather handbags.

One elderly man strolled by my table, carrying a golf club bag over his shoulders. Rich, probably a doctor, I thought. He grinned at me and peered at my sale items politely.

“How’s business, pretty lady?”

“Not bad, I guess—I only set up an hour ago.”

“You’ve been here since seven?”

“That’s when they told us to set up.”

“I see, I see.” He picked up one of John’s books—A People’s History of the United States—and leafed through it. John’s mother had given it to him for Christmas last year. I realized suddenly that many of my items for sale had been given to us by John’s mother—there was the chenille sweater she’s given me for my birthday, one that had a wide collar and tunic shaping, the kind of thing I would never wear. I looked at it more closely—it still had a Macy’s sales tag, with the price ripped off, dangling from the sleeve. I also spied some of the baby outfits she had bought for Michael; he was growing so fast that hardly anything fit him any longer. I made a mental note to shop at the other tables myself to see if anyone was selling used baby clothes cheaply.