The early nights felt like this: the peaceful lull of skin on skin, puffs of milky breath. My mind wandering, circling, ruminating. My body—unfamiliar and reconstituted, still bleeding. I felt scraped open, raw, exquisitely receptive to the world. Sometimes I thought, I am somebody’s mother. The thought shook me, rendered everything else unrecognizable. I sparked with creativity.

Marilinda Guzman was eighty-two years old, and the things her mother had never told her could fill the condo building that rose like a tall, sharp-elbowed gringa across the street from her own little house. Marilinda, her mother had never said, arranging the yellowed lace mantilla around Marilinda’s wedding-day face, you will be happy with Roberto. Her mother had never curved a cool hand around Marilinda’s cheek and promised, Mijita, your life will be swollen with love. Neither had she revealed, in solemn, confidential tones, Marilinda, on the fourth day the moretónes become bright as flower pollen, and that’s when you will be able to cover them the easiest with makeup.

The first time I breast-fed my daughter, I was surrounded by strangers. Someone had helped me slide free of my delivery gown, slick with my daughter’s newness. Someone else had helped me into a new gown. There were hands everywhere: first pressing my tender, flaccid abdomen; now sliding a new pad beneath my hips; now holding my newborn to my breast. The hands — blue-gloved, shiny — squeezed my flesh, guided it into her mouth. My husband, Adrian, stroked my hair. I didn’t know what to do with my own hands. I watched, like the most unnecessary stranger in the room.