This story appears last in my recently completed collection about Greek women and first-generation immigrants.

While unavailable online, it begins:

“When Gloria cries from her crib, her sound jams its notes into each of the six bedrooms before finding me in the kitchen, usually in the kitchen, at the stove or the table, eyes loose with sleeplessness. This palace is cold, so many rooms without personality, each of them filled with proof that we have money but no heart. Before we left Rethymno, Christos said, “Don’t worry, Sofia. America is made for opportunity.” Opportunity. I’ve been here eleven months and my opportunities have been to cook, to stay home every day without a person to talk to, to lie on my back at night while he rocks his pain into me, to give birth. Gloria. She’s so small, a sack of potatoes, six months old with doughy cheeks and blue eyes that can hurry up and change. She needs me all the time, her cries rarely stopping, and I’ve tried it all: feeding and singing and prayer, and Christos comes home and yells at me to make her quiet so he can sleep, and I swear this ridiculous house will be the tomb I am buried in…”