During her thirteenth month of trying for a child, a woman notices a small bump beneath her mattress and realizes it is a hand bunched into a fist. She is not surprised—she thinks back to books on pregnancy that she’s read and how they advised that she had to begin somewhere. She then gets dressed to greet the repairmen who have arrived in her home, and one tells her that an entire section of her attic has been charred in a fire, leaving support beams at three-quarters of the size they are meant to be. The repairmen confirm that they’ll be able to fix it, and the woman finds herself unable to concentrate, still thinking about her past thirteen months of trying to conceive a child. She thinks about a door in the house, which the realtor called the Mourning Door; it is a door that has no stairs despite leading outside, a door through which coffins are meant to be carried. The woman returns to her room and places the hand in a small sack.  Three days later, she finds a shoulder, puts it into the sack, and feels happy that she is making something. She begins to engage in her old favorite hobbies, like knitting and seeing movies, and she begins to find herself beautiful when she looks in the mirror. She soon finds the second hand, a leg, and an arm. She visits the Center for Reproductive Medicine, and they show her her fallopian tubes. Later, she goes outside and finds an ear in the garden and adds it to the sack.  A few days later, she drives to town and visits a yard sale, where she buys a sewing machine. When she gets home, she tentatively sews all of the body parts together, telling herself that it’s okay if all the pieces aren’t there; her son does not need to be perfect. After she attaches all the pieces, the child begins to move toward her as if he wants to nurse, but she realizes that he has no mouth, no elbows, only six ribs, and half a heart. Then she feels a spasm in her belly, and the baby twitches a bit before falling still. Carrying the baby, she exits her home through the Mourning Door and nearly trips due to the lack of stairs. Near a tree, she digs a grave for the baby, and when she and her husband make love that night, she cries.