The Antidote, addressing her unborn son, begins recounting the story of how she became 'bottomless'—the events at the Milford Industrial Home for Unwed Mothers in Nebraska. She contrasts Milford with the upscale Willows Sanitarium ('the Ritz') for wealthy girls, describing Milford's harsh twelve-month confinements, forced labor, weak food, false names, IQ tests, and the rhetoric of 'moral reformation' overseen by Superintendent Malvina Dent. Inmates were called girls, given pseudonyms (hers was Anne Fayeweather), and pressured into adoption. Babies of poor women were taken by the state.

She describes fellow inmates—Suzette the 'Incorrigible' who was sterilized, Melody the prostitute, Stencil the Irish giantess, Ruby, Geneva—and the ways they found laughter and solidarity after Lights Out. She arrived at fifteen, three months pregnant, with no home awaiting her. She felt her baby kick in January, and her love for the unborn child became her anchor.

She then narrates her backstory. Born Antonina Teresa Rossi (Nedda) in Prizzi, Sicily, in 1892, she was raised in Omaha's Little Italy by her beloved nonna Onofria after her father, brother, and mother all died. Her childhood best friend was Bobby Muhley, a Black neighbor. When her grandmother died of cancer in 1907, she was sent to live with the Guardian, a cruel church secretary who fed her scraps.

The Guardian's son, Giancarlo, a kind polio survivor, became her secret lover. They made love on the roof and in the pantry through the summer; she experienced both tender companionship and overwhelming pleasure. By October she realized she was pregnant. The Guardian discovered the pregnancy first, lured her to court under false pretenses, denounced her as a whore, denied Giancarlo's paternity, and convinced Judge Hoffmann to sentence her to a year at Milford. Antonina never got to tell Giancarlo herself, and at the Home she kept her love story secret, protecting it from the others' pain.