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  “Please, please, please,” he whispered. “Help me find a home.”

  Mr. Channar woke Birendra to say that Mrs. Nair had to leave. He hadn’t meant to fall asleep and was sorry to have slept so long. Together with Mr. Channar, they walked Mrs. Nair a few blocks to a rickshaw stand. Birendra thanked her for visiting him, and for the food, and especially for the things she’d brought him. And then they said good-bye, and he and Mr. Channar were alone together, returning to the orphanage. He wanted so badly to know what Mrs. Nair and he had discussed and waited for Mr. Channar to tell him. But they reached the orphanage and still Mr. Channar said nothing, and he gave no indication there was something to discuss as he headed to his office. Was there something the adults knew and weren’t telling him? Birendra lingered at the entrance to Mr. Channar’s office, silently waiting to be acknowledged.

  “Is there something else, Birendra?”

  “Yes, sir,” he said and swallowed the lump in his throat. “May I please return to school?”

  Mr. Channar studied him a moment longer, then motioned for him to come closer, out of the hallway and into his office. The stack of papers on the desk was even higher from this new proximity.

  “Tell me this, Birendra. If you spent your days at school, how would you manage to help me here? Should the good people who come to us arrange their schedules around you? Or should you be allowed to enjoy our charity without contribution?”

  He knew the answer Mr. Channar wanted to hear. If he went to school, he could still clean, but it was true that he would not be there to greet people during the week, or to pour tea, or to show them to the hall and introduce them to the children.

  “No, sir,” he said, “but I could clean before and after.” Mr. Channar made no response, but he wasn’t pleased. It might be Birendra’s only chance, he thought, and so he suffered this confrontation. If Mr. Channar only knew how important school was, maybe he’d let Birendra return. “I’ve missed almost a month of classes. I’m afraid I’ll be very behind, sir.”

  “It’s good that you care about your studies, Birendra. Very good.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  “But you help here as payment for your room and board. Remember, I’m keeping you as a favor to my family. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. You will have to wait to return to school.”

  “My aunt and uncle have money,” he said, despite the fear he felt as he said it. His voice trembled, his gaze fell, but he continued. “They can pay you when they come.”

  “And if they come, you will greet them with your debt? Must they adopt it as well as you?” His expression and tone were even harsher than his words. “Would you not rather make them proud by caring for yourself in their absence, Birendra?”

  He did want to make them proud, more than anything. Maybe Mr. Channar didn’t know that they already paid for his schooling, that it was important to them as well. But all he could think was that Mr. Channar had said if they come. Perhaps he knew something after all. In any case, Mr. Channar made it clear that there was no point in discussing the matter further. The mention of the debt had left Birendra ashamed. He would have to be sure to make himself even more useful as long as he was at the orphanage, he thought.

  “Would you like me to help with your papers, sir?”

  The phone rang.

  “No, you go on with the others. I’ll see you tomorrow, Birendra.”

  On his bed again, Birendra sobbed into his crumpled sheet, grateful to be alone. He couldn’t push away the fear that he had been hoping in vain, that West London was just too far away, and that his aunt and uncle didn’t want a boy his age, either. How could he continue his studies if he had to stay at the orphanage and work? And who would pay for school if not his aunt and uncle? Would he be turned out of the orphanage eventually? More than once, he’d heard Mr. Channar exclaim: Everyone wants a baby. Now Birendra wondered what those words meant for him. He thought again of the dreadful tales about orphans his mother had told him—at the time to remind him he was still one of the lucky ones even though his father had died—tales about children who were sold into slavery, turned into beggars, crippled, even, to increase the profit for their captors. Tales of evil. There must be something he could do, he thought, drying his eyes on his sleeve. Would Mr. Channar find him a home if he asked? Was he an orphan after all?

  X

  Ramesh was especially handsome in the candlelight. He refilled his wineglass, apparently not noticing that Nayana had only been swirling hers. There was a lightness about him again, here at their favorite restaurant. He hadn’t stopped smiling since they sat down. The test run of the new tunnel had been a success, and she could see the relief in his face. The festive mood as he ordered a bottle of their special-occasion red wine. Even as he spoke about work, the fine-tuning his team would still have to do, he was excited again, and his voice lacked the urgency and anxiety she had noticed in it of late. And he promised the long hours he’d been putting in were coming to an end. Nayana felt a twinge at the thought of sharing her evenings again. She’d grown used to having them to herself. She was just being silly. A defense in case he took the news of her pregnancy badly. Would knowing add to his joy this evening? Or dampen it, giving him something to worry about again? Though a child was what he wanted, what they both wanted, they’d retreated from expressing that desire since the second loss. And then there was Daniel, casting a shadow of uncertainty on the already agonizing guilt she felt, not to mention her shame for being so terribly reckless in the first place. Would the sudden announcement force Ramesh from ignorance to face the truth he’d been denying? Was she wrong to think he had some idea about her recent transgressions? He was on his third glass of wine by the time their pastas arrived. He would get drunk at this rate, which he so rarely did. And she didn’t like to rein in his celebratory spirit. Maybe she’d tell him over dessert, if the meal had sobered him up. And if not, then later tonight or tomorrow morning. She liked when he drank too much. He was jolly, flirtatious.

  “My poor brother will still be in the thick of it for a while,” he said. “A minor issue with the cooling pipes. I told Raj it’s only fair, though; after all, he started after me. A younger brother thing, I told him.” She smiled at his joke and his sudden hunger. “It is a shame, though,” he continued, taking a break from his pasta to have more wine. “Jasmeen must miss her dad.”

  “As must his wife.”

  “Of course. But at least Tahira has Mum.”

  For once, Nayana might have preferred thinking of her mother-in-law to the thoughts that were suddenly floating through her mind. Could she justify waiting until she made it through the first trimester before telling him? Until after she’d done a paternity test and at least knew where they stood? All the doubt felt like so much pressure to put on the thing that was struggling just to grow and find a way to life in this world. But she wasn’t sure she could contain another secret from Ramesh physically. It was as if there weren’t room enough in her body for both. As if the lies would not make space for life.

  “Ram,” she said, making an effort to smile up at him. She could feel the desire in his locked gaze, and she almost blushed. “What if we took a little holiday? Got away for Christmas and the New Year? Paris?”

  He looked away, and she knew he was disappointed to have the mood interrupted with such an impossible request. He hated to say no to her, and she knew this, too. But even worse was that she could feel herself pulling his strings: if he said no to this, it would be harder to resist her plan to visit India when she finally revealed it to him.

  “Jaanu,” he signed. “You know we can’t suddenly leave for the holidays. Mum lives for the times when we’re all together. She would make our lives miserable. Especially yours.”

  It was true. His mother had never forgiven Nayana for stealing her elder son from the family home, for disrupting all natural order in their family, for not being Punjabi, for working and wanting a career, for acting so English. But mostly for giving her no grandchildr
en. Before meeting her mother-in-law, Nayana had been given no indication that anyone in Ramesh’s family expected her to be a traditional wife. And while he most certainly did not, he’d never prepared his poor mother for Nayana, either, perhaps knowing this would not be possible. He’d told Nayana he was taking a flat where they could live together alone, outside the family home, because that was what he wanted. In time, she realized it was to spare them both what he must have known would be inevitable. Soon enough, Nayana learned what it truly meant that Indian women married whole families and not just sons: marital conflict could stem from more than two sides. Regardless, when Nayana decided to tell Ramesh about this pregnancy, she would make him promise not to tell his mother. The last time they’d gotten the woman’s hopes up—they kept the first pregnancy, along with the loss that had burdened their early days of marriage, to themselves—she took it harder than anyone. So hard in fact that Nayana had felt like her own ration of mourning had been used up by her mother-in-law’s grief. She wasn’t going through that again.

  “You’re right,” she said, smiling at him. She reached for his hand, hoping to recover his good mood. “I just thought you could use a break. You’ve been working so hard.”

  The waiter took away their plates. Her favorite pasta had proved too rich for her tonight. Ramesh ordered a tiramisu to share. As he had with the wine, he would enjoy it mostly alone. He had drunk most of the bottle by the time they left, and he found his frisky self again in the taxi. Clearly he had ideas about how they were going to spend the rest of their evening. In the lift alone together, he pushed back Nayana’s hair from her neck and kissed her while she searched for the keys. As she was unlocking the door, he kissed her cheek, then turned her face to him. His breath sweet with wine, his lips and teeth stained purple. She told him to stop, as though she were being coy. He said he would never stop and tried to kiss her again in the entryway. She left him there, eyes closed and mouth waiting, and laughed her way down the hallway. She peeked her head into the office to check the answering machine. There were no messages. It was Saturday. What was the date? She looked at the calendar on her desk. It was the eighteenth, which meant Christmas was a week away. If she had thought of it, she would have stayed in tonight. Her sister always took Birendra into town on the Saturday before Christmas, and they called from the kiosk. Perhaps because Christmas fell on a Saturday this year, she would wait to ring on the day itself. She wanted to believe there was some explanation other than Aditi’s disappointment. Ramesh was filling the kettle in the kitchen. She stepped into the hall and called to him, “Ram, you’ve been wiring the money to Adi, right?”

  He came out from the kitchen and clumsily propped himself in the doorway. His drunkenness made her smile.

  “Of course, jaanu. I go to the Western Union by my office at the beginning of every month. Has she not received a transfer?”

  “No, I’m sure she has. It’s just that she didn’t call.”

  She told him to go sit down; she’d bring the tea. What if Aditi wasn’t waiting to call the following Saturday, either? If she was giving Nayana time and space? It would be just like Aditi not to confront Nayana with her neglect. Why was it that people in her life gave her a wide berth when what she needed was their presence, their pressure? It was the same with her girlfriends from university, too, all married, rarely in contact. Nayana pushed people away, of course; she had grown reckless with the affections of others, a symptom of her unhappiness, itself a product of the loneliness she felt in her life in London.

  She joined Ramesh with the tea. He reached for her hand and tried to pull her onto his lap once she’d set it down. She smiled but released herself and sat across from him. This was his corner of their house, where he read his newspapers and drank his tea and the occasional whiskey. Where the lamplight dimly touched down on the brown leather chairs. This corner functioned as an anchor for their home, as Ramesh did for her when she let him.

  She prepared their tea, adding plenty of milk in hers. He was waiting for her to make eye contact. She could sense it.

  “Naya,” he said. “What is it?”

  She looked at him over her teacup. It was his adoring gaze, protective of her, the love there, that finally gave her the strength. She set the cup down and put her hand over his.

  “I’m pregnant,” she said, just like that, and she thought she felt his hand try to retreat.

  He was speechless a moment. She strained to smile. With a shrug, she squeezed his hand, feeling it relax a little. When he spoke, his speech had sobered, and she was sorry for it.

  “How far along?” he asked.

  She hated that he wasn’t allowed a joyous response, for that moment of shock to quickly blossom as it once had to dreams of a family. Miscarriages took away that privilege, made a couple wary, distrustful of their biology, of everything. For Nayana, they brought into question his paternity, their marriage, her home there, as though the failure of the product of a love brought into question the love itself.

  “About two months, and I feel okay—I feel great. Dr. Shah says there’s every reason to hope.”

  The word, she knew when he looked at her, tasted bad in his mouth, too.

  “Of course, jaanu. Still, you must rest now and let me take care of you.” She nodded, but it was mostly that she was relieved to have told him. “Do we tell the others? Perhaps on Christmas?”

  She wouldn’t bring up his mother tonight.

  “No, I think not. Let’s wait a while yet,” she said. “Our little secret?”

  Ramesh responded, as he rarely did anymore, his head bobbing along the coronal plane, that Indian gesture reserved now for moments when there were no right words, no answers.

  “Okay,” he said. “Our little secret.”

  XI

  A second week at the orphanage passed, and still no one had come for Birendra. There had been no word from anyone, not even Mrs. Nair. So when Mr. Channar came himself to wake Birendra, early in the morning before it was light, naturally he took it to mean his prayers had finally been answered. And Mr. Channar was animated in a way Birendra had not before witnessed. He instructed Birendra to bathe and prepare his own breakfast, then come and find Mr. Channar in his office. He’d compiled a list of special tasks for Birendra to perform before his usual morning chores.

  “And put on your English cap today, Birendra,” he said. “Our client this morning is an American.”

  His heart sank. It had been like a dream that felt real for just a moment. The visitors were not his aunt and uncle after all.

  Mr. Channar’s desk had never been so clean. All the stacks of papers that had piled up were gone, and there were only the folders, each of which Birendra knew belonged to one of the children. He was handed his list of chores and told to hop to it; their guest would be arriving at half past nine.

  As Birendra made his way through Mr. Channar’s list, he practiced all the phrases he could recall having used, either in English or in Hindi, since he’d begun helping Mr. Channar with the guests. He polished the tea tray and scoured the pot and creamer. He scrubbed the sidewalk in front of the building with a soapy push broom. He chased out lizards and insects. And he spoke the phrases aloud to them, too: Please follow me, sir. Your tea, madam. Right this way to our nursery, sir. Congratulations on your adoption, madam.

  By nine o’clock, he’d done everything but mop, because Mr. Channar had changed his mind and told him not to; he didn’t want to risk wet floors. Instead Birendra could go around with a wet rag and do a spot mop, then put on water for tea. Mr. Channar wanted it ready as soon as their guest arrived. Birendra was measuring the tea when he heard Mr. Channar’s voice boom throughout the hallway. At first he thought something was wrong, then he realized Mr. Channar had answered the door himself and was greeting their guest. Birendra took a peek down the hall, but the front door was closed, and the woman and Mr. Channar were both in shadow in the dim light of the entry.

  “You may call me Madeline,” the woman said.

&n
bsp; “We are very excited to have you, Mrs. Madeline. Please join me in my office.”

  As the woman entered, Mr. Channar remained in the doorway and issued a curt command to Birendra to bring the tea. It would need time to steep. He quickly poured the hot water into the pot and gave it a stir until the leaves swirled and tinted the water brown. He replaced the lid and filled the creamer with milk, taking care not to spill any on the tray, in which he could now almost make out his reflection clearly.

  When he entered the office, Mr. Channar was seated behind his desk, and his hands were resting on the stack of folders. He was smiling widely at the woman across from him.

  “And tell me, how are you enjoying Kerala?”

  “Oh, it’s lovely,” she said. Birendra set the tray on the side of the desk and could feel her eyes on him now. “The sea is so beautiful and warm. And everyone is so friendly.”