An Obedient Father (30 page)

The garbage woman had straightened her back as soon as the camera was lifted.

"Ask her," Ben said.

Kusum did, and the garbage woman smiled and held up a fist. Ben took a picture of her shaking the ShopRite bag. Kusum was astonished. Anita laughed.

Carolyn and Asha wandered in from the roof, where they had been watching kites being flown. Ben introduced Carolyn to the garbage woman. "You look alike," the garbage woman said politely, though all she probably meant, Kusum knew, was that both Carolyn and he were fair-skinned. Carolyn leaned against her father's leg and his hand dropped to her head.

Kusum watched this and thought that she would like Carolyn to have Ben's capacity to move through worlds, carrying jokes and kindness and possibility with her. Then she felt Ben's love. She felt this and then, for the first time, felt the sharp shape of her guilt at having lived her life while Anita lived hers.

Asha stared out the airplane window. Kusum sat beside her.

Kusum and her family had flown back to America after agreeing to adopt Asha. Kusum had returned to India a week ago to finish the adoption paperwork.

Asha had known for four months that she was leaving India. But in the last few weeks she had been inconsolable, had begun to walk and talk in her sleep. At the Indira Gandhi Airport, she kept saying, "I was lying. I don't want to go." When the plane rose over the dust of Delhi, Asha pulled the red airplane blanket over her head and wept till they were over the ocean, at which point she fell asleep.

Now the Air India flight had just left Heathrow.

"Are we over a park?" Asha asked, turning to look at Kusum.

Kusum leaned over Asha's shoulder. The land was a perfect green, carefully divided by broad black lines. "Those are paths?"

"Highways." Kusum stared past Asha at the landscape tilting beneath them until it righted itself and disappeared from view.