down and look at the stars?"
"Uh-uh." Bella shook her head.
"It would be a big help to Mommy."
"Ahhhhhhh." Bella grabbed her mother's hair.
"Alright, maybe we'll try it like this." Liz climbed onto the white-covered bed beside her daughter and, sitting cross-legged, lifted Bella into her arms.
Sitara opened the drawer and pulled out a fresh packet of needles. The baby's skin matched her mother's perfectly—identical texture, hue, freckledness. They looked like they belonged together, as if one would be incomplete without the other. Sitara swabbed at the spot where she wanted to place the first needle, while Liz sang quietly to her squirming daughter.
Sarasvati wraps two arms around me. With a third, she smoothes my licorice hair, and with a fourth, she draws spirals like smoke rings on my cheeks. I hold her sari in my hands. It is burgundy and green—smooth and silky as coconut milk. There are old Sanskrit lullabies embroidered with gold thread in rows along the border. She sings them for me as she rocks me to sleep, her breath sweet with the smell of halvah.
As Sitara placed the first needle, the baby began to scream. Bella's pale skin was irritated and impressionable. Every time Sitara held her, she made a red blotch with her thumb.
"I'm sorry, little one," she said, trying to make her work as gentle as possible. "This won't take long." Still trying to clear the baby's congestion, Sitara inserted another needle.
I take a deep breath in, although only one of my nostrils is clear, and then breathe out fast and hard trying to flap the white paper tissue that hangs over my nose. Unsatisfied, I try again. I want to make the bird fly. The tissue is a white swan and I know that if I try hard enough, it will fly back to Sarasvati, with me tucked safely under its wings. I have been sniffing for as long as I can remember. Today is the first day I can breathe without having my mouth hang open. Bapa has just given me a steam bath because in the night I kept him awake with my snoring.
"Sitara is sick," I hear him say to Parvati.
"What do you mean?"
"She has a sniffle."
"She's a child," Parvati says. "They all get sniffles. Tell her to go to bed."
And so my bapa leads me back to bed. I complain because it's Saturday and he promised to take me to the park. But he is afraid of my mother and says that we can't go out. He offers to show me his book, but I dive under the blankets and hide there until he is gone. Then I slink over to the window and, using my dresser as a chair, I look out and watch other kids playing on the street.
Sitara removed the needles from the baby's small body. Bella was tense from screaming and Sitara wondered if any of her treatment would actually help.
"Let me know what happens," she told Liz. "And call me if you need anything. My answering machine is always on even if I'm not here."
"I thank you, even if Bella doesn't," Liz replied.
"She'll be fine." Sitara smiled. "She's strong and she'll find more strength in how much you love her."
"I can only keep trying."
"You're doing great, Liz." Sitara put her hand on the woman's burdened shoulder. "Goodbye Bella."
Liz smiled but Bella hid her face again and played at being coy.
"She really does like you. She sits by the door waiting when she knows it's time to come here."
"It's alright," Sitara said, laughing. "I've always been someone people love to hate."
"Thanks again," Liz said. She and Bella slipped out the door.
Following their path to the waiting room, Sitara prepared to accept her next patient, but there was no one there. She double-checked her calendar and confirmed that Rafqa had a three o'clock appointment. It wasn't often that her patients were late, especially when she herself was running behind. Distractedly, she went back into her office and sat down. The wind whipped a maze of brown leaves past her window—they tumbled like the half-digested chunks of almonds in the pit of her stomach. She stood up and plugged the kettle in to make more tea.
I am dressed in a silky black sari that shines as much as my hair, which is pulled back softly with a gold-coloured clip. On my left wrist I have twenty-seven glass and metal bangles—almost two for every year. The high-heeled shoes I wear are borrowed from the woman across the hall and I have paper stuffed in the toes to make them fit. Bapa stands and admires me in the front hall. I think he is proud of me for graduating, but he says he simply wants to remember my beauty.
We are waiting for Parvati to finish on the telephone. She has been gabbing for over an hour. Finally I beg Bapa to rush her because I don't want to be late. He calls to me that they are coming, and says I should go down to the car and wait. Holding my breath, I open the door and pretend to go out.
"She looks like an Indian peasant," I hear her say. "What happened to that pretty dress I bought for her?"
"She prefers the sari," Bapa answers. "Now hurry. She is waiting in the car."
"I can't," Parvati says. "My head hurts. I'm going to lie down."
As Bapa protests, I silently close the door.
In the car, he says, "Your mother has a hole in her head, and will not be coming."
Biting my tongue, I wonder if it's a mistake in his English, or if he hates her as much as I do. On the drive to school, I manage to bend each one of my twenty-seven bangles.
Releasing the unconscious grip on her left wrist, Sitara stretched out her arms. She focused her eyes on her fingernails and then turned her hands over and made an offering with her palms. She could feel the strain through the muscle just below her left elbow. Pulling back with her right, as if tightening a bow, she shot a burst of tension along her sore arm and out the window. Unintentionally, she hit a twig as it whirled itself to the ground. Sighing, she remembered that she'd always had good aim. She'd learned early by practising on her mother. At first, the things she flung at Parvati were made of stone. But later, as her resentment grew, they were made of words, which stung much harder.
"Sitara, I am here. In Halifax. At a hotel," her father had told her during his early morning phone call. "There are many things I want to tell you," he'd said with a crack in his voice that reminded her of calling India—reminded her of Chacha, who always told her that he loved her, even though as a child she knew that adults only loved each other.
Startled by the telephone, she'd knocked a book off the table beside her bed, tipping both a mug of cold tea and the iron candleholder Carrie had given her for late nights of reading in bed.
"Listen, I have to go," she'd said to her father, while kicking off the blankets to escape the heat.
"Sitara, I have come a long way." It had been four years since they'd spoken.
"I can meet you after work. Where are you staying?"
"The Westin on Hollis Street, by the
