Before I could finish, Mohini said, “You know what really bothers me? Your blabbering.”

“Why can’t I talk to Nimita? The two of you talk and laugh all day, but when I walk in you stop. When I’m around, you both whisper as if I’m going to steal your voices. It is always the two of you, Nimita and Mohini, Mohini and Nimita, as if you were a set of tabla, drums. Until last year you even walked to college and back together.”

“You know Mummy doesn’t want Nimita to go out alone,” Mohini said.

“Yes, but I’m your sister, too. Why don’t you include me?”

She didn’t say anything. I stood there wanting to do something, anything, but all I could do was watch as Mohini moved a comb through Nimita’s hair over and over again. “If you want, I’ll braid your hair next,” Mohini said to me.

A few days later when I came home from school, Mummy and Foi were sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor drinking tea next to a big plastic bucket full of wheat.

“Where are Nimita and Mohini?” I asked Mummy.

“They went to Crawford Market.”

“I wanted to go with them.”

“What for?”

So I don’t have to help clean the wheat, I thought.

“You need to go shopping as much as a monkey needs a ladder,” Mummy said.

“Is there something you want?” Foi asked.

I shook my head. I wanted to shop with my sisters or a friend, not with Foi.

“Chiraj and Vivek have been out for two hours. Are they still in the courtyard?” Mummy asked.

“Yes.”

“Still playing cricket?”

“What else?” My younger brothers, eleven-year-old Chiraj and nine-year-old Vivek, had each other and played cricket and marbles or ran around the courtyard with a dozen other boys all the time. As usual, I was left alone in the middle.

I wished I could invite my friends Yamini or Janki over sometimes, but because of Nimita’s eye problem, Mummy had always been afraid of sending her to anyone’s house and Nimita had never asked anyone to come to ours. Since she was the oldest, she set a pattern for all of us. None of us invited friends home.

“How are you doing in math?” Foi asked as she handed me her empty cup. I took Mummy’s cup, too.

“So-so.”

“I’m here all day. If you need help, let me know.”

“Yes, get help now while Foi is here,” Mummy said. “You can’t afford to fail a subject and ruin your year.”

“I’m not going to fail math or anything else,” I said as I put the cups in the sink.

“Listen to the one with a rapid mouth.”

“And smart brain,” I said.

“And sparkling eyes,” Foi said.

I gave Foi a smile as wide as a mango slice.