He could tell that she did not understand. He found himself wanting to please her. Here was a new beginning for him, and he wanted to meet it as a new man.

His mother was in India and would not need to know. His father, if he had been alive, would not have approved. But even his father had been a man of practicality. It would have been his youngest brother, who had died during the famine, who would have chastised him. But that brother had not been shamed for drinking buttermilk or harassed on the street. The thought caught him, the innocence of his brother’s chastisement. He shoved it aside and felt the painful luxury of ignoring a dead boy’s opinion.

He saddled up Jivan’s mare. He would not be gone long; on horseback, the trip was less than an hour. As he was about to leave, Kishen came to the porch. He told her in a soft voice that he would be back soon. He kicked the horse into a trot before she could ask any questions.

The sun had risen by the time he arrived at Rosa’s home. Esperanza answered the door, puzzled. “It is him!” she exclaimed.

Rosa was standing behind her, wide-eyed and startled. “Why do you come?” she asked.

Esperanza interjected—“It is not right, but now I must go, Rosa. Otherwise there will be no flowers left in the market. We will have none for your bouquet.” She glanced at them both. “Alejandro will not be happy with me that I leave you two, but what can I do?”

Rosa nodded her head, but she looked away.

When Esperanza had gone, Rosa asked again, “Why do you come?”

“To ask a favor.” His hand went slowly to his dastar and unwound it. Underneath he undid the patka and his hair, dark and heavy, fell to his waist.

He felt vulnerable, naked before her. The ends of his hair had been with him for as long as he had been alive, thirty-three years of his life upon this earth, had traveled with him across the continents, as much a part of him as his organs and limbs. He folded the patka and dastar neatly and put them inside his leather pouch.

“I need a haircut and a shave,” he said, the way the Americans said it. “Can you help me?”

Her surprise flashed across her face.

“I did not take this decision lightly,” he added. “I have given it much thought.”

She nodded slightly. She walked into the other room and Karak heard the sound of items being moved, a clattering of possessions. On the table near the doorway stood Esperanza’s saints. He did not know them all, only the largest: the Virgin of Guadalupe. The early sun shone in at an angle and cast a shadow across her blue robe.