“But in the meantime you can enjoy—”

“Now. I want to go back now.” Ram had not known this truth. It had slipped from his mouth without warning. To return to a place where everyone spoke his language, where he need not explain history or food, or be trapped in the cage built of people’s stares. He had held his breath for a decade. Could he finally exhale?

Karak paused, but only for a moment. “What about Adela?”

Ram’s muscles tensed. He had never discussed Adela with Karak.

“What concern is that of yours?”

Karak’s eyes met his. Ram glared at him, daring him to continue.

Karak took a breath and his expression shifted. “Think of one last crop,” he said. “All of Moriyama’s land and ours together. It would fetch enough money to reestablish me. It would win back my wife and children. And you will go back like a warrior dragging a treasure chest.”

Ram said nothing.

“It is only one more season. You don’t mind living here,” Karak insisted. “You never have. That’s why you tried to bring Padma.”

“That is also none of your concern,” Ram said. He threw the shovel, unused, on the ground and walked to the house. The days went by and Ram did not pack his things or buy passage or close his bank account.

He had a feeling he could not name. That things could never be the same. That when he went back home, there would be another leave-taking, another death, a hole of ten years in his life’s fabric.

Clive returned three days later. It was Ram who met him first, near the roadway. “We will need seed for the entire field,” Ram said loudly, as Karak approached. He did not meet Karak’s eye.

31

July 1923

HE WOULD STAY FOR A LAST LETTUCE CROP, THAT IS WHAT HE TOLD himself. Eight more months, maybe nine. Everything could remain the same until then. He need not even tell Jivan until later.

The next Sunday Ram went to the dressmaking shop at lunchtime, as usual. The street was deserted. He knocked softly and Adela opened the back door.

There must have been guilt on his face—or something else. She pulled away from him. “What is it?” she asked. Her eyes expressed his own worry. He was surprised at how well she knew him. The decision was an intangible thing, but he could feel the truth of it come between them, as if it had shape and form.

“After the harvest next spring, I will go home,” he blurted out. It was a relief to say it out loud.

“Oh!” she exclaimed, then the knowledge settled. Her face flushed, slowly. “You never cared for me, did you?” she said.

This way of speaking about care was strange to him, as if care were an active thing, not prescribed by the situation. Who were they to each other, after all? Neither Punjabi nor Mexican society recognized them; how could they define themselves? They stood in a borderland, belonging to no one, to neither side, undefined. He wished he had said nothing.