Seema focuses on the steady tug as Tahera pulls her hair tight, even welcoming the sudden jerks and the attendant snap of pain. These allow her to momentarily forget the hurt in Tahera’s voice, to believe that she’s experiencing Tahera’s pain herself. Her mother has never mentioned any of this, and she has not thought to ask. Never caring how it will affect others—Tahera’s charge from yesterday stings, for there’s truth in it.

Tahera finishes with the braiding and, with that, her account. Seema examines Tahera’s handiwork: two plaits, expertly braided, exactly the way Tahera used to do them years ago. Daily gestures of sisterly affection that Seema had taken for granted, then completely forgot. She can’t trust herself to say anything.

Thankfully, Tahera too seems anxious to forestall a response. “Do you have any hair bands?” she asks, already halfway to Seema’s bedroom.

“In the dresser. Top drawer.”

Tahera must flee the living room immediately, for she sees not Seema of the last week, nor the sister who abandoned her years ago, but the sister who held her hand as they walked to school, taught her to climb trees and ride a bicycle, whose capers charmed the most dreary days into promise and delight.

She fumbles in the drawer for the bands. The bedroom is dark, and she needs light, but her mother is sleeping. She pulls out a handful of elastics to select a pair by the window. Her mother is curled up on her side, legs drawn in, face calm in the soft curtained light, no traces showing of the morning’s suffering. Some afternoons, finding their mother napping like this, Tahera and Seema would unbraid her single plait and rebraid her hair into twin plaits, like the ones they sported. Ammi would scold them when she woke up, though she wouldn’t undo their work. How young the twin plaits made Ammi look then, just like how young Seema looks now and how Amina will look in a few years.

A mother for whom time will soon cease, a sister recovered from the mists of time, a daughter whom time is changing too rapidly.

Yet, do not grieve. She cannot fade, though thou has not thy bliss, for ever wilt thou love and she be fair—

“Did you find one?” Seema asks as Tahera hurries back to the living room with the clutch of bands.

“I just remembered,” Tahera’s voice is unsteady, “how we used to do Ammi’s hair. If only—” But she can’t continue, instead holding out the muddle of bands to Seema in a trembling palm.

Seema takes the bands and gestures to the chair in front of her. “Sit.”

Tahera sinks instead to the floor. She looks at Seema for an instant, then buries her face in Seema’s lap, even though there’s little space there, the swell of Seema’s belly obstructing most of it. Her entire body shakes, her shoulders shuddering.