Unexpectedly, she is recalled to the room by another voice that once had a similar calming effect on her. He’d spoken just one word to her last night, after more than fifteen years of silence, and yet he sounds so clearly in her mind. Momentarily, it’s her father’s voice in the room lulling her with explanations and assurances, his grasp carrying her to safety.

52

Finally, here I am, a glow on the monitor. The sonologist is using the latest imaging technology to peer into the darkness of my mother’s womb. Various parts of me flicker on the screen as he moves the probe, sepia-toned close-ups that you, Grandmother, never thought possible.

Here is the umbilical cord snaking across the screen. And those are my fingers, and the curve of my bottom, and my distended belly. The protuberance there is my penis and the empty bag of my scrotum—Dr. Connelly clarifies that my testicles could take up to a year after birth to descend. And here’s my foot with my tiny flexed toes.

Even though you cannot see my face—my head has already descended into my mother’s cervix—you’re enchanted, your visions already excited by these odds and ends of me. You clutch Fiaz’s hand, for he’s closest to you, and lean against him, for the moment portals to some future that is haloed and more lovely, your faith in the persistent regeneration of life reinforced.

But at the very moment when you’re gazing with tenderness at me, you become aware of everyone gathered around, and rue: there are two people missing, two fathers. Your husband and Bill should have been here. What kind of world would deprive two children of their fathers while they are still alive?

It seems a cruel travesty that the only man here is Fiaz—and who is he to Seema, anyway? The gratitude that you felt toward him just a little while ago turns into resentment, as though he has usurped a place in your daughter’s life that rightfully belongs to someone else.

Meanwhile, the sonologist moves the probe around to locate my heart, and the image of my chest on the screen pulses with my heartbeat. He announces that my heart rate is exactly what it should be, twice my mother’s. More readings from various points on the globe of my mother’s belly help him estimate my weight, my volume, and the volume of the liquid I’m enclosed in.

“He’s a big baby, bigger than your average South Asian baby. But everything looks fine,” Dr. Connelly says. “The amniotic fluid seems adequate. The baby is in position and shows no signs of distress. All we can do now is wait.”