25

It takes Seema another year to decide to separate from Bill. During that time Bill’s desire for a child hardens to a demand. Seema asks for some time apart to ponder the matter, away from the charged context of their home, and Bill agrees.

But is it merely chance, or fate, that when they get together on the eve of a more final dissolution they come to conceive me?

Consider: Before returning one last time to her home with Bill, Seema has chosen to have her IUD removed, despite its considerable alleviation of her menstrual suffering, despite the protection it provided from the consequences of unplanned nights like the one in Iowa that resulted in her miscarriage. And that final coupling in the fog—

Had some part of my not-to-be mother come willing after all to concede to a lifelong commitment? Had she come searching for some new beginning in that ending?

Just like I must search for a way past her ending, lying silenced on an operating table, toward my own beginning.

Three

2010

1

I’m born of insecurity and need, of my mother Seema’s desire to fashion a family and home for and by herself.

Even so, it’s not until a few weeks after learning about my incipience that my mother comes to accept my inclusion in her life. During that time, the promise of me battles with the threat I pose: the disruption I presage, the additional responsibility for someone else’s happiness that I entail. She withholds from my father information of my conception when they meet to sign the summary dissolution, afraid Bill may convince her to keep the child, to raise the child together, or even to get back together, before she has time to decide for herself. But afterward, the task of delivering me, of raising me single-handed, is too formidable, too frightening to consider. You’ll never be ready for a child, Bill had said, and she believes him.

What changes her mind?

Is it to a happenstance, her sister’s visit to San Francisco, that I owe this life?

Consider: Receiving Tahera’s call out of the blue after her separation from Bill, Seema nearly discloses her pregnancy, conjuring up a future that definitely includes me, so she can better arouse Tahera’s sympathy and pity. Later, she feels guilty: she’d come close to trotting me out as an actor in her play for her sister’s compassion. Now she can’t compound the guilt by deciding to abort me. Her guilt makes me real. I’m born of guilt.

When Seema agrees to have dinner with Tahera’s family on that visit, it is to prove to herself that her sister doesn’t have anything she needs or desires. But despite her impulse toward disdain for the virtuous domesticity presented to her, she can’t help feeling envious of her sister’s life, echoing as it does the vibrance of her exiled past. “Wait till you’re a mother yourself,” Tahera says, as if that prize is out of Seema’s reach. I’m born of envy and rivalry.