7

Tuesday morning, Seema wakes to an abdominal pain. But since her organs are squeezed to the back to accommodate me, the pulsing cramps feel more like her back is seizing up. She assumes her earlier backache has intensified.

Nafeesa blames herself: “I shouldn’t have let you climb all those stairs last night.”

Seema must stay in bed this morning—Nafeesa will not hear of anything else. Seema drinks her chai, brewed strong and milky and sweet, sitting in bed with the pillows piled up behind her. Breakfast, too, is served to her: toast and an omelet, despite protests that she’s not hungry.

Later Nafeesa and Tahera discuss the menu for dinner the next day, for Fiaz and Leigh. Seema lies back against the pillows, languid in the soft hum of their voices. They are planning an elaborate meal: mutton biryani, chicken curry, brinjals fried in oil, onion raita, a vegetable salad, perhaps kheer or halva for dessert—all contingent of course on finding halal meat and the other ingredients.

“What if I go into labor by then?” Seema objects but is brushed off. Her mother and sister have taken over her kitchen, and her house, and her life, as she’d feared. But they seem so taken with their plans—debating which recipes to use, recalling past feasts—that she admits to knowing a good Middle Eastern butcher in the Tenderloin, where Bill used to buy goat, and a Pakistani store near it that usually stocks the small round baby eggplants.

The next point of discussion is how to do the grocery shopping. Nafeesa and Tahera both agree that Seema should rest, even as she complains, “I can’t stay in bed all day.”

A decision is made: Tahera will do the shopping, taking a cab. But Seema, guessing how uneasy the sketchy Tenderloin would make her, suggests Fiaz accompany her.

“He won’t mind,” she assures Nafeesa, who balks at inviting someone to dinner only to set them to work. Fiaz is promptly requisitioned: he’ll come pick Tahera up in the afternoon.

Although Seema rebels against it all morning, lethargy slowly seeps into her body. As if now that the finish line is visible, her body has decided to slack off.

“Sleep as much as you can,” Nafeesa advises. “Once the baby’s born, he won’t let you rest.”

So Seema half closes her eyes and lets the house fall away to a gauzy haze. From the kitchen float Nafeesa’s and Tahera’s voices, engaged in making a shopping list, her mother specifying quantities. Sometimes they argue over the amounts, to Seema’s amusement. She can picture her mother gesticulating gracefully like a dancer, palm cupped, thumb traversing the length of the fingers to indicate various amounts, as she does in Chennai, giving instructions to their maid.

By the bed, Leigh’s lilies droop more than yesterday, the cream a shade duller. Seema idly wonders what Leigh is doing at that moment. It will be a while before they’re able to snatch some time alone again, after the delivery. But she doesn’t want to think about it now. The future will have to take care of itself.