The hush in the bedroom is then punctuated by quick sharp intakes of breath, Nafeesa’s desperate attempts to stifle her sobs. As with Tahera the previous day, Seema doesn’t know how to react. This is the first time her mother has alluded to her impending death, displaying open grief at the prospect. She reaches a tentative hand toward her mother, but Nafeesa brushes it away.

In the darkness, an immense abyss opens up between mother and daughter, in the space between their bodies in bed. It is Seema who lies rigid now, not breathing, as if even that could pierce the distance separating them. Her world turns soundless, complying with her mother’s wish that the moment simply pass by unacknowledged. Nafeesa’s sobs are someplace else, in a different room, a different continent. Only unmoving shadows remain, the dark curve of the calla lilies arcing over Seema in the ghostly moonlight streaking through the window.

Gradually, as Nafeesa regains control over herself, sound returns. She hears her mother say: “Seema, I want to say something—”

In Chennai, Seema’s rehearsed speech starts off well. The darkness is liberating: she won’t be distracted by her father’s reactions. She is the performer, her father the audience. She has prepared an impassioned argument, incorporating much that he has taught her, much that he should recognize as his own values. He will be proud of her—she will make him proud of her, not for nothing is she his daughter.

When does she realize her performance is coming up short? When Naeemullah listens but his grip on her hand tightens, his face looming large and featureless? His impassivity makes her falter. Her prepared words sound trite and unconvincing. She panics, losing the thread of her oration, digressing into explanations and justifications she hadn’t intended. Still he’s silent. She clings to the belief that she can salvage this. She only needs to find the right words, the right way to declaim them, and her father will respond with his usual applause and approbation.

She repeats sentences, phrases, rehashing herself in increasingly desperate constructions and combinations until she finally stops with a strangled gulp of air, her father’s grip painful around her wrist.

“You’re hurting me, Abba,” she sobs, trying to reclaim her wrist from the vise of his hand.

In San Francisco, Seema turns toward her mother, ashamed at having allowed her to cry alone. She takes her mother’s hand, lifts the bony knuckles to her lips for a kiss—dry lips to dying skin—as her mother had done earlier that evening, consoling her.

Mother and daughter curl toward each other in the dark of the room, their bodies adjusting to the space occupied by me, their faces almost touching.

“What is it, Ammi?” Seema asks, the words whispered to Nafeesa’s clammy forehead.

“Forgive me, Seema,” Nafeesa says, her fingers tracing—awkwardly given the constraint of closeness—Seema’s face, the bridge of her nose, the springy curl of her eyelashes, as though she needs to make sure that Seema is here.