Mina had let Shree and Ma-saheb return to California, to her three children, without her. She refused to leave Shoban’s side, sitting with her day and night as Shoban said nothing. All Shoban could get herself to do all day was practice cricket at the palace pitch. Run and toss. Run and toss. Over and over and over. With Mina sitting cross-legged on the grass watching her.

The numbness hadn’t turned to rage until Shoban had fainted one afternoon while running down the wicket, the sun turning her skin clammy where her hairline edged her forehead. Just one day before she crossed over into the second trimester, the doctor had declared Shoban pregnant.

How an act that ugly, that violent, could result in such a thing, Shoban couldn’t believe. But she and Mina had made their way to the family planning clinic in Goa where they took care of such matters with discretion. It was the very last day in the pregnancy that the doctor would perform the procedure.

Grotesque feelings so acrid she could taste them swirled inside Shoban, but she had no names for them. Her ability to decipher her own feelings seemed permanently lost. Unable to curb her restlessness, she sat down next to Mina again. Mina took her hand and resumed her stroking, which, God help her, was actually soothing.

The woman sitting across from them in the waiting room smiled at them. “A girl, ha?” she said, throwing a glance at Shoban’s stomach, a camaraderie in her voice. A demented sort of commiseration shone in her bespectacled eyes.

She was dressed in designer jeans and a silk blouse, and her hair was blown out and highlighted. “How many do you have already?” she asked, not needing an answer or even acknowledgment from Shoban and Mina. “I have two.” She widened her eyes, as though such horrors were entirely incomprehensible. “Now, until we know it’s a boy . . .” She twirled her manicured hand around the clinic, indicating the fate of her unborn girl children.

The gesture made the white walls spin around Shoban. A typhoon churned up her guts. She sprinted to the bathroom and brought up everything she had ever consumed. At least, that’s how it felt.

It was the first time she was throwing up and it would not stop. Cramps locked her belly, her lungs, her calves, her toes. Everything spasmed like bubbling hot lava, desperate to leave her body.

With a soft knock Mina came into the bathroom and bent over her, pulling her hair back as Shoban vomited again and again.

When the heaving died down, exhausting itself, they sat on the stall floor, face-to-face.

“What if it’s a girl?” Shoban said, the words scraping her throat raw. “What if it’s a girl?”

Shoban wasn’t sure if her tears came first or Mina’s. But they sat there and cried, two women who knew how unwanted they had been.