Succeeding in her mission to let in every last bit of the sun god’s bounty, her mother turned to the couch and commenced glaring at Naina’s pillows as though they made her as nauseated as Naina felt. Her mother’s hands fluttered at her silk-kurti-covered heart, then reached for the pillows, which had obviously done something to offend her, and came back to her heart to flutter some more.

Naina’s parents’ house could have been a model home on a tour of a pricey subdivision from a builder selling the American Dream to newcomers. An expensive premolded version of Americana for those who didn’t carry the privilege of it in their blood but carried the means to purchase it with some fresh green.

Every single thing in their house had to meet one basic criterion: it had to appear expensive. Polished. A word her mother had chased with the fervor of someone who knew exactly what it was like to be on the other side of the class glass.

Unlike her mother, Naina had always been looked at as the It Girl, labels and perceived elegance obfuscating the person she was to the point where not even she knew what separated the two.

It had been a powerful shield, and then it had just become second nature, a substitute for something else that she was too much of a coward to define. Self-worth?

“Why so much color?” her mother said, as she had done before, when she’d first seen the bright green and magenta embroidered, batiked, and tie-dyed cushions on Naina’s yellow linen couch.

The couch was the first thing Naina had bought when she found this apartment. A space that was hers and only hers. She’d seen the sunflower-yellow sectional in a shop window in the Scandinavian furniture place on the first floor of her building, and she’d had to have it, because of how it made her feel and because she could imagine how the pillow covers she’d bought years ago in Kathmandu would look on it.

Mummy had winced when she’d seen the explosion of colors and textures and delightfully tacky embroidery and mirror work. Then, of course, she’d fluttered and asked if the couch could still be returned. Something about the fact that she thought returning the couch was a solution to the pillow problem struck Naina as too damn ironic.

Her mother had visited only once before today, to see if Naina needed any help “setting up”—which translated (even when it was not spoken in Punjabi) to making sure everything looked polished.

The day after her visit, Mummy had gray-gray, gray-blue, and gray-black silk cushion covers delivered to Naina’s apartment to better match that couch.