There are still a few hours until Abbu has to leave for the restaurant, so it’s perfect, really. I take my time making my morning tea, stirring especially slowly and going over the words I practiced last night. They seem lackluster and silly now.

“Ammu, Abbu, I have something to tell you,” I finally say, trying to breathe normally but somehow forgetting how breathing works.

They’re sitting at the kitchen table with their phones in their hands, Abbu reading the Bengali news, and Ammu scrolling through Facebook—so reading the Auntie news/Bengali gossip.

“Yes, shona?” Abbu says, not bothering to glance up from his phone. At least my momentary breathing amnesia isn’t obvious.

I stumble forward, nearly spilling my tea, and somehow make it to the chair at the top of the table.

“Ammu, Abbu,” I say again. My voice must sound grave because they finally look up, twin frowns on their lips as they take me in, trembling hands and all. I wish all of a sudden that I had spoken to Priti. That I’d allowed her to talk me out of it. I am, after all, only sixteen, and there’s still time. I’ve never had a girlfriend. I’ve never even kissed a girl, only dreamed of it while staring at the cracks on my ceiling.

But we’re already here and my parents are looking at me with expectation in their eyes. There is no turning back. I don’t want to turn back.

So I say, “I like women.”

Ammu frowns. “Okay, that’s good, Nishat. You can help your Khala with the wedding.”

“No, I’m …” I try to remember the word for lesbian in Bengali. I thought I had committed it to memory, but clearly not. I wish I’d written it on my hand or something. Like a cheat sheet for coming out.

“You know how Sunny Apu is going to marry Abir Bhaiya?” I try again.

Ammu and Abbu nod, both looking equally bewildered by the turn this conversation is taking. I’m right there with them, if I’m being perfectly honest.

“Well, I think in the future I won’t want to marry a boy at all. I think I’ll want to marry a girl instead,” I say lightly, like this is a thought that just popped into my head, not something I’ve spent years agonizing over.

There’s a moment when I’m not sure they understand, but then their eyes widen, and I can see realization settling into them.

I expect something. Anything.

Anger, confusion, fear. A mixture of all of those things, maybe.

But Ammu and Abbu turn to each other instead of me, communicating something through their gaze that I don’t understand at all.

“Okay,” Ammu says after a beat of silence passes. “We understand.”

“You do?”

Ammu’s frown and the chill in her voice suggests anything but understanding.

“You can go.”