My stomach cramped up as I sat on the couch in our home, and I carefully set down my cup of tea and rubbed the left side of my belly with the palm of my hand. That was where the baby’s head was, the doctor had said. I was only five months along, and of course, this baby wasn’t completely developed (not according to What to Expect When You’re Expecting, which Nadia had bought for me), but I imagined a perfect, miniature human sucking its thumb as it slept in my belly, comforted and lulled by the rhythm of my heartbeat.

For some reason, I started thinking about John’s mother, and what she’d said that morning. Why did it bother me so much? Mrs. Martin had never treated me condescendingly—she’d always been kind to me, even when it was painfully clear that I didn’t fit in with the Martin family. Once, at Thanksgiving, when John and I were still “just friends,” I had picked a chicken leg—with my fingers, not noticing the tongs—from the tray and put it onto my plate, because that was how we did it at home. The dinner table got real quiet, as all eyes watched me. Everyone that night took chicken from the opposite side of the tray, leaving a small pile of chicken wings and legs near what I’d touched, like a contaminated leper colony. What would they do if they knew we ate mansaff with our hands, rolling the rice and meat into little clumps and popping them into our mouths? For the entire evening, I was known as “Hunan”—or even “Huran” by one elderly aunt who wore fantastically large glasses and sipped white wine every few seconds. At another dinner, I had used my bread to sop up what was left of the Caesar dressing from the salad on my plate. I wiped the plate clean and looked up to realize I’d made an unconscious and terrible mistake.

“Did you need more salad, dear?” asked Mr. Martin, peering at my plate over his glasses.

“Um, no thanks. I’m fine.”

I put the last scrap of bread beside my plate, and then for no reason, or maybe because everyone was looking at me, I stuffed it in my mouth.

Things like that still happened around my in-laws, and so I didn’t like to feel at a disadvantage—ever.

When John came home, I asked him almost immediately what he’d told his parents.

“Does that tea have caffeine?” he asked suspiciously, hanging his coat on the hook behind the door and inspecting the little tag that dangled from my mug. “Oh, chamomile. That’s good.”

“Yes, darling,” I said. “I read the books, too.”

He smiled and tugged gently on a strand of my hair, his signal for “I refuse to fight with you.”

I repeated my question. “What did you say to your mom about my job?”