There was a gasp from the crowd. Anil held the last breath he’d drawn. Even at the age of ten, he understood the danger of threatening another man’s pride. Yelling matches had erupted among his relatives over far less. Every pair of eyes in the room turned to Anil’s uncle, who looked shocked by the suggestion he could be at fault for Maya’s affliction. A deep crease appeared between his eyebrows.

“So then,” Papa continued, “we must turn to the child. What do we know about Maya?”

Anil was momentarily lost. What was there to know about an infant, one who wasn’t even present? Looking around the room, he could see that the others were confused as well.

“Maya,” Papa repeated. “Her name means illusion. What is an illusion? Something that tricks our eyes? Something that is not as it appears? Bhai,” he turned to his brother-in-law, reaching out a hand to his forearm, “you’re too smart to be tricked, aren’t you? You know your true daughter is not this harelip. You know your daughter, your true daughter, is beautiful and loyal and will bring you years of care and happiness, don’t you?”

Anil’s uncle stared at Papa for several moments. The furrow between his eyes softened, and very slowly he nodded his head. It was such a slight movement, everyone waited until he nodded again, then the crowd began to murmur agreement. Anil’s aunt stopped crying and sniffled sharply a few times. Papa smiled and sat back. “So what we must do is uncover your true daughter. It will take a strong and clever man. Are you up for the task, bhai? Yes? Very good.”

Three weeks later, Anil’s father and uncle took Maya to the charity medical clinic traveling through a nearby town, where she underwent an hour-long free surgical procedure to repair her cleft lip. Nobody else was aware of such an option; Papa was one of the few people in the village who could read the newspaper from town. A few months later, Maya had healed completely from the surgery. When the bandages came off, the illusion was gone. In its place was a smile as beautiful and perfect as those with which Maya’s three younger siblings were later born. Every year thereafter on Maya’s birthday, her parents brought Papa an offering of blessed fruit and flowers.

* * *

THE NIGHT Papa returned from the clinic, after Ma and Anil’s four younger siblings had gone to sleep, Anil sat with his father in the gathering room, across the great table from one another, the chessboard between them.

“I’ve never seen them like that,” Anil said. His aunt and uncle had both been in tears as they left the Big House with Maya.

One corner of Papa’s mouth turned up in a weary half-smile. “Your uncle is a good man at heart. He just needed some guidance to find the right path.”

“You helped him?” It came out as a question, though Anil hadn’t intended it that way.