It was the nation where she’d felt personally violated when terrorists flew planes into buildings on a clear September morning, where that same day she went to the local hardware store to purchase an American flag and mount it outside their home, a small gesture of solidarity with her neighbors. Being American was woven into the fabric of her life—her connections with people, places, her family and the way she lived. Would she still feel as American, Jaya wondered, if she were to extricate herself from that fabric, to pick up and move back to India or somewhere else? Would it simply travel with her like the habits she’d acquired from the places she’d lived, like eating dates after dinner in Kuwait? Or would America be eternally in her blood like India was?

* * *

When the small white pills ran out, Jaya found herself waking in the middle of the night, unable to return to sleep. One such night, she crept out of bed and downstairs to the kitchen for some herbal tea. It was an eerie feeling to be the only one awake in the house and, it felt to her, in the world. Her phone blipped with a message from her younger brother, Devesh, just starting his workday in London. She picked it up and read:

Meh

An expression of indifference; to be used when one simply does not care.

A: What do you want for dinner? B: Meh.

Do kids say this in America? Mine won’t stop. Help!

Jaya smiled. Dev had been forwarding her daily emails from a website called Urban Dictionary, part of his effort to better understand his children. Smita and Sachin were seven and nine, sandwiching Prem’s age, though they seemed more mature due to their urban upbringing. Dev had met his wife, Chandra, at graduate school in London. Ironically, it was the first time either of them had dated another Indian person, to the delight of their respective parents, who nonetheless took credit for the serendipitous pairing. Chandra worked as a mutual fund manager, while Dev practiced law with a large firm. Jaya emailed him back a smiley face and, almost immediately, her phone rang.

“You’re up!” Dev sounded more delighted than concerned about her insomnia. “It’s so hard to call with the time difference.” He carried most of the conversation, complaining about the utter dullness of his role as a junior barrister. But the next time she was awake at that hour, Jaya called him right away, as it made her feel a little less alone in the dark house. These days, she often felt suspended in time and space, recalling the time she was ten years old and she and Dev were playing on a merry-go-round. He and the other younger children sat atop it while they called out for Jaya to spin it faster and faster. She ran in circles until she felt as though she might actually fly into the air. And fly she did, when she lost her grip on the metal bar, with the centrifugal force of the carousel, landing on the hard ground and breaking her left arm in two places.