Jaya placed the bag down near the flower beds and studied her daughter, assessing the flat expression that frequented her face so often lately. At twelve, Karina was already beginning to take on the manner of an American teenager—the disinterest, the sullenness—about which Jaya had been warned. Suddenly, Karina didn’t like anything Indian, not the food Jaya cooked, not the outfits she deemed scratchy and uncomfortable, not even going to the temple. The experts said this kind of behavior wasn’t personal, but how could it not be, when Karina was rejecting Jaya’s very culture? It was hard not to miss the lively young girl who had brought so much life to their family. Thank goodness, Prem, only seven, was still thoroughly childlike and curious about the world. Jaya had a few more years to bask in his boyish affection. There were some good things about having her children so far apart, despite the heartache it had caused. Jaya found the garden shears in the bucket of tools and sliced open the soil bag. “Must be tough without Isabelle on the team this season.” This was what she did now, poked around delicately since she never quite knew what might be bothering her daughter.

Karina shrugged. “It’s fine. It’s not like I don’t know all the other kids on the team. We’ve been together since first grade.” She flopped down on the grass, cross-legged with her arms propped behind her.

“Yes, that’s true.” Jaya smiled and thought about how different Karina’s stable upbringing was from her own. Jaya’s father, a diplomat, was posted to a new country every few years, where Jaya attended top English schools and their home often hosted visiting dignitaries. While their family life was cosmopolitan, it had the effect of accentuating, rather than diminishing, how properly Indian they were. Jaya’s mother knew how to prepare Indian delicacies from all over the country: thin crispy dosas from southern India and rich lamb curries from the north. Their homes were tastefully decorated with hand-carved furniture and sumptuous silk rugs. They subscribed to Indian periodicals and their dinner conversations revolved around current events back home. Jaya and her brother, Dev, were raised with the implicit notion that India, rich in its vastness and contributions to the world—raga music, great poetry and exquisite cuisine, to name a few—was superlative to whichever country they lived in.

“Okay, you know what to do,” Jaya said to Karina, gesturing toward the empty flower bed. “Start digging the holes, then.” Karina didn’t move from her slouched position in the grass and shook her head slightly. “Where do you want me to put them?”

“Come on, honey. Same as always, eighteen inches apart for the front row, farther for the row behind. I think we’ll need three rows total—flowering cabbage, kale, marigolds,” Jaya said, pointing to each of the trays. “What are these?” Karina touched a plant with gray, velvety foliage that looked like underwater coral.

“Aren’t they interesting? Feel the leaves. Those are called dusty millers,” Jaya said. “Why don’t you decide where they should go?” Jaya marked out spots for each of the rows in the flower bed and went to retrieve the garden hose. She took profound satisfaction in this act of planting flowers in the ground and watching them grow. Her mother had always kept beautiful floral arrangements in their houses, since they often had spontaneous visitors. But those cut flowers inevitably made Jaya sad, the way they began to wilt and smell rank within days. There was never the opportunity to plant a garden outside, with only one or two years in each place, often during winter, when the ground was frozen. So, Jaya learned to cultivate an inner life through her practice of classical dance, her own sense of grounding she could take wherever they lived. She had learned to be comfortable anywhere since home was nowhere.