During that first month postpartum, Bina stayed up every night in her hard, flat childhood bed while beads of milk or sweat trickled down her sore breasts and still-swollen stomach. Ma and Papa didn’t have a full-length mirror so it would be weeks before Bina realized how unrecognizable her body was. Not that she had any mental space to focus on herself. She felt like she was underwater, constantly holding her breath. Every ten minutes, she pressed her hand against Suhani’s tiny chest and made sure it was still rising and falling. When she told Deepak about her nonstop visions of something bad happening to Suhani, he took her to the doctor, who gave her a one-word diagnosis: hormones. There wasn’t enough known about women’s minds after giving birth to really say much else. The doctor wrote down a prescription and slid it toward them facedown, as if it was a secret. Routine and stability are key to helping things get back to normal, he said. I don’t think acting is in your future. In a matter of months, Bina went from working next to the biggest movie stars in India to taking orders from Ma on how to just “get over it,” “pray harder,” and “be stronger.”

On Suhani’s first birthday, Deepak got a call from a classmate who had moved to Georgia and told him there might be a spot in the residency program the following year. They left the day after their visa was finalized. Deepak worked the overnight shift as a cashier at a gas station in Atlanta. It was the only job that gave him the flexibility to study for his boards and later apply for residency at Atlanta Memorial Hospital.

They lived in a family friend’s windowless, mildewed basement during their first five years in Georgia. The adjustment wasn’t difficult for Deepak, who was used to sleeping next to family members on the floor of the cramped bungalow he grew up in. Bina did her best to focus on their future. America was there to free them, give them the luxury to build a new life away from any judgment.

But after Deepak started residency and Suhani was enrolled in daycare, the endless days Bina spent alone suffocated her. A neighbor’s son made fun of her accent the first time she tried to say hi. They couldn’t afford cable or even the gasoline required to make a trip to the area’s only Indian grocery store. Her hours went by in a blur of cleaning and cooking and folding and pleasing. She wondered if the problem was really her, if she wouldn’t be accepted anywhere. Acting had been her way to slip into different identities, but here, there was no audience for her work, nobody who cared that she was once on her way to becoming someone. She had to face herself. Her raw, real self.