I’m going to lose it in this country, she told Deepak after one of his weekend call shifts. We have to go back to India even if that means we failed and couldn’t make it here.

They looked up which tickets to Bombay they could afford and lugged their only giant suitcase out from under the bed. The next day, Deepak came home from the hospital and told Bina about Jiten, the only other South Asian doctor he’d met at Atlanta Memorial. They invited Jiten and Anita to their basement apartment, where the four of them ate sautéed chickpeas, rice with yogurt, and lentils. They bonded over their shared love and longing for Bombay as Suhani read her beloved Corduroy book.

Bina was sure that her excitement at being able to converse with someone besides Deepak came on too strong. But Anita showed up the next morning with a Tupperware container full of mamra. They shared the puffed rice and cups of chai on a rickety side table Deepak had found at Goodwill. Anita launched into a slew of complaints about their husbands’ long hours, the lavish life she left behind in Bombay, and the racist landlord who scowled at her every time she got the mail.

Yes! This is the real her! Bina thought as she relished the catharsis that could only come from freely bitching with another woman.

After that morning, they saw each other every day. Their bond reminded Bina of the kind she’d had with girls when she was in school, rooted in circumstance but sustained by a natural, easy chemistry. Suddenly, all the mundane things that filled Bina’s days had a purpose because someone else, someone she cared about, was doing them, too. They both made sure chai was on the table every morning and hot, cumin-spiced food was on the table every night. They both changed bedsheets and ironed dress shirts. They carpooled to the Indian grocery store to pick out the best okra, packages of spices that gleamed like jewels, and Cadbury chocolates. When their husbands worked thirty-six-hour shifts, they spent afternoons at each other’s homes, sharing everything from OshKosh B’gosh baby clothes to recipes for vegetarian dishes to childhood stories about Bombay. They piled tiny plates with stacks of Oreos, wrapped their babies in hand-block-printed shawls from Rajasthan, and watched The Bold and the Beautiful. They picked each other’s families up from the airport. They learned the intricacies of a new country that seemed to oscillate between embracing and rejecting them. They co-planned birthday and anniversary parties with, first, Carvel cakes from the grocery store’s frozen section and, later, tiered cakes from a hole-in-the-wall bakery. They learned to speak English without a Gujarati accent and then came to the realization that speaking with an accent didn’t make them any less American.