We drove by houses with high white walls guarding their secrets. We liked our walls in Colombo. Yes, they kept the other 99 percent out. But they also hid us away. Kept us safe.

“Who’s taking care of your place now?” Mahesh asked.

“Seetha is still here.”

“Seetha? Sha! Still, ah? I wish our servants were as loyal.” I tensed at the word. It was normal to call the household help “servants” in Sri Lanka, and I’d definitely get laughed at if I pointed out the political incorrectness of it to Mahesh, but of course the word choice made me uncomfortable. I get accused of this whenever I visit, though—starting from back when I was in university. Accused of being “woke.” Made fun of for applying an American context to words that meant something very different here.

Having someone help in the house was another completely normal part of living in Sri Lanka that never struck me as strange until I left. Men and women from the more rural areas of the country would seek employment as gardeners or housemaids in Colombo, often living with families for years. Upper-class Colombo ladies would love to boast about how well they treated their help and how they considered them to be a part of the family. I mean, they’d never make their actual family only enter the house from the back door and use a separate “servants’ ” bathroom, but there I was, being woke again.

Still, it was true that I’ve never thought of Seetha as a servant. Housekeeper, perhaps, even though it was still quite a stretch. My father had employed her to run the house and take care of me after my mother died, and she had stayed on, working for those who rented the house while I was away. It was my only condition, actually, when letting the place out. My mother loved this house. It’s why I never sold it, even though I could probably make a killing off the land value alone. It was the last true part of her to exist. And Seetha is the only person I could trust not to have it erased.

Not that Seetha and I were close. Not that she ever filled the aching gap left behind when my mother died and my father had decided it was better I remained in Sri Lanka under the eye of a housekeeper than disrupt his new family’s life in England.

But there she was, standing on the open veranda that wrapped around my once-home, arms crossed, her lungi impeccably pressed, hair pulled back tight in a severe bun as always.

“Baba,” she greeted me politely when I got down from Mahesh’s jeep. I could be a hundred years old and she’d call me Baba—the Sinhala word for “baby,” which is how the help address the children of the house. I would never be the lady of the house to her.

Her hair was still stark black—she’d been dying it herself for years and would probably slap anyone who suggested she stop, but there were certainly a few extra wrinkles around her eyes, and she seemed frailer than I remembered.