The Lowland

kindred. She walked up the path and rang the bell.
    5.
    It was a Sunday morning, the skies calm after late summer’s storms. Soon the kale, the Brussels sprouts, would be ready for harvesting. A few frosts would improve the taste. Last night, because the temperature had suddenly dropped, they’d put comforters back on the beds. Soon the time would change.
    Meghna was drawing at the coffee table. Subhash and Elise had gone out for their breakfast, their walk.
    Bela was washing dishes when Meghna came up to her, tugging on the edge of her sweater.
    Someone’s at the door.
    She thought maybe it was Drew stopping by without calling first, as he sometimes did. She turned off the water and dried her hands. She stepped away from the counter and looked through the window of the living room.
    But Drew’s pickup wasn’t in the driveway. There was a small white car looking brand-new, parked behind Bela’s. She looked through the peephole, but the person was standing to the side.
    She opened the door, wondering what would be asked of her, a signature or contribution for what cause. The glass of the storm door had been recently replaced for the coming cold.
    A woman stood behind it, putting a gloved hand to her mouth.
    They were the same height now. The dark hair was flecked with gray, cropped close to her head. She was diminished in build. The skin was softer around the eyes, subduing their intensity. She seemed slight enough to push away.
    She had devoted some attention to her appearance. A layer of lipstick, earrings, a scarf tucked into her coat.
    Bela was barefoot. Wearing the sweatpants she’d slept in, an old pullover of Drew’s. She reached for the handle of the storm door. She felt for the catch, locking it from the inside.
    Bela, she heard her mother say. She saw tears on her mother’s face. Relief, disbelief. The voice she remembered, muted through the glass.
    Meghna approached. Mama, she asked. Who is that lady?
    She didn’t answer.
    Why don’t you open the door?
    She unlocked the door, opened it. She watched her mother enter the house, her movements measured, but instinctively knowing the arrangement of things. Down the short set of steps, to the living room.
    Here, where guests were received, they sat. Bela and Meghna on the sofa, her mother across from them in a chair. Her mother was taking in the dirt under Bela’s fingernails, the roughened skin of her hands.
    Some of the furniture, Bela knew, was the same. The pair of standing lamps that flanked the sofa, with cream-colored shades and little tables wrapped around their midsections, on which to put a cup or a glass. A cane-backed rocking chair. The batik wall hanging of an Indian fishing boat, stretched over a frame.
    But proof of Bela’s life was here also. Her basket of knitting. Her plant cuttings on the windowsill. Her jars of beans and grains, her cookbooks on the shelves.
    Now her mother was looking at Meghna, then back at Bela.
    She is yours?
    Yes, I can see that, she continued, answering her own question after some moments had passed. Bela said nothing. Bela was unable to speak.
    When was she born? When did you get married?
    They were simple questions, questions that Bela did not mind answering when posed by strangers. But coming from her mother each felt outrageous. Each was an affront. She was unwilling to share with her mother, so casually, the facts and choices of her life. She refused to utter the words.
    Her mother turned to Meghna. How old are you?
    She raised her hand, showing four fingers, saying, Almost five.
    When is your birthday?
    November.
    Bela was shivering. She could not control it. How had this happened? Why had she yielded? Why had she opened the door?
    You look just like your mother when she was a girl, her mother said. What’s your name?
    Meghna pointed to a drawing she’d made, on which her name was written. She turned it around, so that it would be easier to read.
    Meghna, do you live here? Or are you visiting?
    Meghna was amused. Of course we live here.
    With your father?
    I don’t have a father, Meghna said. Who are you?
    I am your—
    Aunt, Bela said, speaking for the first time.
    Now Bela was looking at Gauri, glaring at her. With a single shake of her head, silencing Gauri, the admonishment slicing through her, reminding her of her place.
    Gauri felt the same suspension of certainty, the same unannounced but imminent threat, as when the walls in California would