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Aunt Sarita’s neighbor’s nephew. Saying it makes the fear something I can see and breathe, like the gray fog that hangs above the smoking section of the aircraft, where someone has placed me by mistake.
    Later, of course, I will laugh at my foolishness. Aunt and Uncle are there, just as Aunt had promised, and I pick them out right away (how can I not?) from among the swirl of smart business suits and shiny leather briefcases, the elegant skirts that swing above stiletto-thin high heels.
    Bikram-uncle is a short, stocky man dressed in greasy mechanic’s overalls that surprise me. He has a belligerent mustache and very dark skin and a scar that runs up the side of his neck. (Had it been hidden in the wedding photo under the garlands?) I am struck at once by how ugly he is—the garlands had hidden that as well—how unlike Aunt, who stoops a bit to match her husband’s height, her fine, nervous hands worrying the edge of her shawl as she scans the travelers emerging from Immigration.
    I touch their feet like a good Indian girl should, though I am somewhat embarrassed. Everyone in the airport is watching us, I’m sure of it. Aunt is embarrassed too, and shifts her weight from leg to leg. Then she kisses me on both cheeks,but a little hesitantly—I get the feeling she hasn’t done something like this in a long time.
    “O Jayanti!” she says. “I am having no idea you are growing so beautiful. And so fair-skinned. And you such a thin thin girl with scabby knees when I left India. It is making me very happy.” Her voice is soft and uncertain, as though she rarely speaks above a whisper, but her eyes are warm, flecked with bits of light.
    I don’t know what Uncle thinks. This makes me smile too widely and speak too fast and thank them too effusively for taking me in. I start to take out letters and packets from my carry-on bag.
    “This is from Mother,” I tell Aunt. “This fat one wrapped in twine is from Grandfather. And here’s a jar of the lemon-mango pickle you used to like so much—Great-aunt Rama made it herself when she heard—”
    Bikram-uncle interrupts. Unlike Aunt, who speaks refined Bengali, he uses a staccato American English. His accent jars my ears. I have trouble understanding it.
    “Can we get going? I got to be back at work. You women can chat all day once you get home.”
    His voice isn’t unkind. Still I feel reprimanded, as though I am a little girl again, and spitefully I wonder how a marriage could ever have been arranged between a man like Bikram-uncle and my aunt, who comes from an old and wealthy landowning family.
    The overalls are part of the problem. They make him seem so—I hesitate to use the word, but only briefly— low-class . Why, even Mr. Bhalani, who owned the Lakshmi Motor Works near the Mint, always wore a starched white linen suitand a diamond on his little finger. Now as I stare from the back of the car at the fold of neck that overlaps the grimy collar of Uncle’s overalls, I feel that something is very wrong.
    But only for a moment. Outside, America is whizzing by the fogged-up car window, blurry silhouettes of brick and stone and tall black glass that glint in the sun, making me dizzy. I wipe the moisture from the pane with the edge of my sari.
    ‘What’s this?” I ask. “And this?”
    “The central post office,” Aunt replies, laughing a little at my excitement. “The Sears Tower.” But a lot of the time she says, “I am not knowing this one.” Uncle busies himself with swerving in and out of traffic, humming along with the song on the radio.
    The apartment is another disappointment, not at all what an American home should be like. I’ve seen the pictures in Good Housekeeping and Sunset at the USIS library, and once our neighbor Aditi brought over the photos her chachaji had sent from Akron, Ohio. I remember clearly the neat red brick house with matching flowery drapes, the huge, perfectly mowed lawn green like it had been painted, the shiny concrete