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and beg for a few rupees from the occupant of a passing car, or else they would forage for leftovers in the big mounds of trash that often lay uncollected in the street for weeks at a time.
    “I really don’t want to go back there,” I said suddenly, shaking my head, turning to Shazia, as we continued our walk down the thoroughfare.
    “Then don’t,” she replied, stopping. She put her hand on my arm. “Tanaya, you’ll think I’m crazy, but I honestly feel like you belong here. Like Paris isn’t done with you. I don’t think you should go home now.”
    The wind felt cooler, and I wrapped my sweater tightly around me.
    “But I have to go. There’s no way I can stay here. My ticket is ‘non-refundable-non-rerouteable-non-endorsable,’ ” I said, repeating my grandfather’s stern directive. “If I don’t use the return portion, it will go to waste.”
    “That’s what return tickets from Paris are for. Wasting,” she said. “Look, come and sit a minute.” She led me to a nearby bench, and we eased ourselves down. I ran my finger over a rusty nail that held the painted green planks in place, confused about the conversation that Shazia and I were starting to have.
    “I’ve been in your shoes,” she said. “I wanted to be somewhere else and it upset everyone. But I did it, because I had to. I know it’s hard. But see how long it took you to get out. What are you going back to Tanaya? Tell me.”
    “My family,” I said softly. “My usual life. That’s all.”
    “Please,” she said, rolling her eyes. “From what you’ve told me, you don’t have much going on there. I mean, it’s hardly like anyone is lining up to make a reality show on you.”
    I blinked, not really knowing what Shazia was talking about, but understanding her point anyway. I knew that since things hadn’t worked out with Tariq, Nana would enroll me in the nearby Mrs. Mehra’s Institute of Domestics. All the girls in my neighborhood went there if marriage was for any reason delayed, and six months later “graduated” with important knowledge such as how to pickle lemons, how to remove stains from limestone, and how to best iron a man’s shirt so that the collar lies flat just so. I had assumed that I would go there too. I told Shazia this now, and she let out one of her typical guffaws.
    “It’s like your whole life has been missing,” she said. “Mrs. Mehra is going to have to wait.”
     
    The thud resonated in my ear long after I had put the receiver down. Fear—terror, actually—had helped keep my voice steady for the past fifteen minutes, but once Nana had ended the call, and no doubt dispensed with his love for me at the same moment, I allowed myself to sob on Shazia’s shoulder.
    She had stood next to me as I had spoken to him, her hand on my back, nodding sympathetically as if she were a nurse and I were a patient trying to down some foul-tasting medicine. She held my hand as I told Nana that I wasn’t planning to use the return portion of the ticket he had purchased for me, even after he reminded me that it was nonrefundable, as if that were the only thing that mattered. I told him that I didn’t want to return to Mahim just yet because there was nothing there for me. I know his heart must have withered a little at hearing this, because if there was nothing else in Mahim, at least there was him. I told him that soon enough I would go home, just not now. I was about to use Shazia as an example, but then thought the better of it. Nana presciently asked me, however, “Does that godforsaken girl have anything to do with this?” For a moment, his voice had sounded controlled. But when he realized that I wasn’t just teasing or testing him, that I was going to remain in Paris indefinitely, more or less on my own, he shouted at me with such wild anger that I was certain all our neighbors had heard him, as well as the slum-dwellers across the street. He called me names that I had never heard uttered by him: