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night.
    In my grandmother’s room, there were the expected two double beds pushed together, united under a king-size blue paisley bedcover. She sat on one side of the bed and brushed the oil through her hair, accumulating on her lap a little pile of hair that had fallen out. Ammamma once had very thick black hair, but now I caught frequent glimpses of scalp between the coils of gray hair, and only a rare glimpse of black, when she bowed her head to brush the underside section at the nape of her neck. The bath oil had a strong sweet smell, and there was the smell of the Vicks and the rosewater, and of the incense that was lit every morning and evening in front of the little shrine my grandmother kept in one corner of the room. There on the dresser were the English biscuit tins, adorned with distinguished royal cavalry, that my cousins from London brought on visits. They contained my grandmother’s medications, and when the lid to any of them was opened, there would be the musty and tart smell of vitamins and powdery prescriptions and ayurvedic ointments, and dried herb treatments.
    It would only be a matter of days before all of that permeated me, my hair, my clothes, my magazines and books.
    â€œWhy don’t 1 sleep in Brindha’s room and keep her company? We only have a week together before she goes back to boarding school.”
    â€œThe ayah sleeps in there with me. But we can let her go early, since this is my last week,” said Brindha.
    â€œBrindha hasn’t organized her things yet for school so I’m afraid her closets are a mess. Are you sure you don’t want to use all this space?” Ammamma opened the armoire doors. One whole side was bare and empty, the shelves had been newly lined with pretty paper. The other side was packed tight with my grandmother’s things, everything wedged precariously into place: more biscuit tins, blood pressure equipment still stored in its original now tattered box, skeins of wool in garish green and yellow, letters and papers rubberbanded together, a pile of prayer books with the bindings falling off, and then stacked on top of each other in folded squares, drab sari after drab sari. I felt the way I had felt when Bobby, my lab partner in chemistry last year, opened his mouth really wide to show me where he got his tooth pulled, and I saw red gums and a chipped tooth and fat silver fillings and a gaping hole, and I hadn’t asked to see any of it.
    â€œI’m sure Brindha and I can manage, Ammamma.”
    â€œI’m good at sharing, remember,” Brindha said to Ammamma. “I know I’m not neat all the time, but when I ask for you or Amma to come sleep over I make everything nice, don’t I?”
    She turned to me. “Not because I’m scared or anything, I just like to have them over for a little slumber party sometimes. The ayah is too tired to stay up late with me.”
    â€œI’ll stay up late with you, I promise,” I said.
    â€œWhat do we do about mosquito nets for Maya?"Brindha asked Ammamma.
    â€œI hope the mosquitoes aren’t as bad as last time,” I said. I’d gone home last time with lots of battle scars. Mosquitoes seemed to like foreign goods, my uncle had said. They liked imports better than Made in India, he joked. My cousins and my grandmother and everyone except newborns slept without netting, and somehow they never got more than an occasional bite. I had slept under mosquito nets every night, but was sufficiently tortured during dinner, teatime, early evening walks.
    â€œI’m not sure the mosquitoes will be any kinder to you,” Ammamma said. “The trouble is, only this room has bed-posts to hang the netting from.”
    â€œI have bug spray with me, 1 can use that.” Anyway, I didn’t want everyone having to bother to put the nets up for me every night and take them down every morning. I didn’t want so much fuss this summer; I just wanted to be able