[MUSIC PLAYING]
CHITRA BANERJEE DIVAKARUNI: I'll just give you a little background for this part of the story where a young woman, Mita, has gotten married a few months back in an arranged marriage. And now she's on her way to the United States. And she's imagining what her married life is going to be, and she's imagining what America will be. And one of the points, or themes, I guess, in this story is that we all have such fantasies about America. Immigrants have-- America is, in some ways, the last great myth of the 20th century, this feeling that it's the golden land. So here she is, and she is thinking about her husband and her life, and also her husband's place of work. When the plane takes off, I try to stay calm, to take deep, slow breaths like Father does when he practices yoga. But my hands clench themselves onto the folds of my sari. And when I force them open, after the Fasten Seat Belt and No Smoking signs have blinked off, I see they have left damp blotches on the delicate crushed fabric. It is hard for me to think of myself as a married woman. I whisper my new name to myself, Mrs. Sumita Sen. But the syllables rustle uneasily in my mouth, like a stiff satin that's never been worn. Somesh had to leave for America just a week after the wedding. He had to get back to the store, he explained to me. He had promised his partner. The store, it seems more real to me than Somesh, perhaps because I know more about it. It was what we had mostly talked about the night after the wedding-- the first night we were together alone. It stayed open 24 hours. Yes, all night, every night. Not like the Indian stores, which closed at dinner time, and sometimes in the hottest part of the afternoon. That's why his partner needed him back. The store was called 7-11. I thought it a strange name-- exotic, risky. All the stores I knew were piously named after gods and goddesses-- Ganesh Sweet House, Lakshmi Vastrala For Fine Saris, to bring the owners luck. The store sold all kinds of amazing things-- apple juice in cardboard cartons that never leaked, American bread that came in cellophane packages already cut up, canisters of potato chips, each large grainy flake curved exactly like the next. The large refrigerator with see-through glass doors held beer and wine, which Somesh said were the most popular items.