“Why don’t they go in the basement?” Lita asked.

“They don’t have basements, dummy,” said Kate.

“It just makes you wonder,” Charlie said. He was basting chicken on the grill. “Why do people insist on living in places that are clearly unsuitable for human habitation?”

Joan had no answer for that. She was still a little dizzy from watching the Times speed by on microfilm. The dress from Bangladesh hung heavily from her shoulders, pressing her into a lawn chair under the oak tree. Joan considered this tree. She laid a hand, fingers spread slightly, against its trunk, and looked up through the leaves to the sky.

…a woman dressed in a sari and veil stood beside the cash register, her long brown fingers folded on the counter in front of her.

Across the street from the Racquet Club, where Kate and Lita had swimming lessons on Saturday mornings, Joan discovered a little import store she had never noticed before she bought the dress from Bangladesh. Each week, while the girls improved their crawl stroke and practiced water safety, Joan stocked up on handmade paper, cane baskets, jute bags, and textiles, all imported from the kinds of places newspapers identify on little maps next to stories about famine, earthquake, pestilence, and war. One morning, as she lifted a tangle of jute plant hangers from a woven hamper in the corner of the store, a voice behind her said, “They are called sikas.”

Joan turned around. Instead of the usual Mennonite lady, a woman dressed in a sari and veil stood beside the cash register, her long brown fingers folded on the counter in front of her. “In Bangladesh,” the woman said, “the people hang them from the ceiling and put everything inside. They are like,” she hesitated, looking for a word, “like the cupboards.”

“Really,” Joan said. “You know, my dress was made in Bangladesh, too.” She held the skirt out in a half-curtsey.

The woman looked Joan’s plaid jumper up and down. Smiling faintly, she said, “You should shop here. We buy direct.”

Joan bought a bag full of jute baskets that morning and took them home, where she hung a half-dozen from the kitchen ceiling, filling them with silverware, bills, rolled-up napkins, pot holders, and bags of recyclable plastic that she took from her remodeled cupboards and drawers. In the living room, she filled four more with CDS and tapes.