Summary

The story “White Dancing Elephants” opens in London in June. The unnamed narrator is a married woman of Indian descent in her early forties. She grieves a recent miscarriage that she had, and she addresses the narration to the miscarried fetus. She maintains a faint but likely hollow hope that she is still pregnant. She thinks enviously of her younger sister, who has two children. She travels through London by foot and by taxi, and she sees mothers on the sidewalks with their children. She imagines what her child would be like if it were born and grew to adulthood. She reflects upon the years she has lived in England, occasionally experiences racist discrimination. Before going home, she imagines a reality in which she is able to sacrifice herself in order to secure the birth and health of her miscarried child...