The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing: A Novel (17 page)

“I have no idea.”

“No classes together?”

“Just biology.”

“Well, that’s probably a good thing, no?”

Amina sighed. “If you say so.”

“Oh, Ami, don’t be so tragic. You just need some time apart to grow into your own people.” She sliced the top and bottom off an onion and then whacked it in half. She placed the flat side down and cut the rest into colorless rainbows, tears pooling in her eyes. “People need to grow apart sometimes to grow back together, you know.”

How did everyone know? Was it so obvious? Amina’s throat grew tight, as though someone were turning a bolt in her voice box.

Her mother wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, cursing at the onions. “Anyway, that girl is a little wonky in the head. Comes
from Bala’s side of the family, you know, delusions of grandeur, excessive vanity. All the women have it. Why do you think they gave her some ridiculous film-star name?”

“Why did you give me a ridiculous Muslim name?”

“Not ridiculous, well behaved! Amina and Akhil are names of good children!”

Amina slid off the stool. “I’ll be upstairs.”

It was good in her bed. It was soft, warm, and, even smelling of too much Jean Naté, comforting. Amina rolled over onto her back. Her Air Supply poster was deftly wedged between the second and third bar of the canopy, hidden from the disdainful gazes of Akhil and Dimple. Amina loved Air Supply. She loved the album
The One That You Love
, with its hot-air balloon hovering in a ringing blue sky; she loved singing “Lost in Love” even though she had been told repeatedly not to; she loved the way the lead singers, Russell Hitchcock and Graham Russell, shared a name
and
quavering, teary voices, like they had been shattered in the middle of the desert, like they, too, had lost their whole world to a long, hot summer.

“I’m all out of love,” she whispered to them now. And then that thing happened that had been happening to her all summer—the hollow ache at the back of her throat went away as she thought of her camera. Her camera! Where was it? And where was her assignment for the week? Half a minute later she had dug both out of her bag, laying them side by side on her bedspread.

Amina picked up the camera and panned around her room. The wall color had been a mistake. Lavender had been in that year, rolling off the tongues of the other fourth-grade girls like a foreign language, and she had mistaken it for her own. The dresser and the desk, bought at two separate garage sales, sat next to each other. Ponytail holders, barrettes, bobby pins, and several Jean Naté products crowded the surface of the dresser, while next to it the desk was empty of everything down to its flat, shiny surface. On the shelves: Indian dolls, records, Rubik’s Cubes permanently locked in mismatched colors, the sorrowful plastic gazes of stuffed animals she no longer loved but could not bear to throw away. Clearly, she could not take a picture of anything in her entire room.

“What are you doing?”

She panned suddenly to the doorway, where Akhil stood. “Learning how to use this thing.”

“Oh.” He leaned into the room, picking up a barrette from her dresser. “Well, you can take pictures of me if you want.”

“The assignment is about
things
, not people.”

“What things?”

“The things that make you, you know, yourself. Your things.”

“That’s retarded.”

“No it isn’t. It’s honest.” She zoomed in on Akhil’s face.

“So you’re going to take pictures of that gay Air Supply poster?”

“You’re breaking out again.” She squeezed the shutter.

Akhil frowned. “So what’s the deal with Marie Osmond down there?”

“I think she looks nice.”

“She looks fake.”

“Jeez, Akhil, she put on some makeup. No big deal.” She fiddled with the focus until he was just a blur of skin and light.

“The commodification of beauty is an economic trap designed to enslave the modern woman.”

Amina shifted two f-stops. The shutter clicked. “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

The light swirled where his eye should have been. “Of course you don’t.”

A few hours later, they sat at the top of the stairs, looking down to the light in the hallway below. The lack of noise from the kitchen assured them that their mother had long since finished cooking, but previous attempts to start eating dinner had been quickly dismissed by Kamala’s overly cheerful insistence that their father would arrive
any minute
! Forty-seven more passed. They were ready to eat their pillows.

“I think we should just go down,” Amina whispered.

Akhil looked at his watch and sighed.

“Do you think we should go down?” she asked.

“I think he should have been here an hour ago.”

“Yeah, I know, but—”

“Mom, can we please eat?” Akhil shouted, cutting her off.

There was no reply.

“Mom! Can we—”

“Sure! Let’s eat!” she called back.

Downstairs, the kitchen table had been set with the good china while the crystal water pitcher sweated into a cloth placemat. Silverware gleamed from napkins.

“What is this?” Akhil asked.

“Pot roasts and mashed potato!” Kamala said proudly.

Amina sat down. She picked up a serving fork and poked at the mass of brown. It smelled insistently of American restaurants, of heavy meat undelighted by real spices. She felt her mother watching her and smiled. “Looks good.”

Kamala nodded to the main dish. “Try it, you’ll like it.”

Amina took a stab at the meat. It resisted.

“I won’t like it,” Akhil said, pushing his plate away. “Can I just have chicken curry?”

“I didn’t make Indian tonight.”

“What about for Dad?”

“Nope.”

Amina and Akhil glanced at each other. It was a point of pride for their mother, always making Indian for their father, regardless of the occasional new dish she might try for the children.

Akhil tried to scoop a spoonful of mashed potatoes, which stretched and thinned as he lifted, as though unwilling to let the spoon go.

“What happened to these?” he asked.

“They’re mashed potatoes.”

“They’re gummy.”

“And wait until you try them!” Kamala looked pleased. “I added an extra stick of butter.”

Akhil looked at Amina, and she shook her head slightly.
Say nothing
. Kamala walked back to the kitchen.

“Aren’t you going to eat?” Akhil called after her.

“No, no. I’ll wait.”

They ate while she waited. Rather, they tried to eat while the food tried not to be eaten. The pot roast held its shape through vigorous chewing, while attempts to swallow the mashed potatoes left their tongues sealed to the roofs of their mouths. In nonverbal desperation, they split the entire bowl of salad, careful not to alert their mother, who was busily scrubbing the already clean stove and counters. They took advantage of her brief trip to the bathroom to stuff most of what was on their plates into paper towels and bury them in the trash, hurrying back to the table with empty plates as the toilet flushed. When Kamala returned to the kitchen, her hair was freshly slicked back, her lipstick reapplied. She walked to the sink, filled the tin cup she kept by it, and tilted her head back, letting the water fall into her mouth in a thick stream. Her shoulders dropped a little as she set it down.

“How’s the food?” she asked, not turning around.

“Good,” Akhil said, and Amina murmured in agreement.

“We’ll do the dishes,” Amina offered.

“No, no. You go upstairs. You both must be tired.”

They cleared the table. Akhil set aside a plate of food for their father, while Amina ran a sponge over the white countertops. When they were done, they walked cautiously to the living room, settling down on either side of their mother to watch an episode of
Hill Street Blues
and the ten o’clock news. From the corners of eyes determined not to look directly, they saw the buoyancy leak out of her, first in
mood, then in posture. By eleven, she was fast asleep on the couch, ponytail askew, mouth open in a slack grimace.

“Should we wake her?” Amina whispered.

“He should fucking wake her,” Akhil said.

Amina leaned over, squeezed her mother’s hand. The purple lids fluttered open.

“What’s happening?” Kamala sat up, her breath sour with sleep.

“You should go to bed.”

Her mother looked around the living room, lingering on the empty armchair.

“What time it is?” she asked.

“Late,” Akhil said.

They made a strange processional walking down the hallway, Akhil leading the way, Kamala semi-sleepwalking behind him, Amina following, trying to guide her mother without exhibiting the kind of tenderness that would draw a flinch. Queen Victoria sniffed the floors in their wake. Akhil opened their parents’ bedroom door, and Kamala glided through it like an errant canoe.

“Good night, Ma.” Akhil shut the door quietly behind her.

Amina looked at him. “Do you think one of us should stay with—”

“No,” Akhil said quietly, definitively. “I don’t.”

Should she go down? Amina lay in bed, blinking into the dark, listening to the screen door open and shut. Thomas was home. He was just sitting down for his nightly drink, she knew by the opening and closing of the cupboards. He would not want company.

She went downstairs anyway. “Dad?”

From the back, she could only see his head rising above the wicker chair like a fuzzy sun on the horizon. When he didn’t say anything, she opened the door, stepping gingerly onto the porch. “Dad?”

Her father was sitting in his surgery scrubs, a scotch bottle between his legs. “Did I wake you?”

“No.” Amina stood on one foot, not wanting to move or breathe or do anything that might make him tell her to go to bed. She looked
around discreetly for something to sit on. Queen Victoria pressed her wet nose to the screen, inhaled deeply, and sneezed.

“Let her in,” her father said.

Amina did, and the dog ran straight to Thomas, sticking her face in his belly. He folded over her, rocking. He stayed down for so long that Amina thought he had fallen asleep.

“Why are you awake?” he said into Queen Victoria’s neck.

“I …” Amina looked at his feet, the dress shoes wrapped with blue booties. “I was just up. Couldn’t sleep.”

Thomas sat up. “Bad habit. Don’t get used to it.”

Amina nodded and her father reached next to his chair, to a jelly jar filled with ice. He placed it between his knees and held the scotch bottle up to the light before pouring. He took a long sip. Queen Victoria backed herself into his legs and sat against them, staring tiredly at Amina.

It felt dangerous to see her father so close. For months, he had been a blur coming or going to the hospital. Amina shifted her weight from one buttock to the other, trying to seem at ease.

“So, what’s going on with you?” he asked.

“Nothing. First day of school.”

“Today?”

“Yes.”

Her father clamped his eyes shut, shook his head. “Shit.”

The pouches under his eyes were darker than usual, liver-purple and puckered.

“So summer is over,” he said, after a few minutes.

“Yeah.”

He looked down at his knees. “How was it? School?”

“It was fine,” Amina said. “I mean, you know, Mesa. It didn’t seem totally horrible, anyway.”

“What subjects are you taking?”

“English, history, French, algebra, bio, photography. You can take photography this year if you took regular art in mid school.”

“You like art?”

Amina nodded. Her father fell silent. He stretched his legs out in front of himself.

“What’s it like?” Amina pointed to the scotch.

Thomas held up the glass, looking at the ice cubes from underneath. “How old are you?”

“Fourteen.” She wanted to add that she had tried beer with Dimple already, and an occasional Baileys Irish Cream with Sanji Auntie, but she didn’t.

“Hmm.” He swirled the glass. “You want to try some?”

She did. He leaned forward, handing her the glass. It was freezing. She looked down, shivered. From the top the scotch looked beautiful, the cracked ice lit up the color of a clean sunrise, the liquid smoking between fissures.

“Hold your breath.”

She tilted it to her mouth. Gulped, swallowed. The first hit tasted like sour air, like the hard metallic tang left in her mouth after a visit to the dentist. A warmth spread deliciously from her cheeks to her forehead. When she exhaled, fire rushed up and through her. It moved from belly to brain, out her mouth in a gasp. She swallowed. Breathed again. Her cheeks were numb. She drew a shaky breath and forced her limbs to be still.