The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing: A Novel

by Mira Jacob

  “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 liqui
d 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.

  Her father smiled. “You like it?”

  Amina handed the glass back. “No.”

  He laughed, startling her. It was a good, deep laugh that rang off the porch and into the night, making the slouching Queen Victoria stand upright, suddenly alert.

  “So you like your new school, huh?” He threw one leg over the other, and Amina nodded, not wanting to botch the moment. Her father looked pleased. “What do you like about it?”

  She looked around the porch, at the moths’ shadows inking the walls. “The campus is nice, I guess. Big. Brick. My teachers seem pretty cool.”

  “That’s good. Wow, high school. You’re really getting to be big, huh?”

  “Thomas?” The soft voice from the door made them look. Kamala’s face was pinched, groggy. “What are you doing?”

  The smile fell from his face. “Nothing much. Sitting here.”

  “Amina, why are you awake?”

  Amina shrugged her shoulders.

  Her mother sighed.

  “I’m sorry I missed dinner,” her father said at last. “A young boy came in. They sent him from Grants. Subdural hematoma.”

  Shuffling, silence.

  “Don’t give me that look. Kam, I told you I would try, I didn’t promise.”

  Her mother gave a thin laugh. “You never promise.”

  “What do you want me to say?”

  “I told the kids you would come.”

  “Then I will tell the kids I am sorry.”

  “When?”

  “When? When I feel like it. Don’t make a big deal out of it.”

  “It is a big deal.”

  “Kamala, enough. I’ve had a long day.”

  Kamala looked at him, the pain on her face so vivid that it was hard to understand how it erased itself so quickly moments later, her features flattening into regular, everyday disappointment. Her mother turned without another word and walked away, her body disappearing into the dark. Amina stood up.

  “Good night,” Thomas said as she left, and she waved halfheartedly, not wanting to see his sad face or show him her own.

  CHAPTER 3

  “What makes someone a good man?” Mr. Tipton asked, placing his copy of Hamlet on the desk behind him.

  Gina Rodgers raised her hand, triggering a class-wide bristle. Everyone wanted to impress Mr. Tipton, but it was Gina who always raised her hand first, like he was going to fall in love with her for her 4.3 GPA or something.

  “Trace,” Mr. Tipton called.

  “Huh?” Trace McCourt looked up from the F-15 he was drawing across his notebook in exacting detail.

  “What makes a good man?”

  Trace stared at the gunmetal-gray divot in his finger, then at his pencil. “Someone who stands up for what he believes in. Does his duty.”

  “What’s his duty?”

  “To defend his country. And his family.” He sniffed like this was something he’d done himself. “His honor.”

  “What about a man who doesn’t have any of those things?”

  “Everyone has a country.”

  “Not necessarily,” Gina Rodgers said, her eyes locked on Mr. Tipton. “There are dissidents. And expatriates. And the classic firstgeneration immigrant caught between the country left behind and the new land. There’s—”

  “Amina, what do you think?” Mr. Tipton asked.

  “What?”

  “How would you define a good man?”

  Amina chewed the inside of her cheek, all her answers trapped inside a swirl of thinking so thick she had trouble making any words at all. Hands rose on all sides of the room like tulips blooming for the sun. The bell rang.

  “You know, you’re going to have to speak eventually,” Mr. Tipton said as she was packing her stuff to go. “It’s English class. Speaking is important.”

  “I know.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re bored with Hamlet already.” He smiled.

  “No. It’s just … I don’t know. One person’s good man is another person’s, you know, dad.” She flushed. “Or ghost or whatever.”

  “See, now, why didn’t you say that? That’s exactly what Hamlet is about—the complexities of sincerity, the relevance of sanity. In fact, there are debates about whether or not Hamlet is crazy or just pretending to be crazy. I’d be interested to know what you think.”

  Amina nodded, like Sure, yeah, I’ll do that, but really, she would have been interested to know what she thought, too.

  At least she had her art. Downstairs forty minutes later in the photo room, everyone stared at the board with nervous excitement. It was a thrill, the last twenty minutes of class devoted to critique, the curiosity about what others had come up with and how you measured against it. There was a rule, of course, to look at all the pictures for at least two minutes before talking. Amina’s eyes flashed quickly over the others but returned to her own, fascinated by the angle, by the cut of her own face. When had her jaw gotten so sharp? She had done much better with the self-portrait assignment than she had with the last. Part of it was getting more familiar with the printing process; the dodging helped where her own knowledge of the camera fell short. And really, she had gotten the perfect picture, setting her desk lamp at a ninety-degree angle to her body so that most everything around her was blanketed with darkness while the side of her face pressed into the light. She hadn’t even bothered to print the more mundane shots—this, she knew, was rare perfection.

  “Well?” Mrs. Messina asked. “What do we think?”

  “I like Sarah’s,” someone in back of Amina said, and she turned. Tommy Hargrow, the oldest of seven Mormon kids. While Amina wasn’t totally sure exactly what being Mormon entailed, it was always the first thing said about Tommy, the second being that he had six siblings. He studied the board. “I think there’s something interesting about it.”

  Amina looked back at Sarah’s picture. It showed her teeth glistening with a goofy smile, her hair weightlessly suspended around her face, like she was underwater.

  “I was on the trampoline,” Sarah offered.

  “We don’t talk about our own images unless we’re asked a question,” Mrs. Messina reminded her. She looked at the photo. “It is interesting to me that Sarah decided to edit out the trampoline, though. Class, what do you make of that?”

  Amina made nothing of it. The image was silly, too stagy, too juvenile. She studied her hands.

  “I like that there’s no, you know, background or whatever,” someone said.

  “Context,” Mrs. Messina said. “What you’re talking about is context. We can’t place Sarah, exactly, though we know she’s joyous. I see at least four pictures on the wall that do the same thing. Take a look at Amina’s.”

  Amina looked down, trying not to smile. There was a long silence.

  “Where are the rest?” Mrs. Messina asked.

  “I don’t have any others.”

  “You only took one picture of yourself?”

  “I didn’t like the others.”

  “Next time, bring them.” Mrs. Messina turned to the class. “Listen, you need to keep in mind that we want to see a good sampling of your work. What you like at this point isn’t really important because you haven’t figured out your own eye yet. This, for example, makes Amina look pretty, and maybe like she belongs on an album cover, but beyond that, I’m not really seeing her at all. Her other photographs might have shown me something different. Now let’s take a look at Tommy’s.” Amina sat very still, suddenly aware of how little she was breathing. How dare Mrs. Messina single
her out? Sure, she only had one photo up, but at least it wasn’t total crap like the ones Missy Folgers had taken, placing all of her horse-riding ribbons in the shape of a horseshoe around her head.

  She looked at Tommy’s pictures. Three showed him on an abandoned baseball dugout. The last four were of him at dinner, sitting very still while his parents and six siblings swirled around him, in varying degrees of sharpness.

  “I love them,” someone said.

  “Value judgments are useless here. What do you love about them?”

  “They’re good.”

  Mrs. Messina sighed. “Why?”

  “They make me sad,” Missy Folgers said.

  Mrs. Messina nodded. “Good. How so?”

  No one said anything. Amina stared at the last photograph. It was the loneliness. It was the way Tommy seemed to be talking to the camera because there was no one else to talk to. She stared at the floor miserably, barely aware of the assignment for the next week landing in her hands until Mrs. Messina started reading from it.

  “Over the last weeks, you did a portrait of yourselves. Over the next two, I want you to turn the camera on your family. We’re learning to tell stories here, so think about action. Okay?”

  People were collecting their pictures from the blackboard, and Amina hurried up with them, snapping hers down. She stuffed it into her backpack, not caring as the paper bent and creased under her hand.

  CHAPTER 4

  “Overpopulation. Truncal obesity. An excess of body hair. This is what we offer the world,” Akhil announced the following Saturday. Amina and Dimple sat on rusty lawn chairs on the Stoop, the tiny corner of roof accessible through Akhil’s bedroom window, while Akhil himself paced, chain-smoking with one nervous eye on the locked bedroom door. Downstairs, a chorus of parents’ voices rumbled with post-meal chatter.

  “Speak for yourself, dude.” Dimple frowned, pulled at her split ends. “I’m not the fat one.”

  “Hit puberty and we’ll talk.”

  “Oh, is that what happened? Good to know.”

  Amina kicked Dimple’s ankle.

  “Ow. Like it’s my fault he’s fat and angry about it,” Dimple said.