by Mira Jacob
“Then why are you punishing me?” Akhil leaned back in his chair, glaring at his father.
Amina saw her parents’ gaze meet, retreat. Silence.
Akhil leaned forward. “Dad, you can’t just say it depends and then not tell me. You have to tell me what so I can know what the rules are. I mean, it’s only fair.”
“We have to do some more tests.”
Akhil’s lips hung open. He blinked. “What?”
“We need to do a few tests at the hospital, starting next week.” Thomas took a deep breath, spreading his palms wide. “Your sleeping patterns show evidence of adolescent-onset narcolepsy.”
Akhil stared at him, the color leaking from his face.
“There’s a possibility that you need to be treated,” Thomas said.
“Narcolepsy? Like I fall asleep?”
Thomas nodded.
“But I don’t do that anymore.” Akhil looked at his mother. “Mom, tell him.”
“I don’t think it’s such a big deal,” Kamala said.
“What?”
“I don’t see why this sleeping is so different from the other sleeping,” she said to Thomas. “So he sleeps! Last time, I told you, it was nothing, no big deal, growing boy, in my head, nah? Now he’s better, and you think it’s some big crisis.”
Akhil turned to Amina. “Tell Dad that I don’t sleep like I used to. Apparently he hasn’t been around enough to notice.”
Amina looked at her father. Akhil kicked her under the table.
“Ow! Jesus!”
“Tell him!”
“It’s …” Amina cleared her throat, scared. “You do, though.”
“What?”
“It’s different now. It’s not that weird long sleep-forever thing. Now you just pass out for just a little bit. Sometimes. Anywhere.”
“What?”
“Something is wrong with you! I don’t know!” Amina looked at her father pleadingly. “I’m not the doctor.”
Akhil turned back to Thomas. “So that’s why you took me in for those tests? You said you were looking for sleep apnea!”
Thomas nodded. “We were looking for everything. Apnea was a possibility. Narcolepsy was also a possibility.”
“But you didn’t tell me that.”
“I wanted to be sure.”
“Oh, so now you’re sure?”
“No, not entirely. But we need to look into it if we’re going to treat you—”
“Treat me? Like I’m your patient?” Akhil’s voice shot up a scale.
“Not mine. Dr. Subramanian’s.”
“You’re going to let that guy fuck with my brain?”
“Akhil, we’re not going to do anything to your brain—”
“Bullshit! You’re going to fucking lobotomize me! You’re going to … what do you think? That you can just change me?”
“What is he talking about?” Thomas asked his wife, but Kamala shrugged, arms crossed tightly over her chest.
“God only knows what things you and your son will say to each other. So? Now he’s angry. Brilliant, Thomas.”
“I told you, this isn’t something we can ignore—”
“Of course it isn’t. When I tell you, it’s some silly joke, right? Some silly woman with her head on outwards. But when you decide, then it’s a problem.”
“This has nothing to do with that. How many times do I have to say—”
“I’m not going,” Akhil announced. His parents looked at him. “To get more tests. I’m not going to do it.”
“You have to,” Thomas said.
“You’re not touching my brain.”
“Of course I’m not; the testing isn’t invasive—”
“I’m telling you, I’m not going.”
“Son, don’t make this worse than it is, okay? All I’m saying is that we need to figure out what it is. That’s all.”
“And then what? We find out I’ve got narcolepsy, and then? What’s the cure?”
“Why get ahead of yourself? We’ll just have to take it slow. First figure out what we’re dealing with.”
“We? We? What, you’re going to stick around for this like you care?”
“Of course I care! Don’t be silly!”
“Bullshit. You’re never even fucking here. You don’t even …” Akhil looked at his mother, at Amina, at his father’s mouth, which was already opening in rebuttal. “You don’t even like us.”
Thomas’s mouth snapped closed. Akhil’s eyes turned bright pink, and for an awful moment Amina thought he might start crying, but he said nothing else.
“You think I don’t like you?” Thomas asked, almost laughing, but then he stopped, a deer in the forest listening to an unwelcome stillness. He looked from Akhil to Kamala to Amina.
“You think I don’t like you?” he asked them.
No one answered. The question blew through the kitchen, over Akhil’s pained eyes and crossed arms, brushing a stray strand of hair from Kamala’s furrowed head, and finally pressing against the base of Amina’s throat, so that even if she could have figured out what to say, she wouldn’t have been able to say it.
Thomas’s head dipped. He took his plate to the sink and stood in front of it, his silhouette buzzing in the fluorescent light.
“Someone has to work,” he said quietly.
Amina looked at the table, its glaze of crumbs and splotches, the arced footprint of oil left from a jar of mango pickle. From the corner of her eye, she saw her father lean heavily into the kitchen counter.
“You need to get the testing,” Kamala said.
“What?” Akhil asked.
“You do.”
“Mom, you just said—”
“And now I am saying different.”
“Based on what?” Akhil said, spit flying across the table. “Dad? His fucking … patriarchy? You’re just going to sit there and take it like some goddamn pushover? IT’S THE 1980s, MOM. YOU ARE ALLOWED TO HAVE YOUR OWN OPINION.”
Kamala shut her eyes and exhaled slowly, as if to expunge every last trace of the sentence. “No driving until you do.”
“What?”
“It’s not safe.”
“Since when?”
“Since now.” Kamala stood up from the table, her eyes scanning the living room, then marched to the couch, where Akhil’s backpack lay.
“Wait!” Akhil shot up. “Wait, what are you doing?”
“I want the keys.”
“No! I mean, you don’t have to take them. I won’t drive. I promise. I swear.”
“Then it won’t matter that you don’t have the keys.”
“But when do I get them back?”
Kamala hovered over the bag, looked at her husband.
“Once we know the severity of your case,” Thomas answered.
“And what if it’s severe?” Akhil asked.
Amina saw her parents look at each other again. Kamala licked her lips. “Then you don’t drive, but that’s not the end of the—”
“I don’t drive ever?”
“Not until we know that you won’t hurt yourself or someone else,” Thomas said.
Kamala reached for the backpack, but Akhil cut her off, grabbing it with one hand and fending her off with the other. His eyes were wide and white in their sockets, his face sweaty.
“Not on weekends? Not even to prom?” he asked.
“Give it to me,” Kamala said, motioning.
“No.”
“Give it.”
“No!”
The tug-of-war that ensued was brief, silly, catastrophic. Kamala latched on and yanked the bag in her direction, while Akhil pulled it in the other. Amina watched from the kitchen table as her mother leaned away with all her weight like some sort of sari-clad warrior. Akhil leaned back. There were grunts, groans, curses, and just as Akhil began to get a better grip, his mother redoubled her efforts, straining harder, her whole person intent on winning, so much so that she failed to see the decision when it flickered across her son’s lips in a cruel smile. He let go sudden
ly, and the bag slammed into her face, sending her backward, hard. She landed flat on her back. For a moment, the rest of the Eapens were silent, staring at her arms and legs akimbo, sari splayed, the backpack where her face should have been.
Amina was standing, though she didn’t remember standing up. Her father moved quickly, shoving Akhil away and lifting the backpack. Under the nylon and the zippers, Kamala lay blinking, one eye shut in dismay.
“Don’t move,” Thomas said. “Just sit there for a moment.”
Kamala raised a hand to her cheek, pressing it gingerly. She stared at the blood that dotted her fingertips.
“It’s a small cut,” Thomas assured her. “Don’t touch it. Amina, get the hydrogen peroxide.”
Amina turned and ran to the pantry on legs shaky with heat. It was cool in the pantry, full of the smell of soup and pickle, and she wanted to stay there for a moment, hidden, until whatever needed to happen out there had happened. Her mother groaned. Amina stepped on a bag of basmati to reach for the cotton balls, Band-Aids, and peroxide.
“Oh my God, Mom,” she heard her brother say.
Amina walked past him on the way back and almost felt sorry for him, kneeling on the carpet, looking like he wanted to melt into it.
“Get ice in a bag,” Amina’s father barked as she handed him everything, and she ran back to the kitchen, opening the freezer. She grabbed out two trays of ice and then looked frantically around the kitchen.
“Where are the plastic bags?” she shouted.
“Oh God, Mom.”
“Under the sink,” her mother said, her voice weak, and Amina grabbed one. She emptied the trays into it and ran back. Akhil hadn’t moved an inch, but Kamala’s hands were roaming her face, patting her features as though they were Braille.
“What else?” Amina asked breathlessly, feeling suddenly important.
“Do we have a steak?” her father asked.
“Lamb only,” Kamala said.
“Get me the lamb.”
“I’ll get it,” Akhil said.
Kamala flinched as the cotton ball was pulled away, her cheekbone swelling fast into a bulbous arc. Her eye jerked in its socket, red and bloody-looking. Amina gasped.
“It’s okay,” her father said. “There are some broken blood vessels, so it just looks bad. Can you see my fingers?” He held up two and cupped his hand over her mother’s other eye.
Kamala nodded.
“How many?”
“Two.”
“Good.”
Akhil returned, lamb in hand. When his mother’s bloody eye fixed on him, he began to cry.
“Can you sit up?” Thomas asked gently. “We need to check your head.”
She sat up. She held her head in her hands like a bowl full of something that might spill easily, while Thomas felt up and down her neck and around the back of her skull.
“You’ve got a small bump here,” Thomas said, pressing, and she let out a little cry. “I want you to follow my fingers with your eyes.”
The checks turned up nothing. Kamala’s vision was fine. She did not appear disoriented, or even upset, really, just deeply, deeply quiet. She sat on the couch, head buffeted between ice and meat, eyes closed. Akhil sat with her. He still could not look at her without his mouth trembling, so he sat with his face turned away. For their part, Amina and her father kept busy by cleaning up the kitchen, finding Tupperware to match the leftovers and scraping the turmeric stains from the stove and countertops. They stacked and lined the dishes up by the sink, and while Thomas swept the floor, Amina filled the basin with hot, lemony soap-water.
“I’ll do it,” her father said, setting the broom to the side.
“It’s okay, Dad, I’ll—”
“Sit.”
It was hard to tell from his tone whether he meant it as an act of kindness or punishment, but she knew better than to argue. Amina looked at the couch and knew she did not want to sit in the pained current between her mother and brother. She walked instead to her book bag, still resting on the kitchen counter where she had set it earlier, and pulled her camera out.
Would Thomas even appear with all the bright light bouncing off the tiles in front of him? Amina had no idea, so she adjusted the settings a few times, hoping she would catch the S-shaped shadow curling up his back as he washed dishes, the few suds that rose in the air like bits of dander. She turned around, walking into the dining room to take a picture of the splattered and stained tablecloth. From that distance, she took a few shots of her mother and brother on the couch, faces flashing blue with the changing television screen. She pulled her focus tighter and saw that Akhil’s mouth was moving. Then Kamala’s. Then Akhil’s again. Who knew what exactly it was that he was saying, or what Kamala replied, or why, ten seconds later, they looked at each other and laughed a little before settling back into silence. All Amina knew was that by the time her father was done with the dishes, they had turned to Hill Street Blues and were watching it side by side, the bright brass of the keys held safely in her mother’s hands. Thomas stood in front of them, wiping his hands dry on a dish towel.
“I see you’ve come around,” he said to Akhil, who said nothing back, his gaze hardening. Amina took the picture.
“I understand it’s very difficult, these moments,” Thomas continued a little too loudly, as though he was being recorded for posterity. “Nobody likes these things life hands us. But part of becoming a man is understanding how to face them head on instead of running all the time. It’s time you knew how to do that.”
Why is it that fathers so often ensure the outcome they are trying to avoid? Is their need to dominate so much stronger than their instinct to protect? Did Thomas know, Amina wondered as she watched him, that he had just done the human equivalent of a lion sinking his teeth into his own cub?
Akhil’s gaze broke away from his father’s, shifting to the driveway in one beat. His mouth pursed, as if sucking on a secret, and with a flash of clarity, Amina knew what it was. It popped into her head cleanly, like a blade so sharp she couldn’t even feel the cut. She stood, the camera pressed to her face. Akhil looked at her through the viewfinder, fury swirling around him like invisible wind, daring her to say anything. She shut her eyes and took the picture.
CHAPTER 4
The next afternoon, Amina stood in the space between the door to her room and Akhil’s, clenching and unclenching her fists. She couldn’t take it anymore. It was a horrible sound, and its showing no sign of stopping in the ten minutes she’d waited outside made her brave enough to just go in.
Akhil was crying in his bed. Really crying. Crying in a way that she hadn’t seen since they were kids and he’d accidentally dropped his Star Wars light saber out the car window, all that would-be heroism shattering into plastic junk on the highway.
“Get out,” he said, but even this was whimpered so weakly that she couldn’t take it seriously. She sat at the bottom of his bed, not knowing what to say. The Greats smiled down at them maniacally.
“Paige is going to dump me.”
“What? She said that?”
“She will when she finds out.”
“What do you mean? You didn’t tell her?”
Her brother took a sticky breath, trying to swallow before he said, “Not really. I can’t. There is no treatment that works. I looked it up today; it’s all just a bunch of shit they try on you and almost none of it changes anything.”
Could that be true? Amina thought of their medicine cabinet, all the pills and candy-colored syrups. “Well, maybe Dad knows of something that will—”
“Dad can’t do shit about this! It’s a disease!”
“But …” Amina licked her lips nervously. “I mean, you don’t even know that you have it for sure.”
“You’re the one that said it! I fall asleep all the time for no reason, right?”
Amina found a cuticle and bit it, wishing she’d never said anything to anyone ever as Akhil started crying again. “Well—”
“Well, nothin
g! Don’t you see, you stupid kid?” he gasped. “It’s never going to change for us! It doesn’t matter how much we grow, or change, or try to become like everyone else, in the end, we’re fucking deformed, and they will know it. We’re too fucked up to love.”
Amina thought of her father standing in front of the sink, of Kamala’s uneaten pot roast, of Akhil’s twitching face during the Big Sleep, of the Salem house that kept getting taller, story by slanting story, in her dreams. She thought of the moment she could have grabbed Jamie’s hand but didn’t.
“It’s going to be okay,” she said loudly, mainly to stop the thinking.
Akhil didn’t say anything.
“She’ll still love you,” she told him, her voice strong in the place of any real conviction, and when he still didn’t say anything she realized he’d probably fallen asleep again. Great. Another failure on top of a failure. She looked up at the Greats. You bastards, she thought. Do something for him already.
“You think?” Akhil asked softly, startling her. “You think she’ll still want me?”
“Of course she will,” Amina said, relieved. “Just tell her.”
Thank God for Saturday mornings. A reprieve from the familiar, a day unworn by routines. Anything was possible. The week might still be redeemed. Amina made her way down to the kitchen, surprised but not unhappy to see her father staring into the cupboards.
“What are you looking for?”
“Coffee.”
“Next to the spices. With the red top.”
Thomas pulled down the tin of Nescafé and opened it, taking a hesitant whiff before nodding. “You want some?”
“Gross.”
“Right.” He took the tiny plastic cup out of it, ladling a spoonful into a mug. “What are you looking for?”
She was looking through the paper for the horoscopes for any indication that Dimple missed her, or barring that, that someone was on the verge of falling in love with her. Thomas watched the kettle with remarkable concentration.
“Know what we need?” he asked a few moments later, and she looked up, the line Someone special has taken notice of you momentarily disorienting her.
“Huh?”
“A coffeepot with an alarm clock attached. You know? So that when the alarm clock goes off, the coffee starts brewing. So by the time you get to the actual kitchen, there it is—a full pot of coffee!—just waiting for you. Neat, huh?”