The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing: A Novel

by Mira Jacob

  “English, then photography, and biology. What about you?”

  “Bio with Pankeridge?”

  Amina looked down at the slip of paper on top of her English book. “Yes.”

  “Oh, thank God. We have bio together.”

  Amina tried not to smile. Her smiles, she knew, had the opposite effect that they used to on her cousin, placing an unmistakable damper on whatever warmth had summoned the gesture in the first place.

  “Did you hear that some girl got kicked out last year for not being able to complete any of her dissection labs? Her life was, like, so over.” Dimple looked smaller suddenly, more like the girl who cried into Amina’s hair before she left for camp.

  “That’s not going to happen to you.”

  “What if it does?”

  “We won’t let it.” Amina said, and was privately elated by the look of relief in Dimple’s eyes. “So I’ll see you at lunch?”

  “What? Oh.” Dimple looked back at her schedule, pretending to see something on it. “Maybe. Let’s just see how it goes, yeah?”

  “Right,” Amina said, and turned to find her way to her next class on her own.

  In the car on the way home, Akhil smoked furiously.

  “Fucker. What a fucker. Capable of more! And the worst part is he believes it! They all fucking do.”

  Every window in the car was open, Iron Maiden was screaming from the stereo, and still she could hear him perfectly. The mesa rumbled by in a blur of dust. Amina’s hair whipped around her face.

  “And you know what the most unbelievable thing is?”

  “Can we roll up a window?”

  “That he thinks we’re on his side. As though he can dictate the terms of our fucking mental growth!”

  Amina started to roll up her window.

  “Not right now! I’m trying to think.”

  “Can you maybe do it without all the expletives?”

  Akhil flipped down the volume, smashed the cigarette between his lips and sucked it, squinting at her. He blew out smoke. “Who do you have for English?”

  “Mr. Tipton.”

  “Goddamn prick.”

  “I thought everybody loved him!”

  “Because they’re sheep. Don’t start quoting him unless you want me to leave you on the side of the road.” Akhil accelerated. Spirals of dust blossomed behind them. He jammed in the lighter and opened the glove compartment. “Who else?”

  “Messina for photography.”

  “I heard she’s okay.”

  Mrs. Messina hardly looked okay, with her deathly pale skin and mud-colored lips and smell of patchouli, but Amina nodded. “Gerber for history.”

  Akhil shrugged. “Whatever. What about bio?”

  “Pankeridge.”

  “Ballbuster. Don’t screw up the labs.”

  “Great, Dimple’s already freaking out about the whole dissection thing.”

  “She should be. She’s fucked if she can’t nail it.”

  Amina stared out the window. She was always messing up with Dimple these days. Not being interesting enough, not getting things that were supposed to be obvious. Her cousin hadn’t really wanted to talk about the blurry pictures Amina had taken when she got back from camp, or the ridiculousness of Akhil’s “Mad About Mutually Assured Destruction” campaign. She had scanned Amina’s room like it belonged to someone else’s kid sister, and shrugged at the possibility of walking to the Rio Grande. In fact, the only aspect of Amina’s life that seemed worth commenting on was the seethingly quiet Kamala, whom Dimple had immediately pronounced “a serious mental case.”

  “I don’t want to go home,” Amina said.

  Akhil took a long drag, flicked the butt out the window. “I’m sure Mom’s fine.”

  “All day? Without anyone?”

  “Well, maybe she’ll get it together. Maybe that will be a good thing.”

  “So she can be more like Monica?”

  “I don’t think he meant that.”

  The words had haunted them, of course. Never mind that outwardly they reassured each other that the fight in June was just one more skirmish in their parents’ never-ending battle; inwardly they felt damned by the very sight of it, instantly hardened, their hearts crystallized with shock. What on earth could have prepared them for the late-night return from an office party, the car idling in the driveway, lights on, doors flung open, their mother screaming like her back was on fire? The noise alone had brought them running to the front door, and as all children are riveted by the sight of parental demise, what they saw kept them there. They had never seen their mother drunk before (and, in fact, would never see her drunk again), but there she was, lit from the knees down by the car headlights, sari pooling at her feet, screaming, “Go live with your precious Monica in the hospital then!” like she was a soap opera star.

  “Drinking like that in front of the people I work with?” Thomas had shouted, pacing the driveway. “What do you think they think of you now?”

  “Isn’t that what you yourself told me? ‘Monica this and Monica that and why can’t you be more like Monica?’ ”

  “Monica can hold her liquor!”

  “Monica is a whore.” Kamala stumbled a little, frowning down at her ankles.

  “She is my assistant, Kamala. You will not talk about her that way.”

  “Touching you!”

  “The Americans do that! It’s their way. You would know if you knew any!”

  “Now he’s going to start again about this job business, and I tell you, I will kill him. I will kill him to tiny pieces!”

  “We’re not going back, Kamala. You have to at least try to fit in.”

  “Yes, because there’s nothing to do here between cleaning up after your children and cooking them meals and making sure they are doing their homework, right?”

  “Do something. Volunteer at a shelter. Get a part-time job.”

  “And now he thinks I am sitting like some fine Mughal princess, counting up my bangles while the bloody servant girls take care of things! Why not wander around all day in some office and come home and cook the dinner and clean the house like some stupid woman in a perfume commercial?” She started to laugh. “Well, Emperor What’s-His-Name, I refuse.”

  “Kamala—”

  “I REFUSE.” She glared at him. “You think that changing and changing and changing ourselves to fit in with these people is some good thing?” She tilted her chin up, daring him. “Fine then. You do it. Go away and become some idiot who smiles all the time for no reason because I don’t care anymore! I really don’t.”

  The surprise was that he had gone away. As Amina and Akhil stood in the open doorway, their father marched straight back to the car, gunning the engine and roaring back down the driveway. If he saw them standing there, it didn’t stop him. Nor did he return for dinner the usual one to two nights after a fight. For days and then weeks, their father was not seen during waking hours.

  Kamala went into angry, gourmet mourning. She made every meal as though it might be Thomas’s last, churning out flaky parathas and paper-thin masala dosas only to watch with fury as they grew limp in his absence. She plucked coriander leaves as Dallas and Dynasty unfolded on the television, sickened and consoled by the sordid love affairs Americans seemed genetically predisposed to partake in. She borrowed Bala Kurian’s Hindi movies and watched them to the exact point where everything fell apart, and then walked around her kitchen, scolding the cupboards.

  Amina sighed, tugging against her seat belt. Who knew what they would find when they got home? She knew better than to try to guess. The traffic into the village was at a dead crawl. Akhil sucked his teeth, fiddling with the radio, trying to needle in on the hard-rock station that always faded out as they got closer to home. He sighed and snapped it off. Reached for the glove compartment. Amina kicked her foot up, stopping him.

  “We’re too close now. You’ll reek.”

  “She won’t even notice.”

  “She’s not stupid.”

&nbs
p; “No, she’s just too pissed to care.”

  Amina sighed. By now she should have been used to the way her mother could perch anywhere in the house, so riddled with fury that she seemed not to see anything in front of her, but it was always disconcerting to walk into the living room and find Kamala smoothing down the same patch of armchair over and over again, or worse, start a conversation in which her mother’s reply was an abrupt departure for another room.

  “Do you have any gum?” Akhil asked, and Amina reached into the first pocket of her backpack. Juicy Fruit. She handed him a stick before slipping another out of the foil and into her mouth. Then she turned the radio on and inserted the Iron Maiden tape, taking comfort in the sugar and the screaming as they inched their way home.

  CHAPTER 2

  “So?” Kamala asked. “How was it?”

  Amina and Akhil stared, speechless. It wasn’t just the plasticky-looking jumpsuit, or the hair she had obviously untwisted from a braid to remold into a high ponytail, or even the tennis shoes Kamala wore on her feet, clean and white and laced in place like intergalactic marshmallows. It was her smile. Somehow in the last eight hours, their mother had become chipper. Her eyes and lips glistened with pinks and purples as she leaned against the kitchen counter.

  “You like all your teachers?” Kamala nodded.

  “Yes,” Amina said, automatically nodding back.

  Akhil scowled. “What’s on your face?”

  “I went to the makeup counter at Dillard’s.”

  “Just like that?”

  “What just like that? I need your permission?”

  “What are those?” Amina asked.

  “Parachuting pants!” Kamala looked down at her own legs like they belonged to an actual skydiver. “They’re the latest things.”

  Akhil looked so baffled that his mother laughed, giving curve to her bronzed cheekbones. Her eyelashes fluttered like the blackened wings of an underworld butterfly, and Amina wondered at the evenness of the thick black line under each eye until she realized her mother was looking back at her with increasing alarm.

  “You look great,” Amina said, and a spasm of discomfort flitted across Kamala’s features.

  “How about your teachers? They’re good?”

  “They suck eggs,” Akhil said, glancing around the kitchen as though there might be more changes hiding in the cupboards.

  Kamala shrugged amicably. “Oh well, that’s how it goes, right? Win things, lose things.”

  Amina nodded. Win things, lose things. Sure. Their mother turned from them to a boiling pot on the kitchen stove. She lifted it to the sink, releasing the muddy smell of hot potatoes, and then opened a drawer, rummaging around for something. “Why don’t you both get started on your homework? Your father is on his way home, so we’ll eat soon.”

  “Dad?” Akhil’s eyebrows shot up. “What’s the occasion?”

  “First day of school, silly.” She fanned the steam from her face.

  “So?”

  “So? So he wouldn’t miss it.”

  “Since when?”

  “Since now, Mr. Curmudgeon!”

  “Are you having an identity crisis?” Akhil asked.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Kamala retrieved a potato masher and held it up like a trophy. She smiled. “Now, why don’t you and whatever radical leftist policies go upstairs until dinner?”

  Akhil said nothing as he left the kitchen. They listened to him stomp up the stairs. Amina sat down on a chair and watched as her mother moved around the kitchen. It was remarkable really. The shiny pants hugged her hips, and from behind, her mother looked like any other Mesa Prep girl.

  “You look so different.”

  “Bad?” Kamala looked at her reflection in the microwave.

  “No, just different.”

  “I wiped off most everything. But I bought myself a lipstick.”

  “Can I see?”

  Kamala pointed to her purse, and Amina opened it and pulled out the lipstick.

  “Berry Delicious?”

  “Oh, I don’t know about that,” her mother said with an embarrassed laugh. She opened a drawer and pulled out a knife. “So, you like school?”

  “Gina Rodgers is in all of my classes.”

  “The knows-it-all.”

  “Yes.”

  “Ach. Poor thing. No one will ever marry her.”

  “Mom! She’s my age.”

  “Not now, dummy, later. I had a friend like this in college, Ranjini Mukerjee. Such a pill, that girl! And no one wanted to marry her.”

  “Um-hm.”

  Queen Victoria, a fat German shepherd with a permanently unimpressed bearing, wandered into the kitchen, sniffing in the direction of the parachute pants before settling on the floor.

  “But it’s a pretty school, no?” asked Kamala. “So big!”

  “It’s okay.”

  “What does Dimple think?”

  “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.

  Assignment 1: PLACES, SPACES, THINGS

  Take this week to show us your world, specifically the places you inhabit, whether that is a classroom, bedroom, or some other place you feel at home. THIS ASSIGNMENT IS NOT ABOUT PEOPLE, rather the rooms and spaces that you move through. Think about the light in each space, and the way it contributes to the mood of the picture. Think about how much honesty can lie in a collection of THINGS. Experiment with shutter speed and aperture (see booklet for details).

  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.