The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing: A Novel (3 page)

“I guess,” Akhil sighed.

Suddenly, two hands wrapped around Amina’s neck and squeezed hard, crushing her larynx. She pulled frantically at them, dimly aware of her mother patting Divya’s arm in greeting, of the hot breath in her ear.

“Mittack!” Itty let go, patting her head.

“Jesus!” Amina gasped, tears in her eyes. “Mom!”

“Itty.” Kamala smiled. She wrapped her arms around the boy, who grunted and buried his face in her neck.

“Hello.” Divya stood in front of Amina, slight, pockmarked, and branded with the expression of someone expecting the worst. “How was the train?”

“It was nice.” Amina loved the overnight train from Madras. She loved the call of the chai-wallahs at every stop, the smell of different dinners cooking in the towns they passed. “We got egg sandwiches.”

Divya nodded. “You’re feeling sick now?”

“No.”

“Sick!” A voice snapped from behind Divya. “Already? Which one?”

Beneath the heat and the house and the blinking lights, Ammachy sat in her wicker chair on the verandah, sweating rings into a sea-foam-green sari blouse. The two years that had passed since their last visit had done nothing to soften her face. Long white whiskers grew out of her chin, and her spine, hunched by decades of complaint, left her head floating some inches above her lap.

“Hello, Amma.” Thomas’s fingers were firm on Amina and Akhil’s necks as he marched them up the few stairs to where she sat. “Good to see you.”

Ammachy pointed to the roll of flesh that pressed at the hem of Akhil’s polo shirt. “
Thuddya
. What kind of girlish hips are you growing?”

“Hi, Ammachy.” Akhil leaned in to kiss her cheek.

She turned to Amina with a wince. “Ach. I sent some Fair and Lovely, no? Didn’t use it?”

“She’s fine, Amma,” Thomas said, but as Amina bent to kiss her, Ammachy snatched her face, pinning it between curled fingers.

“You will have to be very clever if you are never going to be pretty. Are you very clever?”

Amina stared at her grandmother, unsure of what to say. She had never thought of herself as particularly clever. She had never thought of herself as particularly bad-looking either, though it was obvious enough now from the faint repulsion that rippled through the hairs on Ammachy’s lip.

“Amina won the all-city spelling bee,” Kamala announced, pushing Amina’s head forward so that her lips landed openly against Ammachy’s cheek. She had just enough time to be surprised by the taste of menthol and roses, and then she was pulled into the too-dark house and down the hallway, past Sunil and Divya and Itty and Ammachy’s rooms, to a dining room set with tea.

“So train was crowded? Nothing to eat? She’s so happy to see you.” Divya motioned for Kamala and the kids to sit and pushed a plate of orange sweets at them. “She’s been talking of nothing else for a month.”

“Itty,” Sunil boomed, dragging a lumpy suitcase in behind him. “Your uncle is insisting we see what presents he has brought. Shall we take a look?”

“Hullo?” Itty nodded vigorously. “Look? Look?”

“It’s nothing, really.” Thomas took a seat next to Amina.

“Small-small things,” Kamala added.

Ammachy limped in with a scowl. “What is all this nonsense?”

It was: two pairs of Levi’s, one bottle of Johnnie Walker Red, three bags of nuts (almonds, cashews, pistachios), a pair of Reeboks with Velcro closures, a larger pair of hiking boots, two bottles of perfume (Anaïs Anaïs, Chloé), four cassette tapes (the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Kenny Rogers, Exile), two jars of Avon scented skin lotion (in Topaze and Unspoken), several pairs of white tube socks, talcum powder, and a candy-cane-shaped tube filled with marshmallow, root beer float, and peppermint flavored lip balms.

“It’s too much.” Sunil tried to hand back the cassette tapes. “Really, we don’t need.”

“What need?” Thomas smiled, watching Divya sink her finger into the jar of Avon cream. “It’s nice to have is all. What do you think, Itty? You like the Velcro?”

Crouched in a Spider-Man pose on the floor, Itty lunged slowly from side to side, mesmerized by the sight of his poufy white feet.

“You’ll spoil him.” Sunil reached for the scotch bottle, holding it up to the light and studying the label. “Shall we try a bit of this?”

“After dinner,” Thomas said, and Sunil poured two fingers into his empty teacup, sniffing it.

“The Velcro is big thing in the States now,” Kamala explained to everyone with a knowing look. “Easy peasy, instead of having to tie the shoes.”

Ammachy snorted. “Who else besides this no-brains won’t know to tie shoes?”

“Vel cow!” Itty shouted with unfortunate timing, fastening and unfastening his Reeboks until Ammachy smacked him with a powdered palm. She sniffed at all three flavors of lip balm and licked the tip of one before pushing them into Divya’s pile.

“So, you people had a good trip in the airplane?” Ammachy asked.

Thomas nodded. “Good enough.”

“How did you come?”

“San Francisco–Honolulu–Taiwan–Singapore.”

Ammachy grunted. “Singapore Airlines?”

“Yes.”

“Those girls are pretty, no?” She refilled Kamala’s cup, saying, “Nice complexions.”

“Try the hiking boots, Sunil.” Thomas pointed to them with his chin. “The heel itself has shock absorbers!”

“Later. I have some work I should be attending to.”

“Oh, yes, this one with his
people’s practice
.” Ammachy rolled her eyes. “You would think he was actually saving lives instead of teeth.”

“Teeth are lives, Amma,” Sunil said, glowering. “People need to eat to live.”

“So, who all do you want to see?” she asked Thomas.

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it yet.”

“Yes, well, your old classmate Yohan Varghese was asking about you the other day. I told you the wife died, no? Not that she was any real help, stupid thing, but two sons to raise on his own! Ach. And we should see Saramma Kochamma of course, just for one afternoon
meal. And Dr. Abraham wants to talk to you. He’s putting together that rehabilitative center, the one I told you about? Might be a nice thing to see.” This last news was delivered with such practiced indifference that even Amina felt embarrassed.

Thomas reached for a jalebi. He offered the plate to Amina, who shook her head.

“Anyway, he needs someone in head injuries, so I told him you would ring.” Ammachy poured milk into her own tea and stirred. “Maybe tomorrow?”

“It’s not really my field.” Thomas took a bite. “They would only ever need the occasional surgery.”

“Well, no one asked you to become a brain surgeon,” Ammachy snapped.

“No,” Thomas said, chewing carefully, “they didn’t.”

Akhil reached for a jalebi, and Ammachy swatted his hand away.

“It’s just an option.” Ammachy scraped something from the oilcloth. “But then I suppose Kamala likes it there? All of this women’s-libbing and bra burning?”

“What?” Kamala sat up a little taller in her chair.

“I’m sure it’s why she was so excited to go in the first place. Always wanting more and more of freedoms, is it?”

“Who burns the bras?” Kamala asked indignantly.

“How should I know?” Ammachy glared. “You’re the one who chooses to live in there. Godforsaken place.”

“
I’m
the one?”

“Who else? If you wanted to come home, Thomas would come. Men only go as far as the wife allows.”

“Is that so?” Kamala leaned across the table. “Well, that’s very interesting, isn’t it, Thomas?”

“Amma, please. We’ve only just arrived.”

“What’s foreskin?” Amina asked. Everyone looked at her.

“God’s foreskin place?” Amina repeated, and Akhil kicked her shin under the table. “Ouch!”

“What is this child saying?” Ammachy’s face was rigid.

“Time for naps!” Kamala pointed toward the stairs. “Go. You are overtired.”

“But it’s the middle of the day!” Akhil protested. “We just got here.”

“Jet lags! You’ll be cranky tomorrow if you don’t get some rest. Go!” Kamala stood up and ushered them to the base of the stairs, Itty hot on her heels. “Itty, you stay with us, okay? Your cousins need to sleep.”

“Hullo? Cricket?” Itty asked, and Kamala shook her head.

“Not now. They need to sleep. You stay with me.”

“Good job,” Akhil growled as they left the table and dragged themselves upstairs. “Now we’re going to sit up there in the heat forever.”

“What’s God’s—” Amina asked.

“
Forsaken
, dope. It means abandoned.”

“Oh.” It was getting hotter with every step. Amina’s legs felt curiously heavy, as if they were already taking a nap. “God abandoned America?”

“Probably.” Akhil opened the door to the bedroom they shared and flipped the fan onto high, sending a small cloud of mosquitoes in all directions. “Ammachy thinks so.”

“Does Dad think so?”

“No, stupid. Dad likes it. That’s what they were fighting about.”

“They were fighting?”

“What did you think that was? What do you think it is every time we’re here? Ammachy wants Dad to move back. Dad doesn’t want to move back. Ammachy gets mad at Mom about it. Classic immigrant dysfunction, duh.”

“Yeah, I know,
duh
,” Amina said, annoyed that she didn’t. Akhil was such a know-it-all when it came to India, like he was some big expert just because he was three years older than her and he’d been born there instead of in the States, like she had. She lifted the mosquito netting at the edge of one of the twin beds and climbed under. “But Mom wants to move back, too.”

“So?” Akhil fell back onto the bed next to hers.

“So why does Ammachy get mad at her?”

Akhil thought it over for a minute, then shrugged. “Because she doesn’t want to get mad at Dad.”

“Oh.” Amina’s head sank into the pillow. “Do you want to move back?”

“No! India sucks.”

Amina was relieved. This much even she knew. She shut her eyes, surprised by how quickly the blackness of sleep rose up to greet her, swift and persuasive as candor.

“She’s half grandmother, half wolf, you know,” Akhil whispered a few seconds later, and already half dreaming, she took it to be truth in the way unfathomable things can be. She had seen the cool lupine glow in her grandmother’s eyes, her arthritic hands curled into paws. In the days that followed, her hand would instinctively cover her throat whenever Ammachy looked directly at her.

Where was everybody? The deep blue of evening shadowed Akhil’s empty bed as Amina opened her eyes. She rose, letting the pressure in her head settle before shoving her feet into her chappals and walking across the hallway to her parents’ room.

“Mom?”

Inside, Kamala shoved clothes into a dark dresser. She glanced up as Amina walked in. “Oh, good. You need to wake up so you can go to sleep on time.”

“Where is everyone?”

“Daddy and Sunil and all have gone to see the neighbors.”

“Where’s Akhil?”

“In the kitchen.”

Amina blinked against the dry air, feeling vaguely sick. “My head hurts.”

Instantly Kamala was next to her, with a hand on her forehead. “You drank some water?”

“No.” The water in Salem tasted like hot nickels. Amina tried to use it only when brushing her teeth.

“Go downstairs and get some right now.”

Amina groaned.

“No! None of this Miss Needed an Enema Last Time.”

“Mom.”

“You want it again? Four days no pooping?”

“Fine! Fine! Going!”

The sun had already set behind the Wall as Amina shuffled through the shadowed yard, toward the kitchen. The taller of the servant girls smacked a coconut against the cement, staring at her as she walked by. Amina waved and then pretended she hadn’t when the girl did not wave back.

“Fingers out of the ghee, or I will chop them off!” Mary-the-Cook was shouting as Amina entered the kitchen. “How many times do I tell you this? Ah! The little one is awake now! What is it,
koche
? You want some bread and sugar?”

“Mom says I need water.”

“Good, good.” Black as a tire and perpetually struggling under the weight of her pillow-sized breasts, Mary-the-Cook was the exact same age as Ammachy, a fact that had been made incredible by the way time had expanded her body in the exact places it had contracted Ammachy’s. The result was a face smoothed of any wrinkles, a body that moved like a jogging meatball. “Waterwaterwater. All week I have been making the water for you people! You remember last time, nah? Four days and still you couldn’t—”

“I know, I know.” Amina took the cup Mary-the-Cook offered. “What’s for dinner?”

“Biryani.” The cook nodded triumphantly to a bloody chicken carcass resting on the counter. “And maybe a little bit of this fool if he keeps talking such nonsense.”

“It’s not nonsense,” Akhil said. “Anyway, how do you know? It’s not like you were at tea with us.”

“At tea?
At tea?
I have myself been working at this house since this boy’s father was six years old only, and he thinks I have to be
at tea
to know what goes on?”

“I’m just saying Ammachy was pissed at him
again
. It’s like she can’t even look at him.”

“Pist?”

“Angry. It means angry.”

“Nobody is angry! Too much of love is all! All these years Amma works and works to send Thomas to school, and then he goes and marries your dusky mother and studies in America and what? Nothing!”
For reasons unclear to anyone, Mary-the-Cook had always been Ammachy’s strongest ally, regularly citing Ammachy’s teaching her English as evidence of a kindness that no one else had seen. “Like every other so-and-so from here to Bombay, this boy runs off and works and works and does not come home! What is she supposed to do?”

“She could move to the States,” Akhil said.

“Don’t be an idiot! What move? She’s too old.” Mary frowned. “Besides, it’s the children’s duty, everyone knows. And she is getting old! What if something happens?”

“She’s got Sunil Uncle.”

Mary-the-Cook snorted. “That one is a miserable good-for-nothing. It’s a miracle she lets him live here at all! Shouting at everybody, sleepwalking like some baby elephant, always unhappy!”