Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Sajeev Roy?” Bala asked, trembling.

“Yes, Mom. God, what other Sajeev do we know?”

“He knows?” Kamala frowned. “He is wanting this?”

“Ma.” Amina rolled her eyes. “He asked her.”

“SAJEEV ROY?” Bala screamed, and then began jumping up and down, bangles and sari and face a blur of green and gold, and everyone went nuts. Thomas bellowed. Kamala muttered. Raj and Sanji hugged each other and the girls, while Chacko blinked with the stunned disorientation of a man who’d gone to sleep in one country and woken up in another.

“Come here, you little rat!” Thomas shouted, and Dimple went to him, bending down so he could hug her.

“All this time!” Sanji scolded the rest of them. “All this time you people are worried about how will Dimple ever find someone you like and here this girl picks Sajeev Roy himself!”

“You’re getting married?” Chacko asked.

“Oh, Dimple, he’s going to cry,” Thomas said, nudging her toward him. “Look what you’ve done to your poor father’s heart!”

“We will have to go to Mumbai to get the proper lehenga and jewelry!” Bala yelled at nobody in particular. “Three outfits at least!”

“No, wait, Mom, we’re not—”

“What time of year? Winter? Summer? Then only we’ll know the right gown, nah? Someone call the Roys!”

“Not yet! Sajeev should tell them first, okay? But listen, we’re not—”

“They will want to do the engagement party in Wyoming, nah? Fine with me, right, Chacko? Party at the groom’s, wedding at the bride’s?”

“No!” Dimple yelled. “Stop!”

Bala frowned. “Wedding in Seattle?”

“No wedding! We’re eloping.”

Bala blinked, bludgeoned with confusion.

“We’ve already planned it,” Dimple explained. “We’re going to the courthouse in Seattle in three weeks, just the two of us. You know, keep it simple.”

The family catapulted into silence. They did not know. Bala especially did not know, her eyes pinging around the room feverishly like there was a punch line to be found somewhere.

“But not even us?” Sanji’s face was rigid with dismay.

“We already planned it,” Dimple repeated, looking to Amina for help. “It’s really not that big of a deal. People do it all the time.”

“Who?” Sanji demanded. “Americans? Orphans?”

“It will just be so much simpler. And cheap! Cheap, Dad. Don’t pretend you’re not excited about that.”

“No wedding?” Chacko asked sadly. And then, even more sadly, “No father-daughter dance?”

“You want a father-daughter dance ?”

“Of course he wants!” Thomas huffed. “What’s wrong with you?”

“Mad,” Sanji said, wagging a finger. “Absolutely bonkers nutso. Fine-fine not coming home and all, busy girl with a busy life, but a wedding ? Without family ? Might as well have a zoo without animals!” Dimple gave Amina a pleading look as Bala’s crying filled the room, soft and pervasive as humidity.

“What about a simple court ceremony and a small-small reception of only one hundred?” Raj waggled his head from side to side like this was really no different from eloping.

“No,” Dimple sighed. “That’s going to take too much planning. We just want to do this and—”

“I can plan!” Bala said, seizing on this like a lifesaver thrown into an ocean. “All the details only, okay? Flowers and dresses and guest list and food and cake — nothing will be left to you, nah?”

“No, that’s not — listen, Mom, it’s a nice offer, but I don’t want to.”

“But a dress!” Bala whimpered. “Surely you want something beautiful? We don’t even have to go ourselves, I can have my sister order one simple neemzari lehenga and it can be here in just six weeks and—”

“NO. It’s not happening, okay? I’m not waiting six goddamn weeks and inviting a hundred people to sit around and squeeze me! And I’m definitely not wearing some hoochie ghagra choli stomach-baring atrocity!”

Sanji squinted hard at her. “You’re pregnant.”

“Oh my God,” Amina said, finally moving to jump in. “Seriously, you guys, it’s not like it’s some huge surprise, is it? This is Dimple. And anyway, she’s still marrying Sajeev, so it’s still a great thing, right?”

“I’m pregnant,” Dimple said.

“Ho!” Kamala shouted as Chacko’s face paled to gray. “Ho, ho, ho! Now we see!”

“See what ?” Dimple glared.

“Choo!” Sanji stared at the floor, looking awfully surprised for having been so prescient just moments before. She thumped her palms against her sides, as if resurrecting circulation. “So there it is. So now we know.”

“Pregnant?” Amina asked.

“I’m sorry.” Dimple looked at her, wide-eyed. “I wanted to tell you first. I should have told you first. I tried, on the porch this morning. I just couldn’t.”

“Do the Roys know?” Kamala asked.

“Ma.”

“What? Just asking!”

“Oh my God,” Bala moaned, clutching her bangles as if to protect them. “It’s a scandal . We will be scandalized .”

“Oh, come on.” Dimple rolled her eyes. “Do you even know what a scandal is? I’m in love and I’m having a kid and we’re getting married. Big deal.”

“But everyone will know when the baby comes! What will the Roys think of us? Ach!”

“Who cares what they think!” Chacko snarled, finally recovering. “What do we think? What kind of a family does this? I’m going to have a talk with this boy! Set him straight!”

“Dad, stop . This isn’t the 1950s.”

But wasn’t it always the 1950s for Chacko? And not even the American 1950s, but the Indian 1950s, in which a pregnant unmarried daughter in her thirties was as inconceivable as a unicorn in heat? His face sweltered with the indignity of it.

“Hey,” Thomas said, trying to catch Chacko’s eye. “She’s right, you know. It’s not so bad.”

“What do you know about it?” Chacko glared.

“So then, let’s just do it as soon as possible,” Sanji said, as though coming to the end of a conversation with herself. “Right, Dimple? That’s why you wanted it alone, nah? Not because you don’t want us there, but to get it done fast?”

“I don’t … I mean, mostly, yes.”

“So how about this weekend?”

“What?”

“In four days’ time! You are staying until Sunday anyway. That is enough for us to make the party. Wedding is just a party, nah? We make parties all the time.”

“Yes!” Raj clapped. “It’s a good idea, actually. So simple for us to pull something together, right, Bala?”

Dimple looked nervously around the room. “We don’t need to do that. I mean, Thomas Uncle has plenty to deal with right now, we don’t need to—”

“Judge Montano is an old patient; he can perform the ceremony! And the backyard is so nice at this time of year, no?” Thomas said. “And if you do it here, I won’t have to travel, which would be so wonderful. And the Roys can come down easily from Wyoming, and Kamala can cook!”

“I can?”

“We’ll both cook,” Raj said, nodding eagerly.

“What do you think?” Amina asked Dimple quietly, as though the others weren’t listening, and her cousin instinctively patted her pockets, looking for the assurance of a cigarette pack before remembering why it was gone.

She chewed her nail. “I mean, Sajeev would have to agree, obviously.”

“So call him already!” Sanji said. “What else do you need?”

What else did she need? Dimple turned to Chacko, her face disconcertingly blank, a vault holding in three decades of disappointment. From her periphery, Amina could see Bala nodding, willing him to concede, to not make the breach between them any more permanent than it already was.