Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

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 liquid 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.

“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.”