Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

Amina looked at the swirling ground outside her window and imagined her parents descending into Albuquerque, their eyes wide open, India’s monsoon season tucked behind them like a shadow. With Amina not yet born and Akhil in Salem for the eight months it would take them to make a home, it was the first time they had been alone in years. She imagined them coming in at sunset, their hands clasped in a way she’d never seen, their cheeks blazing with orange light. They weren’t distant or shy or awkward in her fantasy; they weren’t a few years into a marriage that Ammachy hadn’t approved of. Instead, they were young and in love and racing into a new country at twilight. They had things to whisper to each other as the plane descended.

“ Koche! Here!”

Amina looked behind her to find Kamala struggling down the escalator in a pink cotton sari and running shoes, her huge black purse hoisted over one arm, hair hanging down her back in the single black braid she’d worn her entire life. Short, slight-bodied, and bobbing from side to side like a furious metronome, Kamala made her way across the floor, entirely unaware of watchers she left in her wake. Even now, well into her fifties, with a few gray hairs framing the smooth flute of her cheekbones, she looked girlishly pretty.

“I’ve been waiting upstairs ten minutes!” she shouted, grabbing Amina’s arm as though she might try to get away.

“That’s the departure zone, Ma.”

“So?” She looked Amina up and down. “You’re looking too thin. Not eating?”

“I gave it up.”

“What?”

Amina squeezed her shoulder, gently guiding her back toward the escalator. “Of course I’m eating. I just had dinner with Sajeev and Dimple last night.” She silently cursed herself as the information lit up her mother’s face.

“Well, well . And how is Mr. Sajeev?”

“Fine.” Amina stepped onto the escalator, and Kamala followed, springing forward gingerly, like a cat onto a pile of papers.

“He has some big job now, isn’t it? What, exactly?”

“I don’t remember.”

“I think computer programmer.” Kamala smiled.

Outside, the old orange Ford was being pelted on all sides by thick sheets of sand. They watched it for a minute, gathering their breath.

“Okay! Run for your life!” Kamala shouted, and they did, throwing the bag into the back and jumping into the front.

“Hoo! What a business!” she yelled when they’d made it inside, laughing as Amina slammed the door shut. She pulled out from the departure zone, cutting off an approaching car and waving benignly as the driver swerved around them, his middle finger extended. “So the Ramakrishnas want to see you tomorrow. Raj is making jalebis.”

Amina winced. “Why can’t we tell him that I don’t like them?”

“You loved them when you were little!”

It was Akhil who loved them, but saying so would hurt her mother in the way all mentions of Akhil hurt Kamala, the prick of his name silencing her for minutes or sometimes hours. “Well, I really don’t love them now.”

“Raj loves making them for you, and your father loves eating, so no big deals, right?”

Right. “Where is Dad, anyway?”

“Big case. Your skin is looking good. You’ve been using the Pond’s I sent you?”

“Wait, he’s operating?”

“What else would he be doing?”

“I don’t know. Resting?”

“He’s not sick.”

“He’s sick enough for you to ask me to come down.”

“I said he was talking , not sick . You’re the one who decided you needed to come down.”

Amina shook her head but said nothing. Why bother? Once rewritten, Kamala’s history was safer than classified government documents. The wind hit harder as they turned north. A few miles away, the hospitals — part of the only cluster of buildings higher than ten stories in the entire town — rose up into the dirty air. Amina squinted at them.

“How was yesterday? You had a wedding?”

Amina pushed away the memory of Lesley Beale’s face and the coats and the limbs. “It was fine.”

“The bride was a nice girl?”

“Eh.”

“What’s her name?”

“Jessica.”

“Je-see-ca,” her mother repeated, nodding to herself. “How old?”

“Twenty-three.”

“I see,” Kamala said softly, switching lanes. “That’s lucky, no? Mother must be so relieved.”

“I’m sure she is. Poor you, huh?”

“No one is saying that!” Her mother looked over her shoulder. “So Sajeev is seeing someone?”

“Not that I know of.”

Kamala waggled her head from side to side, shaking up and reevaluating the information as it settled. She flexed her fingers against the steering wheel a few times before saying, “So then you and Sajeev could go on a date.”

“No we can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because he’s not my type.”

“Oh, that,” her mother snorted.

“What that? That’s important, Mom! That’s not a crazy thing to want.”

“No need to yell about it.” Kamala frowned. “I’m just saying is all.”

“Anyway, I’m thirty,” Amina muttered. “You don’t tell a thirty-year-old who to date.”

“Twenty-nine! And your friends don’t tell you? Dimple doesn’t tell you?”

“That’s different.”

“Yes, of course. This brilliant country where the children listen to other children about who to spend their lives with.”

Amina leaned closer to the window. Up ahead on the road, a herd of tumbleweeds skipped toward the truck, their thorny bodies buoyant with wind.

“Take me to the hospital.”

“What?”

“I want to see Dad for a sec.”

“Just wait until he’s home. Besides, he might be in surgery.”

“Then they will tell me that when they page him.”

“But why go at all? Hospital is a horrible place.”

“Ma.”

“Fine, fine,” Kamala sighed, squinting into the rearview mirror and shifting lanes. “But I’m not coming in.”

Within minutes they were idling in front of the ER, where a few brave nurses sucked down cigarettes, palms shielding their eyes.

“You sure you’re going to be okay out here?” Amina asked, pushing a stray lock of hair behind her mother’s cheek.

“Yes. I will be taking one nap. Go fast.”

Amina pushed her door open and ran.

She held her breath. It didn’t matter that the upholstered seats had changed from mauve to green to blue, or that the television had been updated to a more recent model, or that new pay phones stood in place of the ones that had been there when she was a kid; every damn time Amina went into the ER, the fear and hope and worry emanating from the families surrounded her like thick water, filling her lungs with dread.

“AMINAMINAMINA!” Thomas boomed, white curls springing out of his head like daisies as he crossed the linoleum toward her. “I just got the page! What are you doing here?”

“Just wanted to see you,” she gasped as his arms swooped down around her, squeezing her air out like wet from a sponge.

“You’re lucky I wasn’t in the OR!” He pulled back, looking, she thought, no crazier than usual. Graying eyebrows huddled over his eyes like permanent weather, and his dark irises glinted sharply through them. His mustache and beard were as carefully trimmed as ever, outlining his wide, flat lips. “Come, let’s walk.”

“Okay, but I can’t go far. Mom is waiting.”

“Fine, fine.” Thomas kept one arm over her shoulder as they walked, and she was filled with the smell of him — deodorant and aftershave and the slight masala that always came out of his pores like incense. “So how was your trip?”