Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Holy Raccooner !” Thomas corrected.

The slingshot, if it could still be called that at such enormous proportions, took up the better length of the truck bed when stretched fully backward. Thomas pulled it tight, explaining to Amina, “Thing is, you need to find what works best. We’ve been doing experiments. Tomatoes, potatoes, that kind of thing.”

“We?”

“Raj and Chacko and me. I thought the tomato was something else, but then Raj went and baked an eggplant whole and brought it over and pshoom! You’ve never seen anything like it!”

“You’re going to kill raccoons with an eggplant?”

“Not kill! Stun. Stun is what we’re aiming for. It’s actually a twofer.” In the world of inventions, Thomas held the greatest respect for the twofer. A suit made of naturally deodorizing fabric? A bath sponge shaped like a headrest? Wonderful . His lips now twitched with anticipation, giving her a full three seconds to come up with it before bursting out, “It will provide a meal and a deterrent at the same time!”

Amina looked at the spoons. “You’re shooting them with dinner?”

“You make it sound so sinister. It keeps them from getting into the trash. And by keeping it in the truck, we can move when they do.”

“How do you know it won’t do real damage? I bet a potato could hurt.”

“I wouldn’t fire a whole, uncooked potato,” Thomas said, scoffing. “And stewed tomato barely hurts, really.”

“You don’t know that.”

“I do, actually. Chacko lost the bet and had to stand target. He took two tomatoes in the back.”

“Jesus! And?”

“Nothing much,” Thomas said, sounding vaguely disappointed. “Nice stain and all, but he said that it wasn’t so bad, though he smelled a bit afterward.”

Thomas carefully laid the slingshot down and sat on the back of the truck. He motioned for the scotch she had been holding for him, and they toasted silently. The noise of crickets grew slightly louder around her, pressing in with the night.

“If you want, I’ll take you to the driving range tomorrow. We made one by the dump,” Thomas said. “Those guys let us do it out there, and now we all compete, using each other as targets. Raj thinks we could turn it into a new sport even.”

“Raccooning?” Amina asked.

“Exactly,” her father said.

It’s the altitude, she thought.

Upstairs an hour later, Amina clutched the side of her bed. Her eyes slid dizzyingly around the room, but shutting them was worse, the darkness thick as meat, her head swelling with the sound of the dog barking and the wind through the trees and what might be her father’s voice talking under all of it. She sat up, placing her feet squarely on the floor.

In the bathroom she leaned over the sink, staring at her reflection. Her hair was flat and her pupils were wide. She splashed water over her face.

The tiniest bit of light winked from the glass-covered frames that guided her down the hall, and she moved past them like a plane down an abandoned runway. They were pictures, school pictures, hers and Akhil’s, each leading to their bedroom doors. Even in the dark she knew which she was passing with every step, her braces in fourth grade, his light mustache in seventh. When she got to the bedroom doors, she turned to his instead of her own. The cool wood pressed her forehead, which she lifted twice and knocked, as if that was a good idea with all the spinning, as if he might have surprised her with an answer. Nothing came, but she was comforted anyway, holding on to the doorknob like it was somebody’s hand.

“Hey you,” she said.

“Look at this girl!” Sanji Ramakrishna screamed. She threw the door open in a blue silken whirl and streaked down the steps toward Amina, cackling like a fat devil. Pinching hands landed on Amina’s shoulders, her cheeks, and Sanji bellowed at the door, “Hey! Fools! Get off your rusty rumps and come and greet our baby! It’s taken her all of three days to face us!”

“One day, Sanji Auntie,” Amina protested, but her words were lost to the thrum of voices that moved from the kitchen to the entryway, bursting out of the door with the rest of them: Raj Ramakrishna (led by a spatula), Bala and Chacko Kurian (in one of their many silent fights, from the looks of things), and Thomas, whiskey in hand.

Raj greeted her first, the loose girth of him swaddled in stylishly rumpled linen. Plump, cultured, and the wearer of a docile smile that was rumored to have wooed legions of older women in his youth, he double-pecked each of Amina’s cheeks before whispering, “There’s pani puri and jalebis in the kitchen.”

“You really shouldn’t have gone through all that trouble.”

“Tell me about it!” Sanji said. “All night this one! Clucking about in the kitchen like some mad hen because tamarind chutney wouldn’t thicken and how to get done by the time Amina-baby gets here!”

“Come in, come in,” Bala Kurian coaxed from her perch on the step, arms clenched in front of her like a tiny prizefighter. Known throughout the Indian community in Albuquerque for her steady supply of gossip, outlandish outfits, and baffling non sequiturs, Dimple’s mother was in fine form tonight, glittering under several heavy chains and a saffron-colored, midriff-baring lehenga. ( Straight from Bom! she would brag over dinner. Like a dancing girl dipped in ghee! Kamala would mutter under her breath.)

“Goodness, Ami! But what’s happened to you? You’re looking so fair!”

“She uses the Pond’s every night!” called Kamala, heaving up the driveway with an enormous bowl of rasmalai. “I sent her from Walgreens myself!”

“Or it could be the whole no-sun thing,” Amina said, ignoring her mother’s look.

“Come, let me see.” Chacko Kurian, who had been waiting by the door, now swept the women aside to grip Amina’s shoulders with gnarled hands. “You’re fairer?”

“Hi. Not really.”

He looked down his nose at her as though reading the face of a watch, his eyes glittering from somewhere deep behind heavy brows. “Too old for marrying anyway — why worry about it now?”

“Chackoji, don’t start,” Sanji warned.

“What start? It’s not a conversation, just the plain truth.”

Delivered at least twelve times in every get-together, Chacko Kurian’s plain truths could have stamped the joy out of any festivity if anyone were to take him seriously. Springing from lost dreams (to pioneer heart surgery with a fleet of like-minded sons) and found realities (a daughter who was as uninterested in his line of work as she was in trying to make him happy), his edicts were always promptly dismissed by the others, giving him the air of a king ruling the wrong kingdom.

“So what all is happening in Seattle?” he asked, clearing his throat. “Your father says you’ve been busy-busy.”

“Yes, well, it’s the wedding season.”

“How many weddings do you do in one weekend?”

“Depends. Usually two, but sometimes four. Once I even—”

“And Dimple?” His jaw flexed as he asked. “I don’t suppose she’s given up this silly art business?”

“She’s doing great. I saw her right before I left.”

“We heard that’s not all you saw!” Bala beamed. “What’s this about you going on a date with Sajeev?”

“Oh, for the love of God. Dimple and I met him for a meal .”

“Dimple went on a date with Sajeev?” Bala looked even more thrilled.

“It wasn’t a date. It was dinner.”

“A dinner date?”

“Always, I knew that boy would go far,” Chacko announced.

“Who cares about that little stick-necked thing?” Sanji asked. “What other news of our girl? And when will she come home? It’s been two years already.”