Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“Don’t you think we should take him to the hospital?”

“Not yet.” He walked across the room to the liquor cabinet.

“When? Tomorrow?”

“I think we should just watch him for a bit.” He took out a tumbler.

“We’ve been watching! I’m telling you! He’s not himself anymore!”

“Kamala, please.” The liquid splashed down. “We can’t send him to the hospital because he isn’t fighting with you. Sleeping for a few hours in the middle of the evening is hardly unusual for a boy of his age.”

“But it’s not just that! Amina, tell him!”

Her parents’ eyes shifted to her, pleading separate cases. Amina looked from one to the other.

“Something is wrong with him,” Amina said at last, and her father looked plainly disappointed. “No, really, he’s been sleeping all the time. And he …” She struggled to think of something that wouldn’t get Akhil into trouble. “Even when he is awake, he’s really out of it. Sometimes he has to pull over when we’re driving. He sleeps during lunch. And then he comes home and eats like some crazy starving animal. And Dimple thinks he’s possessed.”

Her father sighed. “Is that everything?”

Amina nodded, feeling foolish.

“Not everything!” Kamala interjected. “He needs to see another doctor! Right now! Take him!”

“I told you he doesn’t—” Thomas started.

“Yes HE DOES. I AM TELLING YOU HE DOES.”

“Does what?” Akhil asked, his voice cottony with sleep. They turned to him, but no one said anything.

“What’s going on?” Akhil asked.

“You’re awake.” An unsurprised Thomas took a sip of his scotch.

“Yeah.”

“What day is it?”

Akhil stared groggily. “What?”

“Day of the week. Monday, Tuesday—”

“Thursday.”

“What’s the date?”

Akhil frowned. “Is this a test?”

“Yes,” Thomas answered.

Akhil blinked several times before saying, “January 12, 1983.”

“Why are you sleeping so much?” Kamala demanded.

Akhil looked at Amina, his face darkening with accusation. “Am I in trouble?”

“No, of course not,” Thomas said.

Akhil slumped back into the chair. He looked at his father, frowning. “What are you doing here?”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s early.”

“Your mother called me home.”

“Why?”

No one said anything. Kamala bit her lips together, blew air in puffs through her nose.

“What is going on?” Akhil looked warily from one to the other. Amina shrugged.

“Something is wrong with you!” Kamala shouted.

Akhil’s eyes rounded. “What?”

“Kamala!”

“ Wrong with me?”

“Your mother was just worried, and now she’s not,” Thomas said. “Don’t worry yourself.”

“Don’t say how I am!”

“Kamala, enough. You’re scaring him.”

“I’m not scaring anyone! Reagan could be deporting all of us tomorrow, and he would sleep like a baby!”

“We’re being deported?” Akhil asked.

“Listen, he’s fine—”

“He is not fine! He’s sleeping all the time like some kind of infant! His brain is going soft! He’s turning into furniture! You’re too busy in the hospital all the time with your precious patients — strangers! — and here your own son is dying and you won’t even—”

“I’m DYING?” Akhil sat up.

“HE’S GROWING!” Thomas bellowed, his voice slapping the ceiling. “My God, Kamala, nothing is wrong with him. He’s a regular boy in the middle of a growth spurt! You and your ridiculous wringing your hands and good Lord, it doesn’t take a doctor to know these things — just look at him ! LOOK AT HIM!”

Amina followed her father’s arm, an arrow of accusation tipped by a trembling finger, pointing straight toward Akhil. She looked at her brother. She really looked at him. And for the first time, she saw that his arms had grown thinner and longer as if stretched, knuckles grazing the carpet as he slouched into the chair. And his legs. Bulkier in the thigh, hard-looking, like twin benches attached to his torso. Her eyes moved up to his scowling face and saw that the acne had sucked back into his cheeks, leaving tiny craters in its place. And his cheekbones. They were too huge suddenly, swollen into arcs that hardened his face into a new, lunar topography. He blinked. He stood up. Amina backed up.

“Done?” Her brother’s voice was tight with fury.

“Yes,” Thomas said.

Akhil stalked across the room. Moments later, his feet trampled the stairs. A bedroom door slammed above them. Kamala stared at her husband. She opened her mouth to say something and then shut it.

“Kamala, you were scaring—”

The flat of her palm silenced him. She turned and left the living room, sari swishing against the bare floor. Another door slammed.

Thomas tipped the rest of the scotch into his mouth, swallowed. He walked over to the couch and sank into it. “Go if you want.”

Amina stayed.

Her father placed his elbows on his knees, his forehead in his hands. A face mask hung loosely from his neck. His scrubs were dotted with blood. He looked up at the television. “What’s this show?”

“ Wheel of Fortune . They’re trying to guess a word.”

“Huh.” He looked confused.

“Or a saying. You know, like ‘tears of a clown.’ Or ‘from dusk till dawn.’ ”

She sat down next to him on the couch and turned up the volume, but her father had lost interest.

“What’s that?” she said, pointing to the box with the antenna.

“It’s a telephone.”

“Where’s the cord?”

“It doesn’t have one. It’s a new thing, a phone that can go where you go. Soon they say they’ll be making them for cars.”

“Why would anyone phone someone from a car?”

Thomas shrugged. “For directions?”

“Huh.”

They were quiet for a moment.

“What’s that?” he pointed at her plate.

“It’s a snackument. Ritz crackers and cheese in a can. You can eat it.”

“What kind of cheese comes in a can?”

Amina grabbed the can. “Hold out your finger.”

“The sun will come out tomorrow!” a cheery voice announced, and a flurry of lit tiles ding-ding-dinged on the television.

Her father held out his finger, and Amina decorated it with swirls of yellow cheddar. Vanna turned the lit tiles over. The winning contestant got a new car and a vacation to Phoenix, Arizona. When Amina was done, her father held his finger to the light, turning it this way and that so that it glistened.

“The wonders of America,” Thomas said. He placed the finger in his mouth and sucked it.

Two days after Thomas had pronounced Akhil’s sleep nothing more than a growth spurt, Kamala settled on a cure for it. Amina, curled into an armchair with a copy of Heart of Darkness , barely noticed as her mother lifted Akhil’s legs and settled herself under them on the sofa. Kamala opened the first volume of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and cleared her throat.

“Anguilla,” she announced.

“What?” Amina said.

“The most northerly of the British Leeward Islands,” Kamala read, underlining the words with her extended middle finger. “Area, about sixty square miles.”

“What are you doing?”

Kamala jerked her head at the sleeping Akhil.

“Oh,” Amina nodded.

Her mother squinted, refinding her place. “The first inhabitants of the islands were—”

“Wait,” Amina said. “Why Anguilla?”

“I’m starting with A’s.”

“You’re going to read them all?”

“No, dummy, just the good ones. I skipped Akrotiri, Afghanistan.” Kamala cleared her throat and resumed: “The first Amerindians settled on Anguilla about three thousand five hundred years ago. Archaeological finds indicate that the island was a regional center for the Arawak Indians, who had sizeable villages at Sandy Ground, Meads Bay, Rendezvous Bay, and Island Harbor. The Caribe Indians, who eventually overpowered the Arawaks, called the island Malliouhana. Early Spanish explorers named the island Anguilla, which means ‘eel.’ ”