Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

Ammachy raised her eyes from the oilcloth, eyelids half-mast in a way that might have been mistaken for boredom if not for the drilling gaze underneath them. She shrugged. “Fine. I will cancel.”

“Amma, you can’t just—”

“I said I would cancel.”

Thomas, body angled forward for the full impact of a fight, wavered in his chair. He opened his mouth to say something, then closed it.

“Thank you,” he said.

“Don’t thank me,” Ammachy said icily. “I’m doing you no favors.”

“Okay, Ami!” Kamala said a little too cheerfully. “You ready to go to the zoo?”

Amina nodded, pushing her mostly full plate to her mother and waiting for one of the adults to protest over how little she had eaten. No one did.

“They can grow to be sixty feet! And they kill elephants in one bite! And they growl like dogs!” Amina told her father at tea that afternoon, while her mother and brother slept upstairs. “And when they get mad, like really mad? They can puff out their hood and it’s bigger than an umbrella. Like, you or I could stand under it in a rainstorm and not even get wet.”

“Wow, really?” Thomas looked impressed.

Ammachy set a small dish of mixture on the table with a clack.

“And …” Amina racked her brain for the details Akhil would have wanted to tell. “It was a female! A girl cobra! But it’s still called a king. I think. And it had built a nest even though there was no mate and no eggs!”

“Stop shouting.” Ammachy winced, sitting down. “Did you comb your hair at all this morning? Why are you looking so grubby all the time?”

“And,” Amina said, ignoring her grandmother, “it almost got free and attacked us.”

“Goodness! What did you do?”

“Don’t encourage her, Thomas.” Ammachy frowned. “Such spoiling I’ve never seen.”

“Akhil and I stayed calm, but Itty pulled out, like, half his hair.” Amina looked down the hall to the door of Itty’s room. “Where is he, anyway?”

“Gone to the bank with Sunil.” Ammachy brushed her fingers over the tablecloth, which had been changed from oilcloth to lace since the morning. “They will be back after they leave the papers.”

“What papers?”

“The papers for the house,” Thomas said. “I signed it over to Sunil.”

“Oh.” Amina nodded, confused.

“My father left a portion of the house to both of us,” Thomas explained. “I gave my part to Sunil.”

Amina looked up at the high dining room ceiling, the peeled paint around the base of the chandelier. “This house was yours?”

“It’s still both of theirs,” Ammachy muttered.

“It’s Sunil’s,” Thomas said firmly. “He’s the one who lives here and keeps it up. The papers were just a formality.”

“Doesn’t matter. You can sign whatever you want to, but this will always be your home.”

Thomas shushed her and Amina felt strangely disappointed. She hadn’t known that any of the house belonged to her father. She wondered now which part did. The upstairs rooms? The roof? The doorbell rang before she could ask.

“Aha!” Ammachy pushed herself to shaky legs.

“I’ll get it, Amma.”

“No, no.” Ammachy waved Thomas down. “You sit.”

But Thomas was already walking out of the dining room. Ammachy followed at a gasping pace behind.

“Thomas … I said …”

Amina, sensing something much more exciting than tea, followed. She stood in the middle of the hall as Thomas threw open the door, letting in the flat haze of late-afternoon sunlight cut by a tall silhouette.

“Hello?” a voice inquired.

“Hello?”

“Goodness, Thomas, is that you?”

The figure stepped into the hallway, no less magnificent for its sudden definition. With light-coffee skin and a short buzz of white hair, the man standing in the doorway hardly looked like he could have emerged from the same Salem that Amina had ridden through just hours before, his white linen pants and pink shirt crisp as cut apples.

“Dr. Abraham,” Thomas said, backing up quickly. “How nice to see you, sir! I wasn’t expecting you.”

“Chandy.” Ammachy beamed. “So nice of you to be able to meet us! I hope it wasn’t too much of a bother?”

“No botheration at all!” Dr. Abraham exclaimed, walking through the doorway and into the foyer. He nodded agreeably at the walls. “Glad to come.”

Amina tugged on her father’s hand. “Who is it?”

“Will you have a bit of tea with us, Doctor?” Thomas asked, oblivious to her. “We were just starting.”

“That would be lovely, thank you.” The man turned to Ammachy. “Miriamma, you’re looking well. We miss you round the hospital, you know.”

“Oh, pah .” Ammachy looked pleased.

“And how is Sunil doing these days?”

“Fine, fine.” Ammachy led the way to the dining room, where Amina saw that someone — Mary-the-Cook? — had sneaked in, placing an array of sweets and savories on the table, along with a fresh pot of tea and clean dishes. “Dentistry will always be needed, as you know.”

“Though less so since the Brits left.” Dr. Abraham waited for the laugh, and Ammachy supplied it, pouring a cup of tea.

“Sugar?”

“Yes, please. I can never get enough of sweetening.” Dr. Abraham ladled four spoonfuls into his cup, stirred, and took a sip. “So, Thomas, what brings you back?”

Thomas nodded as though this was the first of many questions in an oral exam. “Just a family visit, sir. My wife hasn’t seen her sisters in too long, and of course, we want the children to know the family.”

“Ah, yes! The children.” Dr. Abraham looked down at Amina, who stared back, mute. “And who is this?”

“This is my only granddaughter, Amina.” Ammachy poured tea into her own cup. “She’s eleven years old, and top of her class back at home. Champion of spelling itself.”

“Really?” Dr. Abraham took a sip of tea. “And what next? Are you going to be a surgeon like Daddy?”

“I’m going to be a vet for puppies and kittens only,” Amina said.

“I see,” Dr. Abraham appeared unfazed. “And how are you finding India?”

“It’s good. It’s hot. Today we saw a cobra and—”

“You’ve met Thomas’s son, Akhil?” Ammachy passed the doctor a bowl of plantain chips.

“Yes, yes, I believe I did on Thomas’s first trip back. How old was the boy then? Six!”

“Four. He’s fourteen now,” Thomas said.

“And he is back in the States?”

“No sir, he’s just upstairs with his mother napping. Sorry not to have him down to meet you, but I didn’t—”

“Nothing doing! No problem at all. It’s a big change for the children, no? But they recover quickly, I find. I think they know it’s home, yes? Physiologically speaking, of course. What’s the expression?” He paused, and Amina wondered if he was really waiting for an answer or just asking himself more questions out loud. “Ah, yes, they know it in their bones! Don’t you think, Amina?”

He looked at her expectantly, and Amina nodded because it seemed better than not nodding.

“And how have you been, sir?” Thomas passed a tray of neon sweets. “Are you still splitting your time between here and teaching at Vellore?”

“No teaching at the moment. Everything has taken a bit of a backseat to getting this rehabilitative center into tip-top shape.” Dr. Abraham set two plump balls of ladoo down on his plate as though they were baby chicks. “I would feel sadly if I didn’t think the work was vitally important, of course, but what an opportunity … your mother has told you a bit of what we’re doing?”

“A bit, yes.”

Dr. Abraham nodded encouragingly.

“It sounds very interesting,” Thomas offered.