Mira Jacob - The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

“He’s there,” Amina said to her mother’s sunglasses, and watched Kamala’s lips curl in until they disappeared completely. Her father’s eyes were stones.

“Bathroom,” Dimple whispered in her ear, and Amina stood up, letting herself be led down the center aisle, past the Indians, past Jamie Anderson, who stood trapped in the middle of his row as she walked by, silent and aggrieved. By the time she thought to look back, Akhil was standing too, stretching at the side of the podium. He waved at her lazily and strolled toward an open window. No one stopped him when he climbed out.

“Ami?” The tips of Dimple’s black shoes pointed into the bathroom stall.

She had asked to be let in before. She would ask again. Through the crack in the stall door, Amina could see the bathroom mirror, the reflection of Dimple’s head pressed to the metal door, listening. Outside, mourners were singing some flat and lousy hymn that managed to make them sound like children and insects all at once.

“Please?” Dimple shifted her weight. Amina leaned forward, slid the lock open. Her cousin came in, locking the door behind her, and Amina scooted over on the tank of the toilet. Dimple climbed on, nervously eyeing the toilet water. When she leaned back, it was Amina who sighed. It was better with Dimple there. They sat next to each other, a pocket of warmth growing between their touching shoulders. Their feet ringed the toilet.

“I’m not crazy,” Amina said after a few minutes.

“I never said you were.” Dimple flicked a piece of lint off her skirt.

Amina flexed her fingers in front of her, counting them silently.

“What did you see?”

Amina shrugged. The bathroom smelled of disgusting pink soap and talcum powder that made the back of her throat itch. Ten. All fingers were accounted for. Dimple splayed her own hands out, raising them to cover Amina’s, squeezing them into tight fists. Amina ducked her head to her chest to keep herself from crying.

“It’s okay,” Dimple said. “No one can see you.”

Amina shook her head. How to explain that she felt like if she cried, if she actually started, she might never stop? That it felt too bottomless, like jumping into one of those cave pools that was the size of a pond but actually thousands of feet deep? No, there was no explaining this to anyone, even Dimple, who held her in a clumsy half hug as the service ended and the mourners rose to leave.

They made an uneasy knot in the kitchen. Long after the reception had ended and the rest of the guests had parted, the Ramakrishnas and the Kurians curled tightly around the kitchen counter, watching Kamala. It had been hours since the burial service, hours since their arrival at the house, whereupon Thomas immediately excused himself for the bedroom and his wife took up a post at the stove. A hissing cloud of ghee billowed across the ceiling, and under it Kamala flipped and folded yet another golden crepe, its thin edges perfectly browned.

“Who’s ready for another?” she asked.

Bala and Sanji shook their heads, while Raj and Chacko exchanged hesitant glances. They had all eaten as much as they could, and certainly more than they wanted. Even Dimple, for once willing to accept anything Kamala had to offer, had stuffed herself beyond reason.

“Amina?” Kamala trilled.

“No, Ma.”

“I’ll take it, Auntie,” Dimple said, shuffling forward.

Kamala nodded curtly, slipping it onto the plate before returning to the batter bowl. She lifted the ladle with a quick hand.

“No! No, Kamala,” Bala said, standing up. “Really, no need. We’re all so full. Make it for yourself only.”

Kamala stared at her through glassy eyes. “I’m not hungry.”

“Of course not. It’s okay. Don’t eat, then. Why don’t you come sit?”

Kamala was silent, considering this. She looked away. “Have you seen the mural?” she asked.

Bala looked desperately at Sanji.

“Kamala, come sit for a moment,” Sanji said.

“Come, I’ll show you,” Kamala said, walking quickly out of the kitchen.

The others looked at one another, too anxious to move.

“You think maybe we should sedate?” Sanji asked Chacko and Raj, but the latter’s eyes flashed nervously toward Amina. They all turned to look at her.

“It’s upstairs,” Amina said. “The mural.”

In the stairwell, the rustling of silk against silk, the thick press of kitchen spices and the day’s stunned sweat. Amina followed her relatives up. It was strange enough to see the Kurians and the Ramakrishnas on the stairs, since they usually just called up when it was time to go, but when they entered Akhil’s room, all eight of them crammed around the bed, Amina felt distinctly ill. She stared at the floor while Kamala flipped the desk lamp up to light the ceiling and the others craned their necks. A sharp silence filled the room.

“It’s the Greats!” she heard her mother say. A flurry of motion dotted the corner of her eye as her mother extended an arm. “You see?”

“Yes,” Sanji Auntie said at last, and the men shuffled in assent.

“Gandhi is the one with the glasses,” Kamala continued. “Gandhiji, Che Guevara, Martin Luther King, Nelson Mandela, Rob Halford!”

“Rob Halford?” Chacko asked.

“He’s a singing priest,” Kamala said, and the others nodded quickly. “Akhil admired him very much.”

“I want to go home.”

The voice, soft and shuddering, stopped them. Amina looked up to see Dimple standing in the corner, her elbows cupped in her arms.

“I want to go home,” her cousin repeated, her lip trembling. Her face scrunched into a ball and she held herself tighter as tears leaked out of her eyes. Bala Auntie moved quickly across the room, putting one arm around Dimple and the other forward, as if to stop anyone who tried to interfere with their swift turn toward the door.

“We should take her home,” she told Kamala, who nodded mutely, the light in her own face suddenly leaden.

“We’ll stay,” Sanji said, but Kamala shook her head.

“No, you go,” she said. “We’re fine.”

“Call us. You need anything, nah? Just please call.” Sanji Auntie wrung her hands in the driveway, looking at Amina and her mother as if to absorb their pain with her eyes alone. Kamala nodded, already walking back into the house. The doorway faced them, its squared light empty.

“Amina baby, you hear?” Sanji Auntie asked, cupping Amina’s chin in her hand. “Call me when you’re missing him, okay? Call me when you miss him too much.”

Amina nodded, felt Sanji’s fingers slip from her face, replaced by two wet kisses on either cheek. She turned and walked through the front door, shutting it.

As it turned out, it was not Akhil whom she missed in those first weeks so much as her family, or the family they had been before. As her mother slept straight through dinner and her father wandered through the house like a horse that had slipped into an aquarium, Amina warmed bland casseroles, doused them in Tabasco, and turned on the news even though she had no intention of watching it. A few times she even took the stairs back up to her room, shutting her eyes and listening to Tom Brokaw through the floorboards and pretending that nothing had happened at all. It was amazing how easy it was to do, how utterly convincing. Oh, she wasn’t so dumb as to pretend it had all been good then, with Thomas at the hospital and her mother talking to the television for company and Akhil and Paige dreaming up a better world while Amina watched the empty driveway. But they were better. That much she was sure of.