The Sleepwalker's Guide to Dancing

CHAPTER 1

“Traitors! Cowards! Good-for-nothings!” Ammachy had yelled in 1979, finishing the conversation that would finish her relationship with her son, as Thomas would only come back to India to bury her.

But what a calamity! An abomination! Divorced from the mother and the motherland in one fell swoop? Who could have seen such a thing coming? Certainly not Amina, who by age eleven was well versed enough in tragedy (she had seen The Champ and Kramer vs. Kramer) to understand that it came with tinkling music and bad weather.

And what was there to fear from the sunlight that dappled the Salem train station the morning of their arrival, making everything — the packed luggage and the red-shirted coolies and even the beggars — seem sweet and full of promise? Nothing, Amina thought, stepping down onto the platform and into the funk of other people’s armpits. Plump arms sheathed in sari blouses brushed her cheeks, chai-wallahs shouted into car windows, and a coolie reached impatiently for bags she was not carrying. Somewhere above the din she heard someone calling her father’s name.

“Over there, Dad,” Akhil said, pointing at something Amina couldn’t see, and Thomas gripped her by the shoulders and propelled her forward.

“Babu!” He clapped an old man on the back. “Good to see you!”

Wrapped in a bulky dhobi and skinny as ever, Babu smiled a toothless smile, his resemblance to a malnourished baby belying his ability to toss large objects onto his head and carry them through crowds, as he did with all four of the family suitcases. Outside the station, Preetham, the driver, loaded the freshly polished Ambassador, while beggars surrounded them, pointing to the children’s sneakers and then to their own hungry mouths, as if their appetites could be satisfied by Nikes.

“Ami, come!” Kamala called, opening the car door, and once everyone else had taken their places (Preetham and Thomas in the front seat, Akhil, Kamala, and Amina in the back, Babu standing proudly on the back fender), they began the four-block ride home.

Unlike the rest of the family, Thomas’s parents had long ago left Kerala for the drier plains of Tamil Nadu. Settling in a large house at the edge of town, Ammachy and Appachen had opened a combined clinic (she was an ophthalmologist; he was an ENT), and before his sudden death by heart attack at the age of forty-five, they saw 70 percent of the heads in Salem.

“A golden time,” Ammachy would spit at anyone within distance, going on to list everything since that had disappointed her. Top of her list: her eldest son choosing to marry “the darkie” and move to America when she had arranged for him to marry Kamala’s much lighter cousin and live in Madras; her youngest son becoming a dentist producing “the no-brains” instead of becoming a doctor and producing another doctor; the many movie theaters and hospitals that had since sprung up around the house, penetrating it with noise and smells.

“Bloody Christ,” Thomas breathed as they turned onto Tamarind Road, and Amina followed his gaze. “You can’t even see the house anymore!”

This was true. It was also true that what could be seen, or rather, what could not be ignored, was the Wall, Ammachy’s solution to the changing world around her. Built of plaster and broken bottles, the Wall grew crooked and taller and more yellowed with every visit, until it resembled nothing as much as a set of monster’s dentures fallen from some other world and forgotten on the dusty side of the thoroughfare.

“It’s not so bad,” Kamala said unconvincingly.

“It’s creepy,” Akhil said.

“New gate!” Preetham beeped the horn, and the family fell silent as the gate swung open from the inside, pulling the car and its contents down the driveway.

The house, for its part, had not changed at all, its two stories painted pink and yellow and slanting in the heat like a melting birthday cake. A small crowd had gathered in front of it, and Amina watched them through the window — Sunil Uncle, dark and paunchy; his wife, the wheatish and wimpy Divya Auntie; their son, Itty, head weaving from side to side like a skinny Stevie Wonder; Mary-the-Cook, the cook; and two new servant girls. Christmas lights and tinsel twinkled in the pomegranate trees.

“Mikhil! Mittack!” Itty gurgled as the car pulled in, arm hooking frantically into the air. He had grown as tall as Sunil since their last visit, and Amina waved back, full of dread. Mittack was her name, according to Itty, and excitability was the condition that made him bite her on occasion, according to the family. Amina fingered the faint half-moon on her forearm, sinking a little in her seat.

“Hullohullohullo!” Sunil shouted as the car parked. “Welcome, welcome!”

“Hey, Sunil.” Thomas opened the door, taking long strides across the lawn to shake hands. “Good to see you.”

This was a lie, of course, as neither of the brothers was ever particularly glad to see the other, but it was the only way to properly start a visit.

Sunil fixed a blazing smile on Kamala. “Lovely as a rose, my dear!” He bestowed cologney kisses on her cheek and then Amina’s before turning and clutching his heart. “And who is this ruddy tiger? My God, Akhil? Is that you? Blossoming into a king of the jungle, are we?”

“I guess,” Akhil sighed.

Suddenly, two hands wrapped around Amina’s neck and squeezed hard, crushing her larynx. She pulled frantically at them, dimly aware of her mother patting Divya’s arm in greeting, of the hot breath in her ear.

“Mittack!” Itty let go, patting her head.

“Jesus!” Amina gasped, tears in her eyes. “Mom!”

“Itty.” Kamala smiled. She wrapped her arms around the boy, who grunted and buried his face in her neck.

“Hello.” Divya stood in front of Amina, slight, pockmarked, and branded with the expression of someone expecting the worst. “How was the train?”

“It was nice.” Amina loved the overnight train from Madras. She loved the call of the chai-wallahs at every stop, the smell of different dinners cooking in the towns they passed. “We got egg sandwiches.”

Divya nodded. “You’re feeling sick now?”

“No.”

“Sick!” A voice snapped from behind Divya. “Already? Which one?”

Beneath the heat and the house and the blinking lights, Ammachy sat in her wicker chair on the verandah, sweating rings into a sea-foam-green sari blouse. The two years that had passed since their last visit had done nothing to soften her face. Long white whiskers grew out of her chin, and her spine, hunched by decades of complaint, left her head floating some inches above her lap.

“Hello, Amma.” Thomas’s fingers were firm on Amina and Akhil’s necks as he marched them up the few stairs to where she sat. “Good to see you.”

Ammachy pointed to the roll of flesh that pressed at the hem of Akhil’s polo shirt. “Thuddya. What kind of girlish hips are you growing?”

“Hi, Ammachy.” Akhil leaned in to kiss her cheek.

She turned to Amina with a wince. “Ach. I sent some Fair and Lovely, no? Didn’t use it?”

“She’s fine, Amma,” Thomas said, but as Amina bent to kiss her, Ammachy snatched her face, pinning it between curled fingers.

“You will have to be very clever if you are never going to be pretty. Are you very clever?”

Amina stared at her grandmother, unsure of what to say. She had never thought of herself as particularly clever. She had never thought of herself as particularly bad-looking either, though it was obvious enough now from the faint repulsion that rippled through the hairs on Ammachy’s lip.

“Amina won the all-city spelling bee,” Kamala announced, pushing Amina’s head forward so that her lips landed openly against Ammachy’s cheek. She had just enough time to be surprised by the taste of menthol and roses, and then she was pulled into the too-dark house and down the hallway, past Sunil and Divya and Itty and Ammachy’s rooms, to a dining room set with tea.

“So train was crowded? Nothing to eat? She’s so happy to see you.” Divya motioned for Kamala and the kids to sit and pushed a plate of orange sweets at them. “She’s been talking of nothing else for a month.”

“Itty,” Sunil boomed, dragging a lumpy suitcase in behind him. “Your uncle is insisting we see what presents he has brought. Shall we take a look?”

“Hullo?” Itty nodded vigorously. “Look? Look?”

“It’s nothing, really.” Thomas took a seat next to Amina.

“Small-small things,” Kamala added.

Ammachy limped in with a scowl. “What is all this nonsense?”

It was: two pairs of Levi’s, one bottle of Johnnie Walker Red, three bags of nuts (almonds, cashews, pistachios), a pair of Reeboks with Velcro closures, a larger pair of hiking boots, two bottles of perfume (Anaïs Anaïs, Chloé), four cassette tapes (the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, Kenny Rogers, Exile), two jars of Avon scented skin lotion (in Topaze and Unspoken), several pairs of white tube socks, talcum powder, and a candy-cane-shaped tube filled with marshmallow, root beer float, and peppermint flavored lip balms.

“It’s too much.” Sunil tried to hand back the cassette tapes. “Really, we don’t need.”

“What need?” Thomas smiled, watching Divya sink her finger into the jar of Avon cream. “It’s nice to have is all. What do you think, Itty? You like the Velcro?”

Crouched in a Spider-Man pose on the floor, Itty lunged slowly from side to side, mesmerized by the sight of his poufy white feet.

“You’ll spoil him.” Sunil reached for the scotch bottle, holding it up to the light and studying the label. “Shall we try a bit of this?”

“After dinner,” Thomas said, and Sunil poured two fingers into his empty teacup, sniffing it.

“The Velcro is big thing in the States now,” Kamala explained to everyone with a knowing look. “Easy peasy, instead of having to tie the shoes.”

Ammachy snorted. “Who else besides this no-brains won’t know to tie shoes?”

“Vel cow!” Itty shouted with unfortunate timing, fastening and unfastening his Reeboks until Ammachy smacked him with a powdered palm. She sniffed at all three flavors of lip balm and licked the tip of one before pushing them into Divya’s pile.

“So, you people had a good trip in the airplane?” Ammachy asked.

Thomas nodded. “Good enough.”

“How did you come?”

“San Francisco — Honolulu — Taiwan — Singapore.”

Ammachy grunted. “Singapore Airlines?”

“Yes.”

“Those girls are pretty, no?” She refilled Kamala’s cup, saying, “Nice complexions.”

“Try the hiking boots, Sunil.” Thomas pointed to them with his chin. “The heel itself has shock absorbers!”

“Later. I have some work I should be attending to.”

“Oh, yes, this one with his people’s practice.” Ammachy rolled her eyes. “You would think he was actually saving lives instead of teeth.”

“Teeth are lives, Amma,” Sunil said, glowering. “People need to eat to live.”

“So, who all do you want to see?” she asked Thomas.

“I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it yet.”

“Yes, well, your old classmate Yohan Varghese was asking about you the other day. I told you the wife died, no? Not that she was any real help, stupid thing, but two sons to raise on his own! Ach. And we should see Saramma Kochamma of course, just for one afternoon meal. And Dr. Abraham wants to talk to you. He’s putting together that rehabilitative center, the one I told you about? Might be a nice thing to see.” This last news was delivered with such practiced indifference that even Amina felt embarrassed.

Thomas reached for a jalebi. He offered the plate to Amina, who shook her head.

“Anyway, he needs someone in head injuries, so I told him you would ring.” Ammachy poured milk into her own tea and stirred. “Maybe tomorrow?”

“It’s not really my field.” Thomas took a bite. “They would only ever need the occasional surgery.”

“Well, no one asked you to become a brain surgeon,” Ammachy snapped.

“No,” Thomas said, chewing carefully, “they didn’t.”

Akhil reached for a jalebi, and Ammachy swatted his hand away.

“It’s just an option.” Ammachy scraped something from the oilcloth. “But then I suppose Kamala likes it there? All of this women’s-libbing and bra burning?”

“What?” Kamala sat up a little taller in her chair.

“I’m sure it’s why she was so excited to go in the first place. Always wanting more and more of freedoms, is it?”

“Who burns the bras?” Kamala asked indignantly.

“How should I know?” Ammachy glared. “You’re the one who chooses to live in there. Godforsaken place.”

“I’m the one?”

“Who else? If you wanted to come home, Thomas would come. Men only go as far as the wife allows.”

“Is that so?” Kamala leaned across the table. “Well, that’s very interesting, isn’t it, Thomas?”

“Amma, please. We’ve only just arrived.”

“What’s foreskin?” Amina asked. Everyone looked at her.

“God’s foreskin place?” Amina repeated, and Akhil kicked her shin under the table. “Ouch!”

“What is this child saying?” Ammachy’s face was rigid.

“Time for naps!” Kamala pointed toward the stairs. “Go. You are overtired.”

“But it’s the middle of the day!” Akhil protested. “We just got here.”

“Jet lags! You’ll be cranky tomorrow if you don’t get some rest. Go!” Kamala stood up and ushered them to the base of the stairs, Itty hot on her heels. “Itty, you stay with us, okay? Your cousins need to sleep.”

“Hullo? Cricket?” Itty asked, and Kamala shook her head.

“Not now. They need to sleep. You stay with me.”

“Good job,” Akhil growled as they left the table and dragged themselves upstairs. “Now we’re going to sit up there in the heat forever.”

“What’s God’s—” Amina asked.

“Forsaken, dope. It means abandoned.”

“Oh.” It was getting hotter with every step. Amina’s legs felt curiously heavy, as if they were already taking a nap. “God abandoned America?”

“Probably.” Akhil opened the door to the bedroom they shared and flipped the fan onto high, sending a small cloud of mosquitoes in all directions. “Ammachy thinks so.”

“Does Dad think so?”

“No, stupid. Dad likes it. That’s what they were fighting about.”

“They were fighting?”

“What did you think that was? What do you think it is every time we’re here? Ammachy wants Dad to move back. Dad doesn’t want to move back. Ammachy gets mad at Mom about it. Classic immigrant dysfunction, duh.”

“Yeah, I know, duh,” Amina said, annoyed that she didn’t. Akhil was such a know-it-all when it came to India, like he was some big expert just because he was three years older than her and he’d been born there instead of in the States, like she had. She lifted the mosquito netting at the edge of one of the twin beds and climbed under. “But Mom wants to move back, too.”

“So?” Akhil fell back onto the bed next to hers.

“So why does Ammachy get mad at her?”

Akhil thought it over for a minute, then shrugged. “Because she doesn’t want to get mad at Dad.”

“Oh.” Amina’s head sank into the pillow. “Do you want to move back?”

“No! India sucks.”

Amina was relieved. This much even she knew. She shut her eyes, surprised by how quickly the blackness of sleep rose up to greet her, swift and persuasive as candor.

“She’s half grandmother, half wolf, you know,” Akhil whispered a few seconds later, and already half dreaming, she took it to be truth in the way unfathomable things can be. She had seen the cool lupine glow in her grandmother’s eyes, her arthritic hands curled into paws. In the days that followed, her hand would instinctively cover her throat whenever Ammachy looked directly at her.

Where was everybody? The deep blue of evening shadowed Akhil’s empty bed as Amina opened her eyes. She rose, letting the pressure in her head settle before shoving her feet into her chappals and walking across the hallway to her parents’ room.

“Mom?”

Inside, Kamala shoved clothes into a dark dresser. She glanced up as Amina walked in. “Oh, good. You need to wake up so you can go to sleep on time.”

“Where is everyone?”

“Daddy and Sunil and all have gone to see the neighbors.”

“Where’s Akhil?”

“In the kitchen.”

Amina blinked against the dry air, feeling vaguely sick. “My head hurts.”

Instantly Kamala was next to her, with a hand on her forehead. “You drank some water?”

“No.” The water in Salem tasted like hot nickels. Amina tried to use it only when brushing her teeth.

“Go downstairs and get some right now.”

Amina groaned.

“No! None of this Miss Needed an Enema Last Time.”

“Mom.”

“You want it again? Four days no pooping?”

“Fine! Fine! Going!”

The sun had already set behind the Wall as Amina shuffled through the shadowed yard, toward the kitchen. The taller of the servant girls smacked a coconut against the cement, staring at her as she walked by. Amina waved and then pretended she hadn’t when the girl did not wave back.

“Fingers out of the ghee, or I will chop them off!” Mary-the-Cook was shouting as Amina entered the kitchen. “How many times do I tell you this? Ah! The little one is awake now! What is it, koche? You want some bread and sugar?”

“Mom says I need water.”

“Good, good.” Black as a tire and perpetually struggling under the weight of her pillow-sized breasts, Mary-the-Cook was the exact same age as Ammachy, a fact that had been made incredible by the way time had expanded her body in the exact places it had contracted Ammachy’s. The result was a face smoothed of any wrinkles, a body that moved like a jogging meatball. “Waterwaterwater. All week I have been making the water for you people! You remember last time, nah? Four days and still you couldn’t—”

“I know, I know.” Amina took the cup Mary-the-Cook offered. “What’s for dinner?”

“Biryani.” The cook nodded triumphantly to a bloody chicken carcass resting on the counter. “And maybe a little bit of this fool if he keeps talking such nonsense.”

“It’s not nonsense,” Akhil said. “Anyway, how do you know? It’s not like you were at tea with us.”

“At tea? At tea? I have myself been working at this house since this boy’s father was six years old only, and he thinks I have to be at tea to know what goes on?”

“I’m just saying Ammachy was pissed at him again. It’s like she can’t even look at him.”

“Pist?”

“Angry. It means angry.”

“Nobody is angry! Too much of love is all! All these years Amma works and works to send Thomas to school, and then he goes and marries your dusky mother and studies in America and what? Nothing!” For reasons unclear to anyone, Mary-the-Cook had always been Ammachy’s strongest ally, regularly citing Ammachy’s teaching her English as evidence of a kindness that no one else had seen. “Like every other so-and-so from here to Bombay, this boy runs off and works and works and does not come home! What is she supposed to do?”

“She could move to the States,” Akhil said.

“Don’t be an idiot! What move? She’s too old.” Mary frowned. “Besides, it’s the children’s duty, everyone knows. And she is getting old! What if something happens?”

“She’s got Sunil Uncle.”

Mary-the-Cook snorted. “That one is a miserable good-for-nothing. It’s a miracle she lets him live here at all! Shouting at everybody, sleepwalking like some baby elephant, always unhappy!”

“Wait, what?” Akhil’s eyes widened.

“Sunil Uncle sleepwalks?” Amina had only ever seen Scooby-Doo sleepwalk. She didn’t know real people could do it.

Mary-the-Cook frowned. “Not important. Akhil, hand me an onion.”

“Where does he go?” Amina imagined Sunil Uncle in the kitchen, making himself a six-foot-long hoagie.

“Akhil! Onion!”

Akhil reached into the basket behind him. “Seriously? All the time? Like, every night?”

“Doesn’t matter,” Mary-the-Cook said. “I am only saying that Thomas should be coming home. If he waits any longer, it will be too late.”

“Have you tried to wake him up?” Akhil asked. “Because that’s dangerous, you know. He could attack.”

“Waking him? What fool would try to wake him? We are too busy trying to keep our own selves safe from harm.”

“He hurts you?”

“Not me, things. He hurts things only.”

“What things?”

“Things he himself has bought! The china for Amma’s sixtieth birthday. That television set — you remember? Smashed like one cheap toy. The dentistry chair with its three reclining positions and the overhanging lamp.”

Akhil’s eyes narrowed. “How do you know he’s sleepwalking?”

“What fool will break things he himself has saved up so long to buy? He’s not Thomas, he can’t be breaking and buying new all the time. And you should see how he cries over it the next day!”

“Wow.” Akhil looked impressed. “Psycho.”

“Psycho,” Mary-the-Cook agreed, shearing the ends off the onion with a rusty blade.

“Well,” Akhil said after a pause. “Dad always says Sunil Uncle didn’t want to live here or be a dentist, that Ammachy forced him when he didn’t get into medical school. Maybe he’s doing it to—”

“Are you even listening?” Mary-the-Cook asked. “He’s not doing anything, he’s sleeping!”

“I mean subconsciously, duh.” Akhil rolled his eyes.

“Sub?”

“You know, like what he wishes he could do while he was awake but can’t.”

“And what exactly is that?” Ammachy’s voice, sharp as a blade, pierced through the darkened doorway. She materialized an instant later, curled like a shrimp, her eyes fixed furiously on Mary-the-Cook.

“Oh, hi, Ammachy.” Akhil smiled bravely. “We were just—”

“I thought I told you to stay out of the kitchen.” Her teeth glinted in the bad light.

“We just came for water. OW!” Akhil yelped as his grandmother grabbed a handful of his chub.

“If I catch you in here again, I will beat you with a stick. Understand?”

What wasn’t there to understand? Amina made hastily for the door, Akhil coming up behind her. He pushed her out, and they both skittered across the darkened yard, careening around a pile of coconuts and through the pomegranate trees before running up the verandah steps. Only when they were safely at the top did they dare look back at the kitchen, where Ammachy shouted a storm of Tamil at Mary-the-Cook, who minced the onion with shamed gusto.

“Jesus!” Akhil glowered. “What was she … spying? She spies on us now?”

“She spied on us last time, too, remember?” Amina reminded him. “She spies on everyone, all the time. Anyway, you shouldn’t have said that about Sunil Uncle.”

“Why not? Everyone knows he’s been unhappy for, like, years. Even Dad says he should have gotten out of Salem a long time ago, when he had the chance.” Akhil rubbed his waist where he had been pinched. “So the truth hurts! Fuck her!”

“Fuck her!” Itty shouted from behind them, and Amina screamed. Her cousin’s white sneakers glowed as he unfolded himself from behind Ammachy’s chair. He looked at them expectantly. “Cricket?”

“It’s too dark,” Akhil said, and Itty’s face sank. It seemed to Amina that her cousin waited the entire two years between their visits peering anxiously at the gate with ball in hand.

“We’ll play tomorrow,” Amina promised, and Itty nodded miserably.

“Hullo? Roof?” he tried, a close second in favorite activities.

“Nah,” Akhil said.

“I’ll go with you,” Amina said.

Minutes later the two of them stepped off the upstairs verandah to the tiny ledge, climbing the ladder that would take them up to the roof. There, with the last burn of the sunset on the horizon and smoke from dinnertime fires growing, Amina could finally see over the Wall. The thoroughfare was clogged with its usual stagnating life, sluggish buses and cars honking in steady lines while rickshaws and bikes ran around them like beetles. The beggar children from the morning had scattered across the street, approaching any vehicle that slowed down long enough for them to get a hand through the window. Amina breathed in deep, sucking down the smell of gasoline and cooking onions, of cow dung and sewage and sweat, and Itty hummed to himself. Amina watched him watching Salem until it was too dark to see much of anything, and held the hand he offered to lead her back down into the safety of her bedroom.

Dinner that night was extravagant and tough. Burned by a chastened Mary-the-Cook, it was eaten joylessly while the adults discussed Indira Gandhi’s state of emergency (“a colossal mistake,” according to Thomas), and something called the Janata Party, which Amina thought sounded like something that might involve pajamas and cake.

“You watch,” Ammachy said, pulling a thin chicken bone out from between her teeth and setting it on the edge of her plate. “These people are the same as every other political group. They talk and talk of change, and then they will do their best to bring the country crashing to its knees.”

“Nonsense.” Thomas helped himself to more rice. “We survived the British. You really think we can’t handle ourselves?”

Sunil snorted from the far end of the table, where he had settled with pink eyes and a slur.

“Not the same, Thomas,” Ammachy said. “An enemy from outside is easier to manage than chaos from within. And now there are so many of factions growing! Anti-Muslim, anti-Christian, antieveryone!”

“Ah no!” Kamala clucked.

“T. C. Roy himself said there was a mob in Madras.” Divya tried to shovel a handful of rice into Itty’s moving mouth. “He couldn’t even get out of the car for fear of his life!”

“Seriously?” Akhil looked worried.

“Pah—Roy’s a hysterical.” Thomas waved a dismissive hand. “You watch, things will even out again. It’s a pendulum, no? Things swing one way, then the other, but India herself always thrives.”

“Well, s’all very easy to say when you’re gone, isn’t it?” Sunil mashed rice between his fingers.

Thomas puffed up a little. “So I’m not allowed to have an opinion, is it?”

“I’m just saying, it’s easy to look back with rosey-posey glasses when you live on the other side of the earth itself, nah? But those of us that live here, we have to deal with realities, you see. So it’s quite different for us.”

“Obviously. I wasn’t saying India was an easy place to live, I just—”

“Well, it’s not a hard place to live,” Sunil interrupted indignantly. “We’ve got all the modern amenities you do now. Refrigeration. Television. Movies and whatnot. Take a look around you, nah, brother? Things have changed.”

“Who needs water?” Kamala asked.

“It was a simple statement, Sunil.” Thomas moved small piles of food around his plate. “I was just saying that India has survived some three thousand years of change; she will survive a few more.”

“She will sssssurvive!” Sunil crowed, raising fists into the air. “Did everyone hear it? The good doctor says we’ll live! Thank God himself!”

And what would happen now? In the bulging silence that followed, Amina watched as veins pulsed and rose on Thomas’s forehead and Sunil leaned forward.

“You’re a drunk,” Thomas said.

“You’re an ass,” Sunil shot back.

“Enough!” Ammachy smacked her hand on the dining table. “My God, grown men acting like small boys! Can’t the first night pass without you ruining it?”

The cloud that descended on the table was potent enough for even Amina to realize that the first night had been ruined already. She looked from her grandmother to Divya to Kamala to Akhil, each face more uncomfortable than the last with the exception of Itty, who was peeking gleefully under the tablecloth at his just-remembered shoes.

“Don’t get yourself so bothered, Amma,” Thomas said at last, breaking his gaze from Sunil’s. “We’re just talking is all, right, brother?”

At the end of the table, Sunil sat with his eyes closed, his finger raised into the air as though taking the temperature. He pointed it at Thomas and pulled an invisible trigger before opening his eyes again. Then he lifted his glass and downed the last inch of gold.

“Right,” he said.

CHAPTER 2

The sun rose flat and hard the next morning.

Hot. She was already getting hot. How could this be winter? Amina tried to imagine the New Mexico she had just left, the stars sprayed over the black sky, the December air turning her breath into white puffs, and found she could not. India was too much to imagine anything else.

In the cracked bathroom mirror, her black hair stood up from her head, while her nose was pocked with tiny red mosquito bites. It exaggerated the overall effect of her face (long, thin, too beaky to ever be considered beautiful), making her, she worried, as ugly as her grandmother predicted. She backed up, hoping against all odds that something had happened to make her boobs grow in overnight. It had not. Stepping into the tiled basin behind her, she reached into the pink plastic bucket and ladled a cup of lukewarm water over her head.

When she descended the stairs ten minutes later, she found Ammachy, Divya, and her parents hunched over a spicy breakfast. She looked in vain for Mary-the-Cook, who might slip her a piece of cinnamon toast, but the servant girls were there in her place, and neither looked particularly helpful.

“Hello, monkeysoup!” Thomas smiled and pointed to the chair next to him. Sit. “You sleep okay?”

Amina nodded. “Where’s Akhil?”

“Outside playing cricket with Itty.”

“They’re not eating?”

“They ate already.”

“Oh.” The soupy smell of sambar made her stomach turn a little. “Can I go, too? I’m not really even hungry.”

“No.” Ammachy placed three round idlis on her plate. “Eat.”

“I can’t eat that much.”

“Start.”

Amina picked up an idli, scowling. India sucked.

“So Preetham will take us and kids to zoo in the afternoon,” Kamala said. “And should we take a rickshaw back? Thomas, what do you think? Or you and Sunil can drop us and then go to the bank together?”

“Sure.” Thomas took a sip of coffee. “Whatever works.”

“Actually, Thomas and I are going to Dr. Abraham’s office at eleven,” Ammachy announced. “So we will need Preetham.”

“What?” Thomas’s eyebrows rose with surprise.

“He’s arranged for us to have a small tour of the facilities. Afterward we’ll go to his house for lunch.”

“But we can’t.” Thomas struggled to keep his face calm. “I told Sunil I would go to the bank with him today and get the papers.”

“Where’s Sunil Uncle, anyway?” Amina asked.

“Chutney or sambar?” Kamala motioned for her plate.

“Sugar.”

Ammachy ladled enough sambar to float a legion of idlis across Amina’s plate, saying to Thomas, “Sunil will not be out of bed until twelve itself, if we are so lucky. You and he can go after.”

“Twelve? In the afternoon?” Amina asked.

“Less talking, more eating,” Kamala urged.

Thomas glared at Ammachy. “I already told you—”

“It’s arranged, Thomas. I myself arranged it. Now, please don’t make some fuss.”

Sunil Uncle must have gone sleepwalking again! Amina was sure of it. Why else would he be in bed until twelve in the afternoon? She imagined him ambling through the yard in the middle of the night, arms stretched in front of him, feet wandering idly over roots and grass.

“How did everyone sleep?” she asked, looking hopefully at the adults around the table. No one would look back at her, not even Kamala.

Ammachy swiped her forefinger across a dot of sambar on the table. “It’s just a tour, Thomas, nothing more. You can decide for yourself if it’s something you want to pursue after that.”

Thomas’s nostrils flared. He said quietly, “We’re not going. I told you I didn’t want to meet with him, I don’t want to meet with him. That’s it.”

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.

“I’m so glad you think so!” Dr. Abraham smiled. “Of course it’s not a neurosurgical wing, as I’m sure you’re aware, but we are putting together a first-rate facility for trauma and recovery.”

“Yes.” Thomas looked vaguely panicked. “What a nice project for you all.”

“You remember M. K. Subramanian from your class? He is in the process of interviewing the physical and cognitive therapists, while I am recruiting doctors from round the country. And what a stroke of luck that you are here at the right time! When your mother called, I could hardly believe it. Perhaps you’d like to meet with him tomorrow?”

Thomas smiled, clearly pained. “Well, now, you see—”

“Perfect! Tomorrow is perfect.” Ammachy placed a pakoda on the doctor’s plate. “We were planning on going to the hospital anyway in the late afternoon; we could stop and meet you both then itself.”

“Fantastic. I would love to show you the facilities, and have you meet a few of the staff.” Dr. Abraham tucked his napkin into his shirt collar. “Doesn’t this look delicious!”

He busied himself with spooning a generous amount of chutney onto the pakodas, so he did not notice how Thomas dropped his head between his hands, how he rubbed his knuckles against the side of his head as if ironing out knots.

“Are these from Sanjay’s?” The doctor raised a ladoo to his lips. “I do love their sweets, you know.”

“I remember.” Ammachy smiled. “I bought them especially.”

“You needn’t have gone through the trouble—”

“No trouble, no trouble at all.”

A mewl escaped from somewhere deep in Thomas’s throat, stopping the others as it turned into a full-throated groan. The doctor’s eyebrows went up and Ammachy’s back went rigid as Thomas pushed his chair back from the table.

“Dr. Abraham, sir, would you mind very much if we went for a walk in the yard?”

“Now?”

“Eat first, then talk!” Ammachy pushed a tin of mixture at the doctor.

“I’m terribly sorry.” Thomas looked slightly ill. “If you wouldn’t mind?”

“Oh. No.” Dr. Abraham looked ruefully at his plate. “Of course not.”

Thomas rose, revealing a damp U where the sweat had soaked through the back of his shirt, and walked straight out of the room. Dr. Abraham took the napkin from his collar and carefully folded it, nodding to Ammachy. Her mouth fell in a hard line as he followed Thomas into the garden.

And what were the men saying, under the shadow of the leaves? Amina watched them through the heavily slatted window, heads ducked to the onslaught of the white sun, arms tucked neatly over chests. They stared at the plants in front of them with such concentration that they might have been discussing fertilization or watering schedules. Dr. Abraham nodded once, curtly, and then again, a little more heavily. Arms were uncrossed, hands clasped. The men walked toward the front of the house with slow steps, where the whinny of the gate latch and the roar of traffic soon gave way to silence. Amina waited for her father to come back and finish his tea. Minutes passed.

“Where did Dad go?” she finally asked.

Ammachy, who appeared to be studying the tablecloth very hard, did not answer. Amina was about to ask again when a tear ran down her grandmother’s cheek, as fast and unexpected as a live lizard. Amina panicked. Should she say something? Hug her? Both seemed equally impossible. Still, when another tear followed the first, Amina found herself holding her grandmother’s hand. It was thin and pale and cool as marble, the skin almost moist with softness. Ammachy took it back as Kamala entered the room.

“Oof.” Kamala yawned, sitting heavily in a chair and pouring herself a cup of tea. She stirred in sugar drowsily, finally glancing up at the full plates and empty seats. “Where did everyone go?”

Ammachy pursed her lips, as if to spit.

“Uncle and Itty went to the bank,” Amina explained.

Kamala blew on her tea. “And your father?”

“Dad went out with Dr. Abraham.”

“Really?” Kamala’s eyes flew to Ammachy. “When?”

Even not looking directly at her, Amina sensed how her grandmother seemed to ignite suddenly, a palpable flame ready to damage anything it could. She was silent for so long that Amina thought maybe she hadn’t heard Kamala’s question. Then she leaned across the table.

“Fat like one angel,” she spat. “Thomas was born so strong and fat, I knew he would become something. Engineer, head of the Indian National Army, best brain surgeon in all of America. He could have married anyone! Such dowries we were offered!”

Kamala looked at her stonily. “You should have taken them.”

“It was not my decision.” Ammachy stood up and cleared the men’s plates so that they clanged and jostled and threatened to break between her hands. She turned her back on the table, marching toward the kitchen with stiff shoulders. “It was not my decision at all.”

But where had her father gone? Now missing for more than six hours, Thomas had sent the house into tumult in his absence. Ammachy wandered from room to room, fighting with anyone who crossed her path. Sunil, having crossed her path twice already, found a bottle of toddy and was devouring it in the rarely visited parlor. Divya had tucked herself in a corner of the verandah. Itty ran circles on the roof. Kamala, Akhil, and Amina sat on the upstairs bed, playing their fourth game of Chinese checkers.

“Your move, Mom,” Akhil said.

“Yes.” Kamala glanced down at her watch and inched a blue marble toward a yellow triangle.

“What time is it?” Amina asked.

“Nine-thirty.”

Akhil did an elaborate series of jumps, sliding one more marble into configuration.

Amina sighed. “I don’t want to play anymore.”

“That’s just because I’m winning,” Akhil countered.

“You win every game!”

“So don’t play.” Kamala rubbed her own forehead, smoothing out the lines that had settled into it.

“But there’s nothing else to do!”

“Enough of whining! Go see what Itty is up to!”

But Amina didn’t want to see Itty any more than she wanted to see the Chinese checkerboard, or the inside of her parents’ sweltering bedroom, or Akhil gloating for the millionth time in a row. She pushed off the bed, heading instead to the stifling, fanless stairway, and lay down at the top of steps, letting the marble’s momentary coolness slide into her. A whole muffled world rumbled under her ear, clicks and groans of the house, the shup-shupping of someone’s slippers, slow, whale-like moans that she imagined coming from the depths of a huge, cool ocean. Her hip bones dug into the floor, and she heard something else. Singing. Was someone singing? Amina lifted her head off the floor.

“… fingers in my hair, that sly come-hither stare …”

Music! It was coming from below. Amina peeked over the stairwell. She crept down a few steps, and then a few more, until she was able to see into the parlor.

“Witchcraft …,” the record sang, and Sunil along with it, his eyes shut, his face shining. A record spun in neat circles on the turntable, and next to it, her uncle followed, arms cupping the air in front of him, knees bouncing.

Amina stared in dismay as Sunil pivoted from one foot to the other, his hips cutting the air in deft strokes. It was like watching a muskrat slip into the Rio Grande, all of its clumsiness turned to instinctual grace. His meaty upper half arced, dipping near to the floor, then back up.

“I know it’s strictly taboo …”

The lightness in his face was something Amina had never seen before. He was, she realized for the first time, a handsome man. Not movie-star handsome like Buck Rogers, not even tall and sharp-jawed like Thomas, but appealing all the same. He took one quick step back and twirled to the right, his hand guiding an invisible partner.

“Sunil!”

Both Sunil and Amina jumped as Ammachy appeared in the doorway, arms folded tightly over her chest, sniffing at the room. Amina turned and ran up a few stairs, so she wasn’t sure what happened next, whether her grandmother actually sent the needle skidding across the record or if Sunil had done it himself, but the quiet that followed hummed with potential disaster.

“This again,” Ammachy said.

Shuffling. The sound of liquid being poured. A glass slammed on a table.

“You’ve had enough already, Sunil. Go to bed.”

Silence. Amina leaned forward. They were switching rapidly between English and Malayalam, which always just sounded like argada-argada-argada to her, until her grandmother demanded, “And where exactly is your brother?”

“I already told you, I don’t know.”

“So? You can’t be bothered to look for him?”

A sigh, a snort. “Please, Amma.”

“He’s your brother!” Ammachy snarled.

“Argada-argada.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

Sunil loosed another sigh, but this one was forced, feigned boredom hiding anger. “It means that Thomas is Thomas and he will go where he wants when he wants. You of all people should know that.”

“Oh, stop it with that. No one is interested in your babbling.”

“Surprise!”

“Idiot! You’re drunk. Argada-argada-argada.”

“I couldn’t agree more.”

Amina slid her feet over the edge of one stair, then another. She peeked around the wall to find her uncle slumped into a living room chair, all trace of music and movement sucked from him. Ammachy hovered over the chair, the bright green silk of her sari glowing.

“How dare you do this?” she hissed.

“What now?” Sunil shut his eyes, leaning his head back on the chair.

“Feeling sorry for yourself again. Today of all days!”

“I don’t know what—”

“The house! You finally got him to give it to you.”

There was a moment while this sank in, Sunil’s bid for detachment redirecting. He sat up. “You think … you think signing over the house was my idea?”

“All the time he is giving you things, feeling sorry for you! Poor Sunil didn’t get the same opportunities, poor Sunil doesn’t have enough! And now you’ve taken the house!”

“He gave it to me.”

“Because he is always taking care of you.”

“Because he wanted me to take it from him.” Sunil rose from the couch. “You think he wants to live here?”

“He doesn’t know what he wants yet!”

“He doesn’t … You believe that, Amma? That Thomas has been gone these ten years because he doesn’t know what he wants?” Sunil laughed, but underneath there was tightness in his voice. “You think he wants to sit and rot every day in this place instead of running off to America and sending checks?”

“He sends the money for you!”

“He sends it for himself, Amma! He sends it so he doesn’t have to come. My God, you must know that by now.”

If she did know it, Ammachy gave no sign, choosing instead to wrap the end of her sari tightly around her shoulders. “Go to bed!”

“You think Thomas would ever give me something he actually wanted?” Sunil shouted as she walked into the hallway, and Amina covered her ears, suddenly understanding that she had heard too much. She felt for the step behind her with one foot, then the other, hoping illogically that if she walked all the way to her parents’ room backward, she would unremember the entire conversation. The knob was cool against her palm as she twisted it and shuffled into the bedroom.

“What’s wrong with you?”

Amina turned around to find her mother frowning at her.

“Nothing.” Amina sat on the bed.

“You’re feeling sick?”

“No.”

“Did you make BM today?”

“Yes!”

Akhil rolled his eyes. “Sure you did, poo bag.”

“Akhil,” Kamala snapped. “Enough. Your move.”

“Helloooo, Mom, anyone home? I won already.”

“Fine, so do something with yourself.”

“Like what? Make Amina poo?”

Amina rushed at him, digging deep into his belly with her nails so that he shrieked, knocking over the game and the marbles, which spilled across the bed, providing an unlikely torture device as he slammed her on her back. He twisted his head to spit on her, and Amina grabbed an ear, pulling as hard as she could.

“AMINAKHIL! STOP THIS BUSINESS AT ONCE!” Kamala pushed between them, sharp hands collaring their necks. She forced them apart.

“Jerkface!”

“Diaper!”

Amina kicked at him again, and her mother squeezed her throat. “Ow!”

“My God,” Thomas said from the doorway. “What is all that about?”

The family turned to him, panting, and Thomas walked into the room, a sweet and funky cloud of toddy on him. He smiled his lopsided smile, and no one knew what to say.

“You missed dinner,” Kamala finally said.

“I know, I know. Sorry.”

“Where were you?”

“Out.”

“Out where? Doing what?”

“Well …” Thomas looked at them, as if considering something. “Making plans, actually.”

“What plans?”

“Well …” He looked from Akhil to Amina to Kamala and back again. “Okay, listen. I have some big news.”

“You do?” Kamala’s hands dropped, and her voice was soft with excitement.

“We’re going on a trip!”

“What?”

“To the beach! Sundar Mukherjee’s wife is a travel agent, and she booked us rooms at the Royal Crown Suites in Kovalam!”

“What’s Kovalam?” Akhil asked.

“Rooms?” Kamala’s face darkened. “What for?”

“Kovalam is the beach on the peninsula,” Thomas told Akhil. “It’s very nice.”

“But we don’t have time, Thomas! My sisters will be—” Kamala began.

“We’ll get to Lila’s on time. We’ll just leave here a little early.”

“Early?” Kamala asked. “How early?”

“Tomorrow midday.”

“What?”

“We need to rest, koche. A real vacation.”

“Vacation?” Kamala’s voice dropped an octave, like she was saying drug binge or spending spree. “Thomas, what are you talking about?”

“A break! A little peace and quiet! You know, a chance for us to just relax.”

“I’m relaxed!” Kamala protested, looking anything but.

“No you’re not. And how could you be with my mother nagging you all the time?” Thomas raised his hands into the air. “Impossible! She’s made it impossible. It’s not fair to you or the children. No wonder everyone is fighting!”

“A beach like Hawaii?” Akhil asked. “Does the hotel have TV?”

“Yes, I believe it does.”

“Does it have a swimming pool?” Amina asked.

“It has a very nice pool,” Thomas informed her. “I believe there’s even a bar in the middle, where you can swim up and order a fizzy drink.”

Amina gulped, dizzy with possibility.

“Thomas,” Kamala said sharply. “We can’t just go.”

“Why not?”

“You know why not!” She raised her eyebrow at the bedroom door, as though it were Ammachy herself. “Have you told her?”

“Don’t worry about that! I will explain tomorrow. I’m sure she’ll understand.”

“Tomorrow? Understand? Have you lost your minds? Besides, what will the neighbors think? Everyone will talk!”

“Who cares what the neighbors think?” Thomas scoffed.

“Everyone cares what the neighbors think!”

“Kamala,” Thomas sighed, rubbing his neck. “It’s not such a big deal. We’ll be leaving a few days early to go to the coast, that’s all. Don’t make it into a federal case, okay?”

Kamala got off the bed and opened the bedroom door. She looked at the children. “Out.”

“What? No, Mom, this is a family discussion, right? We’re entitled to—” Akhil started.

“OUT.”

Akhil and Amina scooted off the bed as quickly as the marbles and bedsheets would allow, walking straight across the hall into their own room. They waited exactly five seconds after Kamala shut the door to slide out onto the verandah, where they could watch their parents but remain hidden in the dark.

“—can’t. It’s just not done,” Kamala was saying.

Thomas opened his mouth to protest, but she cut him off with the flat of her hand.

“Bad enough the son leaves for America, then he comes home and stays for all of three days only?”

Thomas sniffed. “Don’t let’s start with all that.”

“I am not starting anything! You yourself started this business!”

“Enough, Kam. I am warning you.”

“You don’t warn me when I’m warning you!”

“She lied to me!”

“So what, now you want to run away? All because Dr. Abraham came?”

“She told him I wanted a job!”

“And you told her you would come back after studies! So? You are two liars! So what?” Kamala spun toward the window and Amina ducked, but her mother wasn’t looking at her. She was scooping up loose marbles and placing them in the game box.

“I did not lie, Kamala. It’s not as though I planned this.”

“No, of course not, His Holiness of Sainthood and Angels! You would never do such a thing!” Kamala shoved the top onto the game box. “You just studied the one branch in all of medicine that would be difficult to practice here and were shocked to death to learn that you could not practice it here!”

Thomas’s mouth hung open. He blinked several times before answering. “You saw me, Kamala. I asked at Vellore. I checked in Madras. I even looked in Delhi, for the love of God!”

“Yes, you said.”

“And what? You think I’m lying to you now?”

“No,” Kamala said, uncertainty creeping onto her face.

“The technology is not here yet! What do you want? You want me to work some miserable job just so we can be here?”

“I am just saying—”

“Answer me! Is that what you want? How about if I become a dentist? We can live right here, upstairs.”

“That’s not what I — and anyway, what’s so bad? So you don’t do the surgery! You are still a doctor! We could still have a good life.”

Amina had not known, until that very moment, that her father could look so bloodless, the color draining from his face until it looked like an angry husk. “What is so wrong with your life, Kamala?”

“We are not talking about me!”

“What is it that you long for? What opportunity have you not been given?”

Kamala fumed at the floor. “Nobody is talking about that.”

“Is it the house? It’s not big enough? You don’t like your car?”

“Don’t be a silly.”

“You want to come back here, is that it? After all these years, after everything we have built for ourselves there, after all that I have tried to give you, you want to uproot the kids from their entire lives and just move back here?”

Kamala’s lips clamped shut.

“What can you have here that you can’t at home?” Thomas took a step forward. “Really, tell me! You sit here like some pained mermaid longing for her sea, but what is it, really, that you don’t have back in the States? Your sisters who live in all different towns here anyway? Your independence? Enough help around the house? Someone to—”

“Myself,” Kamala said.

Thomas swayed a little bit, as if slapped.

“Myself,” Kamala said again, her eyes filling with tears she wiped away hastily, and Thomas’s arms dropped in their sockets. They did not look at each other then, but at the floor. A moment later Thomas turned and left the room, shoes heavy on the steps. Amina leaned over the verandah’s edge a few seconds later, watching him cross the yard, heading back to the gate. Akhil tugged her arm.

C’mon, he mouthed.

The lock screeched open again, letting Thomas back out to the street, and Kamala sat on the bed. Something round and hard moved from Amina’s throat to her gut, making it difficult to breathe. Akhil frowned at her.

“Let’s go, stupid,” he hissed, and she turned and followed him back inside, glad to have somewhere to go.

What was it that woke her? Late that night, Amina found herself awake, blinking into the dark. Scraping footsteps. The settling of weight. She stared at the fan cutting the air above her for several seconds before rising out of bed. The verandah was empty, but the tar on the roof was still warm from the day’s sun as Amina took the path back up to the top. The high, warbling songs of newfound Tamilian love rose from the movie theater down the street, along with smoke from the beggars’ fires and the bidi Thomas smoked, his back slumped into a yellow chair, beer between his feet. He glanced over his shoulder as she approached.

“Hi, Dad.”

“Ami.” He looked neither surprised nor unhappy to see her, and though the night was too hot and she was a little too big for it, she climbed into his lap, shoving her forehead against his jaw.

“You should be asleep,” he told her, his breath burning her eyes.

“You should be asleep,” she said, and he grunted.

“Are you having a good time?”

“Sure,” she lied. “Are you?”

He nodded once, heavily. He sighed and she sighed with him, feeling his belly rise and fall at her back, his heart thumping behind hers.

“She’s never satisfied,” he said.

Kamala? Ammachy? Amina was scared to ask.

“Where did you go?” she asked instead.

He shrugged.

“Are we still going to the beach?”

His stubble scratched her forehead as he nodded.

Amina closed her eyes. The pool. Tomorrow she would be crawling through the clear turquoise while light dappled the walls around her. Until her ears hurt. Until her fingers pruned. Maybe there would even be a slide, one of those long ones that curled like a giant’s tongue and spat you into the cool water.

“How is your brother?”

Why was he asking her? Amina opened her eyes to the muggy dark. “Mean.”

Thomas laughed.

“No, it’s true, Dad! He’s worse here than at home.”

“That’s because it’s hard for him here.”

“It’s hard for me, too!”

“Not the same way, koche. He was born here. He remembers more.”

This seemed like one of those things that her father had wrong, like the time he said that being famous would be terrible. Why would it be harder to be somewhere you remember more? What about when you didn’t remember anything if you’d ever even known it in the first place and everyone was always exchanging dark looks over it like you were blind or dumb or didn’t understand what scorn looked like?

“That boy is going to be something else,” Thomas said suddenly, wistfully, like he was seeing the end of some movie she couldn’t. “He’s difficult now, but one day he’ll grow into himself, and then you watch. He’ll shine brighter than the rest of us combined.”

Amina’s heart puckered with jealousy. She wanted to remind her father about how sometimes Akhil spoke so fast that you couldn’t even understand him, and even when you could understand him, he didn’t always make sense, but just then something crashed below them in the yard.

“What was that?” She jumped up, ran and looked over the edge of the roof, seeing a flicker of white. Now came a deep thud, followed by a string of curses and a growl.

“Shit.” Thomas frowned at her side.

Down below, weaving like a ghost through a forest, Sunil wandered through the yard in his white mundu. He took a few steps forward and then turned back, bending over something. He dragged it toward the wall.

“Shit,” Thomas said.

Amina blinked in the dark, trying to focus. What was he dragging? It was heavy, apparently. And dark. A chill shot through her. A body? Was it Ammachy? Sunil reached the gate and tried lifting whatever it was up and over. It dropped on his foot.

“AAAARGH!”

“Sunil, please!” And here was Divya Auntie, running across the yard now in her nightie. “Stop this nonsense and put it all back! You’ll wake the whole house.”

What on earth was he doing? Amina watched as her uncle bent over, tugging at something.

“Sunil—”

“GET AWAY FROM ME!” Sunil roared, stumbling backward so that Amina could finally see what he had been dragging.

“Is that our suitcase?” She looked at her father.

“Shit,” Thomas said.

“BLOODY BULLSHIT ARTIST!” Sunil hit the lock on the suitcase so that it popped open.

“Dad, what is he doing?”

“Shit.”

The first item to fly over the gate was a hiking boot. The other soon followed, hitting the ground directly in front of the group of beggar children. One of them scrambled to pick it up, and another shrieked as a cassette landed in their midst. There were rustlings, and Amina watched a small shadow run to the gate, pointing to it. The rest of the children followed, staring up in wonder. At that moment, Sunil chose to get rid of the tube socks. One by one, the white balls flew into the night, and on the other side of the gate, children bobbed and weaved, snatching them before they landed.

“Sunil, stop!” Divya cried, tugging at his arm. He smacked her away.

Three more cassette tapes followed, and these caused a bit of a scuffle until one of the pairs of Levi’s flew over and a full-on war began. Someone thumped someone. Someone else screamed. One of the jars of Avon cream shattered on the ground, but the next was caught, resulting in cheers. The candy cane filled with lip balms sailed into waiting hands. There was a small pause, and then Sunil raised Itty’s tennis shoes above his head.

“No, no, Sunil!” Divya screamed, running at him. “Nonononono!”

But it was too late, the shoes were flying through the air and over the gate, twin satellites spinning into orbit and caught by swift hands. Divya scrambled for the lock, throwing her whole body against it until the gate clicked open. She shoved through it and stopped. The children watched her. She was breathing hard. She took a step forward, hands out, and they backed up. Amina watched as her aunt said something, reaching toward the children, and they scattered, running in all directions across the street, shoes and creams and cassette tapes tucked tightly under arms as they disappeared.

Amina was shaking. She did not realize this until her father put two hands on either side of her shoulders, pulling her toward him and clamping her still. Her face pressed into his ribs, and her mouth chattered.

“D-d-d—”

“It’s okay,” her father said, but she could hear the forced calm in his tone.

“W-we have to get Itty’s shoes back! Or get him another p-p-pair! He’s going to go crazy without them!”

“Okay,” he said. “It’s going to be okay.”

Why was he picking her up? Amina hadn’t been carried by her father in years, but there he was, scooping her up and crushing her, forcing her head down on his shoulder like she was some small, small child. Amina reared back, wanting to scream at him or scratch his face, and instead found herself crying harder.

“It’s okay,” her father whispered, rubbing her back as if she didn’t know better.

They were packed. How this had happened was a mystery to Amina, who, along with Akhil, had been woken, fed a breakfast of toast and tea, and then led to the driveway by a terse Kamala. The sun was rising fast, spreading muggy air over them like carpet. Mary-the-Cook and the servant girls dutifully ran whisk brooms over the yard, sneaking looks their way but saying nothing as Itty howled and clutched his bare feet on the lawn.

“Itty, koche, pavum,” Divya said in a soothing voice. Her hair charged out of her bun in a haphazard corona; her eyes were red-rimmed.

Itty had been, as Amina predicted, inconsolable when his first shrieks rang across the pink morning. For the last two hours he moved from wracking sobs to soft whimpers and back as steadily as a commuter train on a loop.

Akhil walked over to him, tentatively patting his shoulder. “You want to go play cricket for a minute? We’re not leaving yet.”

Itty shook his head miserably, a gob of snot landing on his shirt. Divya sighed but forced a smile on her face when Amina looked at her, and it was this as much as anything else that sent Amina’s stomach sliding into a greasy shame.

Bad. They were doing something bad. What, exactly, she wasn’t sure, because no single element — the packed bags, the eating upstairs, the sweating outside now — seemed like a horrible act in itself, and yet somehow it had turned them against the Salem house, landing them up in the driveway like pillagers escaping with a country’s pride. Outside the Wall, the morning traffic rose in a steady stream, honks and shouts multiplying on one another.

“Does Ammachy know we’re leaving?” Akhil asked.

“Yes, of course,” Kamala said.

“Then where is she?”

“She isn’t feeling well this morning.”

Akhil looked skeptically at his mother. “Are we even going to say goodbye?”

“Of course!” She bristled. “Who doesn’t say goodbye?”

“Okay!” Thomas called, walking down the steps with two bags. “Almost done here!”

“Thomas, please.” Divya clutched her pink sari tightly around her. “All year she has waited for you and the children to come. What will the neighbors think, all the commotion and sudden leaving?”

“Oh, pah.” Thomas shrugged, shoving Akhil’s backpack into the trunk. “Don’t worry about that, it’s no big—”

“And the party?”

“What party?”

“She was going to have a party for you and the children on Friday.”

Thomas looked momentarily thrown. “She didn’t tell me.”

“It was a surprise.”

Amina watched her father take this in. “Then I will tell her I am sorry.”

Divya shook her head, walking into the house, and Itty wailed anew, the high-pitched whinnying. Akhil patted his head gingerly, and Amina crossed the lawn and crouched next to him.

“Hey,” she said in the same soothing voice that all the parents were using, and it seemed like the right thing to do until Itty looked up at her and she had nothing more to say.

“Vel-cow,” he whispered, panicked, tremulous.

“I know,” she said, and he shuddered, ducking his head.

The hurrying sound of footsteps came from inside the house, followed by Divya and a much-worse-for-the-wear-looking Sunil.

“Ho! Thomas, what’s this?” He was hastily tying a lungi around his plump waist as he walked. “Divya says you’re leaving?”

Thomas nodded curtly, not looking him in the face.

“I thought you were staying until Saturday.”

“We’re going now,” Thomas said, looking coolly toward the Wall. “We need to be somewhere more comfortable.”

“Comfort … you … have you told Mummy?” Sunil managed at last, his face running from indignant to alarmed.

“I have.”

Sunil walked a few paces toward the car and turned around. “You can’t even manage a few more days?”

“Nights, actually.”

The blood rushing to Sunil’s face darkened it like a shadow, and Amina scooted closer to Itty and her brother, unsure if there would be another explosion. Instead her uncle swallowed, saying quietly, “Thomas, bah. That is no reason to leave.”

“Oh, it’s quite enough—”

“No, I mean”—Sunil cleared his throat—“you don’t want to see me? Fine. I will go. But you stay.”

“I can’t.”

“Can’t?” Sunil snorted in disbelief. “What can’t? Who can’t?”

There was a long silence while Thomas struggled to come up with an answer.

“We can’t,” Kamala said, startling Amina and Akhil. “The children are sick with the heat, and I told Thomas to book one room at the beach.”

This was a lie and they all knew it, but invoking the children had done the neat work of making the rest of the conversation impossible, and Sunil looked away, beaten.

“Just tell the neighbors the kids aren’t used to the weather,” Kamala continued. “They’ll understand. Weak American constitution and all.”

Amina could not look at anyone, not Sunil, not Divya, and definitely not Itty. She felt her mother’s hands on her shoulders, propelling her forward, through the yard and up the verandah steps, down the hallway, past the living room and dining room and all the other bedrooms, to the one that smelled of camphor and roses and something else sweet and rotting, like a caramel roll left under the bed. The shadow of a fan cut across the pale blue wall, and in the bed, Ammachy was hunched under her sheets, her long hair loose from its customary braid, her eyes fixed on the pillow next to her.

“The kids would like to say goodbye,” Thomas said, and if she heard him, it did not change her position. Akhil was the first to go to her, leaning quickly over to kiss her cheek and then standing back. Amina did the same, running back to the bedroom doorway when she was done.

“Amma.” Thomas kneeled next to his mother.

Kamala joined him and had barely leaned forward when Ammachy’s hand shot out of the covers, snapping across her cheek hard. For a few seconds there was a terrible soundlessness, the round shock that left Kamala clutching her face. Then she put down her hand, exposing a red welt, and everyone began yelling.

“Ma!” Amina cried.

“You bitch!” Akhil exploded, lunging at Ammachy. “You fucking bitch!”

“Akhil!” Thomas caught him with quick arms.

“What? It’s true! Mom is so nice to her all the time, and why? So she can hear about how she’s too dark to matter? So she can get hit?”

“Calm down.”

“And you! The only thing Ammachy ever does is make you feel like shit! She doesn’t deserve you!” Akhil’s voice broke. “She doesn’t deserve any of us!”

Thomas tightened his forearms across Akhil’s chest and then began to whisper sternly, tenderly. It’s okay, Amina saw more than heard; you’re okay, we’re okay, until the whites of Akhil’s eyes stopped slashing furiously around the room, until he stopped struggling and just stood there, panting heavily, looking like he was going to cry.

“I need you to take your mother to the car. Can you do that for me?” Thomas asked, and Akhil bent to put his arm around Kamala, who was already rising on jittering legs. They left the room together. Thomas waited until their footsteps grew soft before turning back to Ammachy.

“You,” he said, his voice murderously low, and Amina crouched against the wall as he began to pace. “What is wrong with you? Hitting! My God! Is there any shred of sanity left in this house?”

Ammachy glared at him.

“You think the kids will want to come back after this, Amma? You think any of us will want to—”

“Out!” Ammachy screamed. “Go if you are going!”

“You don’t even enjoy it when we’re here! Has that occurred to you? You’re so busy thinking of how it should be that you can’t even appreciate—”

“Cowards!” Ammachy roared. “Traitors! Good-for-nothings!”

Thomas’s voice rose in a rapid, angry swirl of Malayalam, pushing Amina out the bedroom door and down the hall. The last words her father said to his mother were in a language that she didn’t understand, and didn’t want to. He was still yelling as she shot out the front door.

“What happened?” Divya cried, and Kamala, already ducking into the car with Akhil, said nothing. The servant girls stared openmouthed, Babu paced, and Preetham pretended to polish the steering wheel. Mary-the-Cook spat something on the ground, hands on hips, but even she took a few paces back as Thomas came barreling out of the house a few seconds later, his eyes wild and dark.

“Goodbye,” he said, nodding curtly to his brother.

“Thomas, please!” Sunil said, but Thomas was already behind Amina, pushing her toward the car door. She scrambled into the backseat with her mother and brother as Babu unlatched the heavy steel gate to the main road and waved the car through.

“Are you okay?” Thomas reached for Kamala’s face, but she leaned as far away from him as possible, her eyes turned to the road.

“Coward! You’re as bad as she is!” Sunil shouted at Thomas through the window. He ran after the car, banging the flat of his palm on the trunk. “You wait. Your own children will leave you and never come back!”

And then they were out, on the other side of the Wall and rolling back down the dusty road, past the beggar children, down to the train station, where the Kanyakumari Express would take them to Kovalam Beach. For three whole days, they would stay in a resort built for rich Europeans. Akhil and Amina would eat pizza and French fries and begin to fight again without the fear of their grandmother to unite them. Kamala and Thomas would exchange pleasantries and logistics, a palpable coldness taking root between them. But it was Sunil’s parting words that had done the most damage, and more than once Amina turned to find her father staring at her and her brother as though they had become unfamiliar to him already. Four years later, when Akhil died, she knew her uncle’s words were ringing in his head much louder than any consolations the minister offered.