Sleepwalking. Priscila Uppal

      Cover

      

      Selected Praise for Priscila Uppal’s Works

      Projection: Encounters with My Runaway Mother

      “Projection proves to be remarkably free of self-pity … [A] raw, passionate memoir, a fierce exercise in family exorcism.”

      — Montreal Gazette

      “Uppal is brave … made of sterner stuff than most; an inspiration to messed-up adult children everywhere.”

      — Globe and Mail

      “[S]uperbly conveyed without any excessive literary artifice … Projection is a book that’s simultaneously cerebral and visceral, and its ardent refusal of any sort of mind-body split — to sacrifice sophistication for sentiment or vice versa — is the sign of an author who has thrown herself wholly into her book.”

      — National Post

      “Incorporating movie and pop-culture references as storytelling devices is what makes this book truly shine … Above all, Uppal is an impeccable writer, deftly infusing complex scenes and emotions with power and weight … a worthy read.”

      — Quill & Quire

      “[A] heartbreaking memoir.”

      —Toronto Life

      “Intimate, sad, probing and self-aware, often very funny logbook of a harrowing encounter.”

      — Literary Review of Canada

      To Whom It May Concern

      “It is to be hoped that Uppal will continue to rival Atwood in productivity and wit. As Shakespeare might have said: Fortune, smile again on lovers of CanLit; grace us with more irresistible stories from Uppal’s unique perspective.”

      — Montreal Gazette

      “Uppal is a deep thinker, capable of carefully peeling back layer upon layer of the human psyche … makes us laugh and cry long after the last page of the novel has been read.”

      — Ottawa Citizen

      “Uppal’s writing bursts with humour, plot turns and insights … Uppal should be congratulated for writing one of the most powerful and riskiest scenes in a Canadian novel … [she] reveals herself as a compassionate and perspicacious novelist whose humanity and intelligence cannot be overlooked.”

      — Globe and Mail

      The Divine Economy of Salvation

      “In its confident voice and its unsparing, concisely powerful narrative — like Margaret Laurence at her best — Divine Economy is an impressive debut.”

      — Globe and Mail

      “A luminous debut … haunting, gripping, and surprisingly nuanced: begins as a simple mystery and turns into a work of great depth and seriousness.”

      — Kirkus starred review

      Dedication

      For Richard Teleky,

      who has been here since the beginning

      Epigraph

      Who, marked for failure, dulled by grief,

      Has traded in his wife and friend

      For this warm ledge, this alder leaf:

      Comfort that does not comprehend.

      — Edna St. Vincent Millay, “The Return”

      Sleepwalking

      At first we were as honoured as the other parts of her body: her delicate hands, the square fingers that pushed against objects as if trying to hold them by sheer will; her eyes, blue at birth and then a dull grey, slightly small, almost oriental; her thick hair, even then the shade of oak bark. We were tickled and dusted with talcum powder. We were slipped into fresh cotton socks and tiny white sneakers. People crowded us, comparing the size of their own to ours. Olivia, or as her parents called her, Ollie, was in perfect proportion, until she no longer had anyone to depend on to look out for us. Until she learned how to walk. Then, because she assumed our movements were unconscious, she forgot who was responsible for keeping her up. Ollie the baby was perfect, a sylvan shepherdess; Ollie the adolescent wondered about her hands.

      Thin white polyester gloves with sheer frills and tiny yellow flowers. Long purple silk gloves with pointed ends. Pink woollen gloves with bobbles of faux fur. Tiny red buttons, miniature hearts, on cream lace. And a dozen mittens. Ollie’s parents spoiled her hands, let her sleep with gloves on, saying her “Lord’s Prayer” and “Hail Mary” and “If I Die Before I Wake.” She seemed a quiet nun at peace with her vanity. The parents approved, the neighbours approved, and the teachers thought her “precious.” No one condescended to see how we were doing. Not even the doctors who pricked her fingertips (after asking her three time to remove her lovely gloves) seemed to think our blood needed tending. We became grave, and if truth be told, as it must, we became jealous. Weren’t we, after all, the prime movers of her universe? That’s what we thought.

      We decided to sleep all day. Ollie tripped, bumped, slid, fell, toppled, teetered, trampled. Ollie could not tap dance or play basketball. Ollie could not climb ladders or jump rope. We were delighted. As an unseen consequence, however, Ollie relied further on her hands. They slammed against floors and cupboards to support her, protect her face. They waltzed around the young boys’ bodies seductively, so that they didn’t care whether she could be dipped or twirled. They moved in front of her, tentatively, instinctively, like the blind. They developed their own language. And we were sore. We wanted to run. We too wanted to feel. We wanted Ollie to watch where she was going.

      It came to us as a just revenge. Wriggling and anxious after having slept all day, we needed to stretch. Like a hypnotist we summoned inner strength, staunch desire, made all her matter bend to our will. We slipped off the bed, and, a little frightened by the possibility of her entire body at our command, we simply stood in the dark, pressing our heels into the carpet, unbelieving. We went back to bed, blood racing, causing our limbs to twitch. Then we crashed on our own titillation. That was the first night.

      The second night (we waited three days for the second night — how we did this we still don’t know, perhaps afraid we would lose the gift) we became bolder. Found out her hands could be instructed to place a towel underneath her blankets and turn a doorknob. We were on our way outside before her mother, Mommy (still at fifteen), called Ollie. We stopped in our tracks and waited to see if Ollie would wake. She didn’t. We kept on through the kitchen as Mommy ran down the stairs and turned on lights. The mysterious night, which we ached to examine and which had left its corners exposed like unravelled bandages a moment ago, had now sealed itself back up. We were cheated, we thought, until Mommy put a hand on her daughter, and gently directed her upstairs. Apparently, Mommy had previously witnessed this phenomenon. Olivia was regarded as normal. Unconsciousness, like puberty, though disorienting, was a natural state. We stayed and pondered the consequences for a long time.