Baba’s skin splits open with the sound of thunder. A parent’s intuition, he says, switching on the news. A ticker tape warning runs across the screen telling us to leave, leave, leave. The sky over our home is cracking but Baba will not go.

He runs up to the roof instead and grows larger than I ever knew him to be. Tanned skin tears and gives way to obsidian bones. His pot-belly swells to his knees but he does not seem worried. Instead he watches the sky, enraptured as it flashes white before chips of it flake and fall off like Baba’s skin.

“I will take care of it,” he assures us with his steady voice.

Maa tries to stop him, pull him back, but he is already running and leaping, tearing off his skin in handfuls. The wings on his back burst open just as he jumps. They are taut cotton over dark cartilage, a patchwork of old bedsheets. Bright colors spill from them when he flies towards the sun.

Baba swerves through the air towards a fragment of our broken sky. The air around it flickers with heat, threatening to burn through his wings and flatten our house. But I know my father will not let it happen. He is the strongest man I know so of course, he just unhinges his jaw and swallows it whole.

Maa pulls me inside to finish my homework but how can I think about math now? I keep running to the window to catch glimpses of Baba flying, his old skin hanging off him like a grotesque ribbon.

I always knew Baba was a superhero. I just thought he would look different.

• • • •

Baba always showed signs of being a dragon-moth. He was always rushing to the next bright thing, a new money-making scheme, a brilliant business opportunity. He would convince Maa this one would not burn their savings. This would absolve us, pay for our home loan or my education.

“You have to take risks in life. Catch every shining opportunity,” he would tell me. “Just one of them has to work out.”

So far none had, but we knew he was trying his best. He spent hours on his scooter and came back angry. He was always arguing on the phone until he was throwing plates.

We tried being small. Once, Maa pulled me away to build our own dome with pillows and blankets. We tied one edge of the old bedsheet to the window grill and tucked the other under the mattress. Inside, there were only cotton flowers on our sky and loud songs we made up.

We did not hear him until he was in the room, tearing away the bedsheets above us. My father was telling us to stop, to shut up. He could not work in the damn house if there was never silence. Could we never shut up?

Maa put herself between us. Her back tense, shoulder blades touching as she spoke in a practiced calm: “It was my idea.”

“Of course it was.” He threw down the torn bedsheet and we flinched.

• • • •

Before my father became a dragon-moth, he taught me how to do math. He let me hold the calculator, a sacred artifact on his desk, and patted my head so gently. “You will be very good at this someday if you focus.”

I knew I would make myself become anything he wanted.

• • • •

Baba stays outside the house now.

We hear him flying day and night, catching stars for us. Each one must burn sliding down his throat but he keeps going.

He grows larger with each star he eats, until he grows too large for the house to hold him. His wings are paper thin, bleached white by the sun and a white fur mantle grows around his head.

We try to call him home but he has been so busy, too busy to sign report cards, too busy to teach me Math. We say we can leave with the neighbors but he is too far to hear us. When he finally does, he grows angry.

“I am trying so hard. You don’t think I can do this?” He swerves towards us.

“We do. We just want you to be okay.” Maa looks towards me for support. “Tell him.”

I don’t. I am gritting my teeth too hard to speak. I stare at him with all the anger my awkward body can muster. I want him to know.

He avoids my gaze, looking accusingly at Maa before he rushes back into the burning sky.

It takes me days to slacken my jaw, to uncurl my fists. Until then I punch holes into the wall and cover them up with posters.

• • • •

The sky is a patchwork of holes now, through which there is only darkness, a void.

Sometimes, I dream I turn into a dragon-moth like my father and I am flying through it. Sometimes, it is Baba who goes into the void and never returns.

• • • •

I wonder if Baba blames us for his life. I hear him crying some nights. His large body on the roof, demanding to be let in but no door will fit him now. We shut all the windows and watch the cracks on the roof spread from his weight every night.

Cement dust collects in gray piles everywhere. The house is riddled with holes. Cracks on the roof. Holes that I have punched. It will fall soon. It is only a matter of time.

• • • •

I find my bright idea online and draw it up for my mother. A risk worth taking, I promise her, so she talks to the neighbors who can only offer coupons. We eat margarine and bread on their kindness. With the rest, she makes small trips to old scrap stores and brings gears hiding under groceries.

At night, we sleep back to back, counting all the money we need but don’t have. It is so easy to just stay.

• • • •

I only see him when he is in a good mood. We meet on the roof and look for a conversation. He wants to ask about my life but doesn’t have the right questions. So I ask him to teach me Math instead. I keep a flame to draw his attention and scream the questions. He scratches the sum into sand with his talons and roars them back.

When I finally understand how it works, he laughs so bright that I am convinced I could put away our plans. The world beyond sounds so tiring. There are taxes, loans, and forms to fill. It all needs so much money.

Then the sky falls again, another ember to catch.

“Can you help me with another sum?” I find myself asking, fanning the flame brighter.

“I know you can manage, my star,” he tells me before leaping off.

• • • •

He is asleep on our doorstep in the morning, tired from his battle. We are bleary eyed too. We have stayed up all night planning. I do the math he taught me to draw up the schematics. I take the wood out of our beds to saw them into planks. With a kitchen flame, we put together this aircraft and Maa begins to sing.

We slip out the window and her song carries us up and up before Baba can wake. We fly up the patchwork sky. It will keep falling forever. Maybe the world beyond will not have air to breathe but we have to try.

The two of us go through the void, into the darkness where Baba will never go as long as there is a flame to catch.