The Orphan Keeper

by Camron Wright

  She understood. She’d done it before.

  “These children will be a blessing to their waiting families,” Maneesh announced to all, but his tone echoed thin. He turned too quickly to Eli. “Are more coming?”

  “There are always more coming, Maneesh. Always more.”

  And without another word, Eli walked across the compound, into his office, and closed the door.

  When Arayi arrived back home, a box was waiting with a letter taped to its side. Selvaraj said it was left by Oma, one of Arayi’s older brothers. She tore open the envelope and read.

  Dear Auntie,

  We are sad since hearing about the disappearance of Chellamuthu. We have visited the temple in Karur, praying often for peace. Regrettably, I have not been able to come back to Erode with Uncle to help search. My new employer, the Utility Board in Karur, will not allow that I take leave so soon. We have little in the way of wealth but were blessed by generosity at our wedding. Since by Lakshmi’s good fortune I have secured employment, take the money we received at the wedding, an unusually large amount, and use it in your search for Chellamuthu. We have placed his picture in our shrine and will continue to plead for strength, peace, and his speedy return.

  Your nephew,

  Suresh

  After reading the letter, Arayi pulled open the box flaps. Inside, placed side by side, were three tight rolls of rupees. She untied the twine that held them, and as she counted, confidence lifted in her voice. She turned to her son. “Selvaraj, please take these to Mrs. Iyer right away. Tell her we need to order more posters!”

  The boy hesitated.

  “What is it?” she asked.

  Selvaraj dropped his shoulders. “It’s been weeks, Mother. More posters won’t help. Chellamuthu is never coming home.”

  It was early in the morning, just as Chellamuthu and the other children were waking up, when Eli stepped into the room and motioned for the boy to come close.

  “I have some news,” he said. “We need to speak. Can you follow me?”

  Something was wrong. Was Anu okay?

  Chellamuthu tried to read Eli’s face to learn if the news was good or bad, but the man had turned. The boy trailed behind him as they crossed the yard, wishing they could walk faster. When they entered the building and climbed the stairs, Eli pointed to a chair and then sat to face him.

  “I finally spoke with the couple who brought you here, as well as the people who took you, and I believe there has been a misunderstanding.”

  Chellamuthu leaned into the news with relief. It was more than a misunderstanding. But whatever anyone wanted to call it was fine if it meant he could finally go home.

  Eli continued, “Chellamuthu, you were right. You are not an orphan. You have a family.” It was Eli’s turn now to lean close. “But I misspoke when I told you that we have only orphans here. That’s not entirely true. We also take in children from difficult family situations.”

  Difficult family situations? The words circled around Chellamuthu like vultures waiting for death.

  “This will be hard for you to understand,” the man added, “but you are here because your family—Chellamuthu, they sold you! They could no longer provide for you, and so sending you here was their best option.”

  Chellamuthu’s head fell back as the blunt force of the news pummeled him between the eyes. Liar! It wasn’t true!

  “No!” he shouted. “NO!”

  But despite his denial, the door of doubt had been cracked open, and the painful possibility had already nosed in. His head shook in defiance. His words quivered with panic. “We need to call the police!”

  Eli wiped down his beard. His reply was measured, deliberate. “Chellamuthu, we can’t go to the police.”

  “Why not?” the boy asked, his voice barely scratching to hold on.

  “If we go to the police, they will arrest your family for abandoning you, for selling you. Do you want your family to get arrested? Your father and mother will go to jail!”

  The words were weary and burdened, like heaving a full sack of rice to a boy.

  “If the police ever speak to you about how you got here, you must tell them you are all alone, that you have no family to look after you. Do you understand? It’s for your own family’s sake! In the end, it’s what they wanted for you.”

  The room’s walls seemed to bend and sway, as if they could cave and crumble at any moment. Eli continued, “I know it’s going to take some time for you to fully understand. All I’m asking is that you consider what I’ve said. As you do, also ask if you’ve ever been hungry here? Have you always had enough to eat? Good clothing and a dry place to sleep? Has anyone here ever hurt you?”

  The silence waited.

  “Did you have those things at home?” Eli asked.

  Tears were poised to fall. “Yes, I did,” he defended. “I did!”

  Eli arched back, though his eyes fell to the boy’s feet. “If that’s true, then why are your feet scarred?”

  Chellamuthu tucked them beneath the chair out of view. “That was my fault,” he blurted. “I didn’t obey. I kept running off. I stole fruit. It was me—not them!”

  His words froze, naked and exposed. All that could be heard was the sound of his own breathing.

  Was it possible? Could his father really have sold him? Thirty rupees . . . the man in the van had said thirty rupees!

  Eli was patting him on the back now to console him, but it felt like the hacking of Banerjee’s machete.

  His legs trembled. His throat burned. He was certain his heart was about to rupture.

  Eli’s tone suddenly brightened. “Those who are brought to the Lincoln Home for Homeless Children are actually very lucky. You don’t realize it now, but you will have opportunities that boys who remain in India can only dream about—education, employment, perhaps even wealth. You’re going to have an astounding life, Chellamuthu. You will. And some day you will come back here to thank me, to show me what you’ve done with the blessing God is handing you.”

  Like dirty smoke from the factory near Erode Junction, the words settled around Chellamuthu and choked him.

  He wasn’t listening to Eli’s promises. He was still arguing with himself.

  No! His family hadn’t sold him—it was all a lie.

  Rajamani pulled at the ends of his mustache, as if it might tear off. What do I do with the boy?

  He had wanted Chellamuthu to help him repair the commissioner’s desk by holding the corner while Rajamani screwed in a new leg. However, since his meeting with the commissioner, the boy had plopped onto his sleeping mat and refused to move. He’d been like a statue, silent, motionless, even looking away when addressed. When Rajamani touched him on the shoulder, he’d angrily brushed away the man’s hand. He’d even refused to eat!

  Rajamani had promised the commissioner that the desk would be fixed before the end of the day, and that gave him less than an hour.

  “CHELLAMUTHU!” Rajamani called out from across the room, with words as tall as the man was wide. “Come with me now!” He hated to be firm with Chellamuthu, since the child was generally so well behaved, but there comes a time of necessity.

  As Chellamuthu slowly stood, Rajamani commended himself. As he’d always said, A firm hand compels a compliant heart.

  His self-congratulatory back-patting had barely started when Chellamuthu looked heavenward and screamed—a shrieking, painful, lamenting, gut-wrenching scream!

  Children jumped, faces twisted. Both toddlers and babies nearby began to cry.

  Like a boy possessed, Chellamuthu reached for the banana leaf holding his untouched dinner and flung it across the room. Then, to the horror of wide-eyed children trying to create distance, the boy began pulling out the mats from beneath their feet and tearing the straw into pieces like a ravenous tiger.

  Eli, who’d heard the commotion from
across the yard, rushed in to help.

  With children tumbling to the floor like spilled sevai, the men stepped slowly, cautiously, approaching Chellamuthu from opposite sides.

  Rajamani reached him first. Chellamuthu’s eyes bulged and his nostrils flared. His legs were planted wide. He was panting, teeth bared, like a desperate, cornered stray. While it was a fevered rampage, it was short-lived, as the boy’s passion was no match for Rajamani’s size. Once constrained, fury beat a hasty retreat, leaving only room for anguish.

  Tight arms fell limp. Tense shoulders dropped helpless. And when Rajamani loosened his grip, the boy slid through his fingers like sand to the floor. He was sobbing in front of the children, Eli, Rajamani, and himself.

  Rajamani turned to Eli. “I am sorry, Commissioner. I will make sure this never happens again. He will be severely punished. I will see to . . .”

  “No!” Eli cut the man’s words in two. “He’s not to be punished.”

  “Sir?” Rajamani asked, his narrowing eyes still holding onto the question.

  Eli was stroking at his beard, staring down at the crying boy. Rajamani knew this meant that the man was thinking. Eli looked up. “Tomorrow, give him extra vegetables with his rice and beans—and send someone to the market to get all of the children some sweets.”

  Rajamani’s head bobbed. Eli continued, “These children are blessed to be here at the Lincoln Home. It’s a fact we need to celebrate more often.”

  “Certainly,” Rajamani answered. “I’ll get this place cleaned up.”

  Eli wasn’t listening—or if he was, it didn’t show. As he made his way to the door, he seemed preoccupied. Before leaving, he turned to Rajamani and spoke, as if needing to give voice to a notion he was debating in his head.

  “A time will come!” he said.

  “I beg your pardon?” Rajamani called back.

  “A time will come, Rajamani, when these children will recognize the gift we are giving them.”

  The astrologer hunched over his charts like a fox might hunch over a squirrel, only this man was flipping through page after page, making calculations, noting data about planets, stars, and orbits. In addition to his books, he’d brought his own little table to spread them on, a round folding top with carved planets orbiting its circular wooden edge.

  He had arrived half a day late, though Arayi did not complain. She boiled water and served him tea and asked if he was comfortable. This man was in high demand, and she was lucky that he’d made the time. He was wearing a light orange shirt and a white lungi, and other than the large gold medallion that dangled around his neck, featuring the astrological signs, there was nothing special about the man—except his reputation.

  His name had been passed to her by Sulabha Nalini, her friend at the temple. “There is no one,” the woman had said, so emphatically anyone would have believed her, “who reads the charts with more certainty than Devadas D’Souza.”

  He was also the most expensive astrologer Arayi had used. But can a mother ever put a price on her son? One found a way to pay, even if it required missing meals. Luckily, Arayi had saved a small amount of the money Suresh had sent to search for Chellamuthu. It was time now to put it to good use.

  “Tell me about your missing boy,” he’d directed, carrying confidence the way an old woman carries home well water. He expected more than just the boy’s birthday. He’d wanted the time of his birth, the day they first noticed him missing, birthdays and birth times for both the boy’s parents and his siblings. The man was thorough, she’d give him that.

  After several minutes poring over his charts, he faced Arayi. “What would you like to know?”

  She’d assumed her questions were obvious. She voiced them now aloud. “Is my son, Chellamuthu, still alive? Will he be coming home?”

  The astrologer didn’t appear nervous or under pressure to divine the answers correctly because, as he’d explained on his arrival—and as anyone with the slightest understanding of the heavens understood—this was science. Heavenly bodies serve as the fruit of karma, shining their influence on a person throughout their earthly life. To divine that influence, one simply had to know how to read the charts.

  Now that she’d asked, now that she was waiting, now that she’d paid, he checked a few more pages in his notes, just to be certain. “I am only the messenger,” he said. “All I can do is read the stars and planets and their orbits and then tell you what they say.”

  “I understand,” Arayi replied. She paused, watched, waited. He said nothing. “Then what do they say?” she finally asked directly.

  He lowered his head and clutched his medallion.

  “I’m sorry to tell you. Your son, Chellamuthu, is dead.”

  Chapter 10

  Chellamuthu closed his eyes, pretending to be asleep. His back was facing the courtyard door as he measured steady breaths. Long after the lights were turned out, hours after the children quit stirring, Chellamuthu quietly rose, grabbed the blue water bucket beside the trough, and hauled it toward the door.

  Eli was lying about Chellamuthu’s family. He had to be, and Chellamuthu intended to prove it.

  Tonight would be like his pretend wartime missions with Vikesh where they’d sneak across enemy lines to break out captured soldiers, except tonight his mission was real. He was headed to the fountain.

  His plan was simple. When helping to rinse clothes in the basin, he’d noticed the spacing of the spout and the tap as they poked through the wall. If he could just reach the lower handle by jumping from the bucket, he was certain he could grab the spout with his legs and then use it to climb up onto the wall. It would be like the monkey bars at the park in Erode—except instead of falling into soft sand if he slipped, the landing tonight would be unforgiving cement.

  As if his plan wasn’t exacting enough, he’d have to carry it out in virtual silence, since the room where the women slept was just a few steps away. And while the night was cloudy, masking the moonlight, the darkness also made it harder to see the handle when he jumped.

  It didn’t matter.

  He climbed. He leapt. He stretched toward the handle and grabbed.

  His body thumped against the wall, though he didn’t wait to see if anyone stirred. He swung his legs until he could wrap them around the spout. Then, quicker than he could say monkey bars in the park, he pulled himself up into a standing position on the spout to lean against the wall.

  As he gripped the steel posts on top and peered through them, he fought the urge to shout, to wake up the sleeping children below to announce what he’d done.

  His elation died a quick death.

  As he stepped up onto the top of the wall, still holding the posts, something stabbed in his foot. There was the sound of cracking. The top surface of the wall circling the compound was embedded with shards of broken glass.

  Everyone in the compound was asleep. No one heard him cry out in pain. No one watched him wince as he lowered himself back down to the spout. No one could see the blood drip, drip, drip into the fountain.

  He rinsed his stinging foot in the water, limped across the yard, and then held a shirt against the wound in the dark until he drifted off to sleep.

  The next morning, when Mr. Rajamani shook him awake, Chellamuthu told him a story about cutting his foot on a sharp stone near the fountain in the dark while filling the bucket with water for the trough. When Rajamani pulled off the rag, a drop of crimson tracked down the boy’s foot to his heel and then jumped free to the ground.

  “This doesn’t look good. Let me go get some ointment.”

  Chellamuthu counted the slow, steady drops as they hit the dirt. One. Two. Three. It still stung, but it wasn’t his foot that made him uneasy. What he couldn’t figure out how to stop was the ache that pounded in his chest.

  Maneesh banged the poster against the startled table. “Do you know about this?” he asked Eli, waggi
ng a finger at the face of the boy staring up from the paper. He didn’t give him time to answer. “I was in Erode on bank business. These are plastered all over the bus station. Eli, he’s not an orphan! His family is looking for him.”

  Eli wouldn’t pretend. A simple nod sufficed. “I know,” he said, his words too calm for the moment.

  Maneesh wasn’t ready yet to lower his voice. “Did you not think that as your partner I would need to know this information? How did we get him? Why is he here?”

  “Don’t fret. We’ll get paid for the boy.”

  “Paid? Eli, we could get arrested.”

  “If there’s a problem, bribe someone—like you always do.”

  “This isn’t about paying off the police.”

  “But it is! In India that’s what everything is about. And to answer your question, the boy is here because there are children besides orphans who deserve saving.”

  “SAVING? Eli, his family is looking for him!”

  “Did you see his feet?”

  “What about them?”

  “They’ve been burned, scarred. Not only that, when he arrived he was starving and lice were practically building a city in his hair.”

  Maneesh sat. He appeared tired of being the only one with a raised voice. “Eli, you don’t know the circumstance behind the boy’s scars. Besides, when we were children, we were all skinny. We all had lice. This boy was taken from his family. That’s not right!”

  “So bribes are all right, but helping to save a battered boy is not? I have scars on my back that argue otherwise.”

  “That’s different.”

  “Different? I was no older than Chellamuthu when I was forced to carry bricks in that godforsaken factory. When I was beaten so badly I almost died—all possible because the owner paid for the privilege of having the police look the other way. The difference—if that’s what you’re looking for—is that I’m saving children, not torturing them for my own gain.”

  Maneesh rubbed his thumbs against his fingers, a nervous habit when his brain was going but his words weren’t yet ready. He’d heard the story a hundred times.