The Orphan Keeper

by Camron Wright

  Her complaining voice was beginning to stumble.

  “I think we’ve established it’s not right,” Fred added, purposely keeping his own voice calm. He draped his arm across her shoulders, hoping to head off more tears. “The question we need to answer, however, is What do we do now?”

  He took the momentary lull in her frustration to make one point clear. “Linda, whatever we decide, we shouldn’t feel pressured. Mr. Manickam misrepresented the child’s age, pure and simple.”

  “He lied!”

  “Okay, he lied—and if we decide to say no, to walk away, that doesn’t make us horrible people. We do have other children to consider.”

  “Plus it’s not fair to the boy,” Linda added, a point she’d missed in her previous objections.

  “It isn’t fair to anybody,” Fred confirmed.

  There was only her breathing. Her arms folded across her chest. “What we decide now will change the rest of his life—and ours. We can’t mess this up. This isn’t gym class. The bell isn’t going to ring and send everyone home.”

  “There is another way to look at it,” Fred added, brightening.

  “What’s that?”

  Fred straightened. “If he was three but we found out that he was missing an arm, would we still take him?”

  Linda didn’t hesitate. “Naturally.”

  “What if he had diabetes?”

  “Sure, but . . .”

  “Linda, he’s eight.” He let it sink in. “I can think of worse ailments.”

  She hated it when he was right. Her face didn’t smile, but it also didn’t frown. Without a word, she picked up the phone and dialed. Fred’s eyebrows arched.

  Had they decided?

  “Mr. Conway? This is Linda Rowland calling back.” Her question was simple. “When will our son be arriving?”

  It was only after she’d placed the phone back in the receiver for the second time that night that she looked heavenward. She even pointed her finger.

  “God, if this isn’t your doing,” she said, “this momma is gonna be ticked!”

  On the plane, Eli was holding one baby and Mrs. Sundar was cradling the other. The toddler sat between them. Eli let Chellamuthu sit by the window, and as the plane took off, the man seemed to be more entertained watching Chellamuthu than anything else around him.

  “We’ll be flying to Germany,” he said as they gained altitude. “We’re meeting two families there at the airport who are adopting the babies. From there, we head to America.”

  Chellamuthu looked up through swollen eyes but said nothing.

  “It will be quite a long ride,” Eli assured him. “You might want to get some sleep.”

  As an afterthought he added, “Let me know when you have to go to the bathroom. They have one onboard, but I’ll need to show you how to use it.”

  Chellamuthu glanced toward the rear of the plane in the direction Eli had pointed. He pictured a cement trench, a sloshing bucket of water, and a carefully placed hole in the tail of the plane where the waste would drop through onto those watching from below.

  That would be something.

  He might have to pretend he needed to go, even if he didn’t.

  It was late afternoon, and with the weather clear, Chellamuthu spent the next hour gazing down at the melding lines of rivers, roads, towns and cities, wondering if it was the same view that Shiva and the other gods had as they watched over India.

  With the passing of each distant city, he also wondered, Could that be Erode? Is Mother on the ground looking up?

  He closed his eyes. Erode was getting farther and farther away.

  Will I ever find my way back?

  The woman was perhaps forty, stirring a kettle of sambar over a fire. She didn’t look like an astrologer at all, and for a moment Arayi hesitated.

  “Can you tell me about my son?” Arayi asked.

  “Only if you pay my fee.”

  Reluctance held Arayi but only for a moment. She handed the woman money.

  “Wait here,” she instructed, leaving her cooking kettle on the fire to head inside.

  She returned with a ream of loose paper, pages scribbled with writing. While the others had at least played the part, this woman barely tried.

  “Sit here on the ground beside me.”

  “How long have you been an astrologer?” Arayi asked as she sat.

  “I have had an interest for years. I learned from my grandfather. I’ve only been practicing since he passed. A few months.” The woman moved, swayed, chewed a mouthful of betel nuts in rhythm. If she read Arayi’s disappointment, it didn’t show.

  “You said your son is missing? You want to know if he’ll return?”

  A nod.

  “I need the times and dates.”

  As fast as Arayi could recite them, the woman flipped her pages. She thumbed them like a deck of cards, forward and back. Reading quickly and then moving on. Forward and back. Back and forward. Each page evidently leading like a puzzle game to information on another.

  “It’s interesting,” the woman finally said.

  “What’s that?”

  “The signs all say that your son is fine. I’ve had others where that wasn’t the case.”

  “What does that mean, fine?” Arayi leaned forward to get a better look at the pages. She didn’t mean to hope, to let it grow, to blossom so quickly. It would be too painful again if . . .

  “Where is he, where?” Arayi asked, interrupting her thought.

  “The signs don’t say, but it’s not here.”

  Not here?

  “Then where? Do the signs say where he is, or if he will be coming home?”

  She apparently didn’t need to recheck her papers. “He will return to India, that is certain, but I can’t say if he will find his way home or not.”

  “How can that be? Surely if he returns to India, he would come home. When? When does it say he will return?”

  The woman’s head was shaking. “I don’t know, but when he does, the signs are clear.” The woman raised her arms to the sky. “He will fly. When your son returns, he will fly!”

  “Fly? FLY?” Arayi stood, her voice rising with her. This woman was talking gibberish. She’d been swindled again. “What does that mean, he will fly?”

  “These are the signs. I can’t force you to like them. He will return. It doesn’t say when. When he does, he will fly!”

  Arayi didn’t bother saying good-bye. The astrologers had all been wrong, and this crazy woman was the worst of the bunch. She was tired of them taking her money.

  That was it. She was finished.

  “I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve,” Linda said as they pulled into the airport parking lot. She thought the comment especially funny, considering it actually was Christmas Eve.

  Fred was too focused on finding an empty parking spot to offer applause. A light snow was falling, and the wipers were going. Rux, Josh and Jarem, all relatively quiet, were buckled into the back seat.

  “At least he’ll feel at home,” Fred added.

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s over a half a billion people in India, and we have close to that many cars here in the parking lot!”

  With the holiday traffic and slick roads, they were already late. They had agreed to meet Eli at baggage claim, and as they now arrived with two children in tow and pushing one in a stroller, Rux asked an intriguing question. “How will we know it’s him?”

  Linda bent down and unzipped his coat. She was about to explain when an Indian man stepped out from behind an approaching throng. A woman, whom most travelers would have assumed to be his wife, trailed three steps behind carrying a sleeping toddler. In between them, as if corralled, walked a tattered scruff of a boy.

  “I think we’ll know,” Linda said, as time stood beside her to
watch.

  Although she could never give birth to children of her own, Linda had always imagined this moment—the first seconds when she laid eyes on her newly adopted children—to mirror the emotion a mother must feel when she cradles her newborn baby in her waiting arms.

  Linda knew her son, all right.

  From behind a passing flurry of hurried holiday legs, as if hiding in a people-forest, a confused and frightened, licorice-haired boy peeked at them. His blue cotton shorts clung to boney hips. A shabby, sleeveless shirt draped over his slumping shoulders. His bare feet were filthy, unlike the leather sandals held in his left hand. Bloodshot eyes revealed that he’d been crying, and his running nose begged for a tissue.

  Outside, it was snowing.

  Inside, the weather was still unpredictable.

  While Eli greeted Fred and made introductions, Linda stayed low to try and catch the boy’s eyes.

  In Linda’s perfect world, he’d run to her with outstretched arms, thanking her in broken English for bringing him to America, for including him as part of their family, for giving him a proper education and upbringing—for loving him.

  Linda guessed this little boy’s world hadn’t been perfect for a very long time.

  Always curious, Rux interrupted again, this time with a pointing finger. “Why is he so black?”

  While Linda had told her children that they were getting a new big brother, it had never crossed her mind to include the boy’s color.

  “His skin is dark,” she said to Rux, with Josh now listening, “because he is from India, a country where most people have dark skin.”

  “Why?” Rux persisted, needing something more.

  When they got home she would pull the encyclopedias off the shelf and give them a proper explanation about the color differences of children in China, Africa, Europe, Latin America, and more. Right now, she had a son to meet.

  “He has dark skin,” she said to Rux, jumping right to her point, “because God is an astounding artist, and like you, he loves to paint with many different colors.”

  She didn’t wait for Rux to ask why again.

  “Take my hand,” she said, “and let’s go meet your brother.”

  “I’m sick,” Chellamuthu had whined to Eli as they reached the airport’s baggage claim.

  He was positively sick—with worry. He was freezing. He was famished. He was half a world away from home and about to be abandoned in a distant country with a grumpy-looking man and a woman with banana colored hair.

  He was more than sick—he was terrified.

  “I want to stay with you,” he had pleaded with Eli on the plane, words he’d never thought he’d speak.

  When the yellow-haired woman gave the child she was holding to the frowny man and then reached down, Chellamuthu wrapped his arms around Eli’s leg, gripped tight, and began to scream.

  People stopped to stare.

  In Erode, before he was taken, one of the older boys from Kannaian Street had told Chellamuthu that children in America were often forced to work in labor camps as slaves. Chellamuthu didn’t believe him—until today. Why else would these strange-looking people want to take him away?

  The yellow-haired woman backed up, watched, waited. Eli touched Chellamuthu on the arm, crouched down, and pulled him off just enough so that the two could see each other’s faces.

  “I don’t want to go! Please don’t leave me here!” Chellamuthu pleaded. He was trembling, wheezing, choking on panic. “I’ll watch the babies, and I’ll clean up all of their messes. Take me back, take me back, take me back. I’ll never try to run away again. Take me back. Please, please!”

  Eli waited for the boy’s breathing to slow. “Chellamuthu, son, please listen carefully to what I have to tell you. You are young and won’t understand—especially now—but listen anyway. Your life’s path will never be the same now. You are being given a gift tonight, and you need to hold it tight. Here in America you will get an education. You will have opportunities that other boys in India can only dream about. Chellamuthu, your adoption is a blessing! Live a good life, make something of yourself, and then help others, perhaps even those back home. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  Every word screamed that he was about to be abandoned. Chellamuthu whipped his head sideways. “I can be good at home. I can help people there.”

  Eli tried again. “Do you remember when you climbed out the sewer hole at the orphanage?”

  Chellamuthu calmed enough to offer a solitary nod. Perhaps that’s what this was all about. He was being punished. “I’m sorry! I will never do . . .”

  “Chellamuthu, that was a great day!” Eli added.

  The boy stopped.

  “It was a great day, Chellamuthu, because you came back—you returned to help another, and I was so proud of you. It showed me that you have courage, and strength, and initiative—but most important, it showed me that you have a kind heart, that you can love. Late that night, Chellamuthu, when Rajamani came by and told me what you had done, I knew that you were going to make something of your life. And I realized right then that I needed to give you an opportunity right away.”

  Chellamuthu clutched tighter. Eli continued, “The day will come when you will thank me.”

  The man sucked a deep, uneasy lungful of air.

  “It’s time, Chellamuthu. It’s time.”

  While Chellamuthu screamed, Eli and the pasty, yellow-haired woman stripped him away like they were peeling a banana. He gritted his teeth, clenched his fists, and wriggled his body in her arms—and it worked! Eli stepped forward, turned, and reached for him, as if he’d changed his mind and had decided to take him back to India.

  Chellamuthu stretched out his arms and grabbed on for safety. Eli had saved him after all. But then he realized through watering eyes that he’d just scrambled into the arms of the frowny man and was now being hauled away.

  One more time Chellamuthu was being taken. Once more he was being discarded, deserted.

  As he struggled, the strangers carted him outside where everything was covered in a harsh white. Snow! Chellamuthu had never seen snow except in pictures. At any other time in his life, he would have smiled and run and giggled and played—and it would have been magical. Tonight he shivered.

  When they reached their car, they strapped him in the back with the other children and tightened up the buckle on the seat so that he couldn’t move. He’d been right—he was being taken as a slave!

  Eli had lied. Again.

  Today wasn’t special. It was empty. It was just like the day he was taken in Erode, the day Anu died, the day he was rushed away from Lincoln Home so quickly that he couldn’t say good-bye to Vikesh.

  It was like the evening when his feet were burned, except tonight the fiery poker was jabbing at his heart.

  Chellamuthu’s fingernails dug into his own palms. His throat was sore and scratchy. Eli had left him all alone, and now Chellamuthu wanted to hit him in the face so hard it would knock him to the floor, much as the man with the knife had done to Chellamuthu in the van when he’d been kidnapped.

  But now, swirling with the anger to become one, like his ­mother’s curry mixing with rice, was an overwhelming rush of sadness. Kuppuswami, Arayi, Selvaraj, Manju, Anu, Vikesh, Eli, perhaps even India itself—after tonight, he would never see any of them again.

  Chapter 16

  At home, Linda steered Chellamuthu toward the bathtub and mimed for him to climb in. He must have understood because he began to undress. She hollered to the younger boys that it was time for their bath but turned to find Chellamuthu in the center of the tub, naked and squatting, as if he expected to be hosed down.

  His eyes flashed curiosity when she twisted on the water, set the temperature, and motioned him to sit. His curiosity morphed to wonder when Rux rounded the corner carrying an armful of plastic boats.

  “C
an we add bubble bath?” Rux asked Linda, as they traded giggles. “That will totally freak him out.”

  A squirt and squeal later, eager bubbles lathered laughing boys—including a soapy and stunned Chellamuthu.

  “Keep it in the tub,” Linda reminded, as the frothy foam looked ready to spill out. Where was Jarem? He was missing all the fun.

  “Jarem! Bath! Now!” she hollered.

  It was then she noticed her second oldest—no, now her third oldest—standing outside the door peering through the crack. “Jarem, hurry! Come on, climb in!” she encouraged.

  The boy didn’t move. His arms crossed his body with hands jammed into his armpits. He was biting at his lower lip.

  “What is it?” Linda asked, reeling him close with wagging fingers. He arrived slowly, sheepishly. “What’s wrong? Don’t you want a bath?”

  He shook his head back and forth so quickly it almost rattled. And then she noticed his gaze locked on Chellamuthu.

  Jarem leaned in and whispered into her ear. “I don’t want to touch him.”

  “Why not?”

  His little words were bathed with concern.

  “Because, Momma, I don’t want to turn black!”

  In the middle of the night, when Chellamuthu awoke, he was lying on cold brown carpet. It took a moment to realize that he was no longer at the Lincoln Home for Homeless Children. There were no stirring babies, no grass mats, no Rajamani, no cement trough, no blue bucket—nothing familiar at all.

  And he was freezing. He understood now why the other boy in his room wasn’t also sleeping on the floor. Perhaps Chellamuthu would likewise climb under the load of blankets the woman had left on the bed, but first, it was lunchtime in India, and he was starving.

  When he glanced out the bedroom door into the hall, the house was quiet, so he crept to the large room where the white couple had tried to communicate with him earlier. After an hour of speaking, pointing, and repeating—often in a loud voice, as if that would help him to understand—he took away that their given names were Mom and Dad. More critical, he had noticed a bowl of brightly colored candy on the table, and he was hoping it was still there.