The Orphan Keeper

by Camron Wright

  The home was large enough to house several families, though at the moment there seemed to be just the one. The style was also strange, with rugs glued to nearly every speck of floor, including the stairs. Like the orphanage, this place also had a fountain for washing—several of them—and each could be filled by merely turning a handle. More incredible, if one turned the handle on the left, hot water came out without one ever having to build a fire.

  When he had to go to the bathroom, in place of a common trough they had toilets, just like those that Eli had taught him how to use at the airport. But rather than a long row, this house had toilets in three separate rooms. And every one of those rooms would lock! Why did they need so many toilets?

  With everyone asleep, he wondered if tonight wouldn’t be the perfect opportunity to escape. Except that he was already cold, and when he looked out through the large window, he could see that the falling snow was now high enough to easily reach his knees. Instead, Chellamuthu lingered at a tree sitting inside the house, some kind of decoration he was still trying to figure out. It was lit with hundreds of twinkling lights and was covered with glass balls and strands of gold, and while he couldn’t be sure, he’d gathered that a holiday was coming, similar to Diwali.

  Around the tree were stacks of brightly wrapped boxes that he hadn’t remembered earlier when he was shuffled off to bed. He stepped back. The scene was actually quite beautiful, and he wished his mother could be here with him to see it. She loved celebrations.

  He faced the table holding the candy bowl—and sighed. Dad, the grumpy looking man, had eaten all but two pieces. Chellamuthu popped them into his mouth, savored their sweetness, chewed, and swallowed before heading toward the kit-chun, the room where Mom had prepared food when they arrived.

  On his way, he noticed their shrine. It was placed on a table beside the couch, and it was, in a word, pathetic. All of their tiny gods were carved out of wood, every one stained to look the same. They weren’t ornate or intricate or colorful at all. There was no place for incense, no silver cup for water, no spoon—all things a good shrine should have.

  He studied the figures more closely, looking for anyone familiar. He checked for Ganesh, the god of intellect with his elephant head and stout trunk; Durga, an incarnation of Parvati, the divine mother with her ten arms astride a tiger; or Shiva, the preserver with his matted hair, third eye, and blue throat.

  Nothing close.

  Here there were only sheep and cows and men holding long sticks. There was a bowing mother, a kneeling father, and a baby sleeping in a cradle. This was the worst shrine he had ever seen.

  Still, he couldn’t help but think of his devout mother and the countless times she’d hauled him by the ear from the river or park to the temple to worship. And even though he didn’t recognize any of these homely gods, he paused for just a moment in front of the sad, little shrine to utter a short prayer in the room’s dim light.

  One problem: there were so many deities to whom his family prayed, it was hard at times to keep track of the best one. Which god would best help a kidnapped boy from India who was now stuck in America? It was a problem that had never come up before. For most prayers, he had preferred Shiva, but now he had to wonder.

  Could Shiva even hear him when he wasn’t in India?

  He decided to quietly chant the Gayatri Mantram his mother had taught him.

  On the absolute reality and its planes,

  On that finest spiritual light,

  We meditate, as remover of obstacles

  That it may inspire and enlighten us.

  After he recited the mantra twice, he moved on to a more personal plea. “Great Shiva,” he prayed, “I’m far away. I have no way to get back home. Help me. Watch my family. Keep them safe. Shower them with health and peace and happiness. Help them to know I am alive. And please, Shiva, help me . . . get me back to India.”

  He wasn’t actually finished praying yet, had a few more thoughts to add, when he looked up and noticed a bowl of oranges on the far ­counter—large, ripe, beautiful oranges. He scooted over and picked one up. It didn’t take long to peel. After he finished the first, he ate a second, and then a third. He’d counted eight to begin with, which left just five, and not knowing if they intended to feed him in the ­morning—or if ever—he gathered up those remaining into his arms and headed back to his room.

  As he passed the shrine, he remembered he’d forgotten one of the most important parts of worship—leaving the gods an offering of food. He carefully placed an orange between the two sheep and the sleeping baby, a simple act that caused another question to raise its hand.

  Is it okay to pray to Shiva for help, while at the same time stealing oranges?

  When he returned to the room, the boy they called Rux was stirring. Chellamuthu hurried to pull back the blankets and climb under them. The fabric was chilly against his skin, but in just a few moments it began to warm.

  Will I ever get used to the cold? Will I ever get used to America?

  With that question on his mind, he wiped his sticky fingers on the clean bedding and then pushed his remaining oranges to the bottom of the blankets where they’d stay hidden, right beside the picture he’d drawn of his family.

  With a full stomach, he closed his eyes, pulled up the blanket, and drifted off to sleep.

  Chapter 17

  Linda’s favorite quotation, fastened to the mirror in her closet where she dressed, was from The Phoenician Women, by Euripides.

  “This is slavery, not to speak one’s thought.”

  If it was true, Chellamuthu was veritably in chains. To pick at the lock, Fred and Linda started with the basics. They would point to an item and say the word as slowly and clearly as possible—“cereal.” Then, with an enthusiastic assortment of jerky hand movements, like a bad game of charades, they would encourage the boy to repeat it. When Chellamuthu pronounced the word correctly, the two would smile and clap in unison. We have a winner! When he came up short, sighs of silence directed everyone back to step one.

  The first words Chellamuthu grasped were easy.

  Eat. Drink. Bathroom. Sleep.

  Linda loved that he called her Mom right away, until she realized he thought that was her name.

  It wasn’t teaching him the single-word bodily functions that had her frustrated; it was helping him to understand everything else. It was the same question she had posed to Fred a day earlier. “How do you convey to a nodding child that everything is going to be all right, when he’s about to get his teeth drilled at the dentist for the very first time?”

  It was more than just drilling. Over the course of a week, at three separate doctor’s offices, Chellamuthu’s arms were poked, his blood was drawn, X-rays were taken, pills were prescribed, and vaccines were administered. As Linda anxiously watched, her son was probed like a terrified space alien. It was a wonder every morning to find her boy hadn’t run off in the night.

  “Will he survive here, Fred?” she asked, as Chellamuthu scowled angrily back now from the barber chair as his hair was shaved to help treat for lice.

  “He’ll survive,” Fred confirmed.

  “Perhaps, but he’s like a little volcano. So much anger pent up inside. One day he’s going to explode—or worse, he’ll shut down. It will all just harden into rock around his heart.”

  “That’s insightful,” Fred replied. “You should make that into a cross-stitch.”

  “I’m serious.”

  “Well, unfortunately, I’ve coached enough boys to know we’re at the easy part.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, with a turn of her head.

  “Little boys grow up to become teenagers.”

  Rather than sit on the floor to eat dinner like normal people, Chellamuthu’s new family sat in hard chairs around a large wood table. In place of conveniently scooping food onto a banana leaf, to be neatly discarded when the
meal was over, they used glass plates that required washing after every use.

  Silly.

  Instead of picking up food with their fingers, a quick and easy way to get it from the table into one’s mouth, they used an assortment of forks, spoons, and knives.

  Clumsy.

  For all of the stories he’d heard from his uncles about how America was so advanced, Chellamuthu had yet to see it. For example, in the several meals he’d been served since arriving, they’d never once had rice or beans. More unbelievable, there was no sign of curry!

  It was like they’d never heard of it!

  While the food at Lincoln Home had been constant, perhaps even repetitive, at least it stood up and talked back. It was pungent and flavorful, tangy and mysterious. It had opinions and it shared them, whether you agreed or not. In contrast, American food was . . . lonely.

  Most bizarre was breakfast. It was poured every morning out of a cardboard box into a bowl and soaked in cow’s milk to make it edible.

  Not that he wasn’t grateful. Chellamuthu understood the necessity of eating whatever was around in order to survive. He’d lived it—and starving people can’t afford to be picky.

  But when he opened the cupboards in the kitchen, they were all full. They had enough food in the house to hold a wedding. Perhaps two!

  As near as he could tell, America wasn’t starving. Just the opposite. People were eating three meals a day, plus snacks. Lots of snacks. There was so much eating going on in America, in fact, there hardly seemed time for anything else.

  “Chellamuthu?”

  It was the mom-lady calling. She always spoke so fast, running her sounds together, impossible to understand—and it was in English! Still, he’d been able to learn the rhythm of a few basic phrases without knowing the words themselves. He guessed what she was saying now, but he remained in his room until she repeated herself. The second time was always louder. It was like a game.

  “Everyone to the kitchen. It’s time for dinner!”

  Chellamuthu wedged into his desk on the first day of school surrounded by a crowd of eager first graders—all short, very short. Like at the Lincoln Home for Homeless Children, he was a good head taller than any of his classmates in the room. Unlike in India, these kids’ craning necks and wide eyes screamed that he was the first dark-skinned peer ever to join the class.

  The teacher stood, wrote what Chellamuthu presumed to be her name on the chalkboard, and then addressed everyone. Despite her bubbly tone and encouraging gestures, often aimed in his direction, he couldn’t understand a word the woman was saying.

  When she finally quit speaking, the children, starting with a boy in the first row, rose beside their desks and one at a time addressed the class. They seemed to be sharing details about their lives and families.

  It caused Chellamuthu to remember his father.

  Several months prior to Chellamuthu’s kidnapping, Kuppuswami had secured a six-week job in Tiruppur at a factory that extracted sesame oil from pressed seeds. When the machine jammed, which was often, it helped to have someone with small hands reach inside and clear away the excess husks—and so he had dragged along his son.

  Chellamuthu had been happy to oblige. The job was not only easy but it provided bits of sesame paste he could eat at will, and while not particularly tasty, they filled his stomach.

  More memorable than the work was the bus ride to the factory. It was on their walk to the station the first morning that Kuppuswami realized he had enough money for only one fare. Rather than return to beg rupees from relatives, the proud man improvised.

  After a quick detour through the market, Kuppuswami scoured up a sturdy cardboard box. His reasoning was simple: a man with a boy will cost two fares. A man carrying a box will cost just one.

  He stopped at the corner before the station and commanded Chellamuthu to climb inside.

  The only way the boy would fit was to lie sideways with his knees pulled into a ball, his head tucked forward.

  If it had been just once, Chellamuthu wouldn’t have complained. Unfortunately for him, it had worked so well the first day, Kuppuswami insisted that it continue. After all, saving the cost of a child’s fare would mean half a dozen cups of palm toddy when the workday was over.

  Of course it was painful to be scrunched up in a ball in the dark, unable to stretch—but he’d learned after that first day that there was something worse.

  The part of the ride that had turned into near torture hadn’t been the confinement but the silence. Lest he be discovered, Chellamuthu hadn’t been allowed to make a sound for the entire trip. The boy-in-the-box-on-the-bus in India couldn’t communicate.

  Chellamuthu’s thoughts were interrupted when the girl to his right, who had been speaking to the class, sat down.

  His turn.

  The teacher was pointing her finger at him. When he shifted his legs that were lodged up against the bottom of his desk, it lifted momentarily off the ground and landed with a clank.

  The class laughed.

  His stomach was pushed so tight against the back side of the desk, it was difficult to squeeze out.

  As Chellamuthu stood, he glanced momentarily at the four corners of the square room.

  If he spoke in his native language—his only choice—not a single person would understand.

  It turned out that boxes come in many sizes.

  The teacher was smiling now, encouraging him, flinging reassurance at his feet. He had to say something. He uttered a few words, all in Tamil.

  “My name is Chellamuthu,” he said. “I want you to know that once upon a time in India, I rode with my father on a bus in a box.”

  The children, having no clue what he was saying, began to giggle.

  He continued anyway. “I was surrounded by people—talking, laughing, and joking—like today, and nobody at all knew that I was even there or what I wanted to say.”

  Linda was just starting dinner when the doorbell rang. On the porch stood two college-age men, one holding a camera.

  “May I help you?” Linda asked.

  “I’m Chuck. This is Wayne.”

  Linda paused, squinted. “May I help you?”

  Chuck sighed. “Uh, didn’t Donna call?”

  “Donna who?”

  His shoulders dropped. “I’m sorry. Donna’s our editor. She was supposed to call. We’re from Hometown Life, the town paper. We’re here to do a story on your son.”

  “My son? Which one?” Linda suspected she already knew the answer but asked anyway.

  “The boy from India.”

  “And you think he’s somehow newsworthy?”

  Chuck snickered through his nose. “Have you looked around? Your son is the first person from India ever to live in Mapleton. So yeah, we think our readers will find the story interesting.”

  Linda invited them in.

  Before sitting, Wayne asked if he could start with a picture of the boy.

  “I suppose that would be fine.”

  Linda opened the door to the basement where the boys were playing and hollered for Chellamuthu. When he came up the stairs and noticed the man with a camera, he froze.

  “It’s okay,” Linda consoled, surprised he was being timid. “He just wants to take your picture.” She tugged him toward her so they could stand together.

  Even with Linda close, his steps were cautious. He eyed the men warily but particularly the man focusing the camera. No matter how Wayne prodded, Chellamuthu wouldn’t smile.

  It was only after the interview was over and the men had driven away that Chellamuthu’s head raised. He faced Linda. “Pōlīs?”

  Linda shrugged. She didn’t understand.

  It took a moment for him to remember the English pronunciation. “Police?” he asked again, in a stuttered tone. “I . . . stay?”

  Their lack of communicati
on had been frustrating, at times even comical. This was the first time it brought Linda nearly to tears. She let her arms fall around her son and pulled him in tight. Though it was a one-sided hug, it almost felt real.

  “You stay,” she confirmed. “You stay.”

  While Linda’s push was to teach Chellamuthu new words, Fred lobbied for the area he knew best. “Words matter,” he conceded, “but to keep a boy focused and motivated, get him involved in sports.”

  Linda couldn’t disagree. But which sport?

  The encyclopedia noted that the most popular sport in India was cricket. That would be a problem, since the only cricket they’d ever seen was the kind you smashed with your shoe when it came into the house.

  What, then?

  After dinner, Fred loaded his two oldest boys into the car and drove them down to the Mapleton Indoor Recreation Center to introduce Chellamuthu to the pool.

  In the locker room Fred noticed Mark Christiansen, a science teacher from school.

  “Does he swim?” Mark asked, as the boys trotted out toward the pool.

  Fred smiled back with his coach face. “Guess we’re about to find out.”

  Chellamuthu had heard of swimming pools, certainly. He’d just never been to one in person, not living next to the Kaveri. Did they not have rivers here?

  When things were unfamiliar, Chellamuthu watched those around him, to see what they would do. He observed as Rux hurried to the pool’s steps and climbed down in the water, not waiting for anyone.

  Chellamuthu walked to the edge and looked in. Like the rivers in Erode, it was blue—but were there snakes?

  When he was certain all looked clear, Chellamuthu followed Rux’s example and took his first step into the pool.

  The water was warm, as if a piece of the Kaveri had been carefully boxed between cement walls.

  What kept it clean?

  Another step down.

  Rux was already splashing toward the opposite end, calling for Chellamuthu to follow.