The Orphan Keeper

by Camron Wright

  And then, like Taj’s hope, she went quiet.

  Tap-tap. Tap-tap.

  Taj was still asleep when the tapping started. He peeled himself out of bed, whispered to Priya that he’d answer it, and stumbled to the door half asleep.

  “Taj?” Emanuel took half a step back. “Man, you look like . . . Are you feeling well?”

  “Peachy,” Taj mumbled. “Got in late. Couldn’t sleep. What do you need?”

  “Can you tell Priya that instead of helping Auntie with the sambar idli, Mother would like help with the rice? They are meeting in about an hour.”

  “I’ll let her know.”

  Taj was about to close the door when Emanuel interrupted.

  “Taj, there’s one more thing.” He stepped inside. “I looked for you yesterday, but you were gone. I’ve been thinking about your map. May I see it again?”

  Taj rubbed at his eyes. “Sure. Just a second.”

  When he returned from the bedroom, the now dirty map was unfolded. Emanuel took it, studied it.

  “What is it?” Taj asked. A large road map of southern India was still spread out across the table.

  “Can you show me where you’ve been?” Emanuel asked.

  Taj started at Pollachi, dragging a slow, feeble line with his finger to city after city after city—all those he and Chris had visited the days prior.

  “I’ve been thinking,” Emanuel repeated, “that you should go and check out Erode. It’s in the opposite direction—right here. There’s a river that wraps around it, vaguely similar to your map. No guarantees, but it might be worth a look.”

  Taj’s tired eyes stirred open.

  Erode? Was this finally his answer?

  “Show me again,” he said, focusing on the larger map.

  There it was, to the east. One of the cities still waiting, obscure enough he probably would have missed it.

  Priya was standing now in the doorway, watching.

  “Did you hear?” Taj called. “He thinks I should try Erode.”

  A familiar problem nudged him on the shoulder. “Wait . . .” Taj turned to Priya, then to Emanuel, and then back to Priya. “Christopher is gone,” he said.

  “Taj, I have a buddy who lives in Erode,” Emanuel offered. “If you want, I can get word to him and have him meet you at the bus station. I’m sure he can show you around, perhaps even put you up for the night. If you make the next bus, you can be there by noon. I just need you to make me one promise.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Find them or not, I expect to see you back here at my wedding.”

  Taj glanced to Priya. They had come as a couple to support Emanuel and her family. So far, he’d hardly seen her. He waited.

  She nodded her permission.

  He faced Emanuel. Gratitude edged forward in his voice. “I wouldn’t miss it . . . and Emanuel?”

  “Yes?”

  “Thank you.”

  When he spoke next it was to the space between Priya and Emanuel. Was he speaking to both, or neither?

  “I’m certain I’ll be back for the wedding.”

  They responded in unison. “How do you know?”

  “Because I’m running out of options.”

  Chapter 35

  Hope is an avid painter. The picture that brushed into Taj’s mind included a busy but picturesque bus station. A gray-haired woman would be arguing with the ticket seller about the fare to Nagpur. Children would be tugging at their fathers’ lungis, begging for rupees to buy candy. Conductors would be hollering. Travelers would be scrambling and . . . there would be fruit sellers. He clearly remembered the fruit sellers.

  The longer Taj painted, the more detailed the scene became. He would exit the station and recognize a path heading north—or south, or east, or west—that would beckon him to a park, a place packed with slides and swings and teeter-totters and waiting children. Eager boys might even bunch around him as he’d stroll toward a group of huts that would remarkably fit the location scribbled on his map. His mother—older now but no less anxious—would pause for an inquiring second before running toward him with gawky outstretched arms.

  Music might play. Strangers might clap. The sky would certainly smile. A spontaneous party could ensue—with dancing. Lots of dancing. Norman Rockwell would be jealous.

  Erode had a bus station, but there were no singing birds. It wasn’t picturesque. It wasn’t memorable. There was nothing at all worth painting.

  Taj stepped down from the bus into a smear of oil on the cement. The acidic aroma of diesel fuel was doing its best to subdue the stench of urine. It was a battle neither could win.

  This place wasn’t quite as dreary as Madukkarai, that was true, but it was trying its hardest. Dust, sweat, vomit, stink. People running in countless directions. Taj could list three ways it was similar to the other cities he’d recently visited: crowded, chaotic, unfamiliar.

  The station itself was mostly outdoors, a massive parking lot divided by long rows of T-shaped overhangs, some made with cement, others constructed of tin, each providing a place for buses to park, people to gather, and a pretend semblance of order. Around the perimeter were merchant’s stalls, vendors selling liquor, others selling food, even several selling fruit, but nothing that Taj recognized as familiar from his childhood.

  Emanuel’s friend Isaac was waiting, as he’d promised.

  “Welcome, Brother Taj. Emanuel told me you are in search of your family. I am very pleased to help.”

  Isaac was the shortest Indian Taj had met and perhaps the leanest. What the young man lacked in muscle, however, he made up for in mood. He was starving dog skinny but fat dog happy.

  The visit started like all the others. Taj pulled the map from his pocket and held it out for Isaac to examine. “I know it’s rough, but do you recognize where this might be?”

  Also like the rest, Isaac shook his head—but at least he was smiling and positive. “Yes. I can tell you for certain . . . it does not look familiar.”

  “Then we’d better get going.”

  Taj flagged down an auto rickshaw, and the men climbed in.

  Erode had a river, the Kaveri, that swathed it like a scarf. That much Taj knew from Emanuel. The Kaveri was large—too large. It not only wrapped the city but its tributaries feathered off in unending directions, like ants furrowing through soil. As it turned out, nearly any location in Erode was near some arm of the Kaveri.

  Trying to match up the location with a park also didn’t help. Isaac wasn’t aware of any children’s parks in town similar to the one Taj had described, and neither was anyone they stopped on the street.

  “How about huts?” Taj asked. On its face, the question was ridiculous, like a desperate, drowning man grasping at foam.

  In every other city, when he’d run out of options, he’d resorted to driving in a spiral, starting from the center of town, scouting for lost memories. Today, every building, every block, every never-ending street they circled seemed to turn and look away. When the sun finally dropped over the horizon, Isaac directed the driver toward home.

  Isaac had already warned Taj that his home was meager. Taj hadn’t realized that meant he’d be sleeping in the slums. The place was a good dozen blocks west of the bus station, though Taj quit counting as the surroundings grew increasingly . . . humble.

  Isaac motioned left, letting Taj follow him down a dirty alley, along an open cement ditch that trickled liquid too putrid to contain much water, and up a flight of metal stairs that barely clung to a crumbling cinder block wall.

  A grimy gray door greeted them.

  Surely the building had to be abandoned, but once inside, Taj could hear movement coming from unseen rooms.

  “I’m sorry. The electricity is out,” Isaac said, though Taj found himself wondering if they had electricity at all. “I told you not to expect much,” I
saac added.

  “No, it’s fine,” Taj answered, but his words hesitated.

  Isaac fumbled in a darkened corner before retrieving a well-used lamp. He struck a match and lit the wick.

  “Are you hungry?” Isaac asked, pointing to a small cupboard the flickering light revealed hiding in the corner.

  “No, I’m good. Thank you.” Another lie.

  “My father and mother both get home late. You’ll be staying in Jacob’s room. He’s gone until the weekend, working in Coimbatore.”

  With the lamp in hand, Isaac led Taj to an adjacent bedroom—but there was no bed, no bathroom, no running water. Just a mat on the floor, a folded dirty blanket, and a chair waiting in the corner for company.

  “Take this lamp. We have another. I’ll leave the matches on the floor by the door. If you have to use the toilet, it’s in the back, over there.” Isaac pointed to a dark opening on the wall opposite to where they’d entered. Though he tossed back a nod, Taj didn’t intend to find out if the family owned a Jacuzzi.

  “Thanks, Isaac. Thanks for helping me, for letting me stay.”

  “Good night, Taj. I’m sure we’ll have better luck in the morning before you have to go back.”

  Lamplight skipped across the young man’s teeth as he grinned. An optimist amid squalor—how ironic.

  Taj lay down on the mat, though he stayed fully dressed. There was no way he was taking anything off in this place. When he blew out the lamp, the room almost thanked him.

  Taj ignored the darkness that settled in to every crack, corner, and cranny. He’d made it a habit not to stew about life in the dark. He’d found that although darkness encourages introspection, it also distorts life’s problems, makes them larger and more pressing than they need to be. Worries, he’d learned, are like rabbits: they compound in the dark.

  It might have been that he was dozing off, starting to dream, or still suffering from jet lag, because as he lay in the lightless room, trying hard not to consider his situation, the only thoughts lining up for answers in his head concerned his situation. The darkness was whispering, asking questions of its own.

  What on earth are you doing here? You’re alone . . . in India . . . in a slum. America has given you everything. Why are you wasting your time here?

  A patter of footsteps scratched across the floor beneath—too soft and quick for a child. A rat, maybe? The noise stopped, as if it also waited for answers.

  Perhaps he should have listened, should have stayed with Priya, should have been content with life and how it was unfolding. He really was so blessed after all. Why so antsy then? Why was he so drawn to connect with his past? What drives a person to seek his roots, to connect so personally with his culture, to be a part of a family?

  He had posed these questions to one of his professors in school—in a philosophy class, no less. The teacher had retorted that it’s an innate desire wound into our genetic makeup, a survival-of-the-fittest ­mechanism—but the answer had never made sense to Taj.

  Wouldn’t an instinct to survive push a person to change with their environment, to adapt, rather than press him into wasting precious time futilely glancing back? It wasn’t survival Taj longed for. It was belonging. He needed to know if he was important, if he mattered, if he was loved.

  The darkness continued to whisper. If you were truly meant to find your family, why the setbacks? Why the roadblocks? Why the failures?

  The darkness had a point. Going to London, meeting the Tambolis, finding Priya, connecting with Christopher, coming to India, running so randomly into Vikesh—what were the chances? It had all felt so miraculous, so hopeful, like a sign from God that He was watching, that He was aware, that He cared, that everything would work out.

  What a crock of ox!

  He was alone, in the dark, in a third-world slum. It wasn’t working out at all!

  When Taj couldn’t answer the relentless questions in his head, when he doubted, the darkness seemed to smile around him. Taj mumbled with closed eyes. “I guess either God loves a really great story or he has a seriously twisted sense of humor.”

  The next whispering wasn’t a question.

  Give up, Taj. Go home. Go home.

  A knock at the front door rattled him awake. It was followed by voices speaking Tamil.

  Footsteps shuffled toward him. “Taj, are you asleep?” It was Isaac.

  “No.”

  “There is something I need to tell you.”

  “What is it?”

  “When Emanuel said that you were looking for your family, that you had been taken as a child, possibly from Erode, I thought it might be useful to ask around to see if anyone remembered a family from years ago whose child was lost or taken, a child who would now be about your age.”

  “Okay.”

  Isaac was panting.

  “There is a woman standing at our door. Taj, she says she’s your mother.”

  Chapter 36

  The woman was invited inside where she sat on the floor. Lamps were lit. Taj rubbed his eyes and then studied her features in the dancing light. She was a bony Indian woman with crooked teeth, leathered skin, and a tattered sari. Had he passed her on the street, he would have presumed her homeless and perhaps dropped her a little loose change.

  “What is her name? Where is she from? What can she tell me about my family? Have I been missed?” So many questions.

  She was stumbling through half an answer that Isaac seemed to have trouble translating when another knock shook the door.

  Isaac rose and opened it. More Tamil voices spilled into the room.

  When Isaac spun back around, his eyes were wide, surprised. He looked first at the old woman crouched cross-legged on the floor. Next, he glanced to Taj.

  “Taj?” he said.

  “Yes?”

  “Another woman at the door says she is your mother.”

  By the time Taj boarded the afternoon bus, seven women had come knocking, each declaring she had lost a son, each claiming the Indian boy raised in America—a man now rich by India’s standards—was absolutely, without question, her child.

  Yet when asked, three could not remember their boy’s name. The remaining four spoke of their lost child fondly—two of the women even shed tears—but none of their children who’d been taken had been named Chellamuthu. None of the circumstances matched.

  On the bus ride home, Taj stared straight ahead. He no longer cared about watching hunched old women hobble down the street, wondering if they were his mother. He was drained. He was sick. His heart pounded beats of sorrow in his hollow, hurting chest.

  It was over. He was done. He had failed.

  It was time to admit that life doesn’t always go as we expect, that sometimes there are no good answers, that sometimes personal pleas are uttered in vain.

  It was time to let street dogs lie . . . it was time to go home.

  The wedding was a blur. Taj sat next to Priya and nodded politely to anyone who greeted him. He didn’t eat. He hardly smiled. He barely said a word.

  When it was nearly over, Taj excused himself and headed to bed early, not feeling well, and was asleep before Priya slipped in.

  He rose late the next morning and by lunchtime, had already started to organize his suitcase for the trip home.

  Then Christopher entered the room. “How was the wedding?” he asked.

  “Chris! You came back?”

  “Obviously. I told you I would.”

  Christopher sat at the tiny table. Taj rested beside him.

  “I heard you went to Erode. How did that go?”

  “I was hopeful—too hopeful. I just wanted so badly to find something. But nothing clicked, nothing looked familiar. It was just so . . . disappointing. My heart actually aches—seriously, I have a physical pain in the center of my chest.”

  “I’m sorry, my friend,”
Christopher replied. “I truly am.”

  “The sad part is that I can’t convince my heart to give it up. My brain keeps telling me to stop, but my gut won’t let me.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I don’t know if I can describe it. It’s like my head knows there’s nothing there. I’ve seen it with my own eyes. Nothing matched my childhood memories. Nothing felt familiar—but my heart doesn’t care. It’s like a stupid radio jingle that you can’t quit thinking about, no matter how hard you try. I wonder if my mind is playing tricks. I could be conjuring up memories of places that don’t really exist. I was just a kid.”

  Christopher tapped at the face of his watch. He held it to his ear, realized it had stopped.

  “Battery,” he explained, but he wasn’t finished with his thought. “Maybe your memory’s not the problem.”

  “What?”

  “Have you considered that your memory might be fine,” Christopher said, “but that the world simply kept on ticking?”

  “I don’t follow.”

  “When you look in the mirror, do you see a boy staring back or a man?”

  “What’s your point?”

  “Perhaps, like the child who was taken, your city grew up also. Things have changed over the years.”

  Taj straightened. He pushed his chair back from the table. His eyes must have glowed, because it felt as if flash bulbs were going off in his head.

  “You’re right! You’re a genius!” he nearly shouted, his words sizzling with realization. “I’m looking for a city that no longer exists! I don’t need Isaac. I need his father! I need someone who knows what the city looked like around sixteen years ago.”

  Taj stood. “Christopher, what time is it?”

  Christopher held up his stopped watch. He added a shrug.

  “Priya!”

  She stepped in from the bedroom.

  “I have to go back!”

  Isaac didn’t actually have a phone. The number he’d left, where Emanuel had contacted him, was for a bakery where his mother worked. “Leave a message with her,” he’d said, “and she’ll deliver it as soon as she’s able.”