rows of swords raised to heaven,
sheer angles of translucent sun
poised crystal dew.
nets gather blades into battalions
bow softly in centered prayer,
hold silent.
a predator's web
captures light sky,
tempts prey in
to cupped palms.
namascaram.
Tuesday, November 24, 2009
Sunday, November 22, 2009
may god catch you
“You do one thing. You pray to the God that created you,” the Superior commands with resolution. She means to solidify my allegiance to Jesus, but instead opens up a new understanding of faith. This simple statement eliminates the ornaments of religion and identifies the heart of it: cultivating gratitude and expressing it; communicating our intentions for ourselves and others, praying. It doesn’t matter to whom, by what we call our God (‘a rose by any other name...’). Only that we pray. For ourselves. For each other. For our world.
Surrounded by spirituality I am. A boy begging in the market pulls his rosary from inside his shirt as he pleads with us. I can’t help but wonder if his shirt hides other chains with Hindu and Muslim symbols. Monkeys fill the temple’s trees, where they are fed fresh coconut and worshiped on bent knees. Snakes are feared and revered as Gods, spoken of in hushed voices, as if they may hear, and their presence as an omen is more powerful than the poison they carry. Every action is accompanied by prayer.
I’m coming to understand the scripture, how these disparate beliefs are connected. Faith is best expressed in metaphors. With the consumption of his body, Jesus tells the world that God and all of His creation is in every bite, every thing, every one. In this food I clearly see the universe sustaining my existence. When he cautions disciples that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man into heaven, he is explaining the cause of suffering: attachment. He is Buddha celebrating his absent cows. If we see heaven as here on Earth, as joy, it becomes apparent just how difficult it is for those always and forever desiring and acquiring to see the beautiful present before them.
The definition was written in black and white, chalk on the board: Shadow is darkness caused by form blocking light. Like pools of shadows the slums grow beside wealthy houses. Born in the construction of vast cities, the puddles spread to shelter builders and their families, relatives, and finally strangers. Shadow can only exist because of the source that created it. Such is poverty. People know they are poor only when they see the wealth of others. I ask an orphan, what is suffering? “Winter,” she replies. “Cold. Hungry.” It is desire unfulfilled. A teacher, a slum-dweller, tells me: “everyday of life I’m so happy. God never let us be less of anything. Food, let it be. Clothes, let it be. House is small but mine. Faith in God growing.” But she is one of the lucky ones, who understands. There are no slums here, in the village. "What is slum?" one girl asks. Everyone is equal. Some houses are bigger, some clothes are nicer. But everyone is connected, their blood and water and waste. It all flows to the same place.
Until I arrive. I am different, and it is impossible to hide this: my clothes, my shoes, my food, my tea, my music, my everything is strange. And they want it. They ask to see a dollar. An American dollar. I show them, and they try to grab it. I pass out stickers, and they sneak back in line for more. Everything I have and use and do becomes an object of desire, and I can’t stop it. I sit down to tutor the “bridge” girls who have just come here and speak little English. One begins to pet my arm; another rubs my feet. No, no, chalu, enough. But it makes them so happy. She kisses my toes and giggles. Then they gather, like always. Conversation turns into a swarm of pushing and pulsing starched bodies, and the children fight to shake my hand and say good morning. And now they fight to kiss my feet. Two begin to cry, and I hold one in each arm and bring their hands together and “say sorry.” But somehow, I feel guilty. For wanting to leave so soon, even as they beg me, “you will be here now only, Yemma.” They call me beautiful, so nice, and I see glory in their eyes. They worship me after only a week, and I don’t deserve it. I am tired and weak, and not that good. I fall asleep in church and hide in my room and take an extra share of my favorite tiffin. One girl proposes to me, and I tell her I’ll take her away (they all want me to take them away, to America, in helicopter) and buy her castles made of chocolate, like my mother promised me as a child, and now she calls me her darling. An old man in church bows long and low and brings my hand to his forehead. His eyes, dark and foggy with the film of memories, stare into mine with earnest clarity, blue thought, and something else: a deep and noble gratitude I’ve never seen face me. I’ve done nothing for him, only attend mass at his parish, but I feel those eyes hold my own, and I try to copy the movements of his blessing and the intention within, and I know that I want to earn this, to be capable of doing anything for him.
We have an infinite number of choices in life, but they are all deviations of one: free will is the ability to decide how we spend our time. All animals have free will, and every movement we make is the actualization of it—how to be conscious for this, this present moment, where and with whom. And why, that is God.
Surrounded by spirituality I am. A boy begging in the market pulls his rosary from inside his shirt as he pleads with us. I can’t help but wonder if his shirt hides other chains with Hindu and Muslim symbols. Monkeys fill the temple’s trees, where they are fed fresh coconut and worshiped on bent knees. Snakes are feared and revered as Gods, spoken of in hushed voices, as if they may hear, and their presence as an omen is more powerful than the poison they carry. Every action is accompanied by prayer.
I’m coming to understand the scripture, how these disparate beliefs are connected. Faith is best expressed in metaphors. With the consumption of his body, Jesus tells the world that God and all of His creation is in every bite, every thing, every one. In this food I clearly see the universe sustaining my existence. When he cautions disciples that it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than a rich man into heaven, he is explaining the cause of suffering: attachment. He is Buddha celebrating his absent cows. If we see heaven as here on Earth, as joy, it becomes apparent just how difficult it is for those always and forever desiring and acquiring to see the beautiful present before them.
The definition was written in black and white, chalk on the board: Shadow is darkness caused by form blocking light. Like pools of shadows the slums grow beside wealthy houses. Born in the construction of vast cities, the puddles spread to shelter builders and their families, relatives, and finally strangers. Shadow can only exist because of the source that created it. Such is poverty. People know they are poor only when they see the wealth of others. I ask an orphan, what is suffering? “Winter,” she replies. “Cold. Hungry.” It is desire unfulfilled. A teacher, a slum-dweller, tells me: “everyday of life I’m so happy. God never let us be less of anything. Food, let it be. Clothes, let it be. House is small but mine. Faith in God growing.” But she is one of the lucky ones, who understands. There are no slums here, in the village. "What is slum?" one girl asks. Everyone is equal. Some houses are bigger, some clothes are nicer. But everyone is connected, their blood and water and waste. It all flows to the same place.
Until I arrive. I am different, and it is impossible to hide this: my clothes, my shoes, my food, my tea, my music, my everything is strange. And they want it. They ask to see a dollar. An American dollar. I show them, and they try to grab it. I pass out stickers, and they sneak back in line for more. Everything I have and use and do becomes an object of desire, and I can’t stop it. I sit down to tutor the “bridge” girls who have just come here and speak little English. One begins to pet my arm; another rubs my feet. No, no, chalu, enough. But it makes them so happy. She kisses my toes and giggles. Then they gather, like always. Conversation turns into a swarm of pushing and pulsing starched bodies, and the children fight to shake my hand and say good morning. And now they fight to kiss my feet. Two begin to cry, and I hold one in each arm and bring their hands together and “say sorry.” But somehow, I feel guilty. For wanting to leave so soon, even as they beg me, “you will be here now only, Yemma.” They call me beautiful, so nice, and I see glory in their eyes. They worship me after only a week, and I don’t deserve it. I am tired and weak, and not that good. I fall asleep in church and hide in my room and take an extra share of my favorite tiffin. One girl proposes to me, and I tell her I’ll take her away (they all want me to take them away, to America, in helicopter) and buy her castles made of chocolate, like my mother promised me as a child, and now she calls me her darling. An old man in church bows long and low and brings my hand to his forehead. His eyes, dark and foggy with the film of memories, stare into mine with earnest clarity, blue thought, and something else: a deep and noble gratitude I’ve never seen face me. I’ve done nothing for him, only attend mass at his parish, but I feel those eyes hold my own, and I try to copy the movements of his blessing and the intention within, and I know that I want to earn this, to be capable of doing anything for him.
We have an infinite number of choices in life, but they are all deviations of one: free will is the ability to decide how we spend our time. All animals have free will, and every movement we make is the actualization of it—how to be conscious for this, this present moment, where and with whom. And why, that is God.
so nice will it be
“In India it’s enough to have music. Serpents dance, parrots dance, monkeys dance, even the bulls dance.” Each morning finger clouds wipe sleep from a solitary heavenly eye we salute with bodies bowed. Eighty girls of every age move through yoga postures, and I grow conscious of a soft twinkle of anklets, like the bells of an arriving sleigh. A steady beat of bangles follows the flow. And from that point on the day is full of sound and light.
On the way to mass we cram onto a bus, and silk, cotton, sequins, and ribbons caress and scratch and squirm against sticky skin. The church is crowned with tinsel and trimmed with false flowers. It smells of sweet jasmine from garlands woven into dark pleats of hair. The congregation pulses with music: drums and tambourines, claps and chants, and finally, as a poor woman enters to great the sisters, a rooster cries “eh, eh, eh” in perfect beat, emerging from her green plastic tiffin basket for the finale. a tisket a tasket. Even the sermon is sung, and the congregation swallows the joy of faith, and it fills our bodies with nourishment. Here “food is music inside the body and music is food inside the heart.”
The girls take a fieldtrip to the city for a picnic, and as we repair a punctured tire, the bus is slowly passed by a line of camels. The train is migrating from Rajasthan in to the warm south, and I wonder why I’m plan to head the opposite direction. They trod along the road, undisturbed by the honks of ricks and lorries, munching on plants, molting, and I dodge traffic to skip beside them shouting, not sure who is the bigger spectacle. We pass fields of sunflowers facing their higher source, buffalo drawn carts of fresh clippings, clans of monkeys climbing telephone poles, babies on their backs and in their arms, and flocks of egrets shifting color in the wind. My scarf trails out the window in a never ending wave, and the children scream with delight and sing and dance and teach me Hindi hits and how to call a parrot in Telugu, and I feel alive and all right.
India is a mixture of sugar and spice—its food, its music, its people, its life. A balance that makes your lips tingle madly then quenches thirst with mouth watering sweets. I bite into a special treat Sister brings me, something fried, something to celebrate with, and find a chili hidden inside that makes my tongue burn and my eyes water. The combination is deceptive and subversive. Behind a man’s polite smile lies abuse and desire. Behind each child’s innocent greeting is a hunger for something more. Even the flowers are implicated, so beautiful but sticky and poisonous to the touch. You have to be careful not to succumb to the spell.
On the way to mass we cram onto a bus, and silk, cotton, sequins, and ribbons caress and scratch and squirm against sticky skin. The church is crowned with tinsel and trimmed with false flowers. It smells of sweet jasmine from garlands woven into dark pleats of hair. The congregation pulses with music: drums and tambourines, claps and chants, and finally, as a poor woman enters to great the sisters, a rooster cries “eh, eh, eh” in perfect beat, emerging from her green plastic tiffin basket for the finale. a tisket a tasket. Even the sermon is sung, and the congregation swallows the joy of faith, and it fills our bodies with nourishment. Here “food is music inside the body and music is food inside the heart.”
The girls take a fieldtrip to the city for a picnic, and as we repair a punctured tire, the bus is slowly passed by a line of camels. The train is migrating from Rajasthan in to the warm south, and I wonder why I’m plan to head the opposite direction. They trod along the road, undisturbed by the honks of ricks and lorries, munching on plants, molting, and I dodge traffic to skip beside them shouting, not sure who is the bigger spectacle. We pass fields of sunflowers facing their higher source, buffalo drawn carts of fresh clippings, clans of monkeys climbing telephone poles, babies on their backs and in their arms, and flocks of egrets shifting color in the wind. My scarf trails out the window in a never ending wave, and the children scream with delight and sing and dance and teach me Hindi hits and how to call a parrot in Telugu, and I feel alive and all right.
India is a mixture of sugar and spice—its food, its music, its people, its life. A balance that makes your lips tingle madly then quenches thirst with mouth watering sweets. I bite into a special treat Sister brings me, something fried, something to celebrate with, and find a chili hidden inside that makes my tongue burn and my eyes water. The combination is deceptive and subversive. Behind a man’s polite smile lies abuse and desire. Behind each child’s innocent greeting is a hunger for something more. Even the flowers are implicated, so beautiful but sticky and poisonous to the touch. You have to be careful not to succumb to the spell.
Tuesday, November 17, 2009
shaking hands
"Life is meeting and parting. One day we go there," she points upward at the cracked, peeling ceiling of the bus terminal "and we will not part." Sister Alice holds my hand between her fragile calloused palms, and I respond "I look forward to that day," and I mean it. I move onto the bus and back away slowly to the warning wail of carnival music, and then they're gone. I promised the girls I would try to come back and never forget them; that when the other children ask me about my family, "how many we are," I will tell them I have two brothers and nine chellis. I gave them a dream catcher with nine turquoise stones, one for each, and explained how it works until they understood and smiled at the thought of no more nightmares. At least I can take away a little pain. I taught the ones from Navageevana who were too tiny to say much to point to eye, chest, other, I...love...you, and they chanted it, one lounging in my lap and pronouncing Haw..pee, the first English I've heard her say on her own.
Mittapally is not a village as much as clusters of hay piled near the school and a long ruined wall from the days of ancient kings, slowly disappearing under gradual growth. I enter through rice paddies of rising mist and a mango sun slowly announcing work to come. The children here come from poor farmers who see little value in a good education and honor in hard labor. I teach them the song, "head, shoulders, knees and toes," and see several peeking through shoe holes when I bend over to touch my own. Others are barefoot and a few have no uniforms at all.
The students come running to me as before, but now they kiss me tenderly: my arms, my hands, my cheeks, holding me close, feeling my skin, afraid that I’m no more than a phantom, a strange feverish vision that will pass with night. They speak little English, but chant “Good morning, sister” each in turn. They don’t understand my lessons; even the action songs that match words with gestures and body parts come back as only mimicked sounds and eager eyes, a strange warped echo of telephone games.
Concrete shacks lean against each other for strength and support in the heat, souls intertwined, cut from the same slabs of raw rock by the men who sleep inside each night. As are the people. A child leads me through the town, pulling hard on my hand, introducing me to her father, mother, sister, brother, grandmother, other father, second grandmother, auntie, cats, cows, and cocks. She shows me her home: her tattered dolls, her woven blanket, her posters, her pots and pans. Buffaloes are the primary residents; chickens peck scraps dripping from their mouths; egrets perch on their mudluscious backs splashing damp shade over mangled hide. The people stare as we pass. Some smile, others scowl. Namascaram, I whisper and bow my head. Some laugh. Others turn away. When you decide to go off the beaten path you have to bush-whack, and fight your way through thorns and weeds to make a way. Luckily, I have hands to hold and help guide me along, and mine are never empty.
Mittapally is not a village as much as clusters of hay piled near the school and a long ruined wall from the days of ancient kings, slowly disappearing under gradual growth. I enter through rice paddies of rising mist and a mango sun slowly announcing work to come. The children here come from poor farmers who see little value in a good education and honor in hard labor. I teach them the song, "head, shoulders, knees and toes," and see several peeking through shoe holes when I bend over to touch my own. Others are barefoot and a few have no uniforms at all.
The students come running to me as before, but now they kiss me tenderly: my arms, my hands, my cheeks, holding me close, feeling my skin, afraid that I’m no more than a phantom, a strange feverish vision that will pass with night. They speak little English, but chant “Good morning, sister” each in turn. They don’t understand my lessons; even the action songs that match words with gestures and body parts come back as only mimicked sounds and eager eyes, a strange warped echo of telephone games.
Concrete shacks lean against each other for strength and support in the heat, souls intertwined, cut from the same slabs of raw rock by the men who sleep inside each night. As are the people. A child leads me through the town, pulling hard on my hand, introducing me to her father, mother, sister, brother, grandmother, other father, second grandmother, auntie, cats, cows, and cocks. She shows me her home: her tattered dolls, her woven blanket, her posters, her pots and pans. Buffaloes are the primary residents; chickens peck scraps dripping from their mouths; egrets perch on their mudluscious backs splashing damp shade over mangled hide. The people stare as we pass. Some smile, others scowl. Namascaram, I whisper and bow my head. Some laugh. Others turn away. When you decide to go off the beaten path you have to bush-whack, and fight your way through thorns and weeds to make a way. Luckily, I have hands to hold and help guide me along, and mine are never empty.
tend your garden
Early morning, before my eyes have adjusted to the light and the hot milk chai is cool enough to drink the girls creep into the courtyard, an area forbidden to them, to watch me take breakfast. I hear them whispering, and as I peek out through green plastic curtains and make a face they burst into suppressed giggles. All except one, who frowns and holds up four little ashen fingers. Only a few days she says softly, and I run across the square and lift her up in my arms and spin her slowly, telling her, "but how many hugs we can share in four full days," fighting back the tears that slip into my eyes, trying to be brave, for her, for me.
There is an expression in the Pashto language, You are not a man until you give your love truly and freely to a child. And you are not a good man until you earn the love, truly and freely, of a child in return. I'm falling in love with these children, one by one, learning their names, they're ticklish spots, their favorite ways to be held and swung and danced with. Not all of them, arbitrarily, but certain ones. I worry they've become too attached to me, and I find myself fantasizing about staying, or worse asking them to run away with me, showing them how to build sand castles and search for sea shells. They know I'm leaving. The girls at the orphanage say goodbye every time I walk out of a room. I just hope they realize it has nothing to do with them. They've been abandoned their whole lives. They will forever feel unwanted, and now I'll be another ghost, a person who passed in and out of their hearts. Is it better to have loved and lost? Did anyone ever ask a child that? I find myself whispering "I love you, over and over," into the tiniest ear. I have to stop myself. But now, looking back, I wonder if she's ever heard these words before. She is six, but the size of a two year old, the one who came to the sisters crawling like a chimp. I want to repeat these words over and over until she understands what they mean.
Some compete viciously for my attention, clawing at each other's hands and hair. Everyone wants to be wanted. Maybe that's why I've fallen so hard. I need their love just as badly. But still, it’s frightening to see so much anger, so much jealousy, so much emptiness in such small hearts.
It's time to move on. I'm running out of material, patience and restraint. At school, the children take advantage of me. I've come to realize that violence is self perpetuating. The class gets out of control and no amount of yelling and clapping will stop it. Another teacher always comes in to beat the students, and I have to turn away, feeling inadequate for my inability to discipline without a stick. But I think it's the stick that causes the chaos. As long as it’s absent, the children have no boundaries. Other methods don't work because punishment is the most immediate and efficient means of control.
I've become frustrated with the absolute austerity of control here, in India and in the convent. Children live in fear. From preschool on they are driven to succeed, not by their own choice and desire but by the stick. Even the youngest ones live in angst, to the point of teachers confessing that they don't want to tell parents how their five-year-olds are performing. The chellis I live with are afraid to break the rules in any way. I understand the importance of structure, of school, of goals. But these are kids. I brought the girls temporary tattoos, expecting pure rapture, but instead every one worried about the beating that might follow should they be discovered. The next morning, one girl's skin was rubbed raw. I asked what happened, if she'd gotten into trouble. No, she replied. Sister said it causes skin cancer. I told her that was a lie. Flat out. I know I'm going beyond my boundaries but so are they.
At first I was content with silent acquiescence, but that has never been my way, only theirs. I'm trying to find a compromise between teaching my classes what I believe is true and right and empowering and allowing them to live with the socially accepted modes of behavior, within webs of manipulation and domination--by their parents, spouses, teachers, and their sisters. I feel like I'm being monitored, censored. I discuss with the students primary differences a between American and Indian cultures: food, language, dress, appearance, religion, appearance. I tell them that in America wives and husbands have equal opportunities and equal power. I teach them that we fought hard for these rights; I talk about the Women's Liberation Movement (without the burnt bras). The boys aren't really paying attention, but one girl replies that this inequality, this disparity, is what makes India a developing country, even with all the drive and technology its people possess. I'm not trying to start a revolution but a little dissent could be quite progressive. Still maybe it’s best that I sow the seeds and let the fruit ripen on its own, in my absence, like the first missionaries did with mustard.
There is an expression in the Pashto language, You are not a man until you give your love truly and freely to a child. And you are not a good man until you earn the love, truly and freely, of a child in return. I'm falling in love with these children, one by one, learning their names, they're ticklish spots, their favorite ways to be held and swung and danced with. Not all of them, arbitrarily, but certain ones. I worry they've become too attached to me, and I find myself fantasizing about staying, or worse asking them to run away with me, showing them how to build sand castles and search for sea shells. They know I'm leaving. The girls at the orphanage say goodbye every time I walk out of a room. I just hope they realize it has nothing to do with them. They've been abandoned their whole lives. They will forever feel unwanted, and now I'll be another ghost, a person who passed in and out of their hearts. Is it better to have loved and lost? Did anyone ever ask a child that? I find myself whispering "I love you, over and over," into the tiniest ear. I have to stop myself. But now, looking back, I wonder if she's ever heard these words before. She is six, but the size of a two year old, the one who came to the sisters crawling like a chimp. I want to repeat these words over and over until she understands what they mean.
Some compete viciously for my attention, clawing at each other's hands and hair. Everyone wants to be wanted. Maybe that's why I've fallen so hard. I need their love just as badly. But still, it’s frightening to see so much anger, so much jealousy, so much emptiness in such small hearts.
It's time to move on. I'm running out of material, patience and restraint. At school, the children take advantage of me. I've come to realize that violence is self perpetuating. The class gets out of control and no amount of yelling and clapping will stop it. Another teacher always comes in to beat the students, and I have to turn away, feeling inadequate for my inability to discipline without a stick. But I think it's the stick that causes the chaos. As long as it’s absent, the children have no boundaries. Other methods don't work because punishment is the most immediate and efficient means of control.
I've become frustrated with the absolute austerity of control here, in India and in the convent. Children live in fear. From preschool on they are driven to succeed, not by their own choice and desire but by the stick. Even the youngest ones live in angst, to the point of teachers confessing that they don't want to tell parents how their five-year-olds are performing. The chellis I live with are afraid to break the rules in any way. I understand the importance of structure, of school, of goals. But these are kids. I brought the girls temporary tattoos, expecting pure rapture, but instead every one worried about the beating that might follow should they be discovered. The next morning, one girl's skin was rubbed raw. I asked what happened, if she'd gotten into trouble. No, she replied. Sister said it causes skin cancer. I told her that was a lie. Flat out. I know I'm going beyond my boundaries but so are they.
At first I was content with silent acquiescence, but that has never been my way, only theirs. I'm trying to find a compromise between teaching my classes what I believe is true and right and empowering and allowing them to live with the socially accepted modes of behavior, within webs of manipulation and domination--by their parents, spouses, teachers, and their sisters. I feel like I'm being monitored, censored. I discuss with the students primary differences a between American and Indian cultures: food, language, dress, appearance, religion, appearance. I tell them that in America wives and husbands have equal opportunities and equal power. I teach them that we fought hard for these rights; I talk about the Women's Liberation Movement (without the burnt bras). The boys aren't really paying attention, but one girl replies that this inequality, this disparity, is what makes India a developing country, even with all the drive and technology its people possess. I'm not trying to start a revolution but a little dissent could be quite progressive. Still maybe it’s best that I sow the seeds and let the fruit ripen on its own, in my absence, like the first missionaries did with mustard.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Going local
Even the buffalo ox, walking down the street and merging seamlessly with traffic, looks at me funny. The girls at school ask why my hair is light and my cheeks are red and only laugh when they see my toes, and I don’t have a real answer except I was born this way. I expect it from them. But when the herd in the road stops to stare I start to squirm. They are called “natural speed breakers” because Indians (dot not red [their designation]) consider them holy, and it is a more serious offense to kill a cow then a beggar. Streets teem with life and sounds: marriage processions, firecrackers, markets, hari krishna chanters. The sisters pray for our protection each time we go out in an auto, which provides some reassurance as we weasel in between moving buses whose occupants jump and hit the ground running and mopeds carrying 4, 5, 6 people with outstretched babies held over speeding concrete.
And music, music everywhere. The wind carries gasps of chants and flutes depending on the direction. A child ululates his national anthem--so bold, so proud, when moments before he was huddled over, timid cheek pressed into his desk. He moved here from Rajasthan, a land where women cloak themselves completely, allowing only their eyes to peer out as animals in the darkness. When he’d first arrived he’d been afraid to go to class with his teacher exposing so much skin. He’d lingered outside the averting his eyes.
There are certain aspects of this culture I have to learn to accept without judgment. The boy’s teacher suggested I get a sari, because my figure is so slender. I teased her that perhaps then I’d find a nice husband, and maybe we should go shopping for one together. She’s not permitted to leave the house alone, not even to go to church. Her husband does not allow it. I asked how she deals with this. She doesn’t mind so much any more; she’s been married 15 years. I responded that I wouldn’t be finding a husband in India. One of her students died the day I came. She came down with a fever and hours later she was gone. She was so sweet, a bright, beautiful girl only 5 years old who smiled at everything. Sister Alice said “that is why God took her so young.” I refuse to believe in such a selfish God. But then, I am told he made us in his image.
Other than a few speed breakers I’m adjusting well: I accidentally poisoned myself with insect repellant though incidentally was still attacked, and I believe I’ve been bathing in the toilet bucket for a week now. I gave the boarders, my chellis (little sisters), their first Halloween. They too don’t completely understand our culture, and what a bizarre holiday to explain--mischief and make-believe. I revert to a show not tell method: coloring and cutting out a butterfly mask that I strung to my face. They begin shouting acca acca (older sister) I want to be a doctor, a sister, a lion, a princess, a saint. One is even a mango! She makes the costume herself, while I do most of the drawing for the others and the big girls do the cutting, all to the scary tunes of a “thriller” cassette I’d found that afternoon. We have to trick or treat quickly because it is time for duties, but their masked faces light up at the sight of treats, though no one wants the plastic snake and they all shrieked at the sight of it. I have to instruct them to unwrap the candy first and not swallow the gum, but we all walk back to our rooms smiling.
That evening we explore the city. Another volunteer Daniel is visiting, and the presence of a male escort brings me much more freedom. Our tour consists of mostly traffic but we end up at enormous marble temple with white towers glowing in the night sky. We leave our sandals in the car and climb the steps, encountering various shrines with adorned creatures or gurus and intricate carvings covering every surface, telling stories of battles, sacrifices, beasts and heroes. At the highest level bats circle a gold flagpole, and I silently thank them for chasing the mosquitoes that feed on my flesh. We stand in line for a long time only to be hurried before a great altar where a black figure completely covered in garlands and flags peers down on us mere mortals. A priest with a wiry beard and fierce eyes outlined in ink feeds me blessed water, which I sip and splash over my head, repeating the motions of those before me. Another man, stout and shirtless but wrapped in fabric, chants responses and offers the sculpture sacrifices of fruit and incense. A guard ushers us out, and I bend down in prayer, touching my fingertips to each tusk of the elephants that frame the entry. My heart is heavy with bliss of this holy place and perhaps the affects of the offerings I have taken.
When I finally arrive at the orphanage, the girls are not as excited as I expect. Happy yes, but rowdy no. Not at first. I think they are feeling me out, developing trust. They’ve been disappointed all their lives. The conditions are not as bad as I assume: cramped but clean. They sleep head to toe in a tiny space, but there is a large open room upstairs big enough to dance in. So, we proceed to do just that. First they perform for me-- in rows with synchronized movements, a welcome song then one in Hindi and one in Telugu. The little ones are so small they can’t keep up. As the children dance the sister who cares for them explains each story: this one left in the station, that one outside the hospital, those girls, sisters, in a temple, their father told them he’d come right back and never returns. The one in red, both parents died of AIDS. She may be carrier, we don’t know. That one’s father killed her mother, lit her on fire with kerosene. He was going to do the same to her when she was rescued. He tries to visit sometimes, and she runs inside screaming. Row after row. This one was working in a house at age 6, rescued when the government raided, many child laborers are victims of physical and sexual abuse. That one abandoned when she came down with chicken pox, the neighbors heard crying. The small one in blue just recovered from malaria. That is why there are cotton balls in her ears--they have two holes. The fever went to her brain, and they had to operate. She cannot hear. They will operate again to restore sound but not until she becomes ten. And the littlest one in the red dress was very malnourished. When she came here she looked like monkey, huge swollen stomach, face bulging out, so small. she cannot walk properly. never will. but look at her dancing.
Dancing, dancing all of them. The past seems to disappear as they pull me up from my seat with many little hands. I spin them around, lifting them high and dipping them down and become dizzy and soaked in sweat, but more, acca, more they cry. I forget all else and only dance. But the sister reminds me gently that each one was unwanted, that they will never forget that, no matter how much love they receive. Deep in their hearts they burry terrible pain, and it haunts their subconscious. I wish that I could take away their pain, wipe their memories clean, dance forever, spinning in circles faster, faster, faster until reality becomes a blur of laughter.
I return home and scrub myself cleaning, asking for a washcloth that turns from yellow to brown. Many of them have lice and scabies, and I held most and touched them all. After I bathe I have dinner and tell the cooks chala bagunde, very good, a phrase I learned in Telugu that day, my first. They smile with such pride. One hurries to the corner and re-emerges with something white. At first I think it’s a washcloth (I’d asked her for one just a little while earlier) but I see it’s flowers, a string she’s sewn together. She must have seen me gathering them in the courtyard that morning, pinning them into my hair before mass. She holds out her hand, then pulls back, telling the sister something I can’t understand. She wants to do your hair. Go get your brush. I run to grab a comb and she seats me down, while all the chellis gather to watch. They admire my comb and show me their brushes. She combs my hair gently, and the girls murmur, so soft, so pretty. She pulls it back into a tight braid. I haven’t had my hair done since I was a little girl, and it feels good. A sister comes by to give advice, telling her to string the flowers through the braid. Yes, sister, she says. One chelli climbs up on the chair and asks me, are you happy. Yes, I reply, so happy. She ties the final knot, and I’m lead into the girls room to look in the mirror. Very beautiful, I say. She follows us, and whispers something to one child who returns with a sheet of paper. She removes a bindhi and sticks it on my forehead, slightly off-center, the perfect spot, and smiles with smug satisfaction. I have found my place.
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