Amy was discouraged by what she heard from Blessing, but fortunately there were other things to encourage her along the way, such as the Starry Cluster. The women were turning into real missionaries. It was normal to give workers, even Christian workers, a daily allowance, or batta, as it was called. When they all returned home from their first mission journey, Amy paid the women their batta. An hour later they all filed back into the dining room, where Amy sat writing a letter. One by one they placed their batta on the table. Ponnammal spoke up. “We don’t need this money. We can do without it. We would rather you spent it on missionary work.”
Tears came to Amy’s eyes. She thought of the staff get-together back in Bangalore where not one missionary had been able to name a single Indian Christian who would work without pay. But God had given Amy a whole Starry Cluster full of women willing to work for nothing because of their devotion to God.
Another encouraging thing occurred several weeks later. Marial’s husband, the group’s cook, was walking along beside the bandy as the group made their way home after spending several days in a village to the south. He usually didn’t say much, so it was hard to know what he was thinking. But as the group rolled across some rice fields, he turned to Marial riding in the bandy and said, “It’s time to take off your jewelry. Wearing jewelry is not suitable for the life of following Jesus we are living.” Right there in the bandy, Marial stripped off her nose ring, bangles, and toe rings and handed them to her husband. She showed no hint of emotion at getting rid of her jewelry.
Ponnammal and Sellamutthu watched wide-eyed. How could Marial take off her jewelry like that? People would think she was one of the lowest of the low, an untouchable. What a huge insult it would be to her husband’s family, and yet it was her husband who had asked her to take it off. The rest of the way home, Ponnammal and Sellamutthu remained silent. When they got back to Pannaivilai, they spoke to Amy. “Marial has taken off her jewelry,” Ponnammal said. Amy nodded; she had seen her do it. “We are going to take off our jewelry, too,” continued Ponnammal. “If I had loved Jesus more, I would have loved my jewels less.” With that she bent down and began undoing her foot bangles. Sellamutthu followed her, and soon both of them were standing in front of Amy wearing no jewelry at all. Amy smiled at them both. It had taken a lot of courage to go against generations of custom, yet the women were prepared to do it because of their love for God.
Of course, not all Christians saw it that way. When Ponnammal’s father-in-law heard what she had done, he was outraged. How could she take off her jewelry and look like a nobody! He stirred up as much anger and hatred in the church as he possibly could. He saw it as an opportunity to get rid of the Starry Cluster and get his daughter-in-law back. But as hard as he tried to stir up trouble, the pastor of the church would not speak out against Amy or the Starry Cluster. Instead, he told Amy that for the first time, many in his congregation were finally beginning to understand what it meant to be a Christian and follow Jesus.
Chapter 12
Let Me Stay in the Light
There was a village near Pannaivilai called Great Lake. The village had a Christian mission school where local boys, and even a few girls, were educated. Not one of the parents or children attending the school was a Christian, which had been true for the past sixty years. The villagers knew that the school was run by Christians, but they didn’t worry in the slightest about their children’s being influenced by Christianity. Even the youngest child knew better than to break caste. That was, until 1895, the same year Amy arrived in India. One of the girls in the school, who was thirteen years old at the time, was given a Bible by the school principal’s wife. She read the Bible and became a secret Christian. Very secret. She didn’t tell a single person about it, and she continued with all the family’s Hindu practices. She went so far as to allow her brother to smear Siva’s ashes on her forehead every morning. These ashes were worn by devout Hindus to show others their devotion to Hindu gods.
Three years later, the girl had finished school and was being kept at home, which was normal in Indian culture. In fact, she hadn’t been outside the house once in two years. But as she spent many hours by herself doing household chores, she thought about what she had read in the Bible. Slowly she began to realize she didn’t want to be a secret Christian anymore. Instead, she wanted to become an open believer. She wanted to pray with other Christians and go to Bible studies and share her faith with her family. She was also aware that confessing her belief in Christianity could cost her her life. Yet despite that possibility, she could no longer stand to live her faith in secret. She had heard her father and brother talking about the Starry Cluster, and even though they talked about the group in insulting terms, she felt strangely attracted to it.
One night, after everyone was asleep, the girl woke up. Shivers ran up and down her spine. Somehow she knew she had to escape. She had to get to the Starry Cluster. But what if someone saw her? She would be brought home in disgrace and beaten for sure, maybe even found dead at the bottom of a well shaft in the morning. But her desire to escape was too strong to worry about any potential consequences.
Slowly and carefully she stepped over her sleeping mother and tiptoed to the door. She turned the lock and pulled the door open. For the first time in two years, she smelled the fresh air of the garden. Keeping in the shadows with her ear attuned to every sound, she crept out of the village, along the rutted path, and over the bridge into Pannaivilai. Once there, she had no idea where to go next. She sneaked around Pannaivilai until she came to a large two-story house with a veranda around it. A banner over the front door told her she had come to the home of Christians. Suddenly, instead of being as quiet as possible, she had to make noise, and lots of it. She banged on the door and yelled, “Refuge! Refuge!” A sleepy Amy opened the door and let her in.
By the next morning, the village of Great Lake was in an uproar. The girl’s father had discovered that his daughter was missing. That was bad enough, but to find she had run to Christians for refuge was too much to bear. It was an insult to the entire goldsmithing caste to which her family belonged. Her father would rather see her dead than have her break caste and stay with Christians. He mounted a campaign to get her back. But the girl, whom Amy named Jewel of Victory, stood her ground. She went to the village constable and gave a sworn statement to say she was sixteen years of age and was living with the Starry Cluster of her own free choice. Once that was done, there was nothing her father could do—legally, that is. Unfortunately, there were a lot of other things he and the other men of the village could and did do. First, they burned down the school. This meant that none of the other children in the village would receive an education, but her father didn’t seem to care. It was more important that the terrible thing his daughter had done would never happen again. Next they burned down the school principal’s house and drove the school workers out of Great Lake village.
Jewel of Victory was safe with the Starry Cluster, but many people paid the price for her conversion. And the Starry Cluster would not be welcome again in Great Lake village. That was for certain! Indeed, until the turmoil died down, the women of the Starry Cluster decided they should work in the villages to the north of Pannaivilai. But they ran headlong into another crisis there. They were preaching in the streets of a village called Uncrowned King when an eleven-year-old girl named Arulai came by. Arulai was fetching water for her family at the same time the women were holding their meeting, and she stopped to listen to what the women had to say. Arulai had a bad temper, which she’d tried to control without much success. As she listened to the Starry Cluster, she watched Amy very closely. There was something about the Englishwoman in the simple, white cotton sari that fascinated her. When the meeting closed, Arulai overheard one of the women in the Starry Cluster say, “I was a lion, and God turned me into a lamb.”
As she carried the water jar home, Arulai thought about what she’d overheard. A lion turned into a lamb, she said over and over to herself. There was nothing more wild and out of control than a lion or anything more gentle and sweet than a lamb. If God could turn a lion into a lamb, then maybe, just maybe, He could also control her temper. As the days went by, Arulai became more and more sure that He could. Finally one day, she announced to her parents that she wanted to go and live with the Englishwoman in the white cotton sari. Her family was convinced that Amy had sprinkled some magic powder on their daughter to make her want to leave home. Amy was quickly earning a new name in the area—”child-snatching Amma.” (Amma is the Tamil word for mother.)
Arulai kept talking about going to live with Amy until her whole family were so sick of listening to her they sent her off for a long visit at her uncle’s house. That was a big mistake. Arulai’s family didn’t realize that her uncle lived in the next village to Pannaivilai, and it was only a short walk for Arulai to slip away and visit Amy. And that is what she did. She made so many visits that in the end, her uncle said she could stay for Bible studies as well. As Arulai learned more and more about the Christian God, she became convinced He was the true God, and she became a convert. She began to speak out boldly about her growing faith. Of course, this really upset her family, and they soon whisked her away from her uncle’s house.
Months passed, and Amy heard no news of her new friend. She prayed for her every day and hoped she would somehow be able to find a way to come back one day. Meanwhile, more trouble followed the Starry Cluster.
Children, it seemed, were the most drawn to Amy and her message. Unfortunately, horrible things sometimes happened to children whose parents thought they had been listening for too long to the bewitching child stealer. One girl was drugged by her family when she started to question Hindu ways. Her brain was affected by the drug, and she was never the same again. Other children were beaten or whipped or had hot peppers ground into their eyes. Arul Dasan, who turned out to be Arulai’s cousin, was kept tied to a pillar in his house for days on end in the hope he would lose interest in Christianity. Every time Amy heard one of these stories, she thought of Arulai and prayed harder that God would bring her back to visit.
Finally in November, eight months after she’d last been seen by anyone in the Starry Cluster, Arulai appeared again. She arrived on the doorstep one morning, and Amy rushed out to greet her. It was a wonderful reunion, except for one thing. Arulai was sick and getting sicker by the minute. Amy helped her inside and laid her on the couch. Arulai did not know what was wrong with her; she just knew that she felt very weak and had an incredible headache. Finally, Amy put Arulai into her bed and stayed by her side day and night. Sometimes she prayed for a miracle because she was sure a miracle was the only thing that could save Arulai’s life.
As Arulai lay in Amy’s bed close to death, a strange thing happened. Her father came to take her home, but when he saw how sick she was, he realized she could not be moved. Instead, he kept coming back regularly to see whether his daughter was well enough to take home. On those trips, he began to see how Amy cared for his daughter. He hated to admit it, but his daughter was getting more love and care with Amy and the Starry Cluster than she would get in her own home. Ever so slowly, his resolve to force Arulai to come home as soon as possible began to crumble. And ever so slowly, Arulai began to gather strength. Sometimes Amy would overhear her desperate prayers. “Please don’t make me go back to the darkness, God. I am living in the light here. Let me stay in the light.”
