By the time Arulai was completely well again, her father had given up the demand that his now twelve-year-old daughter come home, and Arulai was allowed to stay on with the group in Pannaivilai.
Amy was always doing two or three things at once, and while she was nursing Arulai she was also writing a manuscript. Five years after she had sailed for India, the Keswick Convention still supported her. Fueled by the interest generated by From Sunrise Land, her book of letters from Japan, the Keswick Convention had asked Amy to write a book about India. It took many months of writing and rewriting, but finally Amy felt happy with the result. Then the question came, what to title the manuscript? Amy didn’t want anything too grand or too flowery. She wanted something that was simple and to the point. Finally, she settled on the title Things As They Are. That said it all for Amy. It wasn’t about things as she might want them to be in India, or things the way people in England imagined they might be. No, it was about things as they are.
Amy sent the manuscript off to the Keswick committee in England. She got it back from them much sooner than she’d expected. Inside with the manuscript was a note thanking her for all her hard work but suggesting she make a few changes. It seemed they felt her manuscript was a bit depressing to read. Perhaps, the editor suggested, it needed a lighter touch, more happy stories, and fewer stories about young children and women in unreachable situations. Again Amy was confronted with the desire of Christians in England for “happy missionary, happy ending” stories. She shook her head. If only the committee could have spent a few days with her, they would have quickly seen that for every Arulai, there were a thousand girls who were temple prostitutes or household slaves. Their lives did not have happy endings, and Amy would not pretend they did. She stuffed the manuscript in the bottom drawer of her desk.
Other mail came from England, and it was upsetting, too. Robert Wilson’s sons wrote letter after letter begging Amy to come home to Broughton Grange. Their father asked for her every day; their father was getting weaker; their father had had another stroke. But Amy couldn’t go back to England, especially now that she had Arulai to look after. Besides, she knew that God had called her to India, and she would not leave unless she was certain He was calling her elsewhere. Still, Amy did get homesick. She longed for someone from England to come and visit her. She wanted to show them the way things were and get a firsthand account of the state of Robert Wilson’s health.
Her longing was rewarded toward the end of 1900. Two of her close friends from Manchester, Ella Crossley and Mary Hatch, announced that they had bought tickets and were on their way to see her. Amy was so glad to see them again. Of course, the first questions she wanted answered were, Had they seen Robert Wilson before they left, and How was he doing? Ella and Mary had visited him right before they left, and better yet, they had a letter for Amy that Robert Wilson had dictated to Ella. Amy ripped the envelope open and read what he had to say. One sentence particularly caught her attention: “I hope you will not let my sickness change any of your plans.” Amy was grateful for his reassurance that she was doing the right thing staying in India.
Ella and Mary wanted to experience everything Amy had described to them in her letters. They were eager to climb aboard the bandy and travel the countryside with the Starry Cluster. Amy told them the story of Jewel of Victory and Arulai, who were now both a part of the cluster. The two women got to see a a side of India few Englishwomen ever saw.
One day the three of them entered a home where a child lay crying in a hammock. Amy picked up the child and held him tightly. She guessed he was about three years old. He continuously rubbed his eyes, which were red and nearly swollen shut. “How long has he been like this?” Amy asked his mother.
“About three months,” the mother replied, “but he does not cry as loudly as he used to.”
“What does the doctor say?” Amy asked in Tamil, while interpreting the conversation into English for Ella and Mary.
The mother looked down. “We will not take him to the doctor,” she said hesitantly, and then added, “it would be breaking caste.”
Amy hugged the little boy closer. Surely there could be an exception. The child was well on his way to blindness, if not death. How could it be against caste to get him medical help? She begged and pleaded with the mother to let her take the child to the nearest hospital. But the mother would not budge. Nothing mattered more to her than keeping caste, not even the possible death of her own little boy. Keeping caste was more important than keeping his life.
Ella and Mary emerged from the hut into the bright sunlight with tears streaming down their cheeks. Although they had been reading Amy’s letters for years, the reality of experiencing firsthand what she had described was almost more than they could bear.
They asked Amy why she didn’t write a book about conditions in India so that Christians in England and other places could pray for her and her workers. Amy shrugged her shoulders. Over the next several weeks, they asked the same question again and again. Finally, Amy opened the bottom drawer of her desk and took out the manuscript for Things As They Are. She handed it to Ella and Mary, who took turns reading it aloud to each other. When they finished, they were sure it had to be published. Christians needed to know the truth about India, the so-called jewel in the empire’s crown.
Amy then showed them the letter from the Keswick committee about the manuscript. Ella and Mary shook their heads in disbelief. If only the committee could see what they had seen, then they would understand. Things As They Are was indeed a true picture of life in India and Amy’s work there. Eventually the two women persuaded Amy to give them the manuscript to take back to England. They must have been two forceful women, because soon after their return to England, Things As They Are was published, complete with photos Ella had taken during her visit.
Meanwhile, back in India, Amy and the Starry Cluster were busier than ever going from village to village sharing the gospel message.
Chapter 13
Child-Stealing Amma
Iyer Walker, Amy, and the Starry Cluster had been working in and around the village of Dohnavur for nearly a year. They had intended to spend only three months in the area while Iyer Walker taught a small group of Bible students, but the three months had been stretched and stretched. And there was plenty to do. Dohnavur was a ramshackle little village that lay in the center of a densely populated area. From the village, the Starry Cluster fanned out through the countryside sharing the gospel message and meeting the usual mixed reactions from people. But after a year away, it was time for them all to head back home to Pannaivilai.
The trip back to Pannaivilai took them right past the village of Great Lake, from which Jewel of Victory had escaped. In the very early morning of March 6, 1902, long, long before the sun was due to rise, they were on the final leg of their journey home. (They were able to travel at night now because word had got around that the women of the Starry Cluster wore no jewelry and so were not worth robbing.) Their bandy lumbered slowly past the gates of Great Lake, and thankfully the darkness hid them from the sleeping inhabitants of the village. None of them, though, neither the Starry Cluster nor the village inhabitants, had any idea of what else the darkness around Great Lake was hiding.
Preena was a seven-year-old girl who lived in the Hindu temple house in Great Lake village. She had been given to the temple by her mother to be used as a prostitute. Preena’s father was dead, and her mother had given Preena to the temple to try to win some favor from the Hindu gods. Once, when Preena was five, soon after she’d arrived at the temple, she had escaped and had run all the way back to her mother’s house, twenty miles away. She was sure her mother would be glad to see her again. But she was wrong. To take Preena back now would be to steal from the Hindu gods, and so when some temple women arrived in search of Preena, the mother willingly turned over her terrified daughter to them. When they got back to the temple, Preena’s hands were burned with red hot irons as a reminder that she should never again try to run away.
Two years had passed since that time, and Preena had now found out something that terrified her. She was about to be “married” to the gods in a ceremony. She didn’t know exactly what that meant, but the idea filled her with dread. But there was no way to escape; she was watched all day long and locked up at night. In desperation she threw herself down in front an idol and begged to die. She didn’t die, but the next day one of the older women in the temple house told her about the child-stealing Amma. To show her how safe she was inside the temple and how grateful she should be to live there, the woman told Preena scary stories about Amma and her band of followers. But the stories had the opposite effect on Preena! She began to think there was an Amma out there who would take her away and hide her. How wonderful that would be if she could just find this child-stealing Amma! Preena would gladly take her chances with her and her band of followers rather than stay and be married to a god.
And so, the very night the Starry Cluster was passing by Great Lake village, Preena became strangely alert in the middle of the night. She sat up on her sleeping mat with a sense that something was about to happen. Quietly she crept to the door. She pushed it lightly. Amazingly, it swung open. It was never left unlocked at night. A moment of doubt passed through Preena’s mind. Was this a trick to see whether she still wanted to run away? She looked back at the other sleeping girls in the room and gathered her courage. Placing each foot deliberately, she stepped out of the room and into the courtyard. Once again she found a door unexplainably open. She looked around for any sign of the night watchman. He was not around, so she crept out of the temple grounds and into the street. She started to run, faster and faster, out of the village and toward the bridge that led to Pannaivilai. She followed the exact same route Jewel of Victory had taken when she had fled to be with Amy four years earlier. And like Jewel of Victory before her, once she reached Pannaivilai, Preena didn’t know where to go. Out of breath from all her running, she walked around until she came to the local Christian church.
She stood in the darkness outside the church and patiently waited for something to happen. After a while something did happen. Even though it was very late, a Christian woman whose name in English was Servant of Jesus came out of the church. She saw Preena and knew immediately she belonged in the temple. But Servant of Jesus didn’t want to cross the bridge in the dark and take Preena back to where she belonged, so she took her home for the night. She planned to return her to the temple first thing in the morning. But Preena would not sleep. She kept telling Servant of Jesus she would not go back to the temple and that she needed to find the child-stealing Amma.
Servant of Jesus didn’t know what to do. She knew that Amy and the Starry Cluster were not at home; they had been away for a year. Obviously, it was going to take quite a bit of effort to get the stubborn little girl back to the temple. Even though Servant of Jesus was a Christian, the thought of keeping Preena and not sending her back to the Hindu temple never even entered her mind. Sheltering a child who belonged in the temple would almost surely get her killed.
By morning, Servant of Jesus had been worn down by Preena’s nagging to see the child-stealing Amma. Even though she had told the girl over and over that Amma was away on a trip, Preena would not believe it. So at 6:30 in the morning, to prove her point, Servant of Jesus took Preena to the house where the Starry Cluster lived to show her that no one was there. To her utter amazement, a bandy was standing in front of the house, and Amy herself was sitting on the veranda drinking tea. Preena let go of Servant of Jesus’ hand and ran up the steps. She climbed straight into Amy’s lap and threw her arms around her neck. It was as if they were long lost friends. Amy didn’t know what was going on, but she knew in her lap was a little girl who needed her love. So she threw her arms around Preena and held her close. Servant of Jesus told Amy all she knew about Preena, which was not very much.
