Of course, the temple women soon came to claim her, but if there was one thing Preena knew, it was that she would not go back to the temple. She stood in front of the hundred or so people who had gathered to witness the confrontation between Amy and the temple women and boldly told them she would not return to the temple; she belonged with the Starry Cluster now. After many days of harassment, the temple women finally retreated. They promised to return with Preena’s mother and get her back, but for some reason her mother would not come. No one else from the temple came back, either. And so the matter was settled, and Amy had a seven-year-old girl to teach and love.
Another event at this time brought even more happiness to Amy and the women of the Starry Cluster. It was Arulai’s baptism. It had been more than two years since Arulai had set down her water jar to listen to the Starry Cluster sing and preach on the streets of her village. Now, finally, her father had given his permission for her to be baptized. A very tolerant Hindu man might allow a female in his family to read a Bible; he might even allow her to pray a little; but to be baptized was different. To a Hindu, baptism marked the point of no return. It was the total, final way to break caste. And yet Arulai’s father had given his approval for his daughter’s baptism. Amy was truly amazed.
After a year away from Pannaivilai, it was a glorious return. The very morning Amy arrived back, God had led a small child out of the temple right into Amy’s lap. And now Arulai had been baptized with the full permission of her father. These were things Amy had been praying about for a long time. But soon afterwards, they came dangerously close to being undone.
Arul Dasan, Arulai’s cousin, had joined the men’s equivalent of the Starry Cluster which Iyer Walker had formed. After Arulai’s baptism, Iyer Walker felt strongly that Arulai and her cousin should have the opportunity to visit with their families, and so he set about making the arrangements. Fortunately, he knew one of the chief elders of the village, a man with considerable authority. The man was old now, but in earlier years he had turned to an Englishman for help with a situation. As a result, he was open to helping other English people in return for the kindness and favor that had been shown him. Iyer Walker met with the old man, who gave his word the children would be safe if they came to visit their families again.
Unfortunately, the old man had underestimated the anger of the people in the village toward Christians. No sooner had the bandy carrying Arulai, her cousin, and Iyer Walker entered the village than a riot broke out. The bandy was tipped on its side and the driver dragged out and beaten with sticks. Iyer Walker was abused and pelted with rocks. In the midst of all the confusion, the two children disappeared. As rocks bounced off him, Iyer Walker prayed hard. Without some help, it seemed unlikely that he or the driver would make it out of the village alive, and certainly not with the children.
Suddenly, everything fell silent. The rocks stopped crashing against Iyer Walker, and the sticks stopped pounding on the driver. All eyes turned in the direction of a man standing under a nearby veranda. Iyer Walker recognized the man as the son of the village elder. With all the authority of his father, he barked out orders, and amazingly, the crowd obeyed. Most were told to leave the area, which they quickly did. Then another man appeared, holding Arulai and Arul Dasan roughly by the back of their clothes. He let the children go, and they came running back to Iyer Walker. The young man ordered the bandy to be tipped back upright. Iyer Walker hurriedly loaded the children into the back of the uprighted bandy and guarded them from behind. The driver dragged himself from the ground where he lay bleeding and crawled into the front of the bandy. The young man waved them on. The driver flicked his whip, and the oxen turned slowly and headed out the village gate.
When they got back to Pannaivilai, Amy was shocked by what had happened. She had thought they had a good relationship with Arulai’s father in particular and that he would be glad to see his daughter. Amy was still learning just how much every aspect of Hindu life was ruled by caste. As it turned out, when Arulai’s father gave his permission for her to be baptized it meant he was washing his hands of her completely. Attempting to get Arulai and him to talk to each other was impossible. It would be breaking caste for him to even acknowledge he had a Christian daughter.
Fortunately, no permanent harm was done by the “visit,” and both of the children were safe. Neither Amy nor Iyer Walker knew it at the time, but both Arulai and her cousin, Arul Dasan, would play vital roles in the amazing events that were just beginning to unfold around them. All Amy knew at that moment was that she had a feeling something big was going to happen. She just didn’t know what it was.
Chapter 14
Tied Feet
The Tamil language has an old saying: “Children tie the mother’s feet.” It means that when a woman becomes a mother she is no longer free to do all the things she had done before. It is as though her feet are tied together and she cannot go far from home.
Amy did not want to be a mother with tied feet, but by June 1902, she was Amma (mother) to Jewel of Victory, another teenage girl named Jewel of Life, Arulai, Preena, and four other baby girls who had been given to her for one reason or another, mostly because they were girls and not valued in Indian society. Amazingly, all of this responsibility hadn’t slowed Amy down. Her feet were definitely not tied. She took the eight girls with her wherever she went. They all bobbed along together in the bandy, rolled out their sleeping mats side by side in the tent, and sang songs and read in quiet moments between preaching events. It seemed that Amy had enough energy to do it all.
That is, until July, when Arulai became seriously ill again on one of their journeys. The illness started with headaches and fever, and Arulai was soon diagnosed as having typhoid fever, a sure killer of children in that part of India. Amy and Arulai, along with the other girls and the women of the Starry Cluster, rushed back to Pannaivilai. When they arrived, an around-the-clock team was set up to nurse Arulai. For the next three months everything centered around caring for her in the hope she would be one of the few children who recovered from typhoid. Amy was never far from her bedside, praying for her or singing to her. Despite all the care, however, Arulai caught pneumonia as well. When her temperature plummeted to ninety-five degrees Fahrenheit, Amy called the doctor. After he had examined Arulai thoroughly, the doctor pulled Amy aside. His eyes were sad. Gently placing his hand on Amy’s arm, he spoke. “You’re going to have to prepare yourself to give her up.”
Amy was heartbroken. She loved Arulai as she would have loved her own daughter. More than anything else, she wanted her to get better. Yet the doctor had seen hundreds of cases of children with typhoid fever and knew that when they got this sick, death was certain. Amy sat with Arulai, holding her hand tightly hour after hour. She prayed and prayed that God would perform a miracle. Days passed, and Amy began to wonder whether Arulai wasn’t a little stronger than she had been the day before. Then Arulai opened her eyes and asked for water. Soon she was able to lift her head off the pillow. Bit by bit, she was getting better! Amy’s prayers had been answered. It was like having her daughter back from the dead.
As Arulai continued to recover, Amy began to think. With the eight children all in one place, a lot of things were much simpler and more organized. With less time spent traveling, the older girls had settled into a routine of helping the younger ones with their reading and math. The meals were also a lot easier to prepare in a cooking hut than over an open fire at the side of the road. And, of course, the children were a lot safer. Living together in the house, they had much less chance of being robbed or beaten than when they were camped at the side of the road out in the countryside.
As much as she liked to travel and share the gospel message, Amy could see that it made more sense for her to settle down and raise the eight girls. On the other hand, Amy was not one for doing the “easy” thing. There were hundreds of thousands of people in the district who needed to hear about Jesus Christ. There were also other temple children like Preena who needed to be rescued, and there were new converts who needed to be taught more about the Christian faith. It was very difficult for Amy to think of exchanging all of that for being an Amma. Mothering was not traditional missionary work. But was it wrong to think of being a mother to these girls God had so obviously sent to her? Could that be the real missionary work He had for her in India?
Amy wrestled with the question as she nursed Arulai back to full health. Could she be a good Amma to the children and still keep up the same breakneck pace she always had? Or did God want the children to “tie her feet”? The more she prayed about it, the more she knew the right answer. It was time to settle down and give the girls a home. Amy discussed the issue with the women of the Starry Cluster. They, too, agreed that it was time for Amy to stay home and be Amma to the girls. They also pointed out that it was time to find a larger home to live in. With fifteen people piled into the house in Pannaivilai, there wasn’t much spare room to move around in. But where would they go to find someplace larger? There certainly wasn’t anywhere large enough around Pannaivilai. Besides, who would want a group of caste-breaking Christian women harboring “runaway” girls for a neighbor? No Hindu in his right mind would want this group living next door.
No sooner had the women started thinking about where they might go to find more living space than the answer came. When Iyer Walker had taught the Bible students at Dohnavur, he had been filling in for a missionary who was visiting Australia. But the missionary had never returned to India, and the Bible students desperately needed a permanent teacher. The Bible school was run by the Church Missionary Society, and the group begged their old chairman, Iyer Walker, to come back to Dohnavur and take over the Bible school. If he did, he could have the run of the entire school compound and do with it as he saw fit. Iyer Walker decided to accept their invitation the same week that Amy and the Starry Cluster started praying for God to lead them to a new home.
Of course, Iyer Walker invited Amy and the Starry Cluster to move with him and his wife to the Bible school at Dohnavur, and the women gladly agreed to go along. It was a perfect solution in so many ways. The mud huts at the school were in great need of work, and the land itself was dusty and uncared for. It had been a long time since anyone had done any gardening on the property. But Dohnavur was a safe place to raise children. The village had been founded over fifty years before. In 1827, Charles Rhenius, an early missionary from Prussia, had been very successful in his work in the south of India. He was one of the first men to think about educating Indian women, and he spoke out against the caste system, which he saw as a way to keep poor people from ever improving themselves. Because of his views, Rhenius had encouraged new converts to break caste, and many of them did. Of course, this led to many problems. Christians were drugged, beaten, or starved to death by their families. The lucky ones were thrown out of their villages and told never to return. But where would they go? Charles Rhenius wrote to his supporters in Europe asking for help. Money was sent, and tracts of unused land were bought and called “villages of refuge.” Count Dohn, a nobleman in Europe, sent money to set up one of these villages, and Charles Rhenius had named the new village Dohnavur after him.
