It was a sad day as a new area of land was set aside: the family’s cemetery, which Amy called God’s garden. It was a quiet area between the bungalow and the vegetable garden. The two babies were buried there. There were no headstones or plot markers, just the beauty of the garden and the shade of the majestic tamarind trees as silent witnesses to the children’s passing.
Sapphire, the round, happy baby had turned into an equally round and happy toddler. She was the older children’s favorite. They took turns playing with her and walking her around the compound. However, Sapphire was not well, either, and Mrs. Carmichael watched over her day and night. But again, all her motherly help was not enough, and on January 6, 1905, a few days after the other babies died, Sapphire died also.
Everyone was heartbroken. Three babies were gone. Amy didn’t know how to console her family. She took the older girls out into God’s garden. As she searched for words of comfort, her eyes rested on a beautiful lily, the first one ever to bloom in the garden. She walked the girls around the garden showing them the convolvulus and nasturtiums that were blooming, and then she stopped at the lily. “If Jesus came into this garden,” she asked, “which flower would you give Him?”
The girls pointed to the single lily. “We would give Him this one,” they all chimed.
Amy nodded. “God has asked us to give Him three of our most beautiful lilies, and I would not hold them back,” she said simply.
While life at Dohnavur went on, it was only a short time later that Amy herself needed to be comforted. News reached her that the Dear Old Man, Robert Wilson, had died on June 19, 1905. Fortunately, Mrs. Carmichael was still visiting and was able to give her daughter the comfort she needed. After grieving for Robert Wilson, Amy threw herself back into the work at Dohnavur. Three new babies soon joined the family, and the nursery was once again alive with the happy sounds of baby girls.
Finally, after nearly a year and half visiting and working alongside her daughter, Mrs. Carmichael returned to England in March 1906. Everyone was sad to see Atah leave. But they didn’t have much time to miss her, because the nursery was filled with babies who cried out for attention. Soon everyone was back focused on the growing work that God had given them to do.
Chapter 16
A Strange Sense of Joy
It was three o’clock in the morning on May 10, 1909. Amy sat quietly under a banyan tree. She was partly hidden in the shadows. That was the way she wanted it. She could see about a mile down the moonlit road, but no one could see her. She was waiting for someone, someone she hoped could help her.
It had all started two months earlier when a young girl and her mother came rushing up the steps of the bungalow yelling for refuge. Amy sat them down and poured cups of steaming tea while the mother told her story. Her twelve-year-old daughter Muttammal was her only child. Muttammal’s father had recently died and left all his possessions, including several thousand rupees worth of land, to her. That is where the trouble had started. Muttammal was now a very rich girl, and for her father’s family, the most important task was to keep her land and wealth in the family. This, they decided, would be easy. All they had to do was marry Muttammal off to one of her father’s relatives. An old man, a distant cousin of Muttammal’s father who had no wife at the time, was chosen to be her husband and so secure the family’s wealth. Muttammal’s mother told Amy she was horrified at the thought of her daughter being married off to someone old enough to be her grandfather, and she had escaped to Dohnavur with her daughter.
Amy immediately offered to look after Muttammal, and her mother disappeared as quickly as she’d arrived. When her mother was gone, Muttammal finally found her voice. “Promise me whatever happens, you will not make me leave here,” she begged Amy.
Amy tried to be as reassuring as possible, though she knew there had been times when the Dohnavur family had been ordered by the court to give up girls, and they had done as directed. “I can’t promise you that, but we’ll do our best,” she told Muttammal.
The answer was not good enough for Muttammal. Four years before she had heard of Dohnavur and the Christian God and how He answered prayer. “But I have heard that your God answers prayer. Won’t He answer the prayer of a little girl?” she asked.
“Let’s pray together and see what happens,” Amy answered.
Meanwhile, Amy had found out more about Muttammal’s mother, who was not the kind, caring woman she had pretended to be. In fact, she was as greedy as her husband’s family. She did not want Muttammal to marry the old man because she was looking for a way to keep Muttammal’s money for herself.
Amy was sickened by the way both the mother and father’s family viewed Muttammal as a way to get rich. Amy had grown to love Muttammal and felt she deserved to live with people who cared about her.
Iyer Walker had been away when Muttammal arrived, but as soon as he returned, Amy filled him in on the details. Because Muttammal had been left at Dohnavur by her mother to keep her out of the reach of the father’s family, Iyer Walker had a bad feeling about the situation. To protect themselves legally, he urged Amy to speak with the local magistrate and seek his advice. Amy did so the next day, and the magistrate told her she should return Muttammal to her mother immediately.
Amy didn’t know what to do, but she did not believe in breaking the law. She decided to wait a day before returning Muttammal to her mother in the hope some legal way to keep her might be found. She prayed for a solution, even a miracle, through the night. But in the morning, things were exactly as they had been the night before, and Muttammal had to be returned to her mother.
That is what had led Amy to be under the banyan tree at three o’clock in the morning. She’d heard that a high court official might be passing through on a journey early in the morning. Sure enough, at about 4:00 a.m., Amy heard the rumbling of a bandy in the distance. She stood and waited for it to come nearer. When it was close enough, she darted out of the shadows and flagged it down. The English official riding inside was astonished to see a single white woman in a sari running out to greet him, especially at four in the morning. However, he stopped and accepted Amy’s unusual invitation to have a cup of tea and a sandwich. As the official sat under the tree eating his sandwich and drinking his tea, Amy told him the story of Muttammal and how both sides of her family were fighting over her custody to gain control of her inheritance.
The official listened and nodded sympathetically or raised his eyebrows or shook his head at all the right moments. Amy felt sure that he understood. But then he told her the bad news. He was sorry, but there was nothing he could do. India had its own strange and mysterious ways, and it was not British Empire policy to interfere with matters of religion or local custom, no matter how unacceptable they seemed to the English.
Amy thanked him, and after he’d proceeded on with his journey, she wearily packed up her teapot and china cups into a basket and walked back to the bungalow in Dohnavur. As she walked past paddy fields and sleeping bullocks, she tried to think of a solution. Muttammal had such a simple faith in God. Amy was sure something would happen to save her from her terrible circumstances. And something did happen, though it was not what Amy had in mind. Muttammal was kidnapped by her father’s brothers. Of course, this made her mother very angry, and she went straight to court to get her daughter back. Eventually, the judge ordered Amy to look after Muttammal at Dohnavur until it was decided which side of her family should get her. There were two conditions to this temporary custody. First, Amy had to promise that Muttammal would not change her religion, which to a Hindu meant she would not be baptized, and second, Muttammal had to keep caste.
The second condition was more difficult to keep than the first. Muttammal was from a high caste and could not eat food cooked by someone of a lower caste or even eat in the presence of a lower-caste person. This meant that she had to prepare and eat all her own food alone in a tiny room. It was an inconvenience for everyone, but Amy tried hard to help Muttammal stick to the agreement with the court.
Muttammal begged Amy to be allowed to stay at Dohnavur for good. Finally, Amy agreed. Someone had to speak up for the child. Amy didn’t know how, but she would find some way to gain permanent custody of Muttammal. She would need a good lawyer, though, and good lawyers were very expensive. But Amy managed to find one she could afford. A Christian lawyer from Madras offered to take on Muttammal’s case for free! Amy and her lawyer quickly filed for custody, and while court hearings were being continually delayed, Amy and the family grew to love Muttammal even more. Muttammal fit in easily, and although she knew she couldn’t be baptized, she became a Christian in her heart.
Time dragged on. Amy kept Muttammal with her nearly all the time. She realized that if the Dohnavur family let down their guard for a moment, Muttammal could easily be kidnapped again. All her father’s family needed to do was tie a marriage jewel onto her, and it would be too late; she would be officially married to the old man. As the court case dragged on, it became more and more complicated, more and more costly, and more and more stressful for Amy. She longed for it all to be over.
Muttammal’s court case was not the only thing on Amy’s mind. The family at Dohnavur was growing rapidly. Amy was now Amma to more than one hundred girls. This meant that more staff were needed, and Amy was thankful when Frances Beath, an Australian missionary, joined the family. There was also a constant stream of visitors to Dohnavur. It seemed people were reading Things As They Are and deciding to come to India to see Amy’s work for themselves. One person who was visiting at the time was Mabel Beath, Frances’s sister. Amy welcomed her as she welcomed everyone who came to visit: She put Mabel straight to work!
Finally, after much delay, March 27, 1911, was set as the day the custody trial would be settled. On the night before, Iyer Walker escorted Amy to Palamcottah, where the verdict was to be read. Amy prayed that God would somehow make a way for Muttammal to stay with them. Muttammal herself had stayed behind in Dohnavur with Ponnammal. Although Muttammal was still safe with the family, Amy knew that if the judge ordered Muttammal to be handed over to her mother or her father’s family, she would have to obey his order. As she entered the courtroom, she thought about two nights before when she had stayed up all night talking with Muttammal. Amy had hoped to encourage her, but just the opposite had happened. Muttammal had such a strong faith in God and a trust that things would work out that she had encouraged Amy.
The courtroom was sweltering as the clerk read the judge’s verdict. Page after page of elaborately phrased summary was read. Finally, after listening to the clerk read for over an hour, Amy heard the news she had dreaded for nearly two years. Muttammal was to go back to her mother, and Amy had to pay all of her mother’s legal expenses for the trial. Muttammal was to be handed over to her mother on April 4.
It should have been a moment of complete defeat for Amy, but somehow it wasn’t. Amy felt a strange sense of joy, and somewhere deep inside she knew that everything was going to work out.
Amy’s lawyer thought she should appeal the verdict immediately, and so without much enthusiasm for yet another round of court cases, Amy agreed to go to Madras to meet with the lawyer yet again.
The night before Amy was due to catch the train from Palamcottah to Madras, she received a message from Iyer Walker, who had returned to Dohnavur. The message made her trip to Madras unnecessary. It read, “When I returned home on Thursday morning, it was reported to me that Muttammal had disappeared…”
