A minute later Ida and her father stood facing the Muslim man. He was shaking his head vigorously.
“No, madam, you do not understand. Only a man of her immediate family can ever enter a Muslim woman’s room,” he said. “Forgive me, but is it not true that you are a doctor also?”
Ida could hardly believe it. What kind of cruel night was this? Two men from different religions, and both of them believed she was the only person who could save the lives of their wives.
“I can’t help you. I don’t know anything about medicine,” she replied, and then she had an inspiration. “What if my father and I both came with you? He could look at your wife and tell me what to do, and I could do it. I would be the only one who touched her.”
The Muslim man looked down. “No, if you cannot come, then it is the will of Allah that my wife die,” he said in a flat voice, and with a bow he left.
This time Ida did not want to discuss the situation with her father. She knew what he would say—If there’s nothing you can do to remedy a bad situation, the wisest thing to do is to forget about it. She did not want to hear that advice twice in one night. She fled back to her bedroom and locked the door behind her.
Ida wrote about what had happened and added:
You can see now, Annie, why you wouldn’t like to be a missionary, especially in India. You’d simply hate it. And I ought to know. Believe me, I’m going to get back home just as quickly as I possibly can. Why, the people here don’t even want you to help them. They’d rather let their wives and children die, even if they’re beautiful and they say they love them and some of them are no more than fourteen.
Ida stopped for a moment. She heard a voice through the door. “Ammal, Ammal, are you there?”
Wearily Ida got up from her desk for the third time in an hour and opened the door. This time she knew the man who was standing there. He was Sri Mudaliar, the father of Kamla, one of her favorite pupils at the Hindu girls’ school.
“Kamla? Is she all right? Has something bad happened?” she asked hurriedly.
“No,” Sri Mudaliar said, speaking in broken English. “Kamla happy, but you must come to my house. Much trouble, very much trouble there.”
Ida felt her throat tighten. She knew Kamla’s mother was expecting a baby any day now. Surely it could not be another woman in labor! In a voice barely above a whisper, she asked, “Not your wife?”
“Yes, Ammal,” Sri Mudaliar responded. “She is very sick. The baby is not arriving.” Then, as Ida watched in horror, he knelt down in front of her and touched her feet with his hands. “Please, Missy Ammal. Please come, or my wife, she is dead.”
“Get up off the ground. It will do no good for me to come. I don’t know how to help your wife. My father can come. He is a doctor; he knows what to do.” But even as she was saying the words, Ida knew it was useless. Sri Mudaliar would not allow a man to see his wife any more than the previous two husbands would.
“Missy, you come?” he pleaded hopefully.
“I would go with you if I could help you, but I can’t. I don’t know anything about medicine, and I would do her no good,” Ida repeated, wishing that she was tucked up in bed and none of the events of this horrible night had happened.
“Sorry to bother, Missy,” Sri Mudaliar said, bowing and walking backward at the same time. Before Ida could say anything else, he, too, was gone.
As the man disappeared into the dark, Ida asked herself what she could have said or done to change the situation. She could think of nothing.
Back in her bedroom, Ida decided to abandon her letter writing and go to bed so that no one else would see the lamp in her room. Maybe then she would get some peace.
Ten minutes later Ida was lying in bed. The only sounds she could hear were the swish of a tamarind branch against the roof and the occasional rustling of a lizard as it ran over the reed ceiling. But as much as Ida tried, she could not sleep. She could scarcely believe that three men, all with wives who were in the midst of difficult childbirths, had shown up on the veranda and all within the space of little more than an hour. And worse, all three men had rejected the offer of her father’s help, preferring to sacrifice their wives’ lives rather than break away from their religious beliefs.
For some reason the words of her father kept playing over and over in Ida’s mind. If there’s nothing you can do to remedy a bad situation, the wisest thing to do is to forget about it.
It was the word if that bothered Ida. Her father could not do anything about the situation regarding Hindu and Muslim women who needed medical attention because he was a man. But Ida was a woman, and there was something she could do to remedy the situation. But rather than give more thought to what she could do, Ida rolled over in bed and tried to think of other, more pleasant things. She planned out the dresses she would have made when she got back to the United States and the matching handbags and gloves she would buy. But it was no good. Her mind kept going back to the fact that she could do something about the situation if she wanted to.
It was a long night, and Ida did not sleep one moment of it. She worried about the women in labor, and the babies, and her own future. Eventually the sun came up and with it the sound of beating tom-toms. This was the sound Ida dreaded. It meant that someone in the village had died during the night.
Quickly Ida put on her slippers and dressing gown and slipped out of her room into the courtyard of the mission house. Souri, one of the servants, was just arriving for work, and Ida called to him.
“Souri, do you know who died last night?” she asked.
“No, Missy Ida, I do not,” he replied.
“I want you to find out for me. It is very important.”
“Yes, Missy,” Souri replied. “Right away I shall go.”
Ida sat on the veranda steps waiting impatiently for Souri to return. The sun rose in golden splendor over the trees, but she hardly noticed it. Eventually she saw Souri’s yellow hat bobbing above the stone wall that surrounded the mission compound. When Souri opened the gate, Ida noticed how grim he looked.
“Did you find out?” she asked. “Please tell me.”
“It is not good news,” Souri replied. “Three women died in the night, and each of them with a newborn child.”
“I see,” Ida said, not trusting herself to say any more.
Right about then the first funeral procession began winding its way along the street the mission compound was located on as people made their way to the burning grounds by the river. Ida fled back into her bedroom at the sight of the procession.
Ida stayed in her bedroom for a long time, sitting on the bed thinking about all the things that as late as yesterday had seemed important to her. Now they seemed silly and useless. What was the point of spending her time deciding between a satin skirt and a velvet dress? Or between a lace bonnet and a glittering hair clasp. Was that what she was going back to America for? Was she going back to live a life full of trivial moments? Suddenly Ida heard herself praying aloud, “God, if You want me to, I will spend the rest of my life in India trying to help these women.”
There, she had said it. And instead of feeling like she had just thrown her life away, Ida felt invigorated! She flung her clothes on and rushed out the door. A minute later she was standing in the dispensary facing her father. Ida smiled as she spoke. “This morning I have come to a decision,” she began. “Father, last night when those men came, you said, ‘If there’s nothing you can do to remedy a bad situation, the wisest thing to do is to forget about it.’ Well, I couldn’t forget about those women, and there is something I can do about it. As soon as Mother is completely well, I am going back to the United States to study medicine, and then I am coming back to India to help the women and babies.”
Chapter 6
Dr. Ida Sophia Scudder
Ida would have liked to jump on the first ship bound for the United States and begin her medical studies, but her mother was not yet well enough to assume all her responsibilities. Ida’s parents urged their daughter to stay with them for a while longer instead of returning to America right away. Ida agreed to do so and helped out wherever she could. But now she had a real interest in the people around her. She worked hard to learn the intricacies of the language and better understand the culture around her.
In 1892, about the time Ida hoped to be free to return to the United States, Uncle Jared, his wife, and his daughter Dixie went back to the United States for a two-year furlough. This created a crisis. There was no one to run the medical mission at Vellore. Eventually it was decided that Ida and her parents should move there, leaving Henry to run the work at Tindivanam. In Vellore Ida would manage the daily running of the mission station while her father traveled between there and Tindivanam carrying on his medical work.
Ida was happy enough to move to Vellore, though she did wish she were going home and not Dixie. How ironic it seemed to Ida that just a year ago she had been the one bursting to leave India while Dixie wanted to stay forever in some forgotten little village. Now Dixie was on her way to the United States and Ida was staying behind in India to take over her responsibilities.
The town of Vellore was a pleasant place to live. It had about forty thousand people, and since it was the center for the British colonial government for the North Arcot district, there were many English people among its population. There was even a British judge and police superintendent and an English club where British citizens could play polo, croquet, and card games. Although none of these things interested Ida, she liked to go the club to speak English and catch up on the latest world news.
Vellore, which was much cleaner than Tindivanam, sat in a valley surrounded by rocky hills. Whenever she could, Ida would walk up into the hills, breathing in the fresh, crisp air. Her cousin, Dr. Lew Scudder, worked at Ranipet, just ten miles away, and sometimes Ida walked there to see him.
Within a month Ida found herself slipping into Dixie’s shoes. Dixie had run two schools for Hindu girls, with a combined enrollment of two hundred girls. Ida loved working with the girls. However, in September 1892 the enrollment plummeted. It all started when Lakshmi, one of the brightest Brahman students, did not return to school after a lunch break. Ida was a little concerned about this, and she sent a servant around to find out what the problem was. The servant soon returned with the news that Lakshmi was not at home and that her parents had not seen her since that morning.
More inquiries were made, but no one had heard or seen anything of the ten-year-old. Ida hoped that she had just wandered off on her own for a while, but deep down she knew that was unlikely. Lakshmi loved to come to school.
The night passed, and still there was no word of Lakshmi. Another day and night passed, and Ida became frantic trying to imagine what could have happened. Lakshmi’s parents, while they did not know what had happened to her, certainly had suspicions as to why something terrible had befallen their daughter. They believed it was because they had committed two great sins. First, they had allowed their daughter to acquire knowledge when that was a man’s role, and second, and worse, they had allowed her to go to a Christian school. They told Ida it was no wonder the gods were punishing them.
Soon the entire town knew why Lakshmi’s parents thought she was missing, and one by one the Hindu girls stopped coming to school. Their parents feared that they, too, might disappear without a trace.
A month after Lakshmi’s disappearance, Ida learned that her parents had received a postcard informing them that their daughter’s body was at the bottom of a well on the north side of town. Sure enough, that is where the body was found. The police superintendent investigated the murder, and it turned out that four men had been looking for buried treasure. They were unable to locate any, and so they offered up Lakshmi (who was named after the goddess of prosperity) as a human sacrifice to the goddess in the hope that she would tell them where treasure was hidden.
