Chapter 14
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.
Most of the people who now lived in the village had all but forgotten their Christian heritage. But the village was still a safe, wonderful place to raise children. It was well off the main traffic routes that passed through the district. Despite Dohnavur’s being out of the way, within about a five-mile radius were about fifty other villages. Amy and the Starry Cluster had a huge mission field to tend within just a couple of hours’ bandy ride from Dohnavur.
As soon as Arulai was well enough, the women and girls made the move. The Starry Cluster’s few possessions were loaded onto a bullock cart for the trip west to Dohnavur. The women all knew the place well. After all, the whole Starry Cluster had spent the previous year there with Iyer Walker, although Amy hadn’t had as many children then.
Finally, the Bible school came into view. A low mud brick wall circled the entire compound. A bungalow was on the property, as well as a row of small rooms, each with a single window. There was also a whitewashed church where Iyer Walker would hold his teaching sessions. As the group approached the school, Amy was grateful that earlier inhabitants of the property had planted a row of tamarind trees. The trees had now grown into a line of majestic shade trees. Apart from the tamarind trees, nothing else useful was growing. The soil was as dry as sawdust. It would take a lot of work to get the school compound to match the plans Amy had for it!
Amy and the Starry Cluster moved into the bungalow, which was to be their new home. They had scarcely unpacked when Amy had to leave for six weeks. She had promised to join Iyer Walker in leading a series of Christian meetings in Trivandrum on the southwest coast of India. Amy loved being by the sea again. It reminded her of the many days she had roamed the seashore as a child back in Ireland.
Iyer Walker and Amy were the two guest speakers, though many times they were more like guest “yellers.” With more than two thousand people present, they had no other way to amplify their voices than to yell as loud as they could while they spoke. It was an interesting experience for Amy. It was the first time she had been out of the Tamil region of India in seven years, and she often had to use an interpreter to speak to people attending the meetings. She hadn’t realized how used to speaking the Tamil language she’d become. She also hadn’t realized how a mother felt being away from her children for six weeks. She had left Ponnammal in charge of the children and the Starry Cluster, so she wasn’t worried about their well-being, but she missed them all very much.
Amy couldn’t wait to get back to her new home, and when she arrived, many little arms were outstretched to welcome her. Finally, she knew this was the work God had given her to do in India. He had tied her feet, and she was glad. Although many other groups asked her to be their guest speaker, Amy never left Dohnavur without the children again.
There was so much to do at Dohnavur, and the first year sped quickly by. The Starry Cluster continued to preach in the nearby countryside, but Amy’s days were taken up with teaching the older children and tending to the babies. Iyer Walker helped out whenever he could, and he was always there to give Amy advice when she asked for it. Amy felt as though she had her own big brother to lean on. But Iyer Walker had his own personal problems to deal with. His wife was very sick, and he had been advised to take her back to England for a year of rest. Reluctantly, in November 1903, he left Dohnavur for England.
For the first time since becoming a missionary, Amy, a single woman, had to carry the entire weight of the ministry alone.