The Orphan Keeper

by Camron Wright

  Priya shook her head. “I can’t date.”

  “You can’t date? Why not?”

  “My parents believe in arranged marriages, so we don’t date.”

  It was likely the way he began fumbling with coins in his pocket because her lips tugged again into a smile. “I could perhaps go on a group activity, though,” she said. “I mean, after my appointment with the counselor tomorrow, I’ll need to eat. Right?”

  Not just beautiful but pragmatic. She was extraordinary. Every muscle in his face was nodding.

  “Meet me in front of the administration building tomorrow at noon. I look forward to getting to know you, Taj.”

  No problem that he had a class. For this girl, he’d cancel heart surgery.

  “I’ll be there,” he said. “I will absolutely be there.”

  Their first group activity together, Taj decided, was a lot like the ball scene from Cinderella—but with no animation, dancing, or pumpkin carriage. He bought her a sandwich and drink, and they sat by the fountain on campus and talked and laughed and answered each other’s questions in Air Supply lyrics before either of them realized how low the sun had sunk. She was late and had to run off, leaving him alone, and if he’d found a glass slipper where she’d been sitting, it wouldn’t have been the least bit surprising.

  It was all so perfect, it kept him wondering: Was she just being nice because he was friends with her brother? It must be, because no girl could be that warm and witty, fearless and friendly, brave and ­beautiful—and still actually like him. Something had to be wrong.

  By their fifth clandestine date, they decided that calling their time together a group activity was silly, especially since her parents had gone back to Singapore and she’d moved into an apartment near campus with roommates who didn’t care if she dated or what time she came home.

  That was the night they kissed.

  It was all going so well, Taj found himself waking up every morning with a smile already pasted to his face. He’d have to slap himself in front of the bathroom mirror just to confirm he hadn’t been dreaming.

  By their ninth date, just when Taj was beginning to accept that his life was real, Priya’s call was like an unexpected punch to the stomach.

  “Taj,” she’d said somberly, “we need to talk!”

  How could she? He’d invented we need to talk! He had a copyright on the miserable phrase. He’d broken up with more girls than England had had queens and could deliver the line in his sleep.

  But that was the problem. He had never been the one on the receiving end.

  Her words reached through the phone and pushed nails into his heart.

  When he pulled up to her apartment, she was outside waiting. She climbed in with resolve. No reason to waste time.

  “Taj, I’ve been doing a lot of thinking,” she said. Also his line, and as she spoke it an itchy lump tightened in his throat.

  “Are you ashamed of me?” she asked.

  What had he said? What had he done? He parsed her words. He played back every recent conversation. He was coming up empty.

  “Why would you think that?”

  “Taj, you’ve never taken me home to meet your parents.”

  Relief draped around him like warm sunshine. He gripped her fingers so tightly that she let out a cry. He let go and then tried a high-five. He’d never been so excited to introduce anyone to his parents.

  It was a short drive. There were no lights on inside when Taj pulled into the driveway.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to Priya. “They’re old. They may have already gone to bed.”

  He pushed open the door from the garage, turned on a light in the kitchen, and steered Priya to the couch in the family room.

  “Do you want a soda?” he asked, turning to the fridge.

  “That would be nice, sure.”

  When he passed the hall, he could see Linda standing in the shadows, wearing her pink bathrobe and flagging him down like a stranded motorist.

  “If Priya’s going to run,” Taj mumbled, “it will be tonight.”

  His shrug to Linda all but begged, Please don’t screw this up!

  Linda was pointing toward Priya. “That’s her, that’s her!”

  “Who?” Taj asked.

  “The girl you’re with—I saw her as you walked past. I’ve seen her before. Taj, she’s the girl I dreamed about.”

  Taj latched onto Linda’s shoulders. The night was getting worse. It was a plea that started deep in his throat. “Mom! I don’t know what you dreamed or why, but don’t you dare breathe a word.”

  “Taj, please. I’m not stupid,” she replied but in a voice loud enough to sufficiently prove his concern. While she scurried off to change, Taj went to prep Priya.

  To Taj’s relief, Linda returned dressed, thankfully minus her bathrobe. She gave Priya a squeeze, as if they were already friends. She sat beside her on the couch, forcing Taj to sit across in his own chair. Within minutes, the two women were chatting like girlfriends.

  Each story Linda told started the same. “Let me tell you about the time Taj . . .” And then while Taj denied any memory, claiming the crazy woman was making it all up, Priya and Linda would laugh, and despite their making fun of him, he was euphoric.

  “Wait!” Linda pronounced, with shining eyes. “I have something you should see.”

  She hurried to her bedroom and returned with a box. Inside was a bulging scrapbook. It contained pictures of Taj growing up, the article published in the town paper when he arrived, an assortment of birthday cards and awards he’d won in school.

  It was every son’s worst nightmare—home movies without the movies.

  “Anything to do with Taj or India,” Linda announced proudly, “I’ve saved in this book.”

  Taj moved behind Priya to look over her shoulder.

  “Why didn’t I know about this?” he asked Linda.

  “It wasn’t hidden,” she said. “You were just never very interested.”

  As Priya turned the pages, Linda described the pictures. Most generated laughter, usually at the expense of Taj.

  “Are we sure this is the best activity we can . . .”

  Priya didn’t let him finish. “I wouldn’t miss this for anything.”

  More pictures. More laughter.

  As Linda flipped over the last page, a clear plastic sleeve held a white audio cassette tape.

  Linda pulled it out, examined it. “I’d forgotten about this. When we first got little Taj, we knew he’d forget his language, so we recorded him speaking.”

  “I’d love to hear it,” Priya said.

  “Let me find the player. I think it’s in the cupboard in the utility room.”

  Linda returned with an old audiocassette player and fresh batteries. When it was ready, she pushed Play.

  The sound was scratchy but started with the distinct voice of a child singing unintelligible words.

  “I remember this,” Linda exclaimed. “He sang the songs he’d learned in the orphanage.”

  Priya tipped her head to hear better.

  “He’s singing in Tamil?” she announced.

  “How can you tell?” Taj asked.

  “I speak Tamil. It’s spoken in southern India.”

  Taj scooted forward. He was watching Priya. A smile softly wrapped her face. “It’s a Christian song,” she said. “You’re singing that you love Jesus.”

  When the singing ended, the boy began to speak. Even with the static, anguish carried in his voice.

  Priya’s smile faded.

  “Can you rewind that?” she asked.

  Linda obliged and again pushed Play.

  Priya edged forward, covered her mouth. She looked first to Linda but then faced Taj. Her hand gently lowered. “Taj, you’re saying that—” Tiny wrinkles etched across her brow. “You’re s
aying that you were taken, that you were kidnapped! That you have a family, a mother in India. Did you know this?”

  They swam in silence.

  Priya waited.

  It was several seconds before Taj finally nodded. “It started in London. There are parts of my childhood—flashes, pieces, images—I’ve been remembering.”

  He turned to Linda. “Mom, did you know?”

  Linda stopped the tape so they could talk, so they could breathe. She clutched the couch cushion with determined fingers, as if it might offer courage or perhaps protection. Her words, usually firm, were frail.

  She spoke directly to him. “We first found out when you began to learn English. I still remember the first time that you mentioned your mother. I swore my heart was going to burst. All I could think about was the poor woman, the family, who must have been going crazy missing you. We knew nothing. Honestly. We tried to find out more. We immediately wrote to the man who ran the orphanage to get more information, but he wouldn’t return our letters or take our calls. We pursued it through the embassy, but they told us there was nothing they could do. There were others in India we contacted, but nobody was willing to help.”

  “Why didn’t I know any of this?” Taj asked.

  “You were already so traumatized, we didn’t want to make it worse. We couldn’t get your hopes up. Perhaps we should have said something when you got older, but by then, what was the point? To us, you’ve always been our son.”

  Her eyes were glassy, blinking. Her lips quivered.

  “As it happened, there was nothing more we ever found out.” She wiped at her eyes with her shaky fingers that only served to smear her tears.

  Taj stepped around to sit by his mother on the couch. “The man who brought me . . . do you remember his name?”

  “That much I do know. His name was Eli . . . Eli Manickam.”

  Linda flipped back to the front pages of the album to the pictures they’d taken at the airport. There was one photo of a gray-haired Indian man holding a young boy. Taj pulled it from the album.

  “I remember him,” Taj said, as he looked at Linda. “I remember his beard, and he wore a white skirt thing.”

  “It’s called a lungi,” Priya added.

  Taj turned back to Linda. “Do you have anything else, anything at all?” He hadn’t told her about his map, his memories.

  “Whatever we have,” she said, “it’s in the box. I haven’t looked through it in years.”

  Taj scoured through the papers layered in the bottom. “Is this my passport?” Excitement stumbled from his lips.

  “You had it when you came.”

  When he opened it up, pasted in the front cover was his picture—below was his Indian name.

  “My name was Chellamuthu?”

  “Yes,” Linda explained. “We changed it from Chellamuthu to Taj so the kids would stop teasing you at school.”

  “In Tamil Chellamuthu means ‘precious pearl,’” Priya said.

  Taj rummaged through more papers in the box, mostly articles about India that Linda had cut from magazines. In the stack was a letter with an Indian postmark.

  The return address was clear—Lincoln Home for Homeless Children.

  “What’s this?”

  Linda flipped it over. It took a minute to remember. “That’s right. After Eli wouldn’t answer our letters, we found the name of another man in India, a man involved with the orphanage. We wrote to him, and he was kind enough to write back, though it was still a dead end.”

  Taj skimmed the words. Priya was reading it beside him. She leaned forward.

  “Wait, can I see that?” she asked.

  She took it from his hands to study it more closely. “That’s so strange. This looks so familiar.” When she turned it over, she gasped.

  “What? What is it?” Taj asked.

  “Are you okay, dear?” Linda added.

  “This letter,” she said. “It’s signed by Maneesh Durai.”

  “So? Do you know him?” Taj wondered.

  “Yes, I know him,” she said. “Taj, this letter was written by my father!”

  Chapter 29

  At two o’clock in the morning, Taj was still sitting with Priya in his car outside her apartment.

  “How is it possible?” Taj asked again, as if anything in the last hour had changed. “There are a billion people in India, half a world away, and I end up dating the daughter of a man tied to the orphanage who took me as a child from my family! Do you realize how crazy that is?”

  Priya had no answers.

  “What if he knew?” Taj asked.

  “That you’d been kidnapped?” Her calm balanced his concern.

  “What if he helped?” Taj added.

  “I’d like to think he wasn’t involved like that, but I don’t know. I was just a child.”

  “What if we talked to him, see what he says, what he remembers, if he knows anything about me or my family? Maybe he could help me find them.”

  She’d already been over this. “Taj, we can’t! My family believes in arranged marriages. I’m forbidden to date. My father’s leery of you, anyway. If he weren’t back in Singapore, well . . .”

  “I can’t help that he hates Air Supply,” Taj added.

  It was a needed smile. “He does hate Air Supply,” Priya confirmed, “but that’s not why. I think you scare him.”

  “Me? Scare him? Why?”

  “Because you’re assertive. You know what you want and go after it. You aren’t afraid of people—and, of course, you called him on the phone and wanted to date his daughter.”

  “Those are all good things, right?”

  “I’m sitting here, aren’t I? Listen, just be patient. We’ll ask him, but we can’t do it yet.”

  “When?” It was an eager word that begged for an answer.

  Priya spelled it out for him. “We can’t talk to him until we know we’re serious. There has to be no turning back.”

  “Priya,” he said, his voice lowering to a whisper, “I would tell you I’m falling in love with you, but actually . . . I already fell. The moment I saw your picture at Daniel’s. Does that . . . I don’t know . . . freak you out?”

  He clutched her fingers, their eyes intertwined. “Are you just saying this so I’ll talk to my father?”

  “No . . . I . . . didn’t mean . . .”

  She uncovered her grin. “I’m kidding. Taj! The thing is . . .”

  “Yes.” He was absorbing every glance, every pause, every movement.

  “I’m falling in love with you, too.”

  Priya tugged at the door of Bombay House and peeked inside. With any luck, Daniel would be in the kitchen.

  “Priya?”

  “Oh, hi, brother.”

  “What’s up?”

  “I’ve been told the food here is tolerable. Can you hook me up?”

  “Sure, what can I get you?”

  She didn’t need to look at the menu. “I’ll have the coconut kurma and maybe take some chicken masala, for later.”

  Daniel halted. “You hate my masala.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  “You tell me I use too much garlic, that you like Mom’s better.”

  “All true, but I don’t hate it. Besides, I’d like to see if you’ve made any improvements.”

  “Sounds reasonable. I guess honest feedback never hurts. Kurma to stay and a masala to go.”

  Priya’s lips formed another lie. “Actually, I’ll take them both to go. I have to . . . um, study.”

  Daniel’s eyes narrowed. “You despise eating out of a styrofoam box—and since when do you need to study? You’ve always breezed through school.”

  She could feel her face blush and excused herself to go to the bathroom. When she returned, Daniel was placing her food in a bag. He dropped in a s
et of utensils wrapped with a napkin. “Can I have two of those . . . one for later?”

  He tossed in another and then stepped around the counter. “Come on, I’ll walk you to your car.”

  Beads of perspiration were mobilizing in patches on her forehead. “I’m completely capable of carrying my own food, thank you.” She reached out and took the bag from him.

  “Geez, whatever. A brother tries to be nice and look how he’s treated.”

  “Sorry,” she replied, “I’m just . . . in a hurry.”

  As the door closed behind her, he called out. “Let me know how you like my masala!”

  When she reached the car, Taj was bouncing. “I’m starving. What took so long?”

  Her eyes smoldered. Her fingers clenched.

  “Next time, we’re going to McDonalds!”

  From: Christopher Raj

  To: Taj Rowland

  Taj,

  This is Christopher Raj. I’ve finally figured out how to log on to e-mail. Can you hear me?

  Chris

  ________________________________

  From: Christopher Raj

  To: Taj Rowland

  Taj,

  Sorry you had to phone again. This time I really do have e-mail figured out.

  I have an idea for a product. In India, many people sleep directly on the ground. Families with money purchase woven mats that not only provide protection but are also very colorful.

  I imagine people in the United States would like them. Can we import and sell these sleeping mats? I’ll keep this short as I’m not sure if they charge me by length.

  Christopher

  ________________________________

  From: Taj Rowland

  To: Christopher Raj

  Chris,

  We don’t sleep on mats here. We prefer beds with mattresses. We do, however, go on picnics and take vacations to the beach. Perhaps your sleeping mats would make great beach mats.

  What do you think? Please send a sample.

  Taj

  P.S. There is no limit to length when using e-mail.

  Love is both comfortable and complacent, like a child’s blanket that in a perfect world would last forever.