The Jungle Child

A SCHOOL courtyard in Southern India, paved half with cement and half with yellow river-sand, with here and there a curving cocoanut palm and squat lime tree growing up through sand and cement. A school courtyard, open alike to blazing sun, magic moon, and roaring monsoon rains, but shut away from the outside world on three sides by a single story of rooms opening in through low-roofed verandas to the court, and on the fourth side by a high white wall with a door in it. A school courtyard — the heart and centre of a school.

Starlit night in the courtyard. Ares and Antares, pushing up the branched head of Scorpio, look down over the eastern gable, at the sleeping children who sprawl by scores over the cement, stretching bare, brown limbs into the breathless night.

One small form, stirring in the heat, rolls over and then over again. Dark eyes fly open under a tangled mass of black hair; fly shut again, dazzled by the brilliance of the spangled sky; then open slowly, widening with awe at the vast splendor and stillness of the night. Gone is the dream of the home-hut, cozy and safe, with the warm and heaving bodies of the family pressing close on either side.

In all this silence and wide openness, who is Kanthy? Who is Kanthy? One tiny speck of life lying alone on the cement — alone! With one convulsive movement, she is back on her grassmat, her eyes buried in the comforting stuffiness of her rough sheet, her hands reaching out to touch the next huddled child. But those myriad flaming eyes of the night pierce through her sheet, through her tightly closed lids, and compel her to meet their gaze once more, slowly and steadily, fascinated, paralyzed, calmed, and soothed. When Scorpio drags his long, jeweled tail above the eastern gable, Kanthy lies once more asleep.

Gray gauze curtains of dawn over the courtyard. Kanthy is sitting up, bewildered, rubbing the mists of night out of her eyes, and rousing her senses to the strange new sounds of day. School! Thirty miles of tree-shaded road and wilderness paths away from the home-hut, where now the ragi would be cooking, and the baby would be crying for her and Amma¹ —

Kanthy pulls her wet fingers from her eyes and looks about her. With a scrape and slap-slap-slap over the cement, the mats all about her are rolled up and carried off, leaving her on a little island of solitude. The children are about the courtyard in dozens, combing out their tousled hair, lightening the strings of their long, full petticoats, buttoning up their calico jackets, hurrying back from the kitchen with water-pots on their hips, and their mouths black with charcoal. Chatter, chatter, chatter! In all this giggling, jostling crowd, who is Kanthy? Kanthy! Alone. Nynah² went back yesterday, after putting her hand in the hand of the white Missie. By this time he is with Amma! Kanthy is alone.

‘Time to get up, child!’

A strange voice is in her ear — no, it is the voice that told her where to spread her mat last night. A firm hand lifts her to her feet, and turns her wet face upward, to look into kindly eyes above wrinkled cheeks, and beyond at a circle of grinning children.

‘It is one of the new children,’ the voice goes on. ‘ You, Jeeva, take her as your little sister. Go on, children! You were new once.’

‘Matron Amma always picks out the stupidest ones and the dirtiest ones for me,’ a new voice grumbles. Kanthy is seized by an efficient hand, which helps her to roll up her mat, — scrape and slap-slap-slap over the cement like the rest, — and leads her away through the staring children. They become a part of the bustle. The familiar crunch of a lump of charcoal between her teeth reassures her, as, clinging to the red gingham skirt of her guide, she waits her turn at the well-curb.

Pot after pot drops over the squeaking pulley into the depths, to be hauled hand over hand, swaying, dripping, to the top. In the midst of the chatter and splashing and laughter, Kanthy finds herself suddenly stripped of the beloved orange-calico petticoat and sleazy pink jacket that Nynah bought for her only yesterday in the market. Reaching out a hand for it, she is grasped and held, while a douse of water, — oh, it’s cold! — pours over her; then another and another. She is gasping, she is crying, but the firm hand rubs on, and the determined voice is threatening the wrath of the white Missies if she appears at school

‘ Ah-pah! ’ ejaculates the executioner, scrubbing her dry, and flinging over her head a clean cotton petticoat handed over by the matron, who stands beside them. ‘These children from the refuse-jungle —’

‘Come now!’ remarks the matron, buttoning up Kanthy’s jacket, while Jeeva wrings out the orange and pink garments and hangs them over a bush to dry. ‘It is not so very long since you, too, Jeeva—’

Sitting, a few minutes later, in a line of merry children on the stone flags of the kitchen veranda, sucking up warm, sweet ragi porridge through her fingers, Kanthy looks across at JeevaSister, trim and dainty among the big girls.

Hot, golden sunlight, blinding the eyes and scorching the bare feet of the girls who run across the courtyard at the sound of the school bell. Kanthy has been happy since a bundle of yellow broom-straws was thrust into her hand. She can sweep as well as any of the snickering, noisy children, who stare at her and call her ‘Baldhead Kanthy.’ This has been a very festival of sweeping — not a solitary performance in the narrow home-hut, but a campaign against the dust and dried leaves of the wide courtyard, with a score of other small backs bending to the battle. At the sound of the bell, she straightens and stretches herself, looking about for her next cue; then, adding her contribution to the dust-box and broom pile, follows the crowd. She is one of them now. She is a schoolgirl. Let them laugh as much as they please, and she will laugh, too. She giggles noisily, although they are all silent, till she is fixed by a look from a spectacled woman standing at the open doorway, and a hand jerks her into the line with a warning hiss.

Long lines of children wait at the doors — black pigtails sleek and smooth, jackets pulled straight, petticoats stirred by small bare feet, marking time in their places. The line moves forward and a strange new sound catches at Kanthy’s feet and makes them want to dance, as at a wedding procession. Her back straightens, and she tramps along in step with the others, down the long veranda, over the door-sill, and into the great, light room from which the music comes.

Children and still more children pour in, rank on rank, followed at the last by the tall, dignified ‘big sisters,’ in their graceful sarees. The music still pours from a huge brown box against the wall, which the Missie is hitting in a most sprightly manner, with her two white hands. That is the Missie who spoke to Kanthy yesterday. She has hair the color of the sand in the riverbed when the sun shines on it, and it is all fuzzy about her pale face, like the hair of the village women, not neatly combed and oiled, like the hair of the teachers.

There is another white Missie over there among the teachers— ‘That is Lang Missie, who has newly come and speaks only to the big sisters in English,’a child whispers, pulling back Kanthy’s pointing forefinger. Her hair is black and smooth, but everything else is white — face, arms, clothes, shoes, and her wide hat.

The music stops suddenly and then begins again; but this time there is a new sound with it. The children are singing! Kanthy knows that tune. They sing it often in the mud-walled prayer-house at home, where all the Christians meet at night. She joins in now, shutting her eyes tightly and swaying from side to side with the effort. She is part of it all. But her neighbor pokes her in the ribs, and she starts suddenly, and sees the children turning around and smiling as they sing. Obediently she stops, and her soul soars upward with the melody her voice cannot reach. The singing, the psalm, the prayer, the Missie’s speech, more marching and singing in a smaller group, blocks, beads, seeds, a new slate, a new story from ‘MaryTeacher,’ and through all pauses the droning, chanting, singing of classes hidden away across the courtyard — Kanthy goes through it all in a sort of daze. One thing she knows: she is part of it and she must stay—on and on to some mysterious time when she will be Bee-Yay.³

Rose-gold-gray twilight in the courtyard. Mammoth pots of white rice steam and bubble over the earthen fireplaces in the kitchen, watched by active girls, who alternate between blowing the smoky fires and crushing yellow pulse on a flat stone beneath a stone cylinder which they roll between their hands. At one end of the courtyard two big sisters face one another over a stone urn of raw ragi, one bringing her brass-topped wooden pestle heavily down upon the reddish grain, while the other lifts her pestle high over her head in both hands, ready for the next blow; and so on, plump-plump, plump-plump, till the husks are off and the grain is transferred to another couple, who grind it into gray flour at a circular grindstone on the floor. A fifth is skillfully winnowing, and all are full of talk as they work. The children have just come in from the playground, to place their enamel plates and tumblers in long rows on the veranda; and, this done, are playing kummi, a rhythmical clap-dance, in a swaying circle about one of the palm trees.

Kanthy has investigated all these various occupations, and is distinctly bored. The courtyard that seemed so wide presses in upon her now, and she longs to go out, — out beyond the playground to the bazaar, — to see the wonderful lights and crowds of people. She sets out for the door in the rear wall. Big sisters, carrying in pots of water to the drinking-water tank, push her aside impatiently as she blocks the door, and she slips out. At the well she is hailed by Jeeva-Sister, whose temper is somewhat ruffled by the faults and failings of her ‘water-set.'

‘Where are you going, baby? To the bazaar! Listen to the child! These children from the refuse-jungle!’ With a tight grip on the shoulder, she propels Kanthy back through the door with a shake and a warning: ‘Listen to me. You are not in your jungle now, to run here and there like a wild goat. You must not go out of this courtyard after we come in from play. And if you run away to the bazaar, the Missie will be very angry, and she will beat you. She has a big stick for jungle children.'

Kanthy stands pouting on the yellow sand, gazing vengefully after JeevaSister as she rounds up her water-set to count the pots. Jeeva-Sister is a cross old thing! Listen to how she is scolding those big girls! And she was just lying! Kanthy wants to go to the bazaar and she has two annas, tied up in a corner of her jacket, to spend on sweet palagarams. This time she proceeds more carefully, edging her way out little by little, till the well is passed and the wide, tree-shaded compound lies before her. From beyond the Missies’ bungalow comes the sound of voices and laughter. Hidden behind the potted crotons that edge the bungalow veranda, Kanthy watches, openmouthed, the white man, — the Dhorai it is, who came once to Periya-chary, — and the two Missies, all of whom run shouting about with flat pieces of wood after a ball. The ball flics in among the pots, and Sherman Missie, hunting about for it in the gathering darkness, comes upon the little girl before she can run away. In her hand she holds the broad stick with which she hit the ball, and Kanthy remembers in terror Jeeva-Sister’s warning.

‘What are you doing here?’ the Missie is asking sternly, in her strange, jerky Tamil. ‘You should not be out here now. Go home at once! Go home! ’

Kanthy is away with a bound when released, and stands panting below the pillared veranda at the front of the school. From far inside, in the courtyard, comes the hum of voices and the sound of a bell; but the front of the building is silent and empty. Oh, to be back in there with the children, eating rice and pepper-water and ground pulse from her own new plate! Darkness is dropping swiftly about her. Kanthy is alone. Kanthy must go home! Just as Jeeva-Sister said, the Missie is angry, and the Missie has sent her home, and the Missie has a big stick to beat her if she does not go.

In terror she runs down the driveway to the white gate, and out upon the lonely road. In the distance tom-toms are beating; twinkling lights shine out from the bazaar, but that is not the way home. Where are Nynah and Amma? Far away in Periya-chary — thirty miles away in the ‘jungle.’ But the devils are about at night and they will catch little girls who stray alone. The underbrush at the side of the road rustles, a grazing donkey suddenly heaves out an agonized bray, and Kanthy runs screaming toward a glimmering light at the side of the road.

It is a hut, just like the home-hut; but the woman who comes out of the door is not Amma. A loud and friendly voice questions her; then she is pulled inside the hut, — ah, the familiar, smoky warmth of it! — and in another minute she is eating a handful of brown sugar, and telling the whole tale to the astonished old woman.

‘The Missie sent you away — at night? The white people do strange things sometimes, but I never heard the likes of this. She does not know our language and you have mistaken her. That is what it is.’

‘No, no!’ Kanthy assures her, between soils. ‘She told me to go home! And it is very far. And Nynah said I must stay at school and learn and learn till I am Bee-Yay. And he will be angry.’

‘Eat, eat! Do not cry!’ says the old woman soothingly; and soon Kanthy is playing happily enough with the wee grandchild who swings suspended in a long saree looped over the rafters. In time she consents to being carried back on the old woman’s hip; but as they approach the lighted bungalow, she buries her face in a fold of saree on the motherly shoulder, to shut out the Hashing of the Missie’s angry eyes.

’Fear not! Fear not!’ her protector assures her comfortably; yet at the sound of Sherman Missie’s surprised voice, she clings and hides her face all the more stubbornly. But, before she knows it, she is transferred to another hip, clasped tightly within the circle of another arm. She opens her eyes, blinking in the bright light of a big room, and finds that the arm is the Missie’s, and that the eyes so close to hers are not flashing at all, but full of laughter and tears, while she is squeezed again and again.

‘Poor little Kanthy!’ the Missie is saying over and over again, in her strange, jerky Tamil. ‘I did n’t recognize you at all. I said, “Go home,” it is true, but I did not mean home to Periya-chary. The school is your home now, of course. Don’t you know the children all call me “Amma,” because, when you are in Satthyapuram, school is home and I am Mother!’

‘Said I not so? Said I not those very words?’ exclaimed the old woman.

The foolish child looks abashed, but happy. They go over to the school. Long bars of light shine out to them from the study-hall windows. Inside, the children are singing, A distracted Matron Amma and Jeeva-Sister meet them on the threshold, with cries of relief, and the whole story is told again.

Night again in the courtyard. While the children are bustling about, spreading their mats out on the cool cement, — ‘quietly now, because the big sisters are studying,’ — in rides the lost Kanthy on Sherman Missie’s hip! She slips to the ground in the rush of the affectionate onslaught that follows, but keeps her grip upon the smooth hand that still holds her close.

‘ Children, children! ’ Sherman Missie is saying, as she bends down to gather them in, an armful at a time, — the jealous little tykes! —‘I think you forgot to tell Kanthy that this is home!

I think you forgot to show her that she is your little sister.’

‘No,’ murmurs Kanthy sleepily, an hour later, — in response to a solicitous whisper from one of the new ‘prends’ who has pulled her mat closer than the law allows, — ‘no, I don’t want to go home to Periya-chary. I am not a jungle child now. I am going to stay here till — till — I am Bee-Yay.’