The Sleeping Dictionary (7 page)

The doctor was now speaking a mix of Bengali and English that was hard for me to entirely understand, but I listened carefully, nodding all the while.

“The nurses say you cannot read or write.”

“That is true, but I want to learn.” Perhaps because I spoke so much to everyone and had learned a few English words, he might have expected more from me. This made me ashamed.

“I wish that for you, too, but what can be done? The collector from your locality says your village was destroyed. Your family has not reappeared anywhere. I cannot send you back.” As he spoke, he looked at the small board the nurses often carried. “It was suggested by Nurse Das that you be placed in a family seeking a bride. I don’t like child marriage. However, you have no skills to earn a living.”

How ignorant this doctor was: not knowing that children younger than me pulled weeds and herded cows. “If I have a tin pail, I can sell my water buffalo’s milk. Then nobody needs to care for me.”

“The water buffalo is currently stabled at the Lockwood School. But even if you had her, the countryside is not a safe place for a child to stay alone.”

“May I work here?” The tremble in my voice was real, for I was afraid of leaving the place that had brought me back to life. Despite its strong smells and the anguished cries of patients, it felt like a second home.

“We require education for our nurses and even their assistants.” He paused. “Perhaps that school would take you as a servant.”

There it was: that word,
school
. I’d heard it a lifetime ago from the jamidarni’s pink lips, a promise of something I never thought I could have. I looked at the book on the doctor’s desk. If I was in a school, I could learn to read books. To be like Nurse Gopal, who always had a novel in her pocket, or the Princess.

“Would you go?” the doctor asked.

“Mala is still there? Alive?” I knew Ingrej ate cows, which meant there was a chance they ate water buffalos, too. I could not bear to arrive and find her gone.

He looked at me sternly. “Of course she is, but you must not use her to run away. If you do, Miss Jamison will be so angry she may
never again help our patients. She is the headmistress and regularly brings us supplies. We are very grateful.”

“Yes, Doctor-saheb,” I said, though I was suddenly uneasy. A white devil woman had loomed over my feverish dreams. Would Miss Jamison look like her?

I’D ARRIVED AT the Keshiari Mission Hospital in a bedraggled scrap of a khadi sari, but I left in an English frock. The garment came from one of the boxes of donated clothes that had been packed closely around me in the tonga. The frock Nurse Gopal chose reached almost to my ankles, which she said was good because I would grow into it. It was a faded blue color like the midday sky, and some of the buttons for closing up the back were gone. I knew not to complain, but I did not like the idea of anyone seeing my skin.

Knickers were also provided by the Lockwood School charity. I was quite puzzled until Nurse Gopal explained the thigh-covering pants were to be worn under the frock and not shown to anybody. I was to wash them each night. As she helped me into my garments, she grumbled about the missing buttons. She vanished for a minute, then came back with a needle and two buttons. They were not the same color as the ones on the frock, but they were the right size for closing the gap that had left part of my back bare.

“I won’t ever be able to put on this dress without you,” I mumbled as she began working on the back of my dress. “I wish I could stay.”

Nurse Gopal turned me around so I could see her gentle expression. She said, “Pom, you are very lucky! For Doctor-saheb to convince the school to take you as a servant was a great thing for him to do. And Miss Jamison’s school is the finest in the area.”

“But her face . . .” When Miss Jamison had arrived an hour earlier, I recognized the wide solar topee with a mosquito-netting veil. When she removed it, I saw a long pale face wrinkled like old fruit. She was
the being from my nightmare. After she looked me over with strange green eyes, she said something to the doctor that I didn’t understand, but it sounded unfriendly.

“She looks that way because she is a serious woman. She rules over many teachers, and she teaches religion, too.” Nurse Gopal finished securing one button and started on the next.

“Oh! Is she a priest?” I had wondered about the plain beige dress that went down to the bottoms of her thick calves.

“No. The Ingrej will call her headmistress, but you will call her Burra-memsaheb.” Nurse Gopal’s words came fast, and her hold on my dress tightened. “She is the leader of the school. If you are obedient and work hard, they may keep you for quite some time. It is a blessing.”

“Please don’t leave me!” I said, sensing from the nurse’s fast stitching that I would soon be properly dressed and gone.

She snapped off the thread, knotted it, and turned me around. “I must. I am needed on the ward.”

As Nurse Gopal hurried off, I saw that two buttons were gone from her apron’s waistband: the buttons she had given up for me. I knew I should call out thanks, but I was afraid that if I opened my mouth, I would weep. So I stayed silent instead.

I NEVER HAD sat next to a man other than my father, so I was anxious when the driver called Abbas indicated I should join him on the front driver’s bench of the tonga. The burra-memsaheb, Miss Jamison, was already comfortably settled behind us on her own seat that had a cushion. Overhead, a cloth awning shielded her from sun and rain.

“Indians stay together, Ingrej in the back. It is the way, Beti,” Abbas said in Bengali. I climbed up, trying not to look at Nurse Gopal standing outside watching after me, lest I cry. I found that Abbas had placed three brass tiffin boxes between us, making a small sort of
barrier. He told me it was my job to keep these boxes safe. I was glad to have something to do and kept my hands on them.

Abbas was about my baba’s age, but a little bit plump. He wore a long cotton kurta that strained against his belly, pajama trousers of the same color, and a small crocheted cap. I knew that this clothing meant he was Muslim, another reason I should not have been sitting beside him. But the nurses had told me that he saved my life, and he had already called me daughter.

“Abbas-chacha, I must thank you for what you did.” Consciously, I used the Muslim honorific for
uncle
, because what he had done made him much more to me than a stranger.

“I was only following Allah’s command.” Abbas had a warm voice, and the skin around his eyes crinkled as he smiled at me. “Every life has value; it was my duty to stop. Normally, we would not have been driving that way. We changed our route because of puja celebrations happening in some villages that day. The memsaheb does not like to see such things.”

“I thank your Allah then.” I paused, wanting to say more. “But also you for listening to him.”

Abbas raised his eyebrows and said softly, “Once you learn English, the burra-memsaheb is the one who needs proper thanking. It was only with her agreement that I could carry you to hospital.”

I glanced behind and saw that the strange Englishwoman was reading a book. She could have left me to die but had not. I turned back to Abbas and whispered, “I will always be afraid to speak to her!”

“They will like you at Lockwood School then,” Abbas-chacha said in a joking way. “Quiet is the rule. Don’t ask about your pay; for young ones like you, Miss Rachael keeps it safe. It is only a few rupees each month, anyway.”

Not ever having held a coin as valuable as one rupee, this news did not disturb me. But something else did. “Do you stay at the school?”

“No, I live in town with my wife.”

“And how many children?” He struck me as being a very funny, kind father. Different from my own, but probably just as good.

He shook his head. “My wife is a good woman, but we were cursed—we have no offspring. We live alone!”

“Oh,” I said, unable to imagine this. “Nurse Gopal said many of the girls sleep at the school. Have they lost their homes, too?”

“Not at all. They are Europeans,” he said, and at my blank expression, he laughed. “Ingrej and children from other countries are called Europeans. They often fall sick in Bengal; this school was built one hundred years earlier because it is on high ground believed to have better air.” He was describing the countries in a place called Europe that the foreigners came from when Miss Jamison’s low, grumbling voice came from behind.

“Yes, yes, Burra-memsaheb!” Abbas switched to English and his pitch became higher, and he began bobbing his head as the headmistress continued in her address. He answered her in that high, falsely happy voice after a bit; I could not understand any of it except for the name I’d told him, Pom. The burra-memsaheb spoke again, and then Abbas told her “Yes, yes!” and returned his gaze forward.

The horses picked up speed with a flick of his reins. Under his breath he said to me, “She says your name is too strange. From now on you shall be Sarah. She wants me to tell you it is a good woman’s name from the Christian holy book.”

“Say-ruh.” I pronounced the strange, sharp-sounding name the way Abbas had done and repeated it to myself silently for the next several miles. I should have minded losing my name, but the thought of getting a fresh name to go with my new clothing seemed fitting.

We made a stop in some hours’ time for lunch, and it turned out each one of us had our very own tiffin box. After that, there was more driving. There were fewer rice paddies here than in Johlpur, and many more fields of grain. At last, the land changed a little, with some villages and a big road leading to a town called Midnapore. But we turned off in a different direction, up a long, slowly rising hill.

“A sign for the school.” Abbas pointed to some English letters printed on a white board. Below it were two crossed strips of wood painted gold that he said was the symbol of their religion. I looked at the cross, trying to quell the rapid beating of my heart. We were here, and the wide, tall building ahead was like nothing I’d ever seen before: built not of mud or wood but something entirely foreign.

“The school is built of bricks.” Abbas-chacha seemed to sense my unspoken question. “They are strong enough to resist wind and rain and everything else. The Ingrej sometimes call a person a brick; he is one with a determined, hardworking manner who does not complain.”

I nodded, understanding why he was telling me this. It was how I should behave.

Two bearers in green costumes stood in front of the school’s grand sculpted brass doors. Then two Ingrej girls stepped out the front door toward us. They are here to meet me, I thought with some excitement, but their eyes slid past as if Abbas and I weren’t present.

“Oh, Miss Jamison,” the tallest girl called out, waving a book in her hand. Then she spewed many more English words I couldn’t understand. I stared at her face and that of her companion: not colorless like Miss Jamison’s but a bright pink. Both girls wore neckties like Englishmen with white blouses and dark green skirts almost as long as Miss Jamison’s. Their legs were shielded by thick gray stockings, and their feet were covered in heavy black shoes that tied with laces. I curled my toes, feeling self-conscious about my rough bare feet.

The bearers came forward to help Miss Jamison off the tonga, and then she went inside with the girls. I stayed on the cart bench as Abbas drove us around the school building and past a large garden bordered by square hedges. Inside the hedges were round clipped bushes of flowers; a thin old man moved between the plants, pouring water over them. Beyond the flower garden lay a field of short grass; horses were skipping around it with girls dressed in men’s trousers and jackets riding on top.

Abbas drove the tonga straight into an open building where there were other horses, carts, and carriages. A group of men who had been lounging inside the darkness came forward to detach the horses from the cart’s harness. As two workers led the horses off for a drink, Abbas introduced me to everyone as the new house girl, Sarah.

“Hindu or Muslim?” one of the stable hands asked, looking me up and down.

“Christian,” Abbas said quickly. “Come, Little Sarah, I will show you the animal you have been missing.”