40
HOPE
“I’m going to visit a place I’d love for you to see,” Celina Aunty told me the next day. “So you’re excused from attending lessons.”
I shrugged like it didn’t matter one way or another, but I felt myself flush with pleasure. She’d chosen me to go somewhere with her, as a special treat.
She drove us to a white bungalow, three stories high, an oasis of calm in the midst of all the noise and bustle. Celina Aunty smiled as she parked the car. “This is a school for children like Rukku.”
“Children like Rukku?” Anger spurted out of me. “No one’s like Rukku!” I yelled. “No one!”
“Viji? I put that very badly.” Celina Aunty bit her lip. “There’s no one in the world like your sister. I didn’t mean those words to sound the way they did. I’m sorry.”
I screwed up my eyelids, tight, so no tears would fall out.
“I have a sister, Viji. A sister with a disability.”
My eyes flew open.
“We never were as poor as the two of you, but we weren’t rich either. She came to this school. It’s a school for young people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.”
For a while I said nothing, but her words were a key, opening my locked heart. “Where’s your sister now, Celina Aunty?”
“She works at a print shop. She used to have her own little place at the other end of the city, but recently she got married and moved farther away. We meet as often as we can.”
“Will you take me to see your sister sometime?”
“Sure. Now, are you ready to go in, Viji?”
“Yes. And I’m sorry for yelling.”
Everyone in the building greeted us with smiles and vanakkams. Everyone seemed to know—and like—Celina Aunty.
We were shown into an office. Sitting behind a desk, beneath a picture of the Hindu God Ganesha, was a wiry young woman. She sprang up and pressed her palms together in greeting.
“Viji, this is the director,” Celina Aunty said. “Dr. Dhanam.”
“Call me Dhanam Aunty, Viji. Come. Let me show you around.”
We followed Dhanam Aunty into a sunny, high-ceilinged room. We stayed by the door, peeking in.
A boy around my age was sprawled across the floor, drawing on a large sheet of paper. A little girl of maybe seven or eight was playing with colored blocks. In the center of the room, a few children of all ages sat on straw mats on the floor listening to a silver-haired teacher who sat cross-legged, reading aloud from a picture book. Some of the children looked up at us curiously.
You could have been among them. You could have been here, at this school, learning from teachers who’d pay proper attention to you. A silent flood of tears rushed down my cheeks.
No one seemed to notice I was crying, except the girl with blocks, who marched over to me.
“Don’t cry,” she commanded. “Come and play with me.”
“Thanks,” I said to her, trying to swallow my sobs and hold my voice steady. “I’ll come and play for a bit.”
“Why are you thanking me?” Her forehead wrinkled in confusion. “I didn’t give you anything.”
“I was sad. You made me feel better.”
“I made you better?” Her face glowed like a moon, and her plump cheeks dimpled. “I made her better,” she announced to Dhanam Aunty. “Who is she, anyway?”
“This is Viji,” Celina Aunty said.
“I’m Lalitha. Come.” Lalitha took me by the hand and led me to a shelf full of painting supplies.
“Let’s paint,” she decided. “We must put newspaper on the floor so it doesn’t get messy.”
The two of us spread out the paper, and we started working. At least, I did. Lalitha selected a brush and chewed on its end thoughtfully.
I dipped my brush in the paint and tried to draw a yellow circle for the sun. Lalitha was watching, which made me nervous, because I wasn’t the best painter.
The lines I drew for the sun’s rays came out pretty wobbly. I dropped a bit of blue paint on the bottom by accident, so I smeared it and made a river. Across it, I painted a bridge. On the bridge I painted four stick figures.
“What’s that?” Lalitha put her finger on one of the figures.
“A person,” I said.
“You are a person. I am a person.” She wagged her finger at me. “That is not a person.”
“It’s the best I can do. What are you going to paint?”
“I can paint well,” Lalitha said. “Watch.” She swished her brush around on the paper, making a great yellow blob in the top right corner.
“Is that the sun?” I asked.
“No, Viji. The sun is outside. This is just a big yellow dot.”
“Right.” I smiled.
So we painted dots and lines and all kinds of shapes. We made a mess and had just as much fun cleaning up, skating on the wet floor after we’d mopped.
“That was the best painting class ever,” I told Lalitha when it was time for me to leave. “Thanks.”
“Come back,” she said. “I’ll teach you some more.”
On the way home, I asked Celina Aunty, “Can I go back there again? Maybe work at the school?”
“Sure,” Celina Aunty said. “I may be able to arrange for you to assist the teachers when they need an extra hand. Maybe help with reading or writing or art? And maybe someday you could even teach there.”
Since you’d gone, I hadn’t given a thought to my dream of becoming a teacher. Celina Aunty’s words made my dream glimmer again. Faint and far away, but not lost.