The Dogs Were Rescued (And So Was I) (5 page)

I awoke at four a.m. and was unable to return to sleep. Instead, I got up and tiptoed out of the room, taking my iPad with me. I sipped my coffee alone in the living room. Chris’s email telling me Seamus was doing well and seemed to be improving helped my mood. It wouldn’t be like Chris to make that up or try to fool me, so I relaxed a bit. Then I went to the bathroom and clipped my fingernails down to nothing.

We’d been told lice were a problem at Mother Teresa’s, and in order to avoid getting the lice caught in our fingernails, we should cut them as short as possible. My nails after chemo had more ridges, were weaker, and frequently broke or tore. After changing my diet, that was finally improving, but I still willingly clipped my nails. Never had there been better motivation to give up vanity.

I showered quickly, as we’d been told to do, and I remembered to preserve the water in the large bucket kept in the shower stall in case the water ran out. I was also careful to keep my mouth closed and not swallow any of the water for the same reason we were told to eat only cooked food and fruit we peeled ourselves. Delhi belly is the more aggressive Indian cousin of Montezuma’s revenge.

I couldn’t dry my hair—the noise would have awakened the house (they all didn’t report to their volunteer positions until nine or ten a.m.), and I couldn’t find an outlet near a mirror anyway. I hadn’t counted on the wet weather—my hair wouldn’t dry in the damp air. Finally, I opted to use the blow-dryer quickly, in the far corner of the living room. I plugged it in, flipped the switch, and aimed at the back of my neck. The hot air swept over my shoulder in a comforting rush and then
Pop!
Sparks flew, the scent of burned hair wafted, and the dryer stopped. The puff of smoke and the dim light fixture confirmed that I had blown the fuse.
That
figures.
I pulled my hair into a damp ponytail.

I dressed in the traditional Indian attire I’d purchased the day before: blue
salwar
pants, a long purple
kameez
tunic, and a blue, purple, and orange scarf covering my head. When there was enough daylight in the room, I looked at myself in the mirror. I was hardly recognizable even to myself. I looked like I was the one dying. (I could have been mistaken for a resident at Mother Teresa’s.) The bright color of the clothing washed out my pale face, and while the bags under my small, bloodshot eyes should not have been a surprise, they were. Tendrils of my limp, damp hair escaped the ponytail and stuck to my cheek. I applied tinted moisturizer, blush, a little eyeliner and mascara, and finally some lip gloss. Nothing helped. I made it to the office apartment in time to let Sahil know about the blown fuse and to gulp down a cup of chai tea specially made without the milk. The other three volunteers for Mother Teresa’s—Mary, Lisa, and Helene—were also there, and each looked more fresh and excited than I looked or felt. They also had dry hair.

The drive took a little over half an hour. Plenty of time to view the streets of Delhi as they came to life early in the morning. As I expected, cows were everywhere. But so were dogs, monkeys, pigs, chickens, and goats. And massive swarms of humans and cars. Everybody and everything moving quickly and crowded together. There was chaos, and yet a vaguely discernible rhythm. Our driver, Ashwani, played a Shiva chants CD, providing the perfect background music for our journey. Mary chatted, on and on, excited and nervous. I was glad to see I wasn’t the only one with a bit of trepidation, though mine was expressed differently.

I stayed quiet, tired, and observant, wondering what we might be doing once we arrived, what the patients would be like, while simultaneously questioning myself.
What
was
I
doing
here? Could I possibly do this?
And, of course, again the answer to my rhetoric didn’t matter. I saw the large sign outside the heavy iron gates of a private compound. We’d arrived. I’d be spending the morning with the Sisters of Mercy and the destitute and dying.

The gates opened, and we drove down the long driveway.

Even though the sky was overcast and drizzling, the place was surprisingly beautiful. Wildflowers were abundant, and the wall down the right side of the drive was covered in flowering vines. And I could see there were animals—chickens, a goat, and most surprising of all, peacocks. My immediate impression was one of peace, not distress. We came in off the crazy, hurly-burly streets to a serene calm, and the change was immediate.

Ashwani parked the car and we tumbled out, adding our bright clothing to the wildflower scenery in the midst of the lifting fog. “You will meet Mother Superior first. Here.” He pointed to the smaller of the two buildings.

There was a perfunctory welcome, where we learned each of the sisters included “Teresa” in their name, which would not be confusing at all.
Ahem.
We were quickly taken to the second building—a much larger structure built around a center courtyard with locked gates. This was the residents’ building. The Home for the Destitute and Dying.

Excited exclamations of
“Didi!”
—the Hindi word for “older sister” and a term of respect—followed us as we walked. We smiled and waved as we hurried to keep up with the sister. Some of the residents were sitting in the courtyard, wrapped in jewel-toned shawls against the chill that still hung in the morning air. Others were washing the floors, which caused me to note, almost immediately, how very clean the place was. Some approached us, wanting to hold our hands, walk with us, or simply look at us. Most were smiling. Some were laughing.

This was not what I had expected. This was not a hospital. There was no medicinal smell, other than the floor cleaner; people were up and walking, talking; there was no screaming, no crying, and there was great beauty in the simplicity of the place. The beauty was only emphasized by the peacock strutting through the breezeway. I’d seen far worse when, as an estate planning attorney, I’d visited clients in nursing homes or assisted-living facilities.

But as we approached the living area, that changed. Four women, two who seemed very young, were in wheelchairs, lined up against the wall. Two of them were severely disabled—cerebral palsy, I guessed. Two women were still in bed, one crying out and the other rocking back and forth. I froze, immediately assuming things would get worse; we’d walk deeper and deeper into a sad, depressing hospital atmosphere.

Yet the rest of the room had the same simple tranquillity as the courtyard. The room housed beds for fifty-eight of the seventy residents. The cots were lined up in rows, each with a brightly colored, matching bed covering and pillow. Most of the beds were made, but not all of them. Diffused sunlight streamed in from the windows on the far wall, casting a warm golden hue across the beds. It looked comfortable, homey. And that is not a small feat for a room with fifty-eight metal cots.

Before we could take it all in, the sister was gone.

As the four of us stood, slack-jawed and immobile, trying to conceive of what we should possibly be doing, a young, smiling girl approached and grabbed my hand. She pulled me down the row of cots. “Come, come,” she was saying. Or, at least, I thought that’s what she was saying.

Still smiling, she dropped my hand and stretched her right arm out toward a partially made bed. I could see that she had limited use of her left arm, which was bent and tucked up near her chest, her hand hanging limp.
Ah, okay. Make the bed.
This I could do. Well…maybe. My own bed only gets made maybe twice a week (and I’m exaggerating that number.). But this was a small cot and it was something to do, so I made the bed. Or, I thought I made the bed. There seemed to be an extra pillowcase.

The young woman laughed and said something, presumably in Hindi, that I could not understand. But she was clearly amused at my efforts, so I smiled as well. I held up the extra pillowcase. She nodded.
Hmmm…
I looked around to see if there was a pillow nearby missing a pillowcase. The bed next to hers was also unmade, so I moved to make that bed. She quickly grabbed my arm and, laughing now, shook her head no. She took the pillowcase from my hand and put it back on her bed, and then, through a series of hand movements on her part, bad guesses on mine, and with much laughter, I was able to figure out that the extra case was to be folded and placed under her pillow. I did as I was so comically instructed. She then guided me to the next bed, and the process started over again—though now she helped by pulling up covers, handing me the extra pillowcase, and always laughing.

I was able to determine my new friend’s name, Ranjana. My name was, of course, easy for all of them. Ranjana seemed to have a pretty good grasp of English as well—she (or her family) may have been destitute, but she was not dying. Watching her, I realized that in the United States, she likely would have been mainstreamed into public school. I wondered what her story was but, of course, did not ask. Instead, I followed her again as she led me to the front of the room.

Sitting on a bamboo mat, I drew in coloring books with the ladies, helped Ranjana and one other young woman learn to pronounce the English names of the animals in the coloring books, and smiled until it hurt. Later I walked about with some of the women, arm in arm as they seemed to prefer, and periodically I huddled with my fellow volunteers to wonder if we were doing this right. We gathered in the smaller room, east of the large dormitory room we’d been in. This smaller room had twelve cots and a small office space. We later surmised that the higher functioning women were housed in this room.

It didn’t seem like much, what we’d been doing. And it seemed too easy—other than the uncomfortable feeling of naïveté and the language barrier, which was less than I imagined. There were several women who knew enough English to converse. I was thankful to learn this as, despite my good intentions when I applied for the trip, I had not managed to learn a single Hindi word beyond
n
amaste
, which I, like most middle-aged, suburban American women, had learned in yoga class.

When the sun came out, we all went out to the courtyard where Ranjana showed us the balls and paddles and a plastic cricket set. The courtyard wasn’t large enough for any organized game, especially with the number of women who joined us. But playing catch and “batting” a ball back and forth worked well. The fresh air, the movement, the simple joy of playing momentarily relieved my grief and fatigue.

The spicy, fragrant scent of lunch began to drift from the kitchen to the courtyard. The sisters reappeared at eleven thirty, and the women began to line up for lunch. We were handed plates of food and spoons. Then each of us was guided by one of the residents to one of the women in wheelchairs. With a few hand motions indicating we were to spoon-feed them, we were again left to figure it out.

I don’t have kids. I don’t recall feeding kids. My parents are only seventy years old and quite able-bodied, so I’ve never had to assist with their care and feeding. I have, however, fed myself on more than one occasion, and this I fervently hoped would be sufficient experience. I leaned over the plate, scooped up a spoonful (
Enough? Too much? Should I mix the items?
), and moved the spoon toward the young woman’s waiting mouth. She chewed, drooled, chewed, and opened her mouth again. I spooned. We repeated the motions unchanged until another of the residents came by and moved the plate in my hand so that it was farther under my charge’s chin. Then she motioned for me to squat or kneel down, and when I did, I realized how tense my back was from standing over the wheelchair. I had a lot to learn about some very simple things. It was too soon to be patting myself on my sore back for my one day of volunteering.

I was quiet on the drive home, lost in my thoughts as the others chatted. All I’d done was spend four hours playing catch, making a few beds, coloring in a book, naming animals, and feeding a disabled young woman. I was ridiculously proud of myself for having completed the first day with no horrible mistakes or wildly uncomfortable moments, but I was also aware that I’d been quite tense and nervous. The point of the trip was to get me out of my comfort zone, but I hadn’t expected that to happen on the first day of volunteering, nor over such simple actions. I rested my head on the window and watched as the Delhi street scenes unfolded.

It was easy to do. We were moving slowly, much more slowly than we had during our drive in that morning. I watched for the animals—the cows, the pigs, and particularly the dogs. Piles of trash were deposited along the roadsides, and the cows and pigs rummaged through them at will. Cows meandered across the streets, and dogs dashed in and out of the slow-moving traffic, nimble and quick. I’m an animal lover through and through—all animals, but of course dogs in particular. And each dog on the streets—and there were many—brought my thoughts back to Seamus. These dogs did not look healthy, nor did they look particularly sick; they weren’t fat and they weren’t thin. None were any discernible breed, and they were generally all medium-sized. The males were not neutered. Some were injured, some were still puppies, and some were nursing mothers with a few (never a lot) of puppies nearby. I wondered about their care and how long they survived on the streets. And did they get cancer? If they did, would anyone know? Again, I choked back tears—tears for them, tears for Seamus, and tears of exhaustion. I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep.

Our driver leaned on his horn, as did every other driver in India, but to no visible avail. We did not arrive back at CVV home base until one thirty p.m. There was no time to head to our apartments and freshen up. No time for me to check emails or text messages to see how Seamus was doing. We had to eat lunch and be ready for the two o’clock lecture. Luckily, for us, if not for her, Lisa had a room in the apartment that was also used as the main kitchen and dining room by the entire group. The four of us dashed into her room and bathroom to wash our hands, remove our head scarves, and run the electric delousing comb through our hair. Prior to that moment, I did not know there was such a thing as a delousing comb. This was not exactly what I meant by “out of my comfort zone,” but it was certainly one version.