the fall of 1932, Fuse and I walked through the near-deserted campus of Theodore Roosevelt University, in Richmond, Virginia.
We were third-year students in the medical school and would have been at the top of our class–had there been a class. Two days earlier, the two of us sat in the rigid wooden chairs in front of Dr. Octavia Pompeii’s desk. She was chancellor of the medical school, and she looked as if she carried the weight of the entire university on her tiny shoulders. Her beautiful red hair was thinning, and during the past two years, streaks of gray had crept into the curls from her temples. Dark circles saddened her eyes.
Dr. Pompeii took a deep breath and let out a sigh. “Raji, Fuse, I have bad news.”
Fuse and I glanced at each other. We knew the university was in dire financial straits, just as all the schools were. Faculty and students had been drifting away ever since the crash of 1929.
“We’re closing the medical school,” Dr. Pompeii said.
“Oh, no,” I said. “Why?”
She toyed with a yellow pencil for a moment. “We’ve lost seventy percent of our funding and enrollment for next semester is next to nothing.”
Fuse was quiet, but I knew he was in shock, just as I was. We had talked about this very event over the past semester, but I don’t think we really believed it would happen. No one spoke for a while.
“Dr. Pompeii,” Fuse finally said. “What will you do?”
My old pal Fuse, always thinking of others first.
“Strangely enough,” she said, “I’m going back to school.”
“That’s wonderful, Dr. Pompeii,” I said. “Where will you go?”
“Cornell University. I’m going to study ortho-pedics.” She looked through some papers on her desk. “I’ve prepared a list of ten schools where I want both of you to apply. I’ve mailed letters of recommendation, along with your transcripts, to all of them. I have no idea what the scholarship situation is, but you have to try.”
“Dr. Pompeii,” Fuse said. “I don’t think…” He paused to look at me. “I don’t think any of them have money for scholarships.”
“You don’t know that. If none of these ten will take you in, then we’ll find ten more. There’s no one in this country more deserving of scholarships than you and Raji.”
I took the list of schools. “Thank you so much, Dr. Pompeii,” I said, then stood. “We’ll get right to work on these.”
Dr. Pompeii rose from her chair and reached across the desk to take my hand. “I wish both of you all the luck in the world.” She held her other hand out to Fuse.
“Thank you, Dr. Pompeii,” Fuse said. “Thank you for everything you’ve done for us.”
* * * * *
I don’t know why, but our rambling walk took us to the nearby campus of Octavia Pompeii Academy. I thought about that day in August 1926, when I had joined the junior class. Fuse didn’t finish the competition in the top fifty, but he was invited to attend when one of the other students had to leave due to a death in his family.
Now the once lively academy was a depressing sight, with the windows and doors boarded up and weeds overgrowing the sidewalks and tennis courts. We stopped in front of Hannibal House to watch a trio of crows pecking at the disintegrating parapet above the door.
“I wrote a letter to Mom,” Fuse said, keeping his eyes on the crows.
“You’re leaving, aren’t you?”
He nodded, still not looking at me. I turned to walk along the sidewalk, watching the cracks in the crumbling cement. He walked beside me.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
He stopped to face me, and I saw that crooked grin I knew so well.
“I’ve always wanted to see India.”
“Me, too.” I returned his grin.
It had been fifteen years since I was taken from my home in Calcutta. Thinking back over my life in America, I truly believe I should be thankful to those thugs who grabbed me, along with twenty other girls and young women, from the streets in 1912. We were shipped to New York in the hold of a cattle boat like so much livestock, then sold off to become indentured servants. After my thirteenth birthday, I ran away from the house in Queens where I had been held. Two days later, I ended up sleeping in a barn in rural Virginia.
How fortunate for me that the barn belonged to the Fusilier family. Fuse, who was a boy of fourteen at the time, discovered me the next morning, then I spent the most wonderful year of my life with him and his family. Marie Fusilier took me in as if I were her own daughter.
“I should write to Mama Marie, too.” I took Fuse’s hand.
“I told her you were going with me.”
“Well, how presumptuous of you.”
“Uh-huh.”
That night, Fuse and I packed what little gear we had and hitched a ride to New York City on the back of a potato truck, then we walked along the docks of lower Manhattan.
Two days later, we shipped out on the Borboleta Nova, under the command of Captain Sinaway. The Borboleta was a beautiful new freighter only six months out of the shipyards at Lisbon. She was bound for Calcutta with a cargo of dynamite, and since neither Fuse nor I had any sailing experience, the captain assigned Fuse to the engine room, shoveling coal, and I went to work as a deckhand. We didn’t care what we had to do—we just wanted to escape. From what, I don’t think either of us knew.
I was very apprehensive about seeing my family, especially my mother, Hajini. Seven years earlier, she had written to me at the Fusilier farm, informing me that she had arranged a marriage for me. This was quite a shock, at age fourteen to learn my mother had betrothed me to a man of forty-seven. Mama Marie Fusilier was equally surprised. She told me if a man married a child in America, he would go to jail.
Marie helped me write to my mother in India, explaining that I would like to wait for marriage until I was at least eighteen, then I wanted to pick my own husband.
My mother wrote back, telling me I was being disrespectful and this sort of behavior was not allowed. And in addition, she and my father had purchased passage for me on a ship leaving America for Calcutta. The ticket would arrive soon.
The ticket did indeed come to me in the mail. I sent it back, telling my mother I was old enough to make my own decisions. After that, it was four months before I heard from her again. This time, she said my grandmother was dying and I should come to see her as soon as possible, but she made no mention of paying my passage. I wrote back, saying if I had enough money, I would pay my way to India to see grandmother, but it would be a roundtrip ticket.
It was a year before I received another letter, in which my mother gave me news of all the family. She included many details about my nieces and nephews, and she said my grandmother was still alive, but growing weaker. I wrote back to her about my progress at the academy and said I planned to go to medical school.
Five
