Tiger Heart by Katrell Christie

Author:Katrell Christie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: tiger, heart, unexpected, adventures, make, difference, Darjeeling, learned, fate, fortitude, finding, family, world, away, book, books, katrell christie, shannon mccaffrey
Publisher: Health Communications, Inc.
Published: 2015-09-14T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 11

THE HOUSE

ON UP-UP

ROAD

“You’ve always had the power,

my dear, you just had to

learn it for yourself.”

—Glinda the Good Witch, The Wizard of Oz

I am back in Darjeeling. Years have passed since my first trip to the orphanage. I’ve been to India dozens of times now. This country has become familiar to me, and I have nearly as many friends here as I do back in Atlanta.

The project has grown.

We are sitting around the table for dinner. A mound of rice and a scoop of spicy potatoes are piled on metal plates. An individual bowl of yellow dal sits on the side. Everyone has their small cup of water. But I have a big bottle that I take swigs from throughout the meal so I can survive the spicy bites. They find this funny.

The walls are cream-colored but our drapes are pink with big, darker pink flowers. One table isn’t enough at this point, so I’ve bought a second, and we’ve lined them up, end to end.

At dinner we go around the table and each girl volunteers one thing she learned that day. There are twelve of us now, including Nisha, our housemother, and me. We hear stories of a new bird species, weather reports, kind gestures from school friends. As we wind our way around the long table, Rabani—an orphan whose parents have both died from tuberculosis in the last two years—takes her turn. She is impish, bubbly, and scary smart.

“Today, our teacher told us about the number zero, which has no worth,” she says.

“But put it next to another number, and it makes that number important. The more zeros you add, the bigger the number gets. So know that if you are feeling like a zero, you do have great worth with teamwork.”

We have two honey-colored cats that you can find curled up on someone’s pink bed. The girls named them Biscuit and Gravy in honor of my Southern roots. Most of the bedsheets, comforters, and curtains are pink with fringe or sequins or ruffles. The girly decor is their choice. I want them to have some nice things that are their own. All the girls have photos or drawings from school taped around their beds. Some have different religious figures—Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim, Christian. We don’t discriminate. This project is about education, not religion.

The house we rent has three bedrooms, a living room, a long dining room, and a detached kitchen. We have a patio out front where all the girls sit and study on rare sunny days. We have some small plants in clay pots we maintain for the landlord.

The house is tan, with a big yellow door, but it looks pink when the sunlight hits it just right. It sits at the top of a hill on what the locals call the Up-Up road.

It’s been a long journey to get here. It hasn’t been easy.

After some trial and error, I figured out that the best way to keep a steady stream of money flowing into

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