Glorious Boy. Aimee Liu

took a little wooden ferry back to Ross Island and tried to put the prisoners’ cries behind them as they walked to the top of the ridge. There they landed in front of the low red gate to the Civil Surgeon’s bungalow.

      Shep flipped the latch, and they stepped through to a vivid green lawn ringed with coconut palms, birds of paradise, flaming heliconia, and orchids of every description. The bungalow itself had freshly whitewashed walls and a wide triangular red tin roof with gables at either end. A deep columned veranda ran the length of the house, overlooking the sea.

      It was late in the afternoon. Thick stripes of jade-green ocean laddered to meet the sky. The air had a queer golden vitality, like jazz music made visible.

      “We’re home,” Shep said, as if testing the gods.

      “We’re home,” Claire answered, taking his hand.

      “Welcome to paradise, my love.”

      The following morning, about an hour after Shep ventured across the yard to report for duty at the hospital, the servants arrived, shyly peering in the front door. Som was a careworn middle-aged man with a trim salt-and-pepper mustache and slicked-down hair emblazoned by a white streak over one temple. He seemed as reticent as his much younger wife, Jina, was bold, her confident warmth somehow enhanced by her red-stained teeth. Shep had hired the couple sight unseen, on the recommendation of his predecessor, who described them both as island-born and nominal Christians, descended from convicts but not criminals themselves and therefore worthy of trust.

      When Claire invited them inside, Som bobbled his head in that Indian way that she’d learned could mean Yes, Good, I understand, I’m pretending to understand, If you wish, If I must, or We shall see. Jina’s broad smile, however, spoke to Claire more directly. She held her muslin sari over her head and whispered to her husband in Urdu, the lingua franca of Port Blair.

      Claire liked them for their sweetness toward each other and for their curiosity about her and Shep. It was decided that Jina could manage the house and cooking. Som, whose English was almost nonexistent, would handle gardening and maintenance. They’d live in the two-room servant quarters out behind the kitchen.

      Only after all that was settled did Som beckon his daughter from the shadows where she’d been waiting across the yard. His and Jina’s reference had not mentioned a child, but after her initial surprise, Claire found herself enchanted.

      Naila was a very petite eight-year-old, with dark eyes almost too large for the delicate face that framed them. As she took in her new memsaab’s wrinkled shorts, the unpacked bags and parlor furnishings of the civil surgeon’s bungalow, she seemed both shy and precocious, amused and critically attentive.

      “But what will she do for school?” Claire asked. It was the first question that came to mind. Education was not a foregone conclusion for girls in India, and there was no school on Ross Island, since any European children here had long ago been shipped “home,” but she could hardly accept this bright little girl not being educated on her watch.

      Jina pushed the child back a step and signaled her to lower her eyes. “Aberdeen school on mainland, Memsaab.”

      “By boat each day?”

      “Certainly, Mem.”

      “But who will take her?”

      “She herself, Mem.”

      Claire, at once relieved and impressed by this plan, smiled at Naila, who clearly understood every word. She looked less Indian than either of her parents, more Burmese, or possibly Andamanese. Her hair was a glossy black and springy, cut nearly as short as Claire’s own. Her nose was broad and flat, a little ungainly, but her figure was as fragile as her mother’s was full, her eyes behind their long, thick lashes as lively as her father’s, her skin a lovely pekoe color. Not pretty, exactly, but obviously perceptive.

      When Claire put her palms together in an awkward salaam, Naila replied with a curtsy.

      In the days that followed, Claire invited Naila to help shelve the library and was pleased to see the girl eagerly leafing through each book before placing it. She seemed particularly fascinated by the photographic plates in The Andaman Islanders. Apparently, she’d never encountered any native Andamanese herself, though one picture, she said, resembled the layabout Porubi in Aberdeen Bazaar. “But,” she added, “Porubi at least is keeping his clothing on.”

      Claire noted the disparagement in her voice. She wondered where it stemmed from.

      “What is this book, Mem?”

      “It’s the story of the people who lived in these islands before you or I or even your parents were born, Naila. The people whose ancestors came here first. They still live in the interior, you know. Have you never seen any yourself?”

      “The naked people.”

      There was that same disapproval, but this time flatly matter-of-fact. Claire asked, “Is that what you’ve been taught to call them?”

      Naila swayed her head back and forth like her father. She told Claire that everyone in Port Blair—Europeans and locals alike—viewed the naked people as pests because they were strange and dirty and ugly to see, uncivilized. When the British began to build Port Blair, they fought the largest of the tribes in the Battle of Aberdeen and nearly wiped out the Great Andamanese entirely. Teacher Sen said the surviving forest people still raided settlements and plantations up north, and some of the most remote islands had tribes that were said to be cannibals. Most of the naked people still used spears and arrows, however, so they were no match for British guns. The girl wrinkled her nose at the picture of an aboriginal couple seated rigidly, perhaps ritualistically, back to back and staring in opposite directions. “They are not looking real.”

      Eventually, Claire would deduce that Naila’s father himself had a grandmother from the forest, but she’d died before he was born, and he and Jina never mentioned her, instead instructing Naila to say that she had Tamil ancestors, dark people from south India being racially preferable to the indigenous Andamanese, and “local-born” designating a class meaningfully distinct from “native.” Prejudice in British India, Claire would learn, was actively transferable and widely embraced.

      She persevered with Naila. “The Andamanese tribes have lived here for thousands of years. They’ve survived in the forest without schools or farms or motor cars. Without hospitals—or prisons, either.” She tapped the book the girl was still holding. “The man who wrote this is called an anthropologist. It’s his job to learn how they survived.”

      “Are you antha-ro-po—”

      “Not yet. But I’m trying to figure out how to become one, and I hope the Andamanese can help me.” She glanced up. “And you, Naila? What do you want to be when you grow up?”

      The question caught the girl off guard. Her grandfather had trained as a chemist before his arrest, but as the son of a convict, her father was forbidden to receive a proper education. He often told Naila that she was different, and India, too, would soon be different. Great leaders like Gandhiji were working to persuade the British to send the freedom fighters back to their home states, and once that happened, their local-born children and grandchildren also would be allowed to leave these islands and make a different future for themselves.

      In Calcutta there is a street called College Street. Someday, daughter, you will go there to study and you will make us so proud. And her mother agreed, You go to school, you learn with all your might, and one day you will cross that water. Jina would fling her arm at the horizon as if scattering seed. Daughter, you—

      Naila never let her mother finish. She was drawn to maps and books about the world beyond the sea, but she’d never spent even one night away from Port Blair or apart from her parents. She didn’t want to become someone different than she was, especially not if it meant she must leave those she loved.

      Claire said, “Well, I’m not